Call Me Stormy

Finding righteous currents in turbulent times

Archive for the tag “deficits”

Gold is King

When the dollar became the world currency after World War II, the United States was the world’s richest creditor nation. We had massive trade surpluses and we were the leader in manufactured goods. The dollar was not only backed by gold, but also convertible into gold. Then, says financial commentator and economist Peter Schiff, we exploited the situation and began spending like drunken sailors. With growing concerns over the stability of the dollar, other nations began converting dollar reserves into gold, forcing President Nixon to delink the dollar from gold to the floating exchange rates that exist today.

Fast forward to today and reckless spending has amassed a record deficit exceeding $20 trillion, a scenario that doesn’t bode well for the dollar. “We are going to go back on the gold standard eventually,” Schiff says. “It’s not going to be our decision, but the market’s decision.” He tells us why in this virtual interview with Patrick Bet-David on Valuetainment.

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California’s Lost Promise

California is at a tipping point. Severe budget deficits, unsustainable pension costs, heavy taxes, cumbersome regulation, struggling cities, and distressed public schools are but a few of the challenges that policymakers must address for the state to remain a beacon of business innovation and economic opportunity. In this video, the cracks in California’s flawed policy plans are displayed and analyzed by a diverse set of experts.

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Attack of the Austerions

Senator Rand Paul, R-Kentucky,  and CATO economist Dan Mitchell join John Stossel to discuss a pipe dream called austerity.

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Sequester Facts to Bear in Mind

To hear President Barack Obama tell it, the impending $85 billion in spending cuts to the federal budget known as the sequester are the worst disaster since Seth MacFarlane hosted the Academy Awards.

But before you dive deep into depression, Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie recites a few facts that should take the sting out of the sequester.

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Sequestration Panic Time!

The “cuts” under sequestration are, in fact, not spending cuts at all. Even the one department that faces substantive cuts, Defense, will continue to spend at historically high levels. Cato Institute Senior Fellow Michael D. Tanner comments.

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Hey Washington, Get Frugal

Regular Americans everywhere are having to tighten their belts and learn to live with less. Kira Davis asks: “Why can’t Washington?”

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How Tulsa Squared Its Budget

When Mayor Dewey Bartlett took office on December 7, 2009, Tulsa, Oklahoma was in its worst budget crisis since the Great Depression.

“We would have probably had to file for bankruptcy,” Bartlett tells Reason TV. “It certainly got us focused on how to run a government better.”

With a $10 million budget shortfall and employee compensation spiraling out of control, thinkng about layoffs was just the beginning. Bartlett schooled himself about the budget and decided to focus “on things a government really should do and also make a decision on what a government really doesn’t need to do.” He reformed pay for police and firemen, sold unused vehicles and property, and privatized some city services, including the city’s zoo.

Reason TV talked with Bartlett in his office to talk about how to balance a city’s budget without raising taxes.

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The Money Will Run Out

Remember when President Obama called the Bush Administration deficits “irresponsible” and pledged to reduce them by half? Here’s a quick recap on how well Obama has kept those promises and what his cavalier spending means for the future of our country. H/T iOwnTheWorld

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The Goose-Stepping Democrats

Three Democratic dimwits have made headlines by playing the Nazi card against Republicans. South Carolina’s Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian was among these slanderous slugs, likening his state’s governor, Nikki Haley, to Hitler’s down-in-the-bunker mistress Eva Braun. Here’s how Harpootlian explained his outrageous claims.

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Harpootlian admits he engaged in hyperbole and mudslinging, citing the heat of political combat as his excuse. One might be inclined to forgive him, except his comments came in tandem with similar charges leveled by Kansas Democratic Labor Committee president Pat Lehman and John Burton, the Democratic party chairman from California, who both asserted that the GOP had taken a page out of Joseph Goebbels’ playbook by spreading “The Big Lie” during the Republican Convention in Tampa.

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So, are the Democrats getting swept up in the fever-pitch of their emotions, or are they engaged in a cold, calculated effort to plant a false, half-cocked meme? In answer to that, let’s dial the clock back to when the GOP waged the good fight against Obamacare. How did US Congressman Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, react to the opposition? Listen to him speak on the floor of the House.

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In short, the Democrats have been persistently pounding the drum, engaging in a bombastic and brazen campaign to tar Republicans with the stench of Nazism. The biggest problem with that? It’s the Democrats whose policies, by and large, replicate those of Adolf Hitler. How, you ask? Let’s examine the brutal truths.

  • Between 1933 and 1939, in the build-up to WWII, Hitler’s National Socialist government collected revenues of 62 billion marks, but spent 101 billion marks, disregarding the ever-increasing deficits while amassing a national debt exceeding 38 billion marks. Sound familiar?
  • To try to stimulate Germany’s economy and erase the deficits, Hitler abolished the gold standard and enacted Keynesian policies, involving large governmental and public works projects as a means to close the gap and reduce unemployment. Ring a bell?
  • At the same time, Hitler pushed a trade policy called autarky — designed to discourage open and free trade with other nations, except for vital, raw resources needed to develop Germany’s military arsenal. When President George W. Bush took office, the United States had free-trade agreements in place with only three nations — Canada, Mexico and Israel. Bush negotiated 14 additional such agreements. President Obama has negotiated none on his own, but did sign into law pacts with Colombia, Panama and South Korea put into motion in the Bush years.
  • Hitler consolidated and nationalized key German industries, viewing capitalism with disdain as being brutal and unjust. He presented himself as a champion for workers’ rights, but insisted the workers submerge their individual wills to the collective good of the whole, as embodied by the state.  Interesting that the Democrats showcased a video at their convention in Charlotte on the theme “We All Belong to the Government.”

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  • Hitler hated smoking, was a vegetarian, an ardent environmentalist and favored stringent gun control measures for the general public. Does that sound like any Democrats you know?
  • The Nazis were the first government to widely disseminate contraceptives as part of a larger policy, involving enforced sterilizations and euthanasia, aimed against non-Aryans. How many speakers in Charlotte railed about contraceptives? Essentially, everyone who took the podium. True, they talked about birth control as a right, and not as something sinister. But they did not present it as a God-given right, having already removed any religious reference whatsoever from their party platform.
  • They also had stricken the platform’s longstanding language to proclaim Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. I’m not going to argue that decision equates morally with Hitler’s extermination of 6 million Jews. But I will say this, and say it without hesitation. When I meet people who are anti-Semitic these days, they are not generally right-leaning wingnuts, but rather the loons who occupy the so-called “Progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. These folks have grown more strident and shrill over the last few years, emboldened in their arrogance by the false messiah they put into the White House.

Is Obama Der Fuehrer? Are Democrats his brownshirt disciples? Unlike Misters Harpootlian, Burton and Cohen, and Ms. Lehman, I’ll give the donkey’s asses the benefit of the doubt. Few of them, I’m convinced, know enough about history to understand just how dangerously naive, or potentially insidious, their policies are. That said, it’s incumbent upon the rest of us, whether we’re Republicans, Libertarians, independents or otherwise — to push back and do whatever we can to restrain and ridicule the worst of the Democrats’ extremist tendencies.

I won’t attempt to tell you what you must do, because that’s really your own individual call to make, in accordance with your own religious and political beliefs.  All I’ll say here: The Democrats should be looking into the mirror before slinging around allegations of Nazism. Shame on them and their enablers in the media, Hollywood and academia. When you’re talking Nazism, the boot fits them a lot more closely like a glove, than ever could be applied to any of us who believe in free markets, the free exchange of ideas and individuals exercising independent thought.

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