The NYT Advises NJ on Debt and Taxation: Keep on Spending and Taxing

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1]has an all-embracing and tortuous history of apologizing for Communism, lost politics relics from the socialist era, and maudlin  laments over lost taxes.  There is no substitute for socialism or one of its nastier congeners so today we are educated on the solution to New Jersey’s financial problems.

The Times and its satellite bankrupt ragzines cannot seem to correlate high taxation with the loss of business, fleeing citizens, debt and the rusting of societies. This is a mental disorder.

The chimes of times past ring from Maximum Tax John:

“Gov. Jon Corzine wants to shore up his state’s troubled finances by sharply raising tolls. If he gets his way, the cost of driving most of the turnpike could eventually rise from $5.85 to $48, providing money for both debt reduction and public transportation.” [2]

An echo from the graveyard by Snake:

“In 1993, Clinton campaign strategist James Carville announced that the off-year governor's race in New Jersey between incumbent Democrat Jim Florio -- who had raised taxes in 1989 -- and his challenger Christine Todd Whitman -- who called for a 30 percent across-the-board income-tax cut -- would be the burial ground of Republican advocacy of tax reduction.” [3]

This is typical of the form and substance of tautological howling we have learned to expect from the Times. High taxes are the only solution! Well, why not raise taxes in California and New Jersey and Michigan and bail out the auto business and heal the states?

Today we read:

“It was only last year that Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey was calling for a major, and hugely unpopular, increase in turnpike tolls. …cut in half the state’s $30 billion budget shortfall, caused in large part by the underfunding of public-employee pension funds.”

Now Mr. Corzine is pushing a proposal that in the short term would make the pension problem worse. Unfortunately, given plunging revenues, he has no choice”[4]—NYT Editorial

Deeper in Debt Published: December 12, 2008 [All quotes references this link in this blog unless otherwise noted. [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Let us see if the Times, near bankruptcy itself, can wonder if salaries for public employees are too high and that benefits are astronomical and that the ‘government’ in NJ is a joke in terms of efficiency. Most of this was obvious to me.[5]

“New Jersey’s pension debacle dates back to the late-1990s when the state stopped contributing to the funds entirely and used the money for operating costs. Politicians told themselves that the funds’ investments in an ever-rising stock market would make up the difference, and they did — until the market dropped a few years later. This fall the funds took another major blow, losing more than a quarter of their value.”

And the pensions:

“We agree with Mr. Corzine that large property-tax increases would strain many homeowners already struggling to pay their mortgages, which could lead to additional foreclosures. He is right to require towns to resume their full pension payments in 2012 when the economy, presumably, will be stronger than it is now.”

“The state will also have to further increase the turnpike tolls, with the added revenue going to the pension funds. Without tough, and politically difficult policies, New Jersey will never dig out of its debt.”

Not a hint about the unions giving anything in salaries and benefits!  The stogy stance of the unions just killed off the Detroit Bailout deal last night. The UAW would NOT agree to any concessions![6] No layoffs or trimming down on their phony social programs?

No givebacks No way No how.  And support from their bribees:

“Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) took a harsh and emotional tone with Republicans who voted against the bill. "Evidently the only thing that matters to those on the other side of the aisle is that workers make too much money," she said.”[7]

This is just the beginning. The politicians are spoon-fed by crooked greedy unions who have their claws and fangs fixed securely in many American businesses. They have the mentality of a ghoul. Those CEOs and boards who must deal with these unyielding Neanderthal parasites must think about shutting down their businesses and moving off shore or getting into something else.

There is no hope given the attitude 0f the unions and their stooges at the New York Times.

CA is next and they are hopelessly buried in unionism and EcoNazism. They could consume over 150 bln a year in handouts, some 1% of what used to be our GNP.

But, in a last moment’s insanity, the Idiot Bush, a loser like his stupid father, might get some money to waste in the bailout. [8]

Grunt and Grab

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

The Farce of the Detroit Bailout: Your Tax Monies Down the Rat hole

Friedman of the NYT Mumbles about the Real Generation X. He Stares into the Abyss and Sees Himself.

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1]has an all-embracing and tortuous history of apologizing for Communism, propping up losers, celebrating AIDS along with the perverted practices that spread this horror, and culminating with  its never ending pursuit of higher and higher and higher taxes.  The Times has never retreated from its pathological contempt for capitalism. The Times has also relentlessly praised any leftist parasite or pervert who will openly parade their dishonor in our now degenerated society.  Today, as the economy starts to sag, the Times appears to wax whimsical and wonder how history will view us.  Their Resident EcoNazi[2][3], now dreams of future times when our young will write our epitaph using leftist ideology.

 “What I’ve been thinking about actually is this: What book will our kids write about us? “The Greediest Generation?” “The Complacent Generation?” Or maybe: “The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their Excesses by Charging It All on My Visa Card.””[4]-- The Real Generation X  By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist December 7, 2008  [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]This link references all quotes in this essay unless otherwise stated.

