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55 Reasons Why California Is The Worst State In America

Why in the world would anyone want to live in the state of California at this point?  The entire state is rapidly becoming a bright, shining example of everything that is wrong with America.  It is so sad to watch our most populated state implode right in front of our eyes.  Like millions of Americans, I was quite enamored with the state of California when I was younger.  The warm weather, the beaches, the great natural beauty of the state and the mystique of Hollywood all really appealed to me.  At one point I even thought that I wanted to move there.  But today, hordes of Californians are racing to get out of the state because it has become a total nightmare.  It is the worst state in the country in which to do business, taxes were just raised even higher, unemployment is more than 20 percent higher than the national average and the state government is drowning in debt.  Meanwhile, poverty, gang activity and crime just seem to get worse with each passing year.  On top of everything else, the insane politicians in Sacramento just keep on passing more laws that make the problems that the state is facing even worse.  Unfortunately, what is happening in California may be a preview of what is coming to the entire nation.  The old adage, “as California goes, so goes the nation”, has been proven to be true way too many times.

In dozens of different ways, the state of California is showing the rest of us what not to do.  Will we learn from their mistakes, or will we follow them into oblivion?  Please share the list below with as many people as you can.  In addition to a large amount of new research, this list also pulled heavily from one of my previous articles and from outstanding research done by Richard Rider.  The following are 55 reasons why California is the worst state in America…

1. One survey of business executives has ranked California as the worst state in America to do business for 8 years in a row.

2. In 2011, the state of California ranked 50th out of all 50 states in new business creation.

3. According to one recent study, California is the worst-governed state in the entire country.

4. Thanks to Proposition 30, California now boasts the highest state income tax rate in the nation.

5. Even though California just raised taxes dramatically on the wealthy, state revenues are falling like a rock.  State revenue for November 2012 was 10.8 percent below projections.

6. California has the highest sales tax rate in the United States.

7. California has the 8th highest corporate income tax rate in the country.

8. California has the highest “minimum corporate tax” in the country.  Each corporation must pay at least $800 to the state even if a corporation does not make a single dollar of profit.

9. California is tied with New York for the highest gasoline tax rate in the country.

10. California is the only state in America that taxes carbon emissions.

11. The state of California issues some of the most expensive traffic tickets in the nation.  This is another form of taxation.

12. As of October, only Nevada and Rhode Island had higher unemployment rates than California.

13. The unemployment rate in California is more than 20 percent higher than the overall unemployment rate for the rest of the nation.

14. The state of California requires licenses for 177 different occupations (the most in the nation).  The national average is only 92.

15. California teachers are the highest paid in the nation, but California students rank 48th in math and 49th in reading.

16. California accounts for 12 percent of the U.S. population, but a whopping 33 percent of Americans that receive TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) live there.

17. Only the state of Illinois has a lower bond rating than the state of California does.

18. Including unfunded pension liabilities, the state of California has more than twice as much debt as any other state does.

19. Average pay for California state workers has risen by more than 100 percent since 2005.  That is good news for those state employees, but it is bad news for the taxpayers that have to pay their salaries.

20. More than 5,000 California state troopers made more than $100,000 last year.

21. One highway patrol officer ended up bringing home almost $484,000 in 2011.

22. One state psychiatrist in California was paid $822,000 in 2011.

23. Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

24. Sadly, an astounding 60 percent of all students attending California public schools now qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches.

25. The American Tort Reform Association has ranked the state of California as the worst “judicial hellhole” in America.

26. Businesses all over the state of California are being absolutely suffocated to death by ridiculous regulations.

27. According to the Milken Institute, operating costs for California businesses are 23 percent higher than the national average.

28. According to CNN, the state of California had the worst “small business failure rate” in America in 2010.  It was 69 percent higher than the national average.

29. The number of people unemployed in the state of California is roughly equivalent to the populations of Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

30. Residential customers in California pay about 29 percent more for electricity than the national average.

31. So many poor people and illegal aliens have taken advantage of the “free” healthcare at emergency rooms that many of them have been forced to shut down in California.  As a result, the state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.

32. Political correctness is totally out of control in California.

33. One California town is actually considering making it illegal to smoke in your own backyard.

34. The traffic around the big cities is horrific.

35. Los Angeles

36. San Francisco

37. Oakland

38. Stockton

39. Sacramento

40. The rampant gang activity in the state gets even worse with each passing year.

41. Crime continues to rise all over the state.

42. Just recently, the city attorney of San Bernardino, California told citizens to “lock their doors and load their guns” because there is not enough money to pay for adequate police protection any longer.

43. The murder rate in San Bernardino is up 50 percent this year.

44. In Oakland, burglaries are up 43 percent so far this year.

45. Today, Oakland is considered the 5th most violent city in the United States.

46. There have been more than 250 gold chain robberies in Stockton, California just since the month of April.

47. In Stockton, the police budget cuts got so bad that the police union put up a billboard at one point with the following message: “Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California. Stop laying off cops.”

48. Jerry Brown.

49. The absolutely insane California state legislature.

50. Wildfires.

51. Mudslides.

52. The state of California lies directly along the infamous “Ring of Fire“.  Approximately 90 percent of all the earthquakes in the entire world happen along the Ring of Fire and the “Big One” could hit the state at any moment.

53. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 100,000 more people moved out of the state of California in 2011 than moved into it.

