Obama

20 Signs That We Are Witnessing The Complete Collapse Of Common Sense In America

What do you do when an entire nation begins to lose the capacity to think rationally?  Many Americans spend a great deal of time criticizing the government, and there is certainly a lot to complain about, but it is not just the government that is the problem.  All over America, people appear to be going insane.  It is almost as if we have been cursed with stupidity.  Sadly, this applies from the very top of our society all the way down to the very bottom.  A lot of us find ourselves asking the following question much more frequently these days: “How could they be so stupid?”  Unfortunately, we are witnessing a complete collapse of common sense all over America.  Many people seem to believe that if we could just get Obama out of office or if we could just reform our economic system that our problems as a nation would be solved, but that is simply not true.  Our problems run much deeper than that.  The societal decay that is plaguing our country is very deep and it is everywhere.  We are a nation that is full of people that do not care about others and that just want to do what is right in their own eyes.  We hold ourselves out to the rest of the world as “the greatest nation on earth” and an example that everyone else should follow, and yet our own house is rotting all around us.  The words “crazy”, “insane” and “deluded” are not nearly strong enough to describe our frame of mind as a country.  America has become a sad, delusional old man that can’t even think straight anymore.  The evidence of our mental illness is everywhere.

The following are 20 signs that we are witnessing the complete collapse of common sense in America….

#1 According to Wired Magazine, FBI agents have been taught that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they pursue criminals and terrorists.  But when they break the law they become criminals themselves.

#2 A TSA manager (not just an agent) at Dulles International Airport was recently discovered to be running a prostitution ring out of a local hotel room.  TSA agents have been charged with crime after crime after crime and yet we continue to allow them to be in charge of airport security.

#3 CBS News is reporting that approximately 200 pieces of luggage a day are being stolen by employees at John F. Kennedy International Airport and authorities still have not been able to stop it.

#4 Visitors to the United States must now pay $14 to complete an online form that asks them a series of really bizarre questions.  For example, one of the questions asks visitors to the U.S. if they ever “collaborated with the Nazis”.

#5 The U.S. military is buying huge amounts of electronic parts from China (mistake number one) and a government investigation has uncovered the fact that a large percentage of these parts are counterfeit.  Yet the U.S.military continues to buy huge amounts of electronic parts from China (mistake number two).

#6 A high school senior in Indiana was recently expelled from school for cussing on Twitter.

#7 Police in Chicago apparently believe that our “First Amendment rights can be terminated” at their discretion.

#8 Americans are becoming very cruel to one another.  This is especially true when it comes to the weak and the elderly.  For example, two “caregivers” down in Georgia were recently charged with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman that had been entrusted to their care….

Police charge two caregivers at a Jonesboro facility with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman.

Clayton County police said Jermeller Steed and Cicely Reed held down Anna Foley after an argument that started over ice cream.

#9 An increasing number of American families are taking out student loans in order to pay for their children’s kindergarten tuition.

#10 One town in Massachusetts plans to distribute free condoms to children as young as 12 years of age.

#11 Children in America are exposed to enormous amounts of sexual material on television these days, but we are always so shocked when they try to act out on it.  The following is one very disturbing example that happened recently in Ohio….

Authorities in southwest Ohio have charged a 13-year-old boy with raping a 5-year-old girl at a McDonald’s play area.

The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that the alleged assault occurred Oct. 29 at a McDonald’s in the Cincinnati suburb of Anderson Township. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Barnett says the girl’s grandmother was nearby in the restaurant at the time.

#12 The following is another example from Indiana of how our sexualized society is affecting our young children….

Fishers police said an 8-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy were caught in a sexual act on a school bus.

The girl’s parents are now trying to determine if the February incident was a rape or molestation.

In a statement, police said a bus aid caught the girl and the boy “trying to have intercourse,” and that the “bus aid immediately separated the juveniles and informed the bus driver.”

#13 According to Natural News, the Michigan state government intends to raid private farms and kill pigs that have “the wrong hair color” even though some of these farmers have been raising these pigs for decades.

#14 An executive order recently updated by the Obama administration would give the federal government complete control over all food, all energy, all health resources, all transportation resources and “all other materials, services, and facilities” at the discretion of Barack Obama.  The wording of the executive order has been changed so that this can now be done even in “non-emergency” situations.  Very few Americans seem concerned by this.

#15 These days many Americans are very hesitant to get involved with helping out anyone else.  For example, an 86-year-old World War II veteran living near Detroit was recently brutally carjacked in broad daylight at a gas station.  He could not walk after the attack because his leg was shattered so he began to crawl across the concrete pavement to get help.  Sadly, many people walked past and drove past as if he was not even there.

#16 At one airport in Hawaii, TSA agents recently required one new mother to go to a public restroom and fill up the empty baby bottles she was carrying with her own breast milk before they would allow her to get on to her flight.  The following is how one local news station described the incident….

She claims agents told her she couldn’t take the pump on the plane because the bottles in her carry-on were empty.

“I asked him if there was a private place I could pump and he said no, you can go in the women’s bathroom. I had to stand in front of the mirrors and the sinks and pump my breast in front of every tourist that walked into that bathroom. I was embarrassed and humiliated and then angry that I was treated this way.

When the bottles were full, she was allowed back on the plane.

#17 Massive brawls have been erupting at Chuck E. Cheese restaurants all over the nation.  Police responded to violence at one particular Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Pennsylvania 17 times in just one recent 18 month time period.

#18 Thieves in New Jersey have become so desperate for scrap metal that they have started breaking into churches and ripping the copper piping right out of the walls.

#19 Tide detergent has become an alternative form of currency on the streets of America and there has been an epidemic of Tide thefts all over the nation.  The following is from a recent article in The Daily….

Theft of Tide detergent has become so rampant that authorities from New York to Oregon are keeping tabs on the soap spree, and some cities are setting up special task forces to stop it. And retailers like CVS are taking special security precautions to lock down the liquid. 

One Tide taker in West St. Paul, Minn., made off with $25,000 in the product over 15 months before he was busted last year.

“That was unique that he stole so much soap,” said West St. Paul Police Chief Bud Shaver. “The name brand is [all] Tide. Amazing, huh?”

Tide has become a form of currency on the streets. The retail price is steadily high — roughly $10 to $20 a bottle — and it’s a staple in households across socioeconomic classes.

#20 New federal rules will severely restrict the kind of work that children can do on farms in America.  Kids will be banned from doing many of the most basic kinds of farm chores under the new regulations.  Perhaps the children can just sit inside and watch television while the adults do all the work.

As mentioned earlier, what America is experiencing is not just an economic collapse.  The truth is that our entire society is collapsing.

For many years our great prosperity masked much of our decline, but now our great economic strength is rapidly fading and it is becoming very difficult to deny how far we have fallen as a nation.

You can find more examples of how American society is decaying right here and right here.  Anyone with half a brain can see what is happening to the United States.  It really is sad, because America was once a truly great nation.

So is there any hope of a recovery?

Not if we keep going down the same path.

