analysis policy in all the world: 2012

Thứ Hai, 31 tháng 12, 2012

OH, MY: Some Chevy Dealers Opting Out of Selling Volts

Eh, perhaps it's because they don't want to expand their carbon footprint, or something.

According to Automotive News, the sales of the Volt at some dealerships does not justify the cost of special tools needed to repair and service the vehicles. Dealers are spending up to $5,000 on tools, including a new item that is needed to drain the vehicle’s battery to send back to GM in case of repairs.

Despite sales of the Volt reaching 20,828 through November, some dealers are unable to sell enough of the range-extended electric cars to make up the cost of the parts. Requiring to sell just five Volts to break-even on the costs of the tools, some dealers are instead opting out of the Volt authorized dealer program...

For those of you wondering, the accompanying photo (as I understand it) depicts the first Volt arriving at a dealership sometime last year.

SUBOTAI BAHADUR: The federal government has issued a declaration of war against the Bill of Rights

An interesting debate is occurring over at Legal Insurrection, where Professor William Jacobson asks, "When journalists start a privacy war, where does it end?"

The publication of the names and addresses of gun permit holders by the NY Lower Hudson Journal News , a Gannett paper, sparked controversy, including publication by a blogger (additional here) of equally personal yet publicly available information about the editors and writers of the Journal News...

...Which brings me to a comment submitted last night. It was from a first-time commenter, and it contained personal contact information for the Chairwoman of Gannett, including home address, telephone numbers, second home, neighbors, and relatives... I don’t like the tactic, but it is something done by a Gannett newspaper (at least as to names and addresses).

I’m on board with adopting some of the left’s Alinskyite tactics, like holding them to their own rules, but does this go too far, particularly since she was not directly involved?

An LI commenter, one "Subotai Bahadur", offered what I thought was an exceptionally insightful response:

Professor, we are literally in the end stage of pretending that politics as normal mean something. The Constitutional order has been de facto overturned, while retaining the external trappings of the old order.

The government is at open war on the Bill of Rights. Congress has lost the power of the purse and no longer represents anything but their own vested interests. The rule of law is gone.

Who you are and who you are connected to decides if you will be prosecuted for any crime. No connections [means] no mercy and frequently no due process. If connected to the regime, you are immune [Ed: see Jon Corzine].

Our courts have withdrawn from the fray or have been subverted. In any major issue, it seems that the courts rule that there is no one who has standing to oppose the will of the State; so the State wins. And if a matter does get before the courts, the courts rule based on politics, not law.

The Supreme Court is no longer a barrier defending the [Constitution]. When Chief Justice Roberts suddenly reversed his entire life’s work to rule that the Federal government could violate the Constitution so long as it did it in the guise of a tax; it was obvious that he has been [co-opted] and is now merely a tool of the regime.

Moderating our conduct while the country is still on this side of violence will not prevent things going from bad to worse. Things are going to get worse even if we become martyred saints. Our restraint in the face of ongoing attacks merely removes restraints on the conduct of those who seek the destruction of our country and Constitution. If their escalations are only met with feeble responses on our part, they are encouraged to push the envelope until they reach the point of violence.

So long as no law is broken [after all, that is the standard of combat that they have set; akin to say the real rules on the use of poison gas in warfare] then hit back twice as hard. Make them deal with their families and their neighbors being angry at them. And publicly out the nature of their biases in every thing they publish. Keep in mind that just recently the State got the power to wiretap, investigate, and arrest people without warrant of probably cause. Do you think that they are going to limit what they dig up in the name of “decency”? Look at their record.

Every employee of the paper should have a full background check, as deep as can be done within the bounds of the law. If a prospective employer can find it, then it should be legal. And publishable. Criminal records, court judgments, membership in various organizations, political contributions, public statements. If the investigation leads to family members, so be it. Reveal it all.

Publish the ownership/management details of all the companies who advertised in the editions where the permit holders are/were mapped who continue to advertise with them. There will be the implication that they could receive the same detailed attention as the employees. And if Gannett does not rein in the Journal News; move up the corporate food chain.

Given the nature of the Journo-List 2.0 media; it would be wise for all of their major personalities to be subject to the same investigation as the Journal-News’ staff just to have in reserve for when they next outrageously lie. And every personality in the current administration. There is a lot of work to do.