54. During 2011, more than 58,000 people moved from California to the state of Texas.

55. Overall, the state of California has experienced a net loss of about four million residents to other states over the past 20 years.

34 Signs That America Is In Decline

The United States is clearly in an advanced state of decline.  Many people around the world (and even inside America) rejoice at this, but not me.  I mourn for the country that I was born in and that I still love.  Yes, the United States has never been perfect, but the Republic that our Founding Fathers started truly has been a light to the rest of the world in a lot of ways over the centuries.  Unfortunately, our foundations are badly rotting and our nation is collapsing all around us.  Many Americans like to think that the United States is greater today than it has ever been before, but the truth is that America is like a patient that has stage 4 cancer that has spread to almost every area of the body.  Our nation is being destroyed in thousands of different ways, and more distressing news emerges with each passing day.  This article will mainly focus on the economic decline of America, but much could also be said about our social, political, moral and spiritual decline as well.  We are simply not the same country that we used to be.  Americans are proud, selfish, greedy, arrogant, ungrateful, treacherous and completely addicted to entertainment and pleasure.  Our country is literally falling apart all around us, but most Americans are so plugged into entertainment that they can’t even be bothered to notice what is happening.  Most Americans seem to assume that we will always have endless prosperity just because of who we are, but unfortunately that simply is not true.  We inherited the greatest economic machine the world has ever seen and we have wrecked it, and now a very painful day of reckoning is approaching.  But most people will not understand until it is too late.

The following are 34 signs that America is in decline…

#1 According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percent of all global economic activity in 2001.  That number dropped to 21.6 percent in 2011.  That is not just a decline – that is a freefall.  Just check out the chart in this article.

#2 According to The Economist, the United States was the best place in the world to be born into back in 1988.  Today, the United States is only tied for 16th place.

#3 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

#4 According to the Wall Street Journal, of the 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders, half of them plan to reduce capital expenditures in coming months.

#5 More than three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as will be sold in 2012.

#6 America once had the greatest manufacturing cities on the face of the earth.  Now many of our formerly great manufacturing cities have degenerated into festering hellholes.  For example, the city of Detroit is on the verge of financial collapse, and one state lawmaker is now saying that “dissolving Detroit” should be looked at as an option.

#7 In 2007, the unemployment rate for the 20 to 29 age bracket was about 6.5 percent.  Today, the unemployment rate for that same age group is about 13 percent.

#8 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#9 If you can believe it, approximately one out of every four American workers makes 10 dollars an hour or less.

#10 Sadly, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

#11 Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years.  Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

#12 The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was 28 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#13 Incredibly, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001.  During 2010, manufacturing facilities were shutting down at the rate of 23 per day.  How can anyone say that “things are getting better” when our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted?

#14 Back in early 2005, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was less than 2 dollars a gallon.  During 2012, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has been $3.63.

#15 In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.

#16 As I have written about previously, 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971 according to the Pew Research Center.  Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are “middle income”.

#17 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

#18 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate for children living in the United States is about 22 percent.

#19 Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned.  By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.

#20 Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.

#21 Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

#22 The value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 96 percent since the Federal Reserve was first created.

#23 According to one survey, 29 percent of all Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are still living with their parents.

#24 Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple.  Today, that number has declined to 48 percent.

#25 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives direct monetary benefits from the federal government.  Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.

#26 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7 percent of all income.  Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

#27 In November 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, 47.1 million Americans are on food stamps.

#28 Right now, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#29 As I wrote about the other day, according to one calculation the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

#30 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse.  It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#31 In 2001, the U.S. national debt was less than 6 trillion dollars.  Today, it is over 16 trillion dollars and it is increasing by more than 100 million dollars every single hour.

#32 The U.S. national debt is now more than 23 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

#33 According to a PBS report from earlier this year, U.S. households that make $13,000 or less per year spend 9 percent of their incomes on lottery tickets.  Could that possibly be accurate?  Are people really that foolish?

#34 As the U.S. economy has declined, the American people have been downing more antidepressants and other prescription drugs than ever before.  In fact, the American people spent 60 billion dollars more on prescription drugs in 2010 than they did in 2005.

So what are our “leaders” doing about all of this?

Not much.

They just continue to insist that everything is “just fine”.

Sadly, the truth is that they live in a world that is very different from most of the rest of us.

Barack Obama is getting ready to take a 20 day vacation to Hawaii.

When was the last time you got to take a 20 day vacation?

And most of our “leaders” have no idea what it is like to struggle from month to month on a paycheck.

Overall, more than half of the members of Congress are millionaires.  We are led by wealthy men who are serving the interests of other wealthy men.

But the problem with our system is not limited to the president and the members of Congress.  The truth is that the political system in America has become a colossal beast that just continues to grow no matter who is in power.  The political establishment of both parties is totally dependent on this beast, and they will continue to feed it and serve it because it has been very good to them.  The following is from an outstanding article by Steve McCann…

The Republican and Democratic political establishments are made up of the following: 

1) many current and nearly all retired national office holders whose livelihood and narcissistic demands depends upon fealty to Party and access to government largesse;

2) the majority of the media elite, including pundits, editors, writers and television news personalities based in Washington and New York whose proximity to power and access is vital to their continued standard of living;  

3) academia, numerous think-tanks, so-called non-government organizations, and lobbyists who fasten onto those in the administration and Congress for employment, grants, favorable legislation and ego-gratification;  

4) the reliable deep pocket political contributors and political consultants whose future is irrevocably tied to the political machinery of the Party; and

5) the crony capitalists, i.e. leaders of the corporate and financial community as well as unions whose entities are dependent on or subject to government oversight and/or benevolence .