In the end, the choice is up to you America.

The Man Without A Plan

Barack Obama is a man without a plan.  When you are young, they often tell you to “fake it until you make it”, but Barack Obama is taking this to ridiculous extremes.  Barack Obama has absolutely no idea what he is doing when it comes to the economy, and yet he continues to give speeches in which he declares that he is the man for the job.  The State of the Union speech the other night was just abysmal.  The federal government is spending way too much money, and yet Barack Obama is proposing even more government spending.  Entrepreneurs and small businesses are being taxed into oblivion and yet Barack Obama is proposing even higher taxes.  Our economy is being strangled to death by crippling regulations, and yet Barack Obama is proposing a vast array of new regulations.  Barack Obama always gives a nice speech, but it has become appallingly evident that he is totally out of ideas.  So our country will continue to drift aimlessly along without a direction and without a plan until the next financial tsunami comes along and makes things even worse.

And the American people are starting to clue in to the fact that Obama does not have a plan and does not have anything new to say.  Just check out how the audiences for his State of the Union addresses have declined each year….

2009: 52.3 million

2010: 48 million

2011: 42.8 million

2012: 37.8 million

His ratings are falling almost as fast as the ratings for American Idol are.

It is amazing how Barack Obama can use so many words to say so very little.

He always tickles our ears but then he never delivers the goods.  Toward the beginning of his speech the other night, he made the following statement….

“Tonight, I want to speak about how we move forward, and lay out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last—an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values”

Well, that sounds pretty good.  Except for the fact that everything he has done for the past 3 years has been the exact opposite of that.

It is almost as if he woke up that morning and decided that he would try the whole “do the opposite” thing once made famous by George Costanza on Seinfeld.

Obama says that our employment situation is getting better, but that is not really true.  The only way that the federal government can claim that there is an 8.5 percent unemployment rate is because they have decided that millions of Americans that have been unemployed for a long time should not be considered “part of the workforce” any longer.

If the number of Americans that were considered to be part of the workforce was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to approximately 11 percent.

Sadly, the number of Americans that are dependent on the government continues to soar even higher.

Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has actually increased by 14 million.

Things have not gotten better for average Americans.

They have gotten worse.

In fact, 10 million more Americans have fallen below the poverty line since 2006.  And in 2010, more Americans fell into poverty than ever before.

A lot of people out there are really hurting, and the American people deserve some real answers.

But instead, Obama was saying stuff like this the other night….

“I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place”

Oh really?

What is Obama actually doing about the things that caused the last financial crisis?

The “financial reform” bill was a complete and total joke.  Obama has been shamefully soft on the big Wall Street banks that caused the last crisis.

Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever.  The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

So now they are more of a danger to the financial system than ever.

And not a single Wall Street executive has gone to jail for what they did during the last financial crisis.

Thanks Obama.

But of course Obama was never going to seriously go after Wall Street.

After all, they are the ones that fund his campaigns.

Most Americans don’t realize this, but 3 of the top 7 donors to Obama’s campaign in 2008 were “too big to fail” banks.

And the Obama administration has been absolutely packed with ex-Wall Street bankers.  Last year, Michael Brenner wrote the following about the composition of the Obama administration….

Wall Street’s takeover of the Obama administration is now complete. The mega-banks and their corporate allies control every economic policy position of consequence. Mr. Obama has moved rapidly since the November debacle to install business people where it counts most. Mr.William Daley from JP Morgan Chase as White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Gene Sperling from the Goldman Sachs payroll to be director of the National Economic Council. Eileen Rominger from Goldman Sachs named director of the SEC’s Investment Management division. Even the National Security Advisor, Thomas Donilon, was executive vice president for law and policy at the disgraced Fannie Mae after serving as a corporate lobbyist with O’Melveny & Roberts. The keystone of the business friendly team was put in place on Friday. General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt will serve as chair of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

During his State of the Union address, Obama also promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to America….

“Think about the America within our reach: A country that leads the world in educating its people. An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs”

That sounds great, except for the fact that Obama has been doing everything he can to get more American jobs shipped out of the country.

The Obama administration has been aggressively pushing new “free trade” agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia.  The Obama administration has also made the Trans-Pacific Partnership (“the NAFTA of the Pacific“) an extremely high priority.

And of course we have all seen how wonderfully the first NAFTA worked out.

Our “free trade” policies have been an absolute nightmare for the American worker.

During 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.  Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have shut down since 2001.

We are bleeding jobs at a pace that is hard to believe.

Amazingly, the United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Yet Obama promises more of the same and that is  supposed to help?

During his speech, Obama correctly noted that many foreign manufacturers are heavily subsidized….

“It’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours, only because they’re heavily subsidized”

So are we going to deeply penalize those that have been cheating?

Are we going to warn them that we will stop trading with them unless they stop?

Of course not.

Obama is going to do next to nothing to stop what China and other predatory nations are doing to us.

Today, the United States spends approximately 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States, and the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

But the Obama administration doesn’t seem to care much about these things.

In fact, just check out what U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Tim Robertson of the Huffington Post about the Obama administration’s attitude toward keeping manufacturing jobs in America….

Let’s increase our competitiveness… the reality is about half of our imports, our trade deficit is because of how much oil [we import], so you take that out of the equation, you look at what percentage of it are things that frankly, we don’t want to make in America, you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs that frankly college kids that are graduating from, you know, UC Cal and Hastings [don’t want], but what we do want is to capture those next generation jobs and build on our investments in our young people, our education infrastructure.

Oh, but Obama now says that he is going to toughen up on trade….

“I’m announcing the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating unfair trading practices in countries like China. There will be more inspections”

Oh boy – “inspections” – yeah, that is really going to have the Chinese shaking in their boots.

Meanwhile, the Chinese just keep hitting us with new tariffs.  According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States will now cost about $85,000 in China thanks to these new tariffs.

So is Obama going to hit China with tough new tariffs in return?

Of course not.

Meanwhile, our economy continues to bleed businesses and jobs.  According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

But if you listen to Obama, he makes it seem like many of our industries are in better shape than ever….

“We bet on American ingenuity, and tonight the American auto industry is back.”

Yes, the American auto industry is no longer on the brink of bankruptcy, but it is not “back”.  Just consider the following stats….

*In 1970, General Motors had about a 60 percent share of the U.S. automobile market.  Today, that figure is down to about 20 percent.

*Back in 2000, about 17 million new automobiles were sold in the United States.  During 2011, less than 13 million new automobiles were sold in the United States.

*Japan builds more cars than anyone else on the globe.  Japan now manufactures about 5 million more automobiles than the United States does.

*Since Alan Mulally became CEO of Ford, the company has reduced its North American workforce by nearly half.

*In the year 2000, the U.S. auto industry employed more than 1.3 million Americans.  Today, the U.S. auto industry employs about 698,000 people.

Obama bailed out the auto industry, and they responded by sending even more of our jobs overseas.

During his speech, Obama declared that there will be no more bailouts….

“No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts.”