 My view on this will be that there will be no single generational labels here. We are divided and one half is going to be seen as the goats and the others will those whose successful methods and business mechanisms were undermined by idiots like this author. The EcoNazis will attempt to bring down our economy with fables and fears about global warming and other follies. They fail by themselves to do anything meaningful without our money so they need a sugar daddy to provide them with comforts and drugs.

“Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today. I understand why they aren’t. They’re so worried about just getting a job or paying next semester’s tuition. But we must not take their quietism as license to do whatever we want with this bailout cash. They are going to have to pay this money back. And therefore, we have an incredibly weighty obligation to make sure that we not only spend every stimulus dollar wisely but also with an eye to creating new technologies.”-- Friedman Op-Ed Columnist December 7

There are two things wrong with this: [1] They may have to pay back nothing if hyperinflation hits and [2] spending will solve nothing in the first phase of this mess, which is deflation based due to housing prices falling. People need to seriously study the Bernanke Speech of 6 years ago on deflation as the English and others are doing now. The reversal of the contraction of the credit system will take time.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard quotes Bernanke:

““The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost,” he [Bernanke] said.””[5]--Deflation virus is moving the policy test beyond the 1930s extremes. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor Telegraph 06 Dec 2008

Friedman mumbles and honks about minutia while missing the giant point: we are in a severe deflationary period.  We need to study Evans-Pritchard’s latest article in the Telegraph.

Friedman gurgles on about technology that will ‘save’ us:

“[Topic: Bail out Detroit] You want my tax dollars? Then I want to see the precise production plans and timetables for the hybridization of all your cars and trucks within 36 months. I want every bailed-out car company to move to hybrid electric drive trains, because nothing would both improve mileage and emissions more — and also stimulate a whole new 21st-century, job-creating industry: batteries.

Big batteries that can store electricity for transportation and wind and solar generation are the indispensable enablers of the Energy Internet of the future. Any Detroit bailout has to serve that goal.”-- Friedman Op-Ed Columnist December 7.

He wants? I want an explanation for where my tax dollars went for the Great Society, HUD, War on Poverty, Welfare and much more.

So, here we have some EcoNazi Fruit Loop who thinks he can read a business plan and has already micromanaged the design of future cars based on the myth of Global Warming. Friedman looks into the abyss and sees his own horrors that he handily constructs from ideological fluff and phony science and then he views the enlightening solution to the problems also staring back at him. This is a class piece of cretinic logic. He begins his drooling session by postulating the existence of something we don’t have yet and, after a mere 50 years of research, probably will never have: a big efficient battery.

Friedman drifts off into space and fails to enlighten us that the Chevy Volt battery can only allow a 40-mile driving.[6] He then fails to let us know that about 80% of all electricity is coal fired so after the transmission loses and such we are just inefficiently burning coal and are also limited to short hops. That implies that to avoid using the dreaded gas there would have to be charging stations in all the shopping centers and schools and such. If you commute 50 miles to work you will have to charge up in the middle of the trip or use gas with prohibitive taxes per gallon. How many times do you have to charge on a 500 mile trip? How much time will that take? 10 hours? 20 hours?

“Europe, Japan and China are already dominating this[battery]  industry. It’s the key to clean-tech — and ultimately our national competitiveness. We can’t allow ourselves to be battery importers in the 21st century the way we were oil importers in the 20th.”-- Friedman Op-Ed Columnist December 7

And, to this we add Carbon Cap[7]taxes endeared to the hearts of losers like Princeling of Wails[8], and other ‘clean and green’ taxes while we let our oil sit in the ground on the phony fear that we are raising the temperature of the planet. Our energy comes from the sun and variations in the nuclear engine of that orb cause temperature variations. England’s economy will collapse over their decision to reduce CO₂ emissions, and rightly so. CA and NY are already collapsing from phony social programs, foolish jobs and substandard ‘education’--all self-inflicted. It is too bad we cannot study and broadcast the details of one of these crashes come early on that might alarm and jolt us into reality and let us focus in on the real problems. Everybody does not deserve to lose here. Just let the left lose, as is customary for them.

With Congress running Detroit we may get our chance to witness an economic disaster for a mere 75 billion dollars. [That is about $16 x 75 or $1200 for each tax payer in the upper half.] The auto makers cannot meet the C.A.F.E. standards and have no magic batteries. They will then bawl and crawl back to congress for another bottle of milk.  Congress will spend and spend and print money to give them our money and sustain 90$ per hour union wages that they were bribed for. This is socialism. We will return to the Depression Era with such phony jobs as raking leaves in the forests.

Let us not forget that when the USSR collapsed in 1989 the Marxists went green. Friedman is probably the best candidate for the Lysenko Prize.

