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Lesson to the US: Social Welfare Costs Rapidly Sinking Europe

At the British Conservative Party conference, Chancellor George Osborne unveiled an initiative to jump start the nation’s economy. He also targeted welfare and the problem it is creating for the western world.

Calling handouts bloated, unfair and sometimes corrupt, Osborne suggested they are simply unaffordable. He believes they are crushing Europe’s advanced economies.

The UK Telegraph reported that his speech to the Conservative Party was likely well received by the British who show “a high degree of public support for further cuts in welfare spending. Where once the Tories were regarded as cruel and heartless for wanting to slash benefits, it now seems that they can’t be tough enough. Politically, Osborne is therefore pushing at an open door when he says this is not just about saving money – it’s about fairness and enterprise.”

Osbornes’ attack on welfare took a populist tone:

How can we justify the incomes of those out of work rising faster than the incomes of those in work, he asks, or giving flats to young people who have never worked when working people twice their age still have to live with their parents because they cannot afford a separate home?

More emotively still, he asked how it was possible to justify a system where people in work have to consider the costs of having another child, while those who are out of work don’t. By raising these questions, Osborne gives voice to a strongly populist message, but he also speaks to an underlying, economic imperative – advanced economies are long past the stage of being able to afford such largesse.

But welfare is only part of Britain’s problem. It is also facing – along with the rest of Europe – a potential meltdown from pensions and healthcare costs. The Telegraph points out that “these forecasts point to destruction of the very foundations of the European social market economy.”

The European socialistic model has failed miserably. The United States should run far, far away from this dead-end model of government, embraced by Obama.

France’s Socialist President Defends his 75% Tax Rate

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey

Francois Hollande last night tried to justify his plans for multi-billion-pound tax rises to an increasingly disillusioned France.

The Socialist president, whose popularity has slumped, appeared on live television to convince the public his policies could help turn the country’s economy around.

During the 25-minute appearance, he unveiled plans for tax increases of ‘between 15 to 20 billion euros’ (£12billion to £16billion), targeting wealthy households, savings and firms.

The money raised will be used for public services, including thousands of new civil servant jobs.

He confirmed that ‘all earnings over one million euros will be taxed at 75 per cent’, adding: ‘It’s symbolic, it will show an example.’

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Obama does it again, calls for a future where “prosperity is shared”


“Too many folks still don’t have a sense that tomorrow will be better than today. And so, the question in this election is which way do we go?” President Obama asked at a fundraiser in Chicago on Sunday.

“Do we go forward towards a new vision of an America in which prosperity is shared?” Obama asked. “Or do we go backward to the same policies that got us in the mess in the first place?”

“I believe we have to go forward,” Obama said. “I believe we have to keep working to create an America where no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, no matter what your last name is, no matter who you love, you can make it here if you try. That’s what’s at stake in November. That’s what is why I am running for a second term as president of the United States of America.”

Obama’s Failures Mount: Ranks of US poor highest in 50 years

The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

“I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I’m here, applying for assistance because it’s hard to make ends meet. It’s very hard to adjust,” said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.

Read more from this story HERE.

Related to the increasing US poverty rate, Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press also reported today that the world is suffering the worst economic slowdown since “the dark days of 2009”:

Six of the 17 countries that use the euro currency are in recession. The U.S. economy is struggling again. And the economic superstars of the developing world – China, India and Brazil – are in no position to come to the rescue. They’re slowing, too.

The lengthening shadow over the world’s economy illustrates one of the consequences of globalization: There’s nowhere to hide.

Economies around the world have never been so tightly linked – which means that as one region weakens, others do, too. That’s why Europe’s slowdown is hurting factories in China. And why those Chinese factories are buying less iron ore from Brazil.

As a result of this global economic slowdown, the International Monetary Fund has reduced its forecast for world growth this year to 3.5 percent, the slowest since a 0.6 percent drop in 2009. Some economists predict the global economy will grow a full percentage point less.

For now, few foresee another global recession. Central banks in China, Britain, Brazil, South Korea and Europe have cut interest rates in the past month to try to jolt growth. European leaders have begun to focus more on promoting growth, not just shrinking debt and cutting budgets.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Rush – Obama hates the United States

In this must-see video, Rush Limbaugh explains why Obama “hates this country” and how he is, “brick by brick, trying to deconstruct the American dream.”