Oh, and one more little cross check on the Journal-News’ map. Do not take it on faith that their map was complete. Follow up on it and make sure that they did not “accidentally” forget to publish the names of various politically or otherwise connected individuals that they did not want to offend. If there are political or other celebrities who are calling for the abolition of the 2nd Amendment while themselves being armed; that needs to be Alinsky-ed out.

If we are to have a hope of stopping the enemies of our country before they physically attack us, we have to make them pay a price and show that they will be opposed if they cross that line. Yielding to them does not accomplish that end.

I am reminded of a quote by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his The Gulag Archipelago that seems on point. It was about the greatest regret of those in the slave labor camps:

What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? --Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 1 “Arrest” (p13, The Gulag Archipelago, Collins 1974)

The forces of the Left right now know that they attack us short of violence in perfect safety. We cannot let them think that that safety will be there when they inevitably turn to violence. Thus, we must strike back overwhelmingly before that line is crossed.

Hand-wringing aside, it turns out a simple Google search reveals that same personal information.

I'm guessing that women with restraining orders against abusive ex'es, those who had been threatened for their religious or political views, and others revealed by Gannett's unconscionable disclosures would back Subotai's position.

CHART: President Obama's "Balanced" Fiscal Cliff Proposal

This is what the President called a "balanced" approach.

If there was a single piece of evidence that additional "revenue" (Democrat code word for higher taxes) would be used to offset deficits, reasonable people might be able to support it.

A PLEA FROM RUSSIA: "Americans, Never Give Up Your Guns"

Your QOTD comes from Pravda, of all places, where Stanislav Mishin writes:

While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

...No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tips: Image and BB.

Larwyn's Linx: Yes, Fascism Has Come to America

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QOTD: "Central banks have become the great enablers of fiscal profligacy. The overarching belief is that there will always be someone or something there to act as the safety net. The safety nets worked so well recently that investors now trust they will be underneath them ad-infinitum. Markets and economists alike now believe that quantitative easing (“QE”) will always “work” by flooding the market with relatively costless capital. Unlimited QE and the zero lower bound (“ZLB”) are likely to bankrupt pension funds whose expected returns happen to be a good 600 basis points (or more) higher than the 10?year “risk-free” rate. The ZLB has many unintended consequences that are impossible to ignore.

Our belief is that markets will eventually take these matters out of the hands of the central bankers. These events will happen with such rapidity that policy makers won’t be able to react fast enough. The fallacy of the belief that countries that print their own currency are immune to sovereign crisis will be disproven in the coming months and years. Trillions of dollars of debts will be restructured and millions of financially prudent savers will lose large percentages of their real purchasing power at exactly the wrong time in their lives. Again, the world will not end, but the social fabric of the profligate nations will be stretched and in some cases torn. Sadly, looking back through economic history, all too often war is the manifestation of simple economic entropy played to its logical conclusion. We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation." --Kyle Bass

Chủ Nhật, 30 tháng 12, 2012

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FISCAL CLIFF OLIVE BRANCH TO THE GOP: "You Get Nothing"

Let's recall a few immutable facts regarding the "Fiscal Cliff":

1. A week ago, according to Salon Magazine, the President told John Boehner during fiscal cliff negotiations, that "You get nothing."

2. The Bush Tax Cuts -- which Democrats have fought for a decade -- are suddenly critical to the survival of the Republic (hypocrisy much?).

3. Senate Democrats have refused to pass a budget for nearly four years, an act unprecedented in modern American history.

4. President Obama's budgets have failed to receive a single Democrat vote.

5. Republicans have passed four (4) budgets this year, all of which were defeated in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

6. The recommendations of the President's own bi-partisan deficit commission, which contained a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts, were -- in the words of Democrat commission member Erskine Bowles -- "scuttled" by Barack Obama.

This entire situation belongs in the lap of Barack Obama.

The world's dumbest blogger -- Ezra Klein -- hardest hit.

IT'S COME TO THIS: Doormat Warning Label

Courtesy OverLawyered:

With the Democrat Party in the thrall of the Trial Lawyer Lobby, I believe this warning label is only slightly tongue-in-cheek.

SHOCK: New York Corner Stores Appear to be Facilitating Rampant Abuse of EBT Welfare Benefits

But there's nothing to cut!

Most people run to the corner bodega for a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread, but some welfare recipients are plunking down $500 at a time in suspicious transactions... Welfare users are only allowed to use their Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to buy food, yet they are rung up like fat cats in tiny stores in The Bronx and Brooklyn where the priciest item is usually an $8 pound of ham.

Earlier this year, an owner and a cashier at Glenwood Food Corp. in Canarsie, Brooklyn, were arrested for ringing up bogus transactions... A federal sting found the bodega was recording phony purchases on EBT cards, handing customers about 70 percent of the amount in cash — and pocketing the rest. Goods were rarely exchanged in the scam, which defrauded taxpayers out of $985,000 in two years...

Sheridan Mini Mart in Morrisania, The Bronx, rang up single sales of $543.40 and $473.50 on June 4, 2012, alone. That’s a lot of bread for a store where the most expensive item is an $11.99 jug of cooking oil... At Tremont’s Palenque Supermarket Corp., ETB where the priciest product is an $18.99 gallon of olive oil, transactions reached as high as $400 last year... Desi Grocery, a tiny East New York store now known as Anchor Grocery, racked up a $585 sale and several $400 sales through June 2012...

Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation called the USDA’s anti-fraud procedures “a joke... “There’s virtually no oversight or effort from the USDA to stop this at all,” Rector said. “A store gets disqualified from the program and miraculously it’s back in business in the next two weeks with a new name on the front door.”

How many hundreds of billions of dollars in our money are "redistributed" through fraudulent Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and food stamp transactions?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.

THE TOP 5 GUN CONTROL GRAPHS: The Gun-Grabbers' Failed Policies Are Exposed by Their Own Data!

The very statistics and reports that the gun control crowd selectively market prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that "gun control" increases violence.

5. Violent crime rates tracked by "Right-to-Carry" (RTC) States vs. non-RTC. RTC states are significantly safer:

4. Compared to 25 other "First World" (OECD) countries, the United States has very few robberies.

3. Compared to all other United Nations' members, the U.S. murder rate is extremely low (and far lower if you pull out "gun-free" zones like Chicago and Washington, D.C.).

2. Gun ownership in the U.S. is literally off the charts, which validates Dr. John Lott: more guns yield less crime (or, as Heinlein put it, "An armed society is a polite society").

1. And, finally, for global homicide rates, the United States ranks on the low end of the spectrum. And, again, if "gun-free" zones like Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York City were pulled from the data, the U.S. would be among the safest countries on Earth.

Bonus: From 2007-2010, if you wanted to avoid a mass-murder incident, domestic violence or general violent crime, you'd be far better off living in a right-to-carry state.

The Executive Summary:

Based on the crime data presented in this article — again, all the data come from countries and organizations supporting the most extreme forms of gun control — the gun-ban movement promotes a fatally flawed agenda whose outcome includes:

• More women raped;
• More blacks murdered;
• More people experiencing fear;
• More school children murdered;
• And the individual’s civil rights infringed.

If civilian disarmament is a righteous, caring agenda, why must gun-control advocates manipulate their own data to manufacture “proof” of its validity?

And what kind of empathetic people exploit the occasion of murdered children and a distraught public as the proper time to ask for support of their agenda?

We know precisely what kind of "empathetic people" exploit murdered children to pursue their Statist agenda. We call them "Democrats".

Hat tip: BadBlue News.

HOBBY LOBBY COUPONS: Show Your Support for the First Amendment

Michelle Malkin, among others, is encouraging Americans to support Hobby Lobby in its fight against Obamacare's unconstitutional abrogation of the First Amendment (see "Hobby Lobby Won't Violate Faith over Abortion Drugs").

It's going to be a long, expensive fight against Obamacare, and the company can use your help.

If you'd like to show your support with your pocket book, visit Hobby Lobby's coupon page for online and in-store deals.

Hat tip: BB.

Arab Money and the Purchase of a President

Guest post by John A. Shaw

In the run-up to the 2012 election, a story surfaced about an Iraqi billionaire who managed to buy access to Washington policy makers while funding a Chicago Pay-to-Play scheme that helped produce a Governor, a U.S. Senator, and, ultimately, a President of the United States.

The story was eight years in the making, yet despite the extent of his political influence, this Iraqi’s name remains largely unknown. He wants it that way. In fact, he has spent a significant sum attempting to hinder the reporting of his activities by the news media. The lack of attention paid to him, however, is inversely proportional to his level of importance.

His name is Nadhmi Auchi.

Auchi is now a British citizen. He bought respectability in Britain and in Europe through both donations to charities and self-serving gifts to politicians.

He was once Saddam Hussein’s arms merchant. He morphed into Saddam’s main financial operative in Europe. Today, he is one of the richest men in the world, and has, over the last few decades, been a player in nearly every noteworthy, corrupt, international deal involving Europe and the Middle East.

He was convicted of fraud in a $504 million corruption scandal -- the Elf Aquitaine case – the largest corruption trial in French history.

He was a central figure in one of the largest corruption cases during the Iraqi reconstruction, involving $3 billion dollars.

His U.S. visa was revoked for his alleged facilitation of $30 million in bribes to American and British officials in Iraq.

Auchi was a primary beneficiary of the widely abused and notoriously corrupt U.N. "Oil for Food" program while he was the single, largest stockholder in the merged French megabank BNP Parisbas. The bank was a major conduit for the funds flowing through the U.N. program.

He also reportedly gained access to the White House over the course of four separate administrations, beginning with George H. W. Bush, through the Clinton era and that of Bush 43. And it goes without saying that he was intimately involved with the political career of one Barack H. Obama.

Auchi's Chicago proxy was a man named Tony Rezko, best known for his curious land deal with Obama. At the same time, Auchi staged his worldwide operations out of London. But Chicago was the Alpha and Omega of his empire.

Rezko reportedly used Auchi money to grease political skids and buy access into the shadowy world of the Chicago political machine.

With Rezko on the ground there, the Auchi-Rezko combine created an Arab-American network linking Chicago and the Middle East in ways that brought financial support to two promising, Illinois politicians: Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama.

Rezko and Blagojevich now sit in federal prison convicted of corruption, but Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States, thanks, in no small part, to early financial support from Nadhmi Auchi. Both are said to expect early pardons from Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, Auchi is believed to have maintained ownership of significant assets in Chicago, where Rahm Emanuel, once Obama’s Chief of Staff, now serves as Mayor.

Valerie Jarrett, a member of the Auchi-Rezko network, was part of both the finance arm of the operation and, having been born in Iran, also part of Auchi’s Chicago Arab-American coterie. Jarrett is now the principal advisor to the President and, reportedly, was recently discovered to have clandestinely negotiated with Iran on Obama’s behalf.

Auchi is said to have spent many years serving as a protégé of British Intelligence, brokering its needs in the Middle East and beyond. That connection, and millions of dollars, enabled him to bring his problem-solving capabilities to the attention of U.S. policy makers at the time of the First Gulf War.

The connections he developed during the war positioned him to become a key advisor to the Department of Defense (DoD) during the Reconstruction planning for Iraq. Auchi eventually leveraged his advisory role into becoming the central figure in Iraqi Reconstruction, which was plagued with corruption.

I learned these facts while assigned by the DoD to track illegal arms sales in Iraq. In that role, I learned that Auchi appeared to cover his tracks using his intelligence and political connections.

In 2008, the files which documented and confirmed what I had learned were transferred to the Chicago Office of United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Since then, that office has taken no action to pursue Auchi, or his network.

Similarly, the Chicago media has demonstrated only occasional and cursory interest in Auchi’s role in Chicago politics.

But then, Chicago is accustomed to accepting such skulduggery, seeing as it's the home of Al Capone and the Daley Machine, for starters.

Nadhmi Auchi has gambled very successfully on his investments -- questionable or not -- around the world. Has Nadhmi Auchi gotten a good return on his investments in Chicago and D.C.?

It could be said that Auchi has considerable sway over Chicago City Hall and the White House. My guess is that his aim is to make a lot more money and to influence policy. Don’t bet against his ability to do both over the next four years.

John A. Shaw, a former senior official of the Defense, State, and Commerce departments, served on several White House staffs. He is a specialist in international technology transfer and arms sales, and in the economic development of the Middle East.

Larwyn's Linx: Confirmed -- "We Can and Will Force Christians to Act Against Their Faith"

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Nation

"We Can and Will Force Christians to Act Against Their Faith": CNS
The Dec. 16th shooting you didn't hear about: Nice Deb
Report: Obama will nominate Hagel for Secretary of Defense: Scoop

‘Gun Control Fails,’ Say Statistics from… Gun-Control Advocates: PJM
Molon Labe: AmmoLand
'Biggest crowd ever for biggest gun show on East Coast': Twitchy

Will Joe Biden Voluntarily Give Up His Shotguns?: RWN
The Fiscal Cliff is a Diversion from the Real Problem: CFP
Next Phase Of The Gun Control Fight....Gun Shows: Ace

Economy

Deal or No Deal?: Power Line
Take a Powder: You Voted for Him: Salamander
Is Obama About to Roll Over the GOP?: Dossier

Obamacare Dead on Arrival, Part I: CDN&V
Unemployment Benefits are Becoming a Dependence Problem: AT
Jihad-Free Holiday Gifts: BadEagle

Scandal Central

Obama 2008: “I Am Not Going To Take Your Guns Away”: GWP
Hillary Too Concussed to Testify About Benghazi, But OK to Fly to Dominican Republic for Vacation: JWF
Obama’s ‘welfare case’ space pioneer buys $17 million mansion: Hoocoodanode?

Climate & Energy

Teens Dump Higher Ed for Brown Jobs: Mead
AR5 Chapter 11; Hiding the Decline (Part II): Watts
EPA Sued Over Heinous Experiments on Humans: NLPC

Media

NY Paper Publishes Names, Addresses of Gun Permit Map-Publishing Journal News Employees: BizzyBlog
N.Y. Newspaper Announces it Will Publish More Names & Addresses of Gun Owners: Blaze
Shusher in chief: Obama gets testy at fiscal cliff presser: Twitchy

500 murders? Chicago sure could use a gun ban! Oh. Wait...: AWD
Aspiring Bolshevik Thom Hartmann Wants US to 'Outlaw Billionaires': NB
Recent shootings shine spotlight on assault rifle: USA Today

NBC DC Anchor: Grisly Crime Scene Photos from Newtown Should Be Public to Further Gun Control: NB
Apparently, laws don’t apply to David Gregory: DC
David Gregory defender Howard Kurtz schooled on DC gun law enforcement: Twitchy

World

First They Came For The Guns…: MagNote
Muslim Brotherhood reaches out to Hezbollah: RS
Comedy Gold: Muslim Brotherhood Leader Tells Jews To Leave Israel, Return to Egypt: JoshuaPundit

"It will make 9/11 look like peanuts": Atlas
Memo For File CLXXVI: RWN
Woman charged with murder as a hate crime in deadly New York subway push: Fox

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

Facebook’s High-Stakes Poker Game: Crunch
Windows 8 wrestles with PC's legacy: CNet
Microsoft confirms zero-day bug in IE6, IE7 and IE8: CompWorld

Cornucopia

Fatso the Cat: American Digest
Uno, or not to Uno?: PRS
Obama’s Facebook Page Features ‘Favorite’ Photos of 2012 (Can You Guess How Many Feature Him?): Blaze

Image and sponsored by: Our Rhinestone in the Rough (Ruff?)

QOTD: "Decades hence, our offspring will listen in disbelief when we tell them we used to pay billions of dollars to warehouse children in “gun-free zones” overseen by morons; that 21st-century kids were groomed for 19th-century jobs and came out functionally illiterate but experts nonetheless on the subjects of Kwanzaa, “safe” sex, and something called global warming." --Kathy Shaidle

Thứ Bảy, 29 tháng 12, 2012

EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: David Gregory Mocks D.C. Police on Next Week's Meet the Press

Biff Spackle gives us a preview of this week's Meet The Press, where David Gregory plans on demonstrating a .50-cal. Desert Eagle.

Gregory claims that D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department is incompetent and would never prosecute a member of the media.

MARK LEVIN: I'm thinking that perhaps the Democrat Party should rename itself the Fascist Party

History and reason both tell us that the Democrat Party is so completely addicted to power that they are willing to toss our highest law -- the Constitution -- into the sewer at every opportunity.

I'm starting to think the Democrat Party should rename itself the Fascist Party. Its love of an all powerful, centralized government, and contempt for independent, successful individuals, are traits of a fascist mentality. Killing the long-standing Senate filibuster while in the majority, but using it unconstitutionally to block judicial nominations when in the minority, underscores an ends-justifies-the-means treachery.