Do you think that there is any chance that this insidious system will be uprooted any time soon?

Of course not.

We will continue on the same path that we are on right now and America will continue to decline.

Many will rejoice as America falls, but I will not.

I will mourn for a mighty Republic that has fallen and for a dream that has been lost.

They Are Going To Make It Nearly Impossible To Pass On A Farm Or A Business To Your Children

If you have a farm or a small business, would you like to pass it on to your children when you die?  Well, unless Congress does something, it is going to become much, much harder to do that starting next year.  Right now, there is a 5 million dollar estate tax exemption and anything above that is taxed at 35 percent.  But on January 1st, the exemption will go down to 1 million dollars and the tax rate will go up to 55 percent.  A lot of liberals are very excited about this, because they believe that the government will be soaking wealthy people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.  But the truth is that a lot of farms, ranches and small businesses will be absolutely devastated by this change in the tax law.  There are many farmers and ranchers out there today that do not make much money but are sitting on tracts of land that are worth millions of dollars.  According to the American Farm Bureau, approximately 97 percent of all farms and ranches in the United States would be subject to the estate tax if the exemption was reduced to just a million dollars.  That means that the children of these farmers and ranchers would be faced with a very cruel choice when it is time to inherit these farms and ranches.  Either they come up with enough money to pay the government about half of what the farm or ranch is worth, or they sell the farm or ranch that may have been in their family for generations.  Needless to say, most farm and ranch families do not have that kind of cash lying around.  Most of them are just barely making it from year to year.  So this change in the tax law is going to greatly accelerate the death of the family farm in America.  This is also going to devastate many family-owned small businesses.  Many small businesses don’t make much money, but they have buildings or land or assets worth millions of dollars.  Children that may have wanted to continue the family legacy will be forced to sell because of the massive tax bill that they get from Uncle Sam.  This is an insidious cruelty, and it shows just how broken our system has become.

The desire to leave the wealth that you have worked so hard to accumulate all your life to your children is something that is common to virtually all human societies.  We want to know that future generations will be taken care of.

It is simply immoral for the federal government to swoop in and tax farms, ranches and small businesses that were intended to be passed down from parents to their children at a 55 percent tax rate.

A lot of the people that are going to be affected by this change are not “wealthy” at all.  A recent Fox News report examined what this change in the law is going to mean for rancher Kevin Kester and his family…

Rancher Kevin Kester works dawn to dusk, drives a 12-year-old pick-up truck and earns less than a typical bureaucrat in Washington D.C., yet the federal government considers him rich enough to pay the estate tax — also known as the “death tax.”

Kester told Fox News that he has no doubt that his ranch will have to be sold when he dies just to pay the tax bill…

“There is no way financially my kids can pay what the IRS is going to demand from them nine months after death and keep this ranch intact for their generation and future generations,” said Kester, of the Bear Valley Ranch in Central California.

Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.

Reading that should make you angry.  Every single year, thousands upon thousands of farms, ranches and small businesses are going to be lost to the federal tax monster.

It is almost as if the federal government does not want income-producing assets to remain in the hands of the “little guy”.

What in the world are we supposed to do?

It isn’t as if all of those farmers and ranchers can go off to the big cities and find good jobs.  As I wrote about yesterday, our politicians are standing aside as millions of our good jobs are shipped out of the country.

The cold, hard truth is that our system does not work for average Americans any longer.  Those that roll out of bed every morning, work hard and never complain always seem to get the short end of the stick.

The people that are the backbone of America are the ones that the government is always the hardest on.

Unfortunately, we have gotten to a point where the government is searching for more “revenue” from anywhere it can because it desperately needs more money.  U.S. government finances are a complete and total mess and we are drowning in the biggest ocean of debt the world has ever seen.

We are more than 16 trillion dollars in debt and there are more than 100 million Americans that are enrolled in at least one welfare program.

Someday has to pay for all this.

Middle class Americans are already hit with dozens of different taxes each year, and you can be certain that our politicians will continue to invent ways to extract even more “revenue” out of us.

And of course our politicians will never stop their wild spending.  Despite all of the negotiations that have taken place over the past couple of years, our spending problems just continue to grow.  For example, the federal budget deficit for the month of October was $120 billion, which was more than 20 percent larger than the federal budget deficit for October 2011 was.

So what is the solution?

Well, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner now says that he wants to eliminate the debt ceiling entirely.  He says that we should just have no limit and that the federal government should just be able to go into debt as much as it wants.

In the end, all of this debt is going to absolutely crush us.  We have literally destroyed the future of America, and yet most of the country still seems clueless about all of this.  The blind are leading the blind, and we are headed straight for complete and utter disaster.

One day, when people look back on this period in American history, what do you think people are going to say about us?