That is kind of funny because Obama is basically the all-time champion of handing out bailouts.

If Barack Obama and John McCain had not aggressively pushed for the Wall Street bailouts back in 2008, they never would have happened.

And once Obama became president, there was a seemingly endless parade of bailouts and “stimulus packages”.

So what do you honestly think he will do when the next financial crisis happens?  Do you think he would actually be able to resist the temptation for more bailouts?

Obama also says that he wants to spend more money on training for American workers….

“Join me in a national commitment to train two million Americans with skills that will lead directly to a job.”

But the American people already have enough training.  There are tons of college-educated Americans that are among the ranks of the unemployed right now.

What the American people need are jobs.

Unfortunately, jobs are leaving this country at an unprecedented pace.

Back in the year 2000, more than 20 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.  Today, about 5 percent of all jobs in America are manufacturing jobs.

Not only that, but our incomes are also going down.  Because U.S. workers now have to compete for jobs with workers that make slave labor wages on the other side of the globe, pay in this country continues to decline.

A recent White House reported entitled “Investing in America: Building an Economy That Lasts” actually bragged that our trade policies have driven wages in America down.  The following chart is from that report….

The Obama administration has been very good for the largest corporations.

For the rest of us, not so much.

But Obama now says that he wants America to be a place that encourages entrepreneurs and small businesses to thrive….

“It means we should support everyone who’s willing to work; and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.”

Unfortunately, the reality is that the federal government is strangling entrepreneurs and small businesses to death with taxes and crippling regulations.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

That is not a good trend.

And right now small businesses are extremely hesitant to bring on new workers.

One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers in the coming year.

So obviously what the Obama administration is doing is not working.

During his speech, Obama also spoke of developing our own energy resources….

“A future where we are in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world.”

Hopefully most of those watching laughed when they heard this, because this had to have been a joke.

America is absolutely swimming in oil and natural gas, and yet the Obama administration has blocked the development of those resources at every turn.

Instead, Obama has been very busy trying to push green energy companies on us, but they have had a nasty habit of going bankrupt.

During his speech, Obama also spoke of the need for “comprehensive immigration reform”.

But apparently Obama’s idea of “immigration reform” is to grant “backdoor amnesty” to the vast majority of the illegal immigrants in the United States and to continue to leave our borders completely wide open.

The consequences of such a policy are very serious.  As I wrote about the other day, there are now 1.4 million gang members living inside the United States, and that number has risen by an astounding 40 percent since 2009.

The last thing we need is more “immigration reform” from Barack Obama.

Of course the “class warfare” part was the centerpiece of Obama’s speech the other night.

Referring to it as the “defining issue of our time”, Obama said that now is the time to hit the wealthy with higher taxes….

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

This is going to be what Barack Obama is going to base his entire 2012 campaign on.  He is going to try to tap into the economic frustrations of the poor and the middle class and he is going to try to get them to blame the rich and the “party of the rich” (the Republicans).

But taxing the rich is not going to solve our problems.  If Bill Gates donated his entire fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

The truth is that the ultra-wealthy are always several steps ahead of the U.S. government.  The global elite are hiding 18 trillion dollars in offshore banks, and they are absolute experts at avoiding taxes.

No, the people that always get hit when taxes are raised are small business owners that try to do things “by the book” and middle class families that are barely scraping by.

What we need to do is to get rid of the income tax system entirely.  It is deeply corrupt and it is full of thousands of loopholes.

Trust me, I know.  I used to study this stuff.

But Obama seems to think that taxing the rich is the solution to all of our problems….

“We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right. They know that this generation’s success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to their country’s future, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility. That’s how we’ll reduce our deficit.”

Oh really?

If we just accept Obama’s plan the deficit will be fixed?

That worked out so well during his first term.  During the first three years of the Obama administration, the U.S. government accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

The truth is that Obama does not plan to fix anything.  Barack Obama’s proposed 2012 budget projects that the national debt will rise to 26 trillion dollars a decade from now.  And his budget numbers are ridiculously optimistic.

Not that our tax system does not need reform.

If we are going to have an income tax system (which we should not), then it should at least be fair.

There is no way in the world that General Electric and Mitt Romney should pay a lower tax rate than you and I do.

In a previous article, I noted some of the big corporations that have made enormous profits and yet have paid less than zero in taxes in recent years….

What U.S. corporations are able to get away with is absolutely amazing.

The following figures come directly out of a report by Citizens for Tax Justice.  These are combined figures for the tax years 2008, 2009 and 2010.

During those three years, all of the corporations below made a lot of money.  Yet all of them paid net taxes that were below zero for those three years combined.

How is that possible?  Well, it turns out that instead of paying in taxes to the federal government, they were actually getting money back.

So for these corporations, their rate of taxation was actually below zero.

If you have not seen these before, you are going to have a hard time believing some of these statistics…..

*Honeywell*

Profits: $4.9 billion

Taxes: -$34 million

*Fed Ex*

Profits: $3 billion

Taxes: -$23 million

*Wells Fargo*

Profits: $49.37 billion

Taxes: -$681 million

*Boeing*

Profits: $9.7 billion

Taxes: -$178 million

*Verizon*

Profits: $32.5 billion

Taxes: -$951 million

*Dupont*

Profits: $2.1 billion

Taxes -$72 million

*American Electric Power*

Profits: $5.89 billion

Taxes -$545 million

*General Electric*

Profits: $7.7 billion

Taxes: -$4.7 billion

Are you starting to get the picture?

Hopefully we can all agree that there is something seriously wrong with those numbers.

But fixing holes in the tax system is one thing – blaming America’s economic ills on the wealthy is another.

During his speech, Obama made the following statement….

“You can call this class warfare all you want”

And yes, we will hear the term “class warfare” over and over again for the rest of 2012.

Obama actually believes that “blaming the 1%” can get him sent back to the White House again.

But that isn’t going to solve any of our problems.

Instead, we should be focusing on the root causes of our economic problems.

I would love to see a president get up during a State of the Union address and declare that we need to shut down the Federal Reserve.

Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power.

Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

Thanks to the debt-based Federal Reserve system, we are going into debt at a pace that is unlike anything the world has ever seen.

Right now, the federal government is stealing 150 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren.

But Barack Obama loves the Federal Reserve.

In fact, he actually nominated Ben Bernanke for a second term as Federal Reserve Chairman even though Bernanke has a track record of incompetence that is legendary.

So no, nobody should be applauding Barack Obama for his absolutely abysmal speech the other night.

He is a man without a plan and he has been an absolute disaster for America.