Business leaders slam Obama for saying wealthy aren’t responsible for their own success

America’s leading small business association has slammed Barack Obama for showing ‘an utter lack of understanding’ of the country’s entrepreneurs when he told them: ‘If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’

In a hard-hitting statement to Mail Online, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) president Dan Danne said: ‘What a disappointment to hear President Obama’s revealing comments challenging the significance of America’s entrepreneurs.

Mr. Danne added: ‘His unfortunate remarks over the weekend show an utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the people who take a huge personal risk and work endless hours to start a business and create jobs.’

President Obama said in a speech at the weekend that governments and not individuals create jobs, telling entrepreneurs: ‘If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’

He added: ‘You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.’

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue

Obama’s Friday Campaign Speech Reflects the Left’s Intellectual Exhaustion (+video)

Once in a while, a politician will say something that really offers you some insight into his state of mind and his worldview. On Friday, President Obama gave a campaign speech that included a portion that really repays close inspection. He made his usual case for raising taxes on the wealthy, and then he said:


The most interesting part of this may well be when Obama says “that’s the reason I’m running for president.” Throughout his campaign speeches, it seems he can really only get excited when he forgets that he actually is the president right now and thus manages to reclaim some of that 2008 excitement he clearly badly misses today.

But the larger theme here is fascinating too. It’s a huge and increasingly a central part of what the Democrats are saying (Elizabeth Warren got lots of applause on the left for saying basically the same thing a few months ago), and it tells us a great deal about what they think they’re up against and what they understand themselves to be championing.

The first thing to say about the president’s argument is that most of it is true, and is very, very obvious. No one would disagree with the specific things he says, except perhaps the vague and strange “If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Who? But the president clearly thinks that some people do disagree with his more general point that everyone depends on society. It’s very evident from this passage and from a great deal of what he has to say about his opponents that Obama thinks he is running against a band of nihilistic Ayn Rand objectivists who champion complete and utter radical individualism. That weird notion is also behind the various attempts to link Paul Ryan to Rand, which are pretty amusing if you’ve followed Ryan (for what it’s worth, I would say Ryan thinks Ayn Rand is correct in her analysis of the left, which she believes has drawn the wrong lessons from the death of God, but is incorrect in many of her own prescriptions because she shares the left’s belief that God is dead, but that’s a story for another day…).

The president implies that his opponents don’t think government has any purpose at all, or that laws are necessary for free markets, and don’t recognize the fruits of any common efforts in American history. That’s just ridiculous. I’m sure there are many libertarians who wish Republicans really were radical individualists, but there’s just simply nothing in what Republicans have said or done in our time to support the idea that they are. The Ryan budget, which almost every congressional Republican has voted for, is an attempt precisely to focus the government on achieving what people can’t achieve on their own and on effectively helping the vulnerable and those who cannot help themselves. It envisions a very significant set of public entitlements and programs, in some cases larger than the ones we have now, but tries to bring them into line with the ethic and way of life of our free economy, to make sure they don’t crowd out civil society, and to make them far more efficient and effective than they have been lately. It is a different vision of American life, but not a radically individualist one. It makes for a smaller government on the whole, but it is built on a clear sense that government serves some very crucial purposes. And Republicans are proposing a very gradual path to that vision of America beyond the welfare state. The president would like to imagine that he’s running against radical individualism, but he’s running against some fairly modest reform proposals to avert fiscal catastrophe.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Andrew Aliferis

Video: Obama – “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that”

This past weekend, Obama made yet another outrageous attack on capitalism, suggesting no one can make anything on his own.

Photo credit: Richard Loyal French

Conservative-led states creating far more jobs than those supporting Obama

In each of the States that elected Republican governors during the Tea Party dominated 2010 midterm elections, unemployment rates have gone down. According to an Examiner.com analysis, since Tea Party Republicans took over in January 2011, the average reduction in unemployment for those 17 States has been 1.35%. When compared nationally, job creation in those States has been 50% better than the rest of the country.

The unemployment rate in States that elected “progressive” Democrats in 2010 saw a drop in rates that did no better than the .9% national rate of decline.  In at least one of these “progressive”-run states, the unemployment rate actually went up, not down. New York’s jobless rate increased from 8.2% to 8.6%, an increase of 0.4%.