There Will Be War In The Middle East

The military action that we are watching in the Middle East right now is just a preview of coming attractions.  Tensions in the region are rising with each passing day, and all sides have been anticipating future conflicts and preparing for war for decades.  It would be wonderful if everyone could sit down, forgive each other and agree to quit fighting, but that is not going to happen.  Most of us that live in the western world have a very difficult time understanding the mindset of those immersed in these conflicts.  In the Middle East, there are vendettas and grudges that go back literally thousands of years.  Children are raised in schools where they are taught to bitterly hate their enemies from the time that they are first able to speak.  As Americans, we have forgiven former enemies such as Germany and Japan and we just expect that everyone else should be able to forgive as well.  But that is simply not the way that it works over there, and there is no long-term solution in the Middle East that is going to be acceptable to all sides.  Right now, Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria and Iran are all preparing for war.  Hopefully cooler heads will prevail in this current crisis, but that will only delay the inevitable.  There will be war in the Middle East.  Yes, politicians such as Barack Obama will do their best to broker more “peace agreements”, but even the declaration of a “Palestinian state” will never stop the fighting.  In fact, it would just set the stage for more war.  I don’t mean to sound pessimistic about the region, but the truth is that there will be more war until it is not possible to fight any longer.  Any “peace plan” will just be a pause in the warfare.

But hopefully the current crisis in the Middle East will not immediately erupt into a full-blown regional war.  That would not be good for the global economy.  In fact, that would not be good for anyone at all.

Here are some of the most recent developments…

-Hamas has launched dozens of rockets into Israel since Saturday.  At one point, the IDF estimated that at least 130 rockets had been fired from Gaza.  Other estimates have put the number of rocket attacks much higher.

-In response, the IDF launched a military operation in Gaza on Wednesday.  This involved the killing of the head of the military wing of Hamas, Ahmed Jabari, in an airstrike that was captured on video.  You can see video of the airstrike right here.

-The IDF also attacked more than 20 underground rocket launchers in Gaza.  The goal was to stop them from launching more rockets into Israel.  Apparently those rocket launchers were capable of hitting targets 25 miles over the border into Israel.

-In response to the Wednesday attacks by the IDF, a substantial number of rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel.  The IDF says that the Iron Dome missile defense system was able to intercept 13 of the rockets.

-The IDF says that the military operations they conducted on Wednesday were part of a “major offensive” and that a ground attack may also be coming.

-“Operation Pillar of Defense” is the code name that has been given to this campaign.

-The IDF is not taking any options off the table.  The following is from a message posted on the IDF Twitter account…

“All options are on the table. If necessary, the IDF is ready to initiate a ground operation in Gaza.”

-In particular, the IDF is being very open about the fact that top Hamas leaders will be targeted.  The following is from another message posted on the IDF Twitter account…

“We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.”

-The U.S. State Department has denounced Hamas for the rocket attacks against Israel and is saying that Israel has the right to self-defense.

-The military wing of Hamas says that Israel “has opened the gates of hell.”

-One top Hamas official, Khalil al-Haya, is very clear about what his goal is…

“The battle between us and the occupation is open and it will end only with the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem”

–Islamic Jihad has released a statement that is very critical of the IDF attack on Wednesday…

“Israel has declared war on Gaza and they will bear the responsibility for the consequences.”

In Egypt, the head of the most important political party is warning that Egypt may have to get involved if the fighting continues.  The following is from a Breitbart report…

Today, Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood – a party formerly headed by current President Mohammed Morsi – announced that Egypt would get involved if Israel continued to kill terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Such Israeli action, said the party, would prompt “swift Arab and international action to stop the massacres.” The party also warned that Israel “must take into account the changes in the Arab region and especially Egypt … [Egypt] will not allow the Palestinians to be subjected to Israeli aggression, as in the past.”

-Things also continue to get more tense with Syria.  Israel has fired tank shells into Syria twice since Sunday.  They did this in response to Syrian shells which struck the Golan Heights.  This marked the first time that Israel had fired tank shells into Syria since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

-Syrian rebels are receiving a massive influx of arms and assistance.  The following is from a recent article in the Washington Post…

Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials.

Obama administration officials emphasized that the United States is neither supplying nor funding the lethal material, which includes antitank weaponry. Instead, they said, the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.

-It is being reported that UK troops may soon be deployed to areas near the border with Syria.

-NATO has announced that it is prepared to defend Turkey if necessary…

NATO will defend alliance member Turkey, which struck back after mortar rounds fired from Syria landed inside its border, the alliance’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a meeting in Prague on Monday.

“NATO as an organization will do what it takes to protect and defend Turkey, our ally. We have more plans in place to make sure that we can protect and defend Turkey and hopefully that way also deter so that attacks on Turkey will not take place,” he said.

Once again, hopefully all of this will settle down in a few days.

But it is never easy to predict what is going to happen next in the Middle East.  There is so much hate and anger and things could literally explode over there at any time.

In the months and years to come, I expect the Middle East to become a major issue for the global economy and a major political issue inside the United States.

When war does erupt in the Middle East, it is going to dramatically affect the price of oil, and there will also be a tremendous amount of debate about whether the U.S. military should intervene or not.

Let us hope for peace, but let us also be very realistic about the situation over there.  Our world is becoming more unstable with each passing day, and the times that are coming are going to be very challenging.

So what do you think?

Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…

The Politicians We Have Chosen Reflect Who We Are As A Nation

The American people have spoken.  It is estimated that approximately 6 billion dollars was spent on political campaigns in 2012, and we ended up exactly in the same place that we were before.  Barack Obama is still in the White House, the Democrats still have solid control of the U.S. Senate and the Republicans still have solid control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Clearly, the American people want more of the same, and that is really bad news.  The path that we have been on will only lead to unprecedented disaster, and now it is abundantly clear that there are not going to be any solutions to our problems on the national level.  Not that things would be that much different if we reversed things and gave Republicans control of the White House and the Senate and we gave Democrats control of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Over the past several decades, nothing has really seemed to get any better no matter what faces we have sent to Washington.  But this time there is really a feeling of “finality” to things.  The American people have made their choices, and those choices are going to have consequences.  There is no turning back now.  The politicians that we have chosen reflect who we are as a nation.  It is not just our leaders that have turned their backs on the U.S. Constitution and on the principles that this country was founded upon – the truth is that the majority of the American people have rejected them.  We have willingly chosen our destiny, and there are no more excuses.