The Obama Nation: Even More Debt And Even More Store Closings

Well, it is time to raise the debt ceiling again.  Right now we are about to hit the current limit of $15.194 trillion and the Obama administration is going to ask that it be raised by another 1.2 trillion dollars.  Unfortunately, Congress has already promised not to stand in the way, and so soon the debt limit will be raised to a staggering $16.394 trillion.  Considering how much debt we have already placed on the backs of future generations, what is another 1.2 trillion dollars?  After all, if we are going to sell our children and our grandchildren into debt slavery, we might as well go all the way, right?  Such is the thinking in “the Obama Nation”.  During “the Obama Nation”, the federal government has already accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.  Of course the Bush administration was nearly as bad at piling up government debt.  Between Bush and Obama (with a big helping hand from the Federal Reserve), they have done a pretty good job of wiping out the financial future of the United States.  If there are future generations of Americans, they will look back and curse those that did this to them.  It is absolutely immoral to steal trillions of dollars from future generations.  Unfortunately, there are very, very few members of Congress that are even objecting to this madness.

Today, more debt just seems to be the answer to everything.  The truth is that debt is not just a government problem.  We are a nation that is addicted to debt.

As of October, total consumer credit in the United States had increased for 12 of the past 13 months.  We simply have not learned the lessons of the past and we are making the same mistakes all over again.

We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and this false prosperity that we are enjoying is simply not sustainable.

But even in the midst of this false prosperity we are seeing a huge number of store closings.

For example, it was just announced that Sears has decided to close between 100 and 120 Sears and Kmart stores.

Once upon a time, Sears was the dominant force in the retail industry, but those days are long gone.  Sears stock has declined more than 45 percent so far this year, and many are wondering how long the company is going to be able to survive.

And there have been other high profile store closings announced during this holiday season as well.  A while back it was announced that all Syms stores and all Filene’s Basement stores will be closing.

Will we all eventually be relegated to shopping only at Wal-Mart?

In the middle of this “economic recovery” that Obama keeps talking about a staggering number of retail stores are closing up shop.  The following is a list of store closings in 2011 that I recently found.  The first number represents the total number of stores being closed for each chain….

405 Blockbuster

633 Borders

200 GameStop

189 Gap

160 f.y.e.

117 Anchor Blue

117 Foot Locker

100 Talbot’s

71 A.J. Wright

69 Metropark

63 Friendly’s

60 Rite Aid

52 Destination Maternity

50 Abercrombie & Fitch

50 Hot Topic

45 Big Lots

45 Family Dollar

43 Select Comfort

43 Sonic Drive-In

35 Denny’s

32 Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Inc. (SuperFresh, Pathmark Super Market)

30 Ultimate Electronics

28 Dominos

25 Superfresh (Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company)

20 Lowe’s

Sadly, it looks like things are going to get even worse next year.  One consulting firm is projecting that there will be more than 5,000 store closings in 2012.

The United States is piling up unprecedented amounts of new debt at a time when our economy is dying and our ability to produce wealth is diminishing.

All over America right now, poverty is absolutely exploding.  Millions of people that never dreamed that they would have to reach out for help now find that they have no other options.  The following comes from a recent article in the Fiscal Times….

For years, the food pantry in Crystal Lake, Ill., a bedroom community 50 miles west of Chicago, has catered to the suburban areas’ poor, homeless and unemployed. But Cate Williams, the head of the pantry, has noticed a striking change in the makeup of the needy in the past year or two. Some families that once pulled down six-figure incomes and drove flashy cars are now turning to the pantry for help. A few of them donated food and money to the pantry before their luck soured, according to Williams.

“People will shyly say to me, ‘You know, I used to give money and food to you guys. Now I need your help,’” Williams told The Fiscal Times last week. “Most of the folks we see now are people who never took a handout before. They were comfortable, able to feed themselves, to keep gas in the car, and keep a nice roof over their head.”

But not everyone will ask for help nicely.  As the economic numbers continue to get worse, desperate Americans will lash out in wild and unpredictable ways.

The following is from a local NBC station down in Texas.  In the days to come, this type of report will become quite common….

A 19-year-old Houston-area man says he was beaten and a friend was slashed in the face as a group of men robbed him of his new pair of expensive Air Jordan shoes.

We will also see more mass protests and more mass riots as the months and years roll along.  This country is going to become increasingly unstable.

Check out this video of a massive brawl that erupted inside Mall of America the other day.  Soon scenes such as this will become so common that they will not even be newsworthy anymore.

In response, many Americans will get sick and tired of waiting for the police to protect them and will take matters into their own hands.

In fact, we are already starting to see this.  For example, just the other day a store clerk down in North Carolina knocked a would-be robber out cold and then forced him to clean up his own blood after he woke up.

There are millions of Americans out there that are not going to put up with a whole lot of nonsense.  When desperate criminals try to rob from their homes or businesses it might not end well for the criminals.

Of course it would be much nicer if the federal government would do some things to actually fix the economy and avoid some the problems that are looming on the horizon.

Ah, but that would interrupt their vacations.  Right now, the U.S. House of Representatives is on vacation until mid-January.

If you can believe it, Congress does not work for most of the year.  Normally they are scheduled to be in session for about a third of all the days on the calendar.

And Obama is certainly taking it easy.  He is enjoying yet another vacation.  As I wrote about yesterday, it has been estimated that the Obama Hawaiian vacation this year will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 million dollars.

Yes, it is tough being the head of the Obama Nation.

Sadly, a lot of Americans still have faith in these jokers.

According to a Gallup poll that was just released, Barack Obama is the most admired man in America by far and Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America by far.  If you can believe it, Barack Obama has held the top spot for men for four years in a row, and Hillary Clinton has held the top spot for women for ten years in a row.

When are we going to learn?

Someone once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Well, the American people keep sending corrupt politicians such as Bush and Obama to the White House and they keep expecting things to get better.

It just isn’t going to happen.

If we stay on the current path that we are on, there will be a lot more store closings, the economy will continue to crumble and government debt will continue to skyrocket.

Minor changes are not going to cut it.  We need massive changes on a fundamental level.

Unfortunately, neither political party is offering massive changes.  The Republicans and the Democrats just keep offering the same tired solutions and they keep promising that they can “fix things” if we will just send more of them to Washington.

Hopefully the American people will wake up and see through these lies because time is running out.

Child Poverty In America Is Absolutely EXPLODING – 16 Shocking Statistics That Will Break Your Heart

If the U.S. economy is improving, then why is child poverty in America absolutely exploding?  If we are experiencing “economic growth”, then why are more than half of all children in major U.S. cities like Cleveland and Detroit living in poverty?  If we are the “greatest economy on earth”, then why are one out of every four American children on food stamps?  The shocking statistics that you are about to read below should absolutely break your heart.  Tonight, millions of precious American children will go to bed without any dinner.  Tonight, millions of American children will shiver as they try to go to sleep because their families cannot afford any heat.  How bad does child poverty have to get before we all finally admit that our economic system is completely failing many of the most vulnerable members of our society?  If you want someone to blame, you can blame Congress, the Obama administration, the Bush administration and the corrupt Wall Street bankers.  But most of all, blame the Federal Reserve and the debt-based monetary system that the Fed administers.  Our economy is in the midst of a long-term decline and is slowly but surely dying.  Many of those that are suffering the most from this decline are children.

The following are 16 shocking statistics about child poverty in America that will break your heart….

#1 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

#2 According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, 1.6 million American children “were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year”.

#3 The percentage of children living in poverty in the United States increased from 16.9 percent in 2006 to nearly 22 percent in 2010.  In the UK and in France the child poverty rate is well under 10 percent.

#4 A higher percentage of American children is living in poverty today than was living in poverty back in 1975.

#5 The number of children living in poverty in the U.S. has risen for four years in a row.

#6 There are 10 different U.S. states where at least one out of every four babies is born to a family living in poverty.

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

#8 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

#9 In the United States today, more than 35 percent of all African-American children are living in poverty and more than 33 percent of all Hispanic children are living in poverty.

#10 There are seven million children in the United States today that are not covered by health insurance at all.

#11 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#12 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.

#13 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

#14 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.

#15 In Washington D.C., the “child food insecurity rate” is 32.3%.

#16 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

So why are so many children suffering so badly?

Well, one reason is that millions of parents are unemployed.  The government tells us that the official unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, but when you take an honest look at the numbers the truth is that the situation is much worse than that.

A recent Washington Post article included the following quote from Ed Luce of the Financial Times….

“According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.”

The U.S. government has artificially reduced “official” unemployment numbers by claiming that millions upon millions of Americans have “left the workforce” over the past 4 years.

In addition, millions upon millions of American parents have been forced to take crappy, low paying jobs because they simply cannot find anything else.

At this point, the share of the economic pie being taken home by U.S. workers has fallen to record lows.

For example, the following comes from a recent CNBC article….

The labor share — the amount paid to workers instead of businesses and other income-earning entities — was reported to have fallen to 57.1 cents on the dollar for the business sector, its lowest level since it was first reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1947.

Median household income in the United States has fallen for several years in a row, and yet the cost of household basics just seems to keep going up and up.  For example, electricity bills have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

American families are being squeezed by this economy, and millions of children are feeling the pain.

Every single day, large numbers of American families get dumped out of the middle class and into poverty.  According to the latest figures, extreme poverty in the United States is now at the highest level ever recorded.  The number of good jobs continues to shrink and the poor are getting poorer.  Things are really bad in America today, and unfortunately it looks like the economy is going to get a lot worse in the years ahead.

But most Americans still do not understand what is happening.  One of the biggest problems we are facing is something called “normalcy bias”.

The following is how Wikipedia defines normalcy bias….

The normalcy bias, or normality bias, refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.

Most Americans still believe that things will eventually return to “normal”.

After all, every time the U.S. has had a recession in the past we have always recovered and gone on to better things, right?

Well, the cold, hard truth of the matter is that this is not just another economic downturn.  There are a whole host of very bad long-term economic trends that are ripping our economy to shreds.  We are a nation that is drowning in debt even as our economic guts are being ripped out.  The greatest economic machine in the history of the world is being destroyed right in front of our eyes, and most Americans don’t even realize it.

Sadly, most Americans are so brainwashed by the mainstream media that they are not going to believe you the first time that you tell them about all the statistics that point to a coming economic collapse.

Many of them are going to have to be hammered with articles like this time and time again until they finally get it.

America is in a massive amount of trouble, and because of the economic mistakes that we have made millions of children are going to needlessly suffer.

Please share this article with as many people as you can.  The more people that we wake up, the better off America is going to be.

Uh Oh: 90 Percent Of Americans Rate Economic Conditions In The U.S. As “Poor”

Uh oh – are we rapidly reaching another major economic tipping point?  According to a new CNN/ORC International Poll, 90 percent of the American people believe that economic conditions in the United States are “poor”.  This represents a significant increase from when the same question was asked in June.  Back then, 81 percent of the American people considered economic conditions to be “poor”.  To put this in perspective, only 11 percent of Americans rated economic conditions in the U.S. as “poor” back in January of 1999.  The Federal Reserve and the Obama administration keep telling us that we are in the middle of an “economic recovery”, but obviously what average Americans are experiencing on the street is a different story.  Millions of families have been absolutely devastated by mass layoffs, heartless foreclosures or bad debts.  All of the recent polls show that satisfaction with government is at an all-time low and anger at Wall Street and the financial community is rising to dangerous levels.  In the United States today, the economy is the most important issue for most Americans.  When you have 9 out of 10 Americans rating economic conditions as “poor”, that is a very troubling sign.

Many wealthy Americans consider it to be very painful when their investment portfolios go down by a few percentage points, but that is not the kind of economic pain that we are talking about.

The truth is that the vast majority of Americans in the bottom half of society do not even have investment portfolios.

What we are talking about is real economic pain.

As I have written about previously, the average American family is barely making it right now.  Tonight, a whole lot of American families will gather around their kitchen tables and will have some very nervous conversations about things such as making the next mortgage payment or how to pay the heating bill this upcoming winter.

Have you ever been at a point where you work as hard as you can and yet it is still not good enough to provide for your family?

If you have never been completely broke and at the end of your rope financially, then you should not judge the people who are going through it right now.

There are very real reasons why so many Americans are so incredibly depressed about the economy at the moment.

One recent poll found that 80 percent of the American people believe that we are actually in a recession right now.

Things have gotten so bad that Hallmark recently unveiled a 6 card line of “job loss” greeting cards.

Yes, that really is true.

Every month, tens of thousands of American families are still losing their homes to foreclosure, and we are on pace for record low new home sales once again in 2011.

Many families have gotten in debt up to their eyeballs in an effort to stay afloat.  According to a new study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

In case you are wondering, that is not good.

Our founders intended for us to live in a capitalist system that allows all Americans to have an opportunity to better themselves, but instead what we have developed is a system where the vast majority of the money and the vast majority of the economic power are in the hands of the biggest banks and the biggest corporations.

If you work for the system and you are near the top of the pyramid, life is good.

For nearly everyone else, life is a struggle.

Back in 1980, the top 1% of all income earners in America brought in about 10% of all income.  Today, the top 1% of all income earners bring in about 20% of all income.

If the ranks of the top income earners were populated by a huge number of entrepreneurs and small business owners, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

But instead, the reality is that most of the very wealthy either work in the financial community or they work for the biggest corporations.

True capitalism is supposed to create a very healthy environment for small businesses.

Instead, our current system suffocates them out of existence.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

Our entire system is now tremendously slanted in favor of “the big guy” and against “the little guy”.

Millions of Americans are starting to get sick and tired of all of the economic injustice and the vast corruption that is endemic in our financial system.

As the economy has continued to decline, the anger and the frustration of average of Americans has reached a boiling point.

This is a big reason why we have seen the rise of new political movements in recent years.

First, we saw the Tea Party arise to challenge the establishment in the Republican Party.  But sadly there are already signs that the establishment has taken over the Tea Party to a large extent.

Now, we are seeing the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Large numbers of frustrated Americans are flocking to these protests because they want an outlet for expressing the anger and frustration that they are feeling.  Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of evidence that the Occupy Wall Street movement was started and is being greatly aided by the liberal political establishment in this country.

What the American people need to do is to wake up and break out of the stale two party system.

Unfortunately, the American people have become so “dumbed down” that large chunks of them are absolutely clueless about what is really going on in this country.

For example, according to the new CNN/ORC International Poll mentioned above, 27 percent of Americans have never heard of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and 15 percent of Americans have no opinion about him at all.

Do you understand what that means?

It means that only 58 percent of Americans know enough about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to have an opinion about him.

According to the survey, the way that the 58 percent breaks down is that 28 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Bernanke and 30 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of him.

That is so sad.

Ben Bernanke has more power over our economic problems than anyone else in the country, and yet only 30 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of him.

Nearly as many Americans say that they have never heard of him as say that they do not view him favorably.

How pathetic is that?

That is one of the reasons why I write about the Federal Reserve so much.

We need to get the American people educated.

If the American people get educated, they will feel empowered.

Where there is a lack of knowledge, the people perish.

The other day, a 51-year-old father of three daughters up in Minnesota that had just lost his job locked himself in his car and shot himself in the head in front of some of his former co-workers.

I don’t want to see anymore of that.

We need to give the American people some hope.  We need to explain to them exactly why this economic crisis is happening and what can be done to turn things around.

We also need to reach out to people that are in pain and love them and let them know that there is always hope.

All of us know people out there that are really hurting right now.  Please don’t forget about them.  Please don’t let them quietly slip into depression.  Please don’t let them become the next victims of this economy.

There is always hope.  A reader of this column named “JD” went through all kinds of hell in recent years.  He lost his job, he lost his lady, he stayed in run down motels, he got meals wherever he could and he even slept in his car for a time.  But today he has a new job and his outlook on life is brighter than it has been in ages.

In 1941, Winston Churchill gave a speech during which he uttered the following words: “never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Things may not look good for you right now, but you must never give in.

No matter how bad things are, they can always be turned around.

Yes, the U.S. economy is going to continue to decline if we stay on our current path, but none of us must ever use that as an excuse to give up.

There is always hope.  You just have to keep on fighting.

The Obama Jobs Plan: 10 Reasons Why It Is A Bad Joke

So that was what we have been waiting for?  That was what all the hype was about?  With a little over a year until the next election, that was the “best shot” that Obama has for fixing the unemployment crisis in this country?  The Obama Jobs Plan (also now known as “the American Jobs Act”) is going to cost $447 billion and it is going to do next to nothing to create more jobs.  Many Americans were hoping for something bold and new from Obama, but instead what they got was a bad joke.  When Obama stated that there is “nothing radical in this bill”, he was not kidding.  Instead of addressing the fundamental issues that are causing job loss, Obama wants us to spend half a trillion dollars on measures that will only create a very small number of jobs.  Sadly, much of what Obama is proposing actually consists of huge bribes to middle class voters.  Obama is trying to keep his own job, and he appears willing to pile up even more debt in order to make that happen.

During his speech to the nation, Obama instructed Congress to either “pass this jobs bill” or to “pass it right away” 16 different times.  Obama obviously feels very strongly about his jobs plan.

But will it work?  Let’s take a few moments to break it down.  The following are 10 reasons why the Obama jobs plan is a bad joke….

#1 The payroll tax cuts are going to cost more than anything else in the plan, but they will do very little to create jobs.

Just take a look at what is happening right now.  Have the current payroll tax cuts done much?  No, the unemployment rate is still over 9 percent.

Yes, the new payroll tax cuts would be deeper and they would put some more money into the pockets of American workers.

But if American workers go out and spend it on stuff made in China, how does that create more jobs for American workers?

Businesses would certainly welcome the fact that their payroll taxes would be cut, but it probably will not entice many of them to hire more people.

Why?

Because they know that the tax cut would only be temporary.  After just a handful of months the payroll tax would go right back to where it was before.

Businesses are not often moved by temporary tax cuts.  If you want tax cuts to really move business, then you need to make them permanent.

So does that mean that I am against these payroll tax cuts?

Absolutely not.  I very much hope that payroll taxes get cut.  I am all in favor of the government taking as little money from me as possible.

Look, if the federal government is going to destroy our financial system anyway, I would much rather keep as much of my own money in my own pockets as possible.

So yes, I am all in favor of payroll tax cuts.

But no, those cuts are not going to do much to create jobs.  If payroll tax cuts were going to create a lot more jobs we would already see it happening.

However, if this is passed it will be a great bribe to voters because millions of Americans will see their paychecks go up and when that happens they will think of Obama.

#2 Obama’s plan to extend unemployment assistance is going to cost about $49 billion but it is not going to do much to create any jobs.

Back in 2009, Congress first authorized an extension of unemployment benefits to a maximum of 99 weeks.  Five times since then Congress has reauthorized this extension.

So has this made a huge difference in the number of unemployed?

Of course not.  If it was going to make a huge difference it would have done so already.

Yes, these extended benefits are easing the suffering of those that are out of work, and yes they are giving them a little extra money to spend, but let’s not pretend that extending unemployment benefits is going to create a whole bunch of new jobs.

#3 Obama is proposing $50 billion in “immediate” infrastructure spending and $10 billion for a new infrastructure bank that will be dedicated to raising private capital to finance infrastructure projects around the country.

Hopefully this will work out a whole lot better than the “shovel ready” jobs that Obama promised previously.

Yes, infrastructure all over this country is rapidly falling apart.  Yes, it is a legitimate function of government to invest in public infrastructure.

But no, this is not going to create a ton of new jobs.  It will create a few jobs, but it will also add to our rapidly growing national debt.

#4 According to the fact sheet on the jobs plan released by the Obama administration, direct financial aid to state governments will prevent up to 280,000 teacher layoffs, and it will also help states retain more police and firefighters.

Essentially, this is a “backdoor bailout” for the states.  Yes, it will be a good thing if teachers, police and firefighters are able to keep their jobs.  However, preventing job losses is not the same as creating new jobs.  So this may help reduce the bleeding a little bit, but it is not going to turn the overall employment situation around.

#5 There are a bunch of other minor things in Obama’s proposal such as “modernizing” public schools and helping more Americans refinance their mortgages, but it is not entirely clear how those things will help create a lot more jobs.

Meanwhile, there are a whole lot of things that the Obama jobs plan does not do….

#6 The Obama jobs plan does next to nothing to prevent jobs from being shipped out of the country.

As I wrote about the other day, right now the way the system is designed makes it highly profitable to send American jobs overseas….

*It is legal to pay slave labor wages in many of these other countries.  After all, why pay an American worker 10 or 20 times as much as a worker on the other side of the globe?

*In many of these other countries you do not have to provide any health care for workers.

*In many of these other countries there are virtually no environmental controls to worry about.

*In many of these other countries there are virtually no labor standards to worry about.

*In many of these other countries you only have to deal with a fraction of the “red tape” that you have to deal with in the United States.

Obama is doing absolutely nothing to address these imbalances.

#7 The Obama jobs plan does nothing about the unfair trade practices that are absolutely killing America on the global economic stage.