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

Friedman Calls on Pakistan to Protest: It takes a Village [or many Village Idiots]?

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1]has an all-embracing and tortuous history of apologizing for Communism supporting EcoNazism with flag-waving, high taxes and song and supporting anything left or what ever supports our enemies.  Today our Resident EcoNazi[2] [3] Thomas L. Friedman, unleashed upon us for this special occasion only because we are spared another blast from the Old Red Lady [4], calls on Pakistan for something like protests against terrorism. We can wonder what that might be about. Are we pretending to be objective now?

“Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?”[5]-- Calling All Pakistanis By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist Published: December 2, 2008  [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Who, indeed? Who would believe in Global Warming[6] except drooling toadies or mentally ill political activists? Who could have believed in the Great Society, the War on Poverty or the nostrum that F.D.R. would “…not send our boys to a foreign war…?” Nobody.

Some questions for Friedman:

Who are the ‘monkeys and pigs?”[7] [8] Where is the NYT condemnation of Kamau Kambon [“…exterminate white people off the face of the planet …].[9] Where is the angry protest from the NYT against the beheading of Nick Berg, a US citizen from Philadelphia?[10]Racism and religious bigotry are obviously the most important precepts of leftist politics. They thrive over the polarization of groups hence the basis of identity politics.

Friedman is an example of a political construct that is cocooned in some politically insulated mantle that has a few narrow mystical portals where he can only view and excrete some slobber on authorized topics. He cannot seem to condemn the Islamic madrasa system that is an ideological hate system rivaling the Social Science Department of Cornell. Where is the objection to the ideological Sharia Law from the Times? There is apparently no bigotry, hate or bias in this system as the Walter Duranty Papers[11]cannot seem to find any.

Hope:

“I am still hoping — just once — for that mass demonstration of “ordinary people” against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake.

Why? Because it takes a village. The best defense against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicly and repeatedly the murderers — and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or “explain” their activities.”-- Thomas L. Friedman

We have this problem in the US. Where is the ‘village’ here? Maybe we can believe that the ACLU goes around condemning Islamic terrorists in the madrasas in the US?

Turning the tautological crank:

“Because, I repeat, this kind of murderous violence only stops when the village — all the good people in Pakistan, including the community elders and spiritual leaders who want a decent future for their country — declares, as a collective, that those who carry out such murders are shameful unbelievers who will not dance with virgins in heaven but burn in hell. And they do it with the same vehemence with which they denounce Danish cartoons.”

Does Friedman know about the rewards in Heaven from Allah for terrorists who die in a jihad?[12]What about: ““The Unbelievers will be led to Hell in throngs.”[13] What about the 71 virgins as part of their reward for martyrism?[14]

Friedman whistles a soothing but phony song in the wind if he thinks he can suddenly use persuasion or shame to prod psychotic Islamo-Fascists and their Islamic hosts to apologize for this act of terrorism. This view is patently phony and our resident EcoNazi knows this. This was a great victory for Pakistan over India, old and nasty enemies and they will dance in the streets and celebrate with an extra glass of apple juice over this event. The attack on the witless Indians in Mumbai was wildly successful and will provide a vision and a new set of goals. This was a fair approximation of the 911 tragedy in New York City. They are proud of this all over the Middle East.

Friedman is out to lunch again. We need  the Old Red Ladyback  if only for her literary delusions.

rycK

 Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

Krugman Lectures us on Deficits and tells us all is well. Big Government will get Bigger

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers [1] has few goals for their paper and this narrow list consists of: [1] apologizing for Communism, [2] propping up losers like Al Gore and his phony EcoNazism[2] or [3] celebrating AIDS and [4] hatching new lies so as to engorge government with honest taxpayer’s money.  They daily struggle to reinvent Marxism as a new-fangled and magical solution to achieve a great society and can apply their wondrous dreams to any problem along with the proper taxes of course. These people are intellectuals—they think of new ways to grunt and grab your money. They have a new paradigm! Tax and spend.

To accomplish this set of freak show parlor tricks, they employ ideological stooges who turn the cranks of the old rusty socialist propaganda machines while offering solace and wealth to losers so as to attract votes. One of their most proficient propaganda chuckers is the resident igNoble Leechette[3][4][5][6], One Paul Krugman, who has monotonously inculcated us with his politically-inspired although reason-deficient insights on recessions and depressions. It seems that he tortures us again with another round of explanations how big government will solve any and all problems.

From today’s tautological screed:

“… Many economists, myself included, are calling for a very large fiscal expansion to keep the economy from going into free fall. Others, however, worry about the burden that large budget deficits will place on future generations.”[7]-- Deficits and the Future By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: December 1, 2008    [Emphasis is mine in all quotes. This link references quotes in this essay unless otherwise indicated.]

Krugman is not an economist as he cannot keep his blood pressure within reasonable limits when the notