Posted by CrabbyCon on June 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment
California just can’t seem to beat the habit of government spending. The latest proposal coming out of the state legislature originally had $11B in cuts to state services, but that proposal was shot down. So while California burns, literally and figuratively, the state legislature sits there battling back and forth on “to cut, or not to cut.” My advice to California: cut the fat and start doing what’s best for your constituents and your state not your lobbyists, special interests, and your own pockets. I know it’s difficult for politicians, since so many have forgotten who they really work for, but it’s about time to start voting all these people out of office and voicing our concerns. California will be bankrupt before the legislature comes to a decision on the $24B budget, how sad is that?
“All of the cuts that were rejected by the majority party that the governor proposed are things that unfortunately have to be done,” he said. “We can’t afford some of those things when we’re talking about revenues that are back to where we were in 1999 or 2000.
Moody’s Investors Service has warned that California could face a “multi-notch” downgrade in its credit rating, citing the state’s expected massive shortfall for fiscal 2010 of more than 20 percent of its general fund budget and limited options for plugging it.
Schwarzenegger and lawmakers face the task of closing a $24.3 billion budget deficit for the state’s fiscal year beginning on July 1.
Besides the idiocy coming out of California, Massachusetts has also created a plan to house the homeless in motels. They aren’t housing them in motels because they are overwhelmed or out of room at shelters. No, they are paying for them to stay in motels due to complaints that the shelters didn’t have enough amenities to satisfy their needs, like kitchens, living rooms, etc. Are you kidding ME? These people are jobless, don’t pay taxes, and just become leeches on society. Not everyone, but the majority. What would be the incentive to me to make a better life and find a job if the government enabled me to live the way I have always lived and be lazy and complacent? This is the exact same problem with bailouts, welfare, unemployment benefits, and entitlements in general. This has become insane. This is not the innovative, hardworking American society that I studied and read about in school. This is not what my parents taught me or what those in our military have fought for. I’m appalled by the idiocracy that we are now calling our government and our country.
Housing Massachusetts’ homeless is costing tax payers around $2 million per month. It costs an average of $85 per night to have families, including nearly 1000 children, stay in motels.
The Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness admits that the use of motels for the homeless is not ideal, but is the best that can be done at this time.
Homeless advocates are worried that families are not getting the support of shelters with living rooms, kitchens, and play areas.
Share on Facebook
Filed under Bailouts, Budget, Constitution, Economy, Politicians, State Issues · Tagged with Budget, California, Debt, Economy, Entitlements, Homeless, Massachusetts, Politicians, spending, State Issues
Posted by CrabbyCon on April 17, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Things could get much worse not only for the United States but for the rest of the world:
The International Monetary Fund has warned of “worrisome parallels” between the current global crisis and the Great Depression, despite the unprecedented steps already taken by central banks and governments worldwide.
This recession is likely to be “unusually long and severe, and the recovery sluggish,” said the Fund, releasing two advance chapters from its World Economic Outlook. However, it warned there is a risk that it could spiral down into a full-blown slump unless further action is taken to stop “feedback effects” gathering force.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, said millions of people risk being pushed back into poverty as the economic storm ravages the most vulnerable countries. “The human consequences could be absolutely devastating. This is a truly global crisis, and nobody is escaping,” he said.
Synchronised world recessions striking all major regions are “historically rare” events, the Fund said. They last one and a half times as long typical downturns, and are followed by painfully slow recoveries.
William Graham Sumner, an economics professor at Yale University, wrote in 1883 about the Forgotten Man. His synopsis is one of the best I have heard and it was played out during the Great Depression as FDR took the reigns and tried to make a Utopian, collectivist society to raise up the poor, but step all over the middle class. Those who lived through the Great Depression and who made up the middle class, such as my grandmother, can speak passionately and clearly to this day about the policies of FDR and against those who believe in progressive, socialistic societies. Sumner wrote:
A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.
For once let us look him up and consider his case, for the characteristic of all social doctors is that they fix their minds on some man or group of men whose case appeals to the sympathies and the imagination, and they plan remedies addressed to the particular trouble; they do not understand that all the parts of society hold together, and that forces which are set in action act and react throughout the whole organism, until an equilibrium is produced by a readjustment of all interests and rights.
They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and, forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion — that the state cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man.
There always are two parties. The second one is always the Forgotten Man, and any one who wants to truly understand the matter in question must go and search for the Forgotten Man. He will be found to be worthy, industrious, independent, and self-supporting. He is not, technically, “poor” or “weak”; he minds his own business, and makes no complaint. Consequently the philanthropists never think of him, and trample on him.
[...]
For our present purpose it is most important to notice that if we lift any man up we must have a fulcrum, or point of reaction. In society that means that to lift one man up we push another down. The schemes for improving the condition of the working classes interfere in the competition of workmen with each other. The beneficiaries are selected by favoritism, and are apt to be those who have recommended themselves to the friends of humanity by language or conduct which does not betoken independence and energy. Those who suffer a corresponding depression by the interference are the independent and self-reliant, who once more are forgotten or passed over; and the friends of humanity once more appear, in their zeal to help somebody, to be trampling on those who are trying to help themselves.
[...]
The question then arises, Who is C? He is the man who wants alcoholic liquors for any honest purpose whatsoever, who would use his liberty without abusing it, who would occasion no public question, and trouble nobody at all. He is the Forgotten Man again, and as soon as he is drawn from his obscurity we see that he is just what each one of us ought to be.
No truer words were ever spoken and how prophetic his analysis is today. It amazes me how so many in the past, whether it was our founding fathers or men like William Graham Sumner, knew the very essence of the issues that continue to stifle us today. The true condition of what it means to be American and those Forgotten Men and Women that really do make up this great nation.
Read more
Share on Facebook
Filed under Bailouts, Budget, Economy, Foreign Affairs, National Debt, Obama, Socialism, Stimulus, Treasury, Wall Street · Tagged with Bankruptcy, Debt, Depression, Economy, FDR, Forgotten Man, IMF, Markets, Middle Class, National Debt, Recession, Socialism, Sumner
Posted by CrabbyCon on March 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama‘s budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, more than four times the deficits of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency, congressional auditors said Friday.
The new Congressional Budget Officefigures offered a far more dire outlook for Obama’s budget than the new administration predicted just last month — a deficit $2.3 trillion worse. It’s a prospect even the president’s own budget director called unsustainable.
In his White House run, Obama assailed the economic policies of his predecessor, but the eye-popping deficit numbers threaten to swamp his ambitious agenda of overhauling health care, exploring new energy sources and enacting scores of domestic programs. Read more
Share on Facebook