As I wrote about the other day, other nations are manipulating currency rates, they are openly stealing technology from our companies, they allow their workers to be paid slave labor wages and they put up huge barriers to goods and services from the United States and we let them get away with it.  Our trade policies are absolutely insane, and the way that the new “global economy” is structured guarantees that U.S. businesses are going to be operating at a huge disadvantage.  The following are just a few more of the reasons why foreign firms have a huge advantage over U.S. companies….

*Many foreign nations deeply and directly subsidize national industries and the U.S. government lets them get away with it.  That puts our industries at a vast disadvantage.

*The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world.  That puts our corporations at a vast disadvantage.

*Many foreign nations do not require businesses to provide health care for their employees.  That puts our businesses at a vast disadvantage.

*Many foreign nations impose very little regulation on businesses.  That puts businesses in the United States at a vast disadvantage.  In the U.S., we have some of the most restrictive regulations in the world.

In 2011 we are going to end up with a trade deficit that is probably going to be well in excess of half a trillion dollars.  According to one estimate, if the trade deficit was totally eliminated it would create 8.4 million new jobs inside the United States.

So why isn’t Barack Obama proposing to do something about all of this?

#8 The Obama jobs plan does nothing about the gigantic mountains of ridiculous regulations that are absolutely killing small business in this country.  According to the Heritage Foundation, 75 new major regulations that have cost U.S. businesses more than 40 billion dollars have been passed since Barack Obama first took office.

The Federal Register (which contains all federal regulations) just keeps exploding in size.  Last year alone, 81,405 new pages were published in the Federal Register.

Right now there is a good chance that you are breaking dozens of federal regulations without even knowing it.

All of this regulation is crushing our businesses and is making us much less competitive in the global marketplace.

Yes, there will always be a need for common sense regulations on business activity.  But what we have right now is an absolute madhouse.

#9 The Obama jobs plan does nothing about the negative effects of Obamacare.  Obamacare is going to absolutely slaughter U.S. businesses.  Look, when most other nations do not burden their businesses with providing health care and we force our businesses to comply with the nightmare that Obamacare represents, who do you think has the advantage?

The other day, I noted some of the effects that Obamacare is already having on the U.S. business community….

According to a recent report from the National Federation of Independent Business, one out of every eight small businesses in the United States have either already had or expect to have the health insurance plans for their employees terminated by the health insurance companies because of Obamacare.  Another recent survey of mid-size and large businesses found that nearly ten percent of them plan to stop offering health insurance coverage to workers once Obamacare insurance exchanges begin in 2014, and another 20 percent are not sure if they will continue to offer coverage or not.  Our health care system is deeply broken and the ones that keep getting the short end of the stick are average Americans.

If Obama was serious about putting Americans back to work, he would do something about Obamacare.

But he is not going to do that, is he?

#10 The Obama jobs plan makes our national debt worse.  Yes, Obama insists that his plan will be “100%” paid for, but he has not told us how it will be paid for.

Exactly where in the world is he going to get an extra half a trillion dollars next year?

Obama probably intends to propose some tax increases that he knows that the Republicans would never, ever agree to.

So, no, Obama’s proposals will not be paid for.

The U.S. national debt has increased by more than 4 trillion dollars since Barack Obama took office.  It is currently increasing by more than 2 million dollars per minute.

We cannot afford to pile huge amounts of additional debt on to the backs of our children and our grandchildren.  What we have already done to them is deeply, deeply criminal.

In the end, some of Obama’s proposals will probably get passed, none of them will be paid for, our debt will get even bigger, and the fundamental reasons for our job losses will remain unaddressed.

So hopefully you can understand why I consider the Obama jobs plan to be a really bad joke.

Tonight, millions of Americans will be sleeping in seedy motels, in their cars or in tent cities.

Just check out these pictures from New Jersey.  Can you believe that some hard working Americans actually have to live like that?

We had the greatest economy that the world has ever seen.

Things did not have to turn out this way.

But they did.

Now Obama has come up with a “plan” that will not fix any of our fundamental problems but that will get us into a whole lot more debt.

Please excuse me if I am less than thrilled.

Empty Promises: 5 Reasons Why Barack Obama’s State Of The Union Address Was Completely Wrong About The Economy

Barack Obama’s State of the Union address sure sounded good, didn’t it?  There were lots of solemn promises, lots of stuff about America’s “bright future” and a line about how we are now facing this generation’s “Sputnik moment” that will surely make headlines all over the globe.  But we all knew that Barack Obama could give a good speech.  That has never been the issue.  What the American people really need are some very real answers to some very real problems.  So were there any real answers in Barack Obama’s State of the Union address?  Well, Barack Obama promised that America will “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build” the rest of the world.  He also pledged that America will become “the best place in the world to do business” and that the government must “take responsibility” for our deficit spending.  But does all of this rhetoric mean anything or is all this just another batch of empty promises to add to the long list of empty promises that Barack Obama has already made and broken?

The American people certainly don’t need any more empty promises.  Millions of American families have been pushed to the edge of desperation by this economy.

There has been a lot of talk that the economy is “turning around”, but in many areas of the country the employment situation continues to get even worse.  Payrolls decreased in 35 U.S. states during the month of December.

The truth is that the number of “good jobs” produced by the U.S. economy continues to shrink.  In fact, only 47 percent of working-age Americans have a full-time job at this point.

The American people are not going to buy this “economic recovery” as long as unemployment remains at epidemic levels in so many areas.  Just consider some of the stunningly high unemployment rates in some of our most important states….

Nevada – 14.5%

California – 12.5%

Florida – 12.0%

So did Barack Obama propose anything substantial that will actually create real jobs?

No.

Instead, all he had to offer was just a bunch of empty promises.  It is almost as if Obama believes that a really good inspirational speech will somehow make things better.  The following are just a few of the empty promises Obama made during his address to the nation….

Empty Promise #1: America Will “Out-Innovate” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

During the State of the Union address, Barack Obama promised that the United States will “out-innovate” the rest of the world and that this will create more jobs.

Oh really?

Perhaps we could create some more cutting edge products like the Apple iPhone, right?

After all, Apple iPhones were one of the most wildly successful American technological innovations of the past decade.  Surely this is the kind of innovation that Obama would like to see more of.

Well, do you know where Apple iPhones are made?

Apple iPhones are manufactured in China by workers making about 293 dollars a month (and that was after a big raise).

But it isn’t just the Apple iPhone that is made overseas.  The truth is that almost all high technology products are made outside of the United States.

In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide.  So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States?  Zero.

Ouch.

Not only that, another fact to note is that manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

So exactly how is more “innovation” going to produce millions of U.S. jobs if all of the high tech manufacturing continues to be shipped out of the United States?

Empty Promise #2: America Will “Out-Educate” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

For decades, U.S. presidents have promised that “education” is the key to competing with the rest of the world.

Okay, if suddenly every single person in the United States had an extra college degree, would that mean that more jobs would suddenly start popping into existence?

Of course not.

Right now, we can’t produce enough nearly enough jobs for all of the college graduates that we already have.

Sadly, the truth is that we are already experiencing an epidemic of unemployment among our college graduates.  According to the Project on Student Debt, unemployment for new college graduates stood at 8.7 percent in 2009, which was way up from 5.8 percent in 2008.

But that is not the whole story.

Millions of college graduates that have been able to find jobs have ended up taking jobs that they didn’t even need a college education for.  The “underemployment rate” among college graduates is absolutely exploding.

In 1992, there were just 5.1 million “underemployed” college graduates in the United States, but by 2008 there were 17 million “underemployed” college graduates in the United States.

Many of our brightest young minds are now flipping burgers, waiting tables and welcoming people to Wal-Mart.

In fact, in the United States today 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

Oh, but certainly the answer is to get more Americans to go to college, right?

It certainly sounds good in a speech for a politician to say that “more education” is the answer, but in the end all it amounts to is a hollow promise.

Getting more Americans to go to college will not create any more jobs, but it will create more debt.  Americans now owe more than $884 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.

Empty Promise #3: America Will “Out-Build” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

So Barack Obama says that we are going to “out-build” the rest of the world?

Well, that certainly sounds good.

But what exactly does that mean?

Does it mean that we are going to quit shutting down our factories and tearing down our economic infrastructure?

After all, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good since 2001.

So is Obama going to do something to stop the flood of jobs and factories that are leaving the United States?

No, in fact he intends to “increase” trade with countries such as China and India.  That is going to mean that thousands more factories and millions more jobs are going to be “outsourced”.

Well, what about building up infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power grids, dams and ports?

That is certainly a very good idea.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to spend approximately $2.2 trillion on infrastructure repairs and upgrades just to bring our existing infrastructure up to “good condition”.

So we desperately need some investment in that area.

But there is a big problem.

We are flat broke.

As will be discussed below, the U.S. government is flat broke.  Not only that, our state governments are flat broke and our local governments are flat broke.

So where will the trillions of dollars that we need for infrastructure come from?

Obama did not even come close to answering that question.

Empty Promise #4: America Will Become “The Best Place In The World To Do Business” And This Will Create More Jobs

It was incredible that Barack Obama could suggest that America is “the best place in the world to do business” with a straight face.

First of all, when you consider all forms of taxation, U.S. businesses face one of the most oppressive taxation regimes in the entire world.

But not only that, U.S. businesses also have to deal with one of the most horrific regulatory environments in the history of mankind.

As I have written about previously, the mountains of red tape that U.S. businesses have to wade through just continues to grow every single year.

The Federal Register is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies.  In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register was about 2,600.  Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long.

So is Barack Obama going to do anything about that?

Of course not.

In fact, Barack Obama and the Democrats have been really busy passing even more ridiculous regulations.

For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer.

Empty Promise #5: Barack Obama Pledges To “Take Responsibility” For Our Deficit Spending

During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

In fact, since Barack Obama took office, the U.S. government has gotten us into so much new debt that it breaks down to $10,429.64 for each of the 308,745,538 people counted by the 2010 U.S. census.

So is that “taking responsibility” for our deficit spending?

When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars.

Today it is over 14 trillion dollars.

Government debt is absolutely out of control.  At this point, the U.S. national debt is increasing by roughly 4 billion dollars every single day.

If all of this debt is not brought under control, it will bring down the entire U.S. financial system.  According to a recent U.S. Treasury report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will reach 19.6 trillion dollars in 2015.

Can you imagine being 20 trillion dollars in debt?

That is 20,000,000,000,000 dollars.

So it would be really great if Barack Obama could do something about all of this debt, but based on his track record perhaps we should not be holding our breath.

Not that Obama is to blame for all of this.

The sad reality is that both parties have been involved in a massive debt orgy for decades and decades.  Now the day of reckoning is almost here and it is going to be incredibly painful.

We are in so much trouble that it is hard to even try to put it into words.  None of our politicians are telling us the whole truth.  We are headed for a complete and total disaster.

111 Obamacare Waivers And Counting – Can The Rest Of Us Get Waivers From Having To Comply With Obamacare Please?

In a stunning admission of just how job-killing and business-crushing the new health care law really is, the Obama administration has issued a staggering total of 111 Obamacare waivers (and counting) so far. The list of the dozens of companies and organizations that have been approved for a waiver is very, very deeply buried on the website of the Department of Health & Human Services.  In fact, it takes six separate clicks to get to the list.  Some of the companies that have been granted waivers include McDonald’s, Darden Restaurants (owners of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurant chains), Aetna, the United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund in New York, and Dish Network.  These Obamacare waivers cover a total of 1.2 million Americans.  However, as news of these waivers spreads, it is inevitable that thousands more companies will want to apply.  In the end, tens of millions of Americans may be covered by health plans that have been exempted from Obamacare.  So can the rest of us get in on this action or is the Obama administration going to play favorites with these waivers?

So far, the Obamacare waivers have primarily been granted to companies that offer very limited health plans.  The Obama administration has apparently been afraid of the public relations nightmare that would result if dozens of companies suddenly started dropping health coverage for their employees.  The following is how the New York Times recently described what is going on with these waivers….

Last month, federal officials granted dozens of one-year waivers that were aimed at sparing certain employers, including McDonald’s, insurers and unions who offer plans that sharply limit the coverage they provide. These limited-benefit plans, also known as “minimeds,” fail to comply with new rules phasing out limits on how much policies will provide in medical care each year.

So do you want to get an Obamacare waiver for your own company?  Well, just over a week ago the Department of Health & Human Services published a set of new guidelines for those seeking to apply for a waiver.  As news of these waivers starts to spread they will likely get absolutely swamped with applications, so you better get yours in early.  In fact, it is being reported that the number of approved applications has tripled in just the last month alone.

But these waivers raise some very important questions.

-If Obamacare is such a great law, shouldn’t it apply equally to everybody?

-If Obamacare is going to cause firms to drop their “mini-med” health plans, shouldn’t all firms with “mini-med” plans be given a blanket exemption?

-Are all firms that apply for an Obamacare exemption going to be given one or will the Obama administration be playing favorites?

-Won’t firms that are granted these Obamacare waivers be given a very substantial competitive advantage over other firms in the same industry that do not have an exemption?

-What does it say about an administration when they grant dozens upon dozens of exemptions from a law that they spent months upon months selling to the American people as the ultimate solution to our health care problems?

The following is a recent video news report about these Obamacare exemptions…..

The truth is that the U.S. health care system was deeply broken before Obamacare, and after the new health care law the U.S. health care system is still deeply broken.

Before Obamacare, the U.S. health care system was all about making as much money as possible for health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry.  After Obamacare, the U.S. health care system is still about making as much money as possible for health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry, only now we all have to deal with more suffocating layers of government bureaucracy and much higher health insurance premiums.

The entire health care system in the United States should be dismantled and built again from scratch.  It was a complete and total nightmare before Obamacare and it is still a complete and total nightmare.

But perhaps you disagree.  Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, and if you have a different perspective feel free to express it below….

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