Compare that lackluster performance to a solid decrease in unemployment in each of the 17 States that elected fiscally Conservative governors back in 2010:  Michigan -2.4%, Florida -2.3%, Nevada -2.2%, Alabama -1.9%, Ohio -1.7%, Tennessee -1.6%, South Carolina -1.5%, Georgia -1.2%, Wyoming -1.1%, Iowa -1.0%, New Mexico -1.0%, Wisconsin -0.9%, Kansas -0.8%, South Dakota -0.7%, Maine -0.6%, Pennsylvania -0.6%.

This is another substantiated example of how, when compared to fiscally Conservative Tea Party solutions, “progressive” economic policies fall short. It also blows a gigantic hole in the “we’re-making-progress-but-can’t-go-back-to-policies-that-caused-our-economic-problems” talking points lie that “progressives” insist on repeating ad nauseam.

This also indicates that the real problem in America is “progressive” ideas, which have been being imported into the United States from Europe since the early 20th century. Since then, these “progressive” ideas – hostile to the Republic envisioned by our Founders – have managed to infiltrate and infest both of America’s major political Parties.

The Republican vs. Democrat political paradigm is obsolete. This is especially true where economic policies and government power are concerned. To more accurately describe the philosophical divide in today’s political landscape, think Patriots vs. “progressives.”

It should be noted, “progressives” easily occupy a space within the “globalist” category. Globalism is a clear and present danger to the very concept of national sovereignty . . . any nation’s national sovereignty. Be assured, United States sovereignty is being targeted; “progressives” are eagerly playing a large part in this.

Patriots want the United States to follow the Constitution, which limits the size, scope, reach and power of the central government to that prescribed by the Constitution. “Progressives” wish to “evolve” beyond America’s foundation document, favoring a central government that usurps the maximum amount of power possible from the States and from the people.

Although many Americans supported the invasion of Iraq and George W. Bush’s strong backing of the U.S. military, a careful examination of his Presidency shows that Bush increased the size and cost of the federal government. He created the DHS, a large, expensive and essentially unnecessary Cabinet level bureaucracy. If the underlying cause of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was the FBI and the CIA not sharing information, that could have been rectified with the proper use of an Executive Order directing the two intelligence agencies to share pertinent data. Bush also greatly expanded the size, cost and presence of the TSA. Remember that the next time your 87 year old grandmother or four year old niece is being openly groped by an overly-controlling faux uniformed union member who can probably never be fired.

Bush also worked with a Republican majority Legislature to enact Medicare part D, which imposed that financial burden onto the States. Near the end of his Presidency he and his Goldman Sachs Treasurer promoted TARP, which put taxpayers on the hook to the tune of $700 billion. The Feds then used some of that money to bail out GM and Chrysler.  And, of course, we also have Bush’s role in adding $5 trillion to the national debt, War Powers Act issues, and nominating the current Supreme Court Chief Justice, who recently sided with “progressives” in preserving the biggest, farthest reaching government power grab in U.S. history.

Like it or not, the results of George W. Bush’s presidency indicate that in many instances he acted as a “progressive” Republican.

The chief discernible distinction between “progressive” Democrats and “progressive” Republicans is the rate at which government grows and individual Liberty is lost.

The government of the United States needs to shrink, not grow. Europe has been growing their governments decade after decade after decade. That is one of the major reasons why their economies are failing. “Progressives” are trying to make America more and more like Europe. Increasing government spending while expanding the size and scope of government bureaucracies and increasing the people’s dependency on government is not the way to fix a problem caused by big government spending, bloated bureaucracies and government dependency.

The last time America had an anyone like a patriot in the Oval Office was Ronald Reagan. Under the influence of the anti-American “progressive” economic policies of Obama, America’s GDP growth is currently 1.9%. At this point in his first term, under the influence of Reagan’s pro-American economic policies, America’s GDP growth was 7.2%.

For the America envisioned by its Founders to survive, “progressives” must be stopped. Forget the (R) and the (D). These political Party designations are growing increasingly meaningless. Voters need to realign their thinking and begin voting for Patriots and against “progressives”, regardless of Party affiliation.

If “progressives” currently living in America want to live in a European country doomed to economic failure, they can move to Europe. They would be doing America a favor. An even bigger favor would be if they sent disenfranchised Europeans who want to live the American way to the United States. America would definitely benefit from that exchange.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates.  Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/.  His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

 

Photo credit:  andyarthur