Power is the obsession, not societal improvement through virtue, prudence, and justice.

In 2009, I created an illustrated definition of the word "fascism". Read it, and weep for our Republic.

PHOTOS: The $17M mansion the founder of an electric car maker bought after getting $465M in federal green energy loans

Let me guess: he's doing it for the children. His children, that is.

Taxpayers footed the bill for a $465 million loan to troubled electric carmaker Tesla as part of President Barack Obama’s “green energy” stimulus. But Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk is now riding high with the purchase of his new $17 million mansion.

Here's a photo of the exterior of Musk's home in Bel Air, a 20,000-square foot palace equipped with wine cellar, tennis court, and pool.

Mr. Musk’s 20,248-square-foot hilltop mansion boasts breathtaking views, a two-story library with rolling ladder, a home theater, and a five-car garage to house his taxpayer-subsidized, pricey Tesla vehicles.

In September, The New York Times reported that Tesla had burned through cash and missed production targets, raising “questions about the long-term viability of the company” and igniting “ criticism of the government’s energy loan program, which has been heavily promoted by the Obama administration..."

Reportedly you can see the ocean from the terrace.

Coincidentally I'm sure, Musk donated over $100,000 to the Obama 2012 campaign.

And Tesla produced a grand total of 359 cars last quarter.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: when the complete history of the Obama administration is written, it will make the Teapot Dome look like a case of shoplifting.

Never have so few stolen so much from so many.

Hat tips: Sad Hill News and Lee.

SHOULD THE U.S. DEFAULT NOW... OR LATER? The only question we should be asking about the debt ceiling

Here's something you probably didn't read in the funny papers: $2.1 trillion has been added to the national debt in the last 16 months alone.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has alerted Congress that the nation will once again hit the debt ceiling on Monday, but that his department can take “extraordinary measures” to keep paying the bills for another few months.

Incredibly, the debt ceiling was raised from $14.294 trillion in August 2011, to its current level of $16.394 trillion. Thus in the span of only sixteen months, the Obama administration has added a whopping $2.1 trillion to the national debt. [Source]

The entire hullabaloo about the "Fiscal Cliff" is a politico- and media-manufactured diversion.

The real discussion we need to have -- but won't -- concerns the "Fiscal Abyss" (in the words of former Comptroller General David Walker) facing our nation.

Raising taxes is like putting a Band-Aid on a severed femoral artery.

DON'T RAISE THE DEBT CEILING

I've thought long and hard about this issue -- and have arrived at what is probably a controversial opinion: Republicans should refuse to raise the debt ceiling without huge spending cuts and entitlement reforms.

Here's a news flash: President Obama wants the country to default. He has layered on so much debt, so fast, that the U.S. simply can't honor its obligations.

And the administration's cascade of regulations (like "Boiler MACT") are explicitly designed to prevent the economy from growing fast enough to help make up the difference.

DEFAULT NOW -- OR DEFAULT LATER?

The real question we should be asking is whether a default now is preferential to a default later.

I believe a default now is by far the best solution for the vast majority of Americans: when the default occurs, it will shock the financial system, rattle markets around the world, and -- in all likelihood -- herald the onset of another Great Depression.

A default several years down the road, however, will be far worse for America:

• The crash will be much larger, and much more catastrophic for the citizenry -- and it will hit seniors and the poor much harder;

• America's manufacturing sector will be less able to recover than it is today, having been downsized by this administration's regulatory onslaught;

• And America's citizens will be even less self-reliant, whether it comes to EBT cards, firearms, family-owned farms, and every other measure of independence;

• The military will be weaker, having been gutted by years of Obama's efforts to defund national defense;

The real question we must ask is this: do we want the economy to crash on Obama's timing -- or ours?

THE NEXT DEBT-CEILING DEBATE

I believe that the House of Representatives should refuse to raise the debt ceiling without immediate and immense cuts and entitlement reforms. Barring, say, a $900 billion reduction in annual spending (removing the Stimulus from the baseline budget, for example), the House should refuse to raise the debt ceiling.

Let the country default.

It is provably better to default now than later.

We know that President Obama wants the country to default. That much is clear with the accompanying chart, which comes to us directly from the White House. He just doesn't want the default to happen quite so soon, before he's had a chance to -- in his words -- "fundamentally transform" America.

So let's default now, before things get immeasurably worse.