New Mainstream Media and Democrat Tactics

As if the mainstream media wasn’t partisan enough, there appears to be a new and even more extreme series of stories coming out that follow the lying lead of major Democrats. These are stories that aren’t just slanted or biased in the progressive direction, but are outright lies disguised as news stories.  Let’s take two examples.

First the recent New York Times story claiming that a video was responsible for the four Americans murdered in Benghazi. The absurdity of that claim, which was first concocted and spread by president Obama, Hillary Clinton and Democrats for nearly a month after the attack on 11 September, 2012 was proven false.  Not only false, but it was shown to be an absolute smokescreen, an apparent cover-up to protect the administration and Hillary Clinton. The second example involves an AP story, which claims that Obama care will not impact your job, your hours or your ability to keep them.  How that claim can be made is stunning.  Not only is it inaccurate, but it flies in the face of people across this country who already lost their jobs  or had their hours cut to part-time due to Obama care.  (Since I first posted this blog, the CBO released a report that highlights the terrible effects that Obama care will have on employment.)

Given the brazen nature of these stories, one has to ask if this is a new tactic?  Has the media decided that they must engage in an entirely new level of deception to camouflage the progressive agenda and provide cover for Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, etc.?

These new types of stories come at the same time that another very disturbing progressive tactic may be surfacing.  Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative filmmaker, was just brought up on campaign finance charges in the state of New York.  At the same time, conservative activist James O’Keefe is claiming that NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo is targeting his organization with intimidation, similar to how the IRS went after conservative groups, and may still be at it.  As an aside, the IRS is now trying to change policy in order to institutionalize their ability to intimidate in the future as they did to conservative groups since Obama took office.

As a retired member of the military, we used to proudly state that although we might disagree with what you have to say, we would defend with our lives you’re right to say it.  Is this belief no longer alive in America?  Have we entered a new era of governmental intrusion and intimidation?  Has the left now taken so much power and become so brazen as to believe that they can wantonly target and destroy and potentially even imprison those that have the courage to dissent?

– This country needs to wake up!  Americans open your eyes!

 Without freedom of speech, without the ability to speak one’s mind free from governmental reprisal, we are headed down the road to authoritarianism, and that path is a one-way street!

The Fallacy of Unemployment Insurance Benefits

President Obama and prominent democrats are once again pushing an increase to unemployment benefits. They even label them as “emergency” payments while at the same time telling us that the economy is rebounding and growing stronger. One of the left’s claims to sell the program extension, a clear fallacy of unemployment insurance benefits, is that it would create jobs.

Saying that paying unemployment benefits creates jobs is like saying digging a hole creates dirt!dirt_pile

Money that goes out to one person in unemployment payments first gets taken from another as a tax. The tax creates a hole in their bank account just as digging creates a hole in the ground. Leftist economic illiteracy claims that the payments create jobs as each person spends their unemployment checks, bringing revenue to businesses such as heating companies and grocery stores.

What’s missed, either through ignorance or deception, is that the person who got taxed no longer has their own money to spend on heat or groceries, negating every unemployment check dollar. In reality, it’s far more likely that the extension of benefits costs the economy jobs due to government inefficiency, but it most certainly doesn’t create any.

What Our Government Won’t Show Regarding The Debt

The Congressional Budget Office released a report in September 2-13 (updated in Oct) called the 2013 Long Term Budget Outlook. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44521

Both Republicans and Democrats heavily quoted the report. Republicans were quick to reference that the report concluded that America can’t sustain the debt path we are currently on. Democrats used a very slight near term improvement to the annual Debt to GDP ratio as great evidence that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress were improving the economy and the US debt picture. As often occurs, the Democrats are stretching the truth to the breaking point. The comparison of spending to GDP, used everywhere in the report, is camouflage for what’s really happening. See a couple of the report’s GDP comparisons by clicking here. Nowhere does the report show the debt in actual dollars. The two charts below expose the truth, extrapolating from the report’s supporting data tables, and proves that fundamentally the US is on a disastrous spending path.

Chart 1 below throws the Debt to GDP ratio away and provides raw constant year 2013 dollars for both Total US National Debt and GDP. Democrats trumpet the minuscule dip of the debt (Red Curve) below the GDP (Green Curve) in the 2018 time-frame as great news. Despite the fact that it was caused by the Republican House, it’s so insignificant that you can barely see it. Unless we control the reckless federal spending tidal wave, the red curve (US real debt) will grow exponentially vs our GDP. US debt will pass $30 Trillion by 2030. At some point in the not so distant future, we’ll cross the point of no return, a cataclysmic debt “event horizon”. The responsible answer involves cutting federal spending.

Government Debt Projections Exposed

Government Debt Projections Exposed

Chart 2 shows two potential futures from CBO’s report. A $2T reduction across ten years reduces the debt growth to the green curve. A further reduction to $4T across ten years dramatically (purple curve) cuts the debt’s growth more, but it does not yet cut the debt. Additional reductions (beyond $400B/yr), along with pro-growth economic policies are critical to balancing, and perhaps dare I say, paying it off.

Only Immediate and Deep Cuts Stabilize Budget Future

Only Immediate and Deep Cuts Stabilize Budget Future

For comparison purposes, the Debt to GDP ratio was added to Chart 2 (dotted blue line). Notice that the Democrat’s touted reduction in Debt to GDP clearly happens at the same time that the Debt itself explodes.

BOTTOM LINE: Significant cuts are essential and need to happen yesterday.

NOTE: Comparisons to GDP are useful to assess one time in history to another. However, our goliath government created a new paradigm that makes the debt to GDP ratio a poor future comparison and pundit “feel good” conclusions based upon them grossly misleading. Why?

Past spending spikes were more “single year” events as opposed to spending baked into the Federal baseline as they are today:

  1. Huge spikes in past Annual Debt to GDP were largely due to military wartime spending, easily reduced after wars ended to return to sustainable spending. See below chart.
  2. Today’s spending, which drives each year’s budget deficit, is increasingly caused by sources that can’t be easily eliminated (unlike the case with wartime spending).
    1. Interest on the national debt. The interest avalanche grows each year, as shown here, and must be paid or the US Government defaults on its obligations. Even Progressives admit that’s a bad thing.
    2. Social welfare programs are the third rail of politics. Democrats use them to buy votes, and bludgeon anybody who suggests responsibly reforming them.

Interest and social welfare programs, which now include Obama Care’s massive costs, will consume the budget, pushing all else aside. That “all else” includes what our Constitution mandates the Federal Government actually do.

From CBO's "The 2013 Long-Term Budget Outlook"

From CBO’s “The 2013 Long-Term Budget Outlook”