What Barack Obama has pulled off is absolutely mind blowing.  First of all, I must acknowledge that the Obama campaign had the best “ground game” in the history of American politics.  Their ability to deliver their voters to the polls was absolutely amazing.  Yes, the election was close, but I thought it would be much closer.  The Obama “ground game” made a significant difference.

Having said that, it says a lot about who we are as a nation that the American people would willingly send Barack Obama back to the White House for a second term.  You could almost excuse the American people for having the wool pulled over their eyes the first time, but at this point American voters have had four years to evaluate Barack Obama and learn what he is all about.

Barack Obama, like many of our politicians, is a con man.  He just doesn’t have a few skeletons in his closet – he has a whole army of them.  Over the course of two presidential campaigns he has refused to release his school records, there are very serious irregularities concerning his Social Security number, and he has managed to keep vast stretches of his past a total secret to the American people.  Anyone applying for a decent job or trying to get into a decent school would have been required to disclose more background information than Barack Obama has revealed to the American people.  What Obama has pulled off is completely and totally absurd.  I truly believe that Barack Obama will someday be regarded as one of the greatest con men of all time.

But even setting all of that aside, the outrageous things that Barack Obama has publicly said and done should be more than enough for every American that loves the U.S. Constitution to reject him.  The truth is that no American should have ever cast a single vote for him for any political office under any circumstances.

And yet now he is headed for a second term in the White House, and now he will feel absolutely no accountability to the voters since he will not be running in 2016.  He can do whatever he wants over the next four years, and nobody can do anything about it.

Not that Mitt Romney would have been much different.  Out of all of the Republican candidates, the Republicans selected the candidate that was most similar to Barack Obama.  During primary season, in many of my articles I pleaded with the Republicans not to choose Mitt Romney.  I warned that large numbers of very conservative voters would refuse to support him in the general election.  I was horrified by how Romney treated Ron Paul and his supporters during the primaries.  It turns out that Romney desperately could have used their help in swing states that Romney barely lost like Ohio, Virginia and Florida.

In the end, Mitt Romney ran one of the most inept campaigns in modern American political history.  Except for his one brief shining moment during the first debate, Romney just seemed to keep falling flat on his face over and over.  He seemed to have absolutely no idea how to attack Obama’s track record, and he kept shifting positions every five minutes.  To be honest, his campaign was an embarrassment to the Republican Party.

I know that a lot of Republicans are mourning today, but things would not have been much different under a Romney administration.  Romney was perhaps the most liberal candidate the Republicans have ever nominated for president, and Obama and Romney were perhaps the two most similar candidates that we have ever seen run against each other on the national stage.

The fact that the Republicans picked Mitt Romney says a whole lot about the Republican Party just like the fact that the Democrats picked Barack Obama says a whole lot about who they are.

But let us not overlook the other choices that the American people made yesterday either.

The U.S. Senate has been an abysmal failure for years, and yet the American people just keep voting for more of the same.

If you can believe it, the U.S. Senate has not passed a budget in over 1,200 days.

In fact, the last time the U.S. Senate passed a budget, there was no such thing as an iPad.

But not only did the American people allow Democrats to keep control of the U.S. Senate, the Democrats actually gained a couple of extra seats, and several of the newly elected Senators are extremely liberal.

And keep in mind that all of the new Senators that were elected yesterday will not be up for re-election until 2018.

That is very frightening to think about.

The funny thing is that the American people also gave the Republicans very firm control of the U.S. House of Representatives once again.  It is almost as if they were saying that they want things to remain exactly the same as they are right now.

So we can definitely expect more gridlock in Washington.  And perhaps that is a small piece of good news to come out of all this.

If we can get our politicians fighting with each other so much that they can’t get anything done, perhaps they will have less of a chance of messing this country up even worse than it already is.

This election season was the last, best chance that the American people had to bring about changes on the national level.  Unfortunately, the Republicans, the Democrats and the American people all failed miserably in this regard.

As far as the economy is concerned (after all, this is a column about economics), we will continue to steamroll toward collapse at record speed.  It is now glaringly obvious that there will be no political solutions to our problems on the national level.

So you better brace for impact, because a crash is coming.

And I think we just got a preview of coming attractions.  The Dow was down by more than 300 points on Wednesday.

I wish that I could be more optimistic, but the truth is that there is no hope on the horizon on the national level.  The American people have spoken, and they have made their choices.

Now we all get to pay the price.

Thousands Of Shocking Threats Of Violence By Obama Supporters On The Eve Of The Election

On social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook, thousands of threats of violence were posted by supporters of Barack Obama on the evening prior to the election.  If you doubt this, just go on Twitter and do a search for keywords such as “Romney riot”, “assassinate Romney” and “if Romney wins”.  We have seen very serious threats of violence against Mitt Romney and his supporters for weeks, but little action has been taken to shut these threats of violence down, and now they are reaching a crescendo as we reach election day.  At the moment, law enforcement authorities and the mainstream media do not appear to be taking these threats of violence very seriously, but they should.  Just look at what happened when the San Francisco Giants won the World Series.  Horrible rioting broke out in San Francisco and a city bus was even set on fire.  But that little bit of rioting is nothing compared to what could happen on a nationwide basis if Mitt Romney wins this election – especially if there are allegations that Romney stole the campaign.  If Romney is victorious, expect to see allegations of “voter fraud” and “election fraud” from the other side.  If there is a belief that the Republicans “cheated” (whether true or not), this would provide all of the justification that those out committing violence would need.  Many of them would actually consider themselves to be “standing up for democracy” or “fighting for their rights”.  Hopefully the scenario that I just outlined will not play out.  Hopefully Obama supporters will be calm if Romney is declared the winner.  But we would be very foolish to ignore the thousands upon thousands of threats that we have seen over the past few weeks.

This is a topic I have written about before, and I received quite a bit of criticism for writing about it.  Apparently supporters of Barack Obama should be allowed to endlessly spew out threats of physical violence against Mitt Romney and his supporters and nobody is ever supposed to say anything about it.

Yes, there are a lot of Republicans that are saying some very cruel things about Barack Obama, but people know that if you make a physical threat against Barack Obama you are likely to get a visit from the Secret Service.

Apparently the same thing does not apply to threats against Mitt Romney.  Every single hour, large numbers of physical threats directed at him and his supporters continue to pour in.  If these people mean just a small fraction of what they are saying, we are going to see American cities burn if Romney wins.

Most of the examples that I could have included below I decided not to post because of the vulgar language used.  A lot of children will end up reading this, and so I decided to try to keep it as clean as possible.

The following are just a few examples of some of the “cleaner” threats of physical violence and rioting that have been posted on Twitter just tonight…

If obama doesn not win im gonna go burn down every house who has mitt romney signs outside their house! (Link)

If mitt Romney win tomorrow, point blank, we might just start a riot ! # Team Obama tho, so I got faith in our president. (Link)

If Romney wins, we gona start a riot (Link)

if Obama wins i will burn every romney sign in breezewood! (Link)

I always wanted to be in a Riot , and if Romney wins my dream might come true. (Link)

If Mitt Romney wins; I might go around blowing heads off (Link)

RT @Ska_Supernova: If romney win imma start a riot! (Link)

Lol but if you go for Mitt Romney i’m not going to burn you alive because that’s whatever you believe in. I’m #teamobama tho (Link)

Romney better start digging his grave cuz if he become president somebody might assassinate him..ALL BLACKS AND MIDDLE CLASS GONE TURN UP!!! (Link)

I would personally assassinate Mitt Romney if he wins… but I think Al Qaeda will beat me too it! (Link)

If Romney gets elected I’m going to burn down the White House so he doesn’t have a home (Link)

Trust me, it gets a lot worse than what you just read.  You can see more threats against Romney and his supporters from recent days in this article right here.  But please be warned, some of the language used is quite shocking.

Of course many in the mainstream media insist that we don’t even have to worry about what might happen if Romney wins because Obama “has it all locked up”.

For example, as I am writing this Nate Silver of the New York Times is projecting that Barack Obama has a 92.2% chance of winning the election.

Other publications are expressing similar sentiments.  An article on Business Insider today had the following headline: “Either The Polls Are All Wrong, Or Mitt Romney Doesn’t Really Have A Viable Path To Win The Election“.

I honestly don’t know how people get paid to write that kind of stuff.  This election is super close and it has been for months.  According to the latest Gallup tracking poll, Mitt Romney has a one point lead over Barack Obama with likely voters.  A lot of people on both sides are proclaiming that it will be a landslide for their guy, but I simply do not see it that way.

This is going to be close.  In fact, we may not have a winner on Tuesday night.  In fact, if it goes into the courts we may not have a winner for weeks.

We could very easily end up with another Bush v. Gore scenario.  Only this time it might tear the entire nation apart.  Obama and Romney both have hordes of lawyers ready to roll, and neither of them would hesitate to contest the results of the election if there is still a realistic chance of winning.

The funny thing is that it really does not matter that much which candidate wins anyway.  Our nation has been going downhill for decades no matter who has been in the White House, and it will continue to go downhill under either Obama or Romney.  When you take a very close look at their policy positions, they actually agree far more than they disagree, and no matter who wins this race the next four years are going to be worse for America than the last four years have been.

But like so many millions of other Americans, I find election night to be absolutely fascinating.  So I will be glued to my television just like so many other Americans will be.

And I think that a number of states will end up being much closer than most people originally thought that they would be.

For example, I believe that Romney has a very real shot of winning Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  I am not predicting that he definitely will win those states, but he does have a legitimate chance.

Romney might even make things interesting in Minnesota, although that is more of a long shot.

It should be very interesting to see how it all plays out.

Many Americans are happy that this election season will soon be over, but unfortunately this election should not really be viewed as the end of something.  Rather, I believe that it will be the beginning of a disturbing new chapter in American history.

A whole host of polls and surveys have shown that the American people are angrier today than just about at any other point since World War II.  In recent months, this anger and frustration have been bottled up as people have waited for election day.  Right now, true believers on both the red team and the blue team are optimistic about the future because they are totally convinced that they are going to win this election.

But when a winner is finally announced, close to half the country is immediately going to be bitterly disappointed.  And then when things continue to get worse in this country despite “their guy” winning, the winning side is not going to be so pleased either.

This election could end up being the “release point” for a lot of the anger and frustration that have been building up in this country for a very long time.  You can almost feel the tension in the air.  All it is going to take is just the right “spark” to set it off.

If you have any political signs in your yard or any political bumper stickers on your car, you might want to start taking them down – especially if you live in a densely populated area.  Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, but I wouldn’t count on it.  There is just so much hate and anger out there right now.

So pray for peace, but also watch your back.

18 Startling Quotes About The Incredible Destruction Caused By Hurricane Sandy

It is hard to put into words the absolute devastation that we are seeing along many areas of the east coast right now.  Boats have been washed ashore, homes have been razed, some coastal roads have been essentially destroyed, and large numbers of people are still trapped in their homes by flood waters.  It is being reported that more than 50 people are dead and more than 8 million people along the east coast have lost power.  Those without power might not get it back for a week or more.  In New York City, an all-time record storm surge of almost 14 feet caused incredible destruction.  It is going to take months for New York City to recover, and along the Jersey coast things are even worse.  Hurricane Sandy really did turn out to be “the worst case scenario” for much of the eastern seaboard.  At this point more than 15,000 flights have been cancelled, and nobody knows when subway service in New York City is going to be restored.  More than 4 million people a day use that subway system, and right now many of the most important tunnels are absolutely flooded with water. Sadly, this crisis is far from over.  The storm formerly known as Hurricane Sandy has moved inland over Pennsylvania where it continues to do a tremendous amount of damage.  The full extent of the destruction caused by this storm will probably not be known for weeks.

We have truly seen some unprecedented things during this storm.  For example, a 168 foot long tanker was driven ashore on Staten Island.  Right now the tanker is sitting on Front Street.

In the beachfront Queens neighborhood of Breezy Point, a massive fire broke out and burned just about everything that was not already flooded.  The blaze destroyed close to 100 homes, and by the end of the fire more than 190 firefighters were battling it.

Some areas in the West Virginia mountains have already had up to 3 feet of snow, and yet it just continues to fall.  When all of that snow starts to melt in a few days, tremendous flooding is anticipated.

The northeast has never seen a storm quite like this, and the ripple effects are going to be felt for years to come.

The following are 18 startling quotes about the incredible destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy…

#1 New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

“The devastation on the Jersey Shore is some of the worst we’ve ever seen. The cost of the storm is incalculable at this point.”

#2 MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota

“The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on our entire transportation system, in every borough and county of the region. It has brought down trees, ripped out power and inundated tunnels, rail yards and bus depots. As of last night, seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded. Metro-North Railroad lost power from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line and to New Haven on the New Haven Line. The Long Island Rail Road evacuated its West Side Yards and suffered flooding in one East River tunnel. The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel is flooded from end to end and the Queens Midtown Tunnel also took on water and was closed. Six bus garages were disabled by high water. We are assessing the extent of the damage and beginning the process of recovery. Our employees have shown remarkable dedication over the past few days, and I thank them on behalf of every New Yorker. In 108 years, our employees have never faced a challenge like the one that confronts us now. All of us at the MTA are committed to restoring the system as quickly as we can to help bring New York back to normal.”

#3 Hoboken, New Jersey Mayor Dawn Zimmer

“The Hudson River came in and filled half of Hoboken like a bathtub”

#4 Little Ferry resident Leo Quigley

“I looked out and the next thing you know, the water just came up through the grates. It came up so quickly you couldn’t do anything about it. If you wanted to move your car to higher ground you didn’t have enough time”

#5 New Jersey resident Montgomery Dahm

“I mean, there’s cars that are just completely underwater in some of the places I would never believe that there would be water.”

#6 Mobile home park resident Juan Allen

“I watched a tree crush a guy’s house like a wet sponge.”

#7 Angela Valenta, mother of 9-year-old Angelo Valenta

“He kept saying, ‘Am I going to die?'”

#8 U.S. Representative Bob Turner

“I, along with many other Breezy Point residents, lost our homes last night and I am grateful that my family and I are safe after this destructive storm. I hope you will join me in lending a hand to those who were less fortunate and keep everyone impacted by this storm in your thoughts and prayers.”

#9 Long Branch, New Jersey resident David Arnold

“The ocean is in the road, there are trees down everywhere. I’ve never seen it this bad.”

#10 New York resident William Yaeck

“I am looking outside of my sixth-floor apartment, and I see that a new lake has formed in the parking lot adjacent (to) my building”

#11 Motel owner Peter Sandomeno

“There are boats in the street five blocks from the ocean”

#12 West Virginia meteorologist Reed Timmer

“It’s 3 feet of heavy snow. It’s like concrete”

#13 Maryland State Police dispatcher Bill Wiltson

“It’s like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs up here”

#14 Con Edison spokeswoman Sara Banda

“This is the largest storm-related outage in history”

#15 John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Con Edison

“This will be one for the record books”

#16 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg

“Clearly the challenges our city faces in the coming days are enormous”

#17 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

“You want to talk about a situation that gets old very quickly. You are sitting in a house with no power and you can’t open the refrigerator”

#18 National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Pollina

“It was an extremely devastating and destructive storm, hopefully one that people will only see once in their lifetime”

So what will this storm ultimately cost the U.S. economy?  Well, Fox News is reporting that the total cost could reach 45 billion dollars.  Others estimate that the economic toll may be even higher than that.

But one thing is for certain – at a time when layoffs are already surging, this is definitely not going to help.  The U.S. economy is showing lots of signs of slowing down again, and this storm may have just nudged us even farther in that direction.

Hopefully we will have some time to recover before the next major crisis strikes, but with the election coming up early next week that does not seem too likely.

Worst Case Scenario: Hurricane Sandy Is The Biggest Storm Ever To Hit The Northeast

The biggest storm to ever hit the northeast United States is creating a tremendous amount of havoc up and down the eastern seaboard.  It is hard to describe how gigantic this storm actually is.  From end to end, Hurricane Sandy is more than 1000 miles across.  It is twice the size of the state of Texas, and meteorologists are calling this storm a “worst case scenario“.  It is currently coming ashore in New Jersey, but this is just the beginning.  A winter storm approaching from the west is going to combine with Hurricane Sandy, and the combined storm is projected to hammer the northeast with wind and rain all the way through the end of the week.  Meteorologists all over the nation are saying that they have never seen anything like this.  Hurricane Sandy is the biggest storm in modern U.S. history, and earlier today the storm pressure was recorded to be even lower than the Long Island Express Hurricane of 1938.  In fact, Hurricane Sandy has the lowest pressure ever recorded for any storm north of the state of North Carolina.  On Monday evening it was packing maximum sustained winds of about 90 miles per hour, and hurricane-force winds could be felt as far out as 175 miles from the center of the storm.  To say that this storm is a major disaster is a tremendous understatement.

On Monday night, it is projected that wind speeds in New York City could reach 80 miles per hour.  But that is only part of the story.  The higher you go, the more intense the winds will be.  For example, if you live 30 stories above New York, a gust of wind at 80 miles per hour on the ground will be close to 100 miles per hour for you.

New York City has never seen anything quite like this.  Anything that is not completely secured is in danger of being picked up by the wind and hurled down the streets.  The damage that will be caused by flying projectiles alone is likely to be immense.

On Monday afternoon it was being reported that a giant crane working on the top of a new skyscraper known as One57 had broken because of the wind and was in danger of totally collapsing.  One57 is going to have some of the most beautiful apartments in New York City.  In fact, the penthouse recently sold for $90 million.  But this just shows us that despite our great advances we are more vulnerable to nature than we might like to think.

But of course wind is not the only problem that New York City will be facing.  Hurricane Sandy is pushing a massive wall of water in front of it.  It is being estimated that water levels could reach up to 11 feet above normal along Long Island Sound and in New York Harbor.  A lot of areas that have never been under water before will experience tremendous flooding as a result of this storm.

Overall, it is being projected that 60 million Americans will be affected by this storm.  So far, about 14,000 flights have been cancelled and more flight cancellations are anticipated.

More than 2 million homes and businesses have already lost power, and by the end of this disaster it is estimated that up to 10 million people could lose power.  Once people do lose power, they might not get it back for a week or more.

Essentially, the entire northeast will be shut down for most of this week.  This is going to be a storm that nobody will forget any time soon.  It is going to take many months to clean up the mess that this storm will create.

But if you don’t live near the coast don’t think that you will be able to escape the worst of this storm.  The center of the storm is projected to stall somewhere over Pennsylvania, and some areas to the west are going to get tremendous amounts of snow.

For example, it is being forecast that some areas in the mountains of West Virginia could see up to 3 feet of snow before this is all over.

This is an extremely unusual storm.  Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy says that this is “the most catastrophic event” that his state has had to deal with…

“This is the most catastrophic event that we have faced and been able to plan for in any of our lifetimes.”

Stu Ostro, the senior director of weather communications at The Weather Channel, says that this is “the big one” that meteorologists dream of…

“When I was a young boy growing up in the Northeast (New Jersey) and obsessed with the weather, I used to wonder what it’d be like when the big one comes. Well, we’re about to find out.”

The storm is just now starting to come ashore, and it has already done a tremendous amount of damage all along he east coast.  For example, earlier today an 80 foot section of the Atlantic City boardwalk was spotted floating free down the streets of Atlantic City.

In New York City, large sections of Battery Park, Brooklyn and Wall Street are already underwater.  There are some that even believe that parts of LaGuardia airport could be underwater before this is all over.

The New York Stock Exchange will be closed once again on Tuesday, and many are hoping that it will be able to reopen on Wednesday.  But at this point that looks like it will be quite a challenge.

The power of this storm is being felt over a vast area of the country.  Just check out what meteorologists are saying conditions will shortly be like along the Great Lakes…

A gale warning has been issued for Lake Huron from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, with waves expected to reach a maximum of 17 to 24 feet. The National Weather Service in Chicago on Sunday issued a gale warning for Lake Michigan, predicting waves as high as 33 feet by Tuesday. Vessels were advised to seek safe harbor.

33 foot high waves on Lake Michigan?

That is crazy.

And obviously the economic impact of this storm is going to be absolutely massive.  Some are projecting that this storm will cost the U.S. economy 10 billion dollars a day.  Others believe that it will be even worse.  As I noted yesterday, one meteorologist believes that this gigantic storm could potentially cause a total of 100 billion dollars in damage to the U.S. economy.

If you live in an area that is in the path of this storm, please do your best to stay safe and stay dry.  This is definitely not a storm to be taken lightly.

So what are you seeing in your area?  Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts on the storm below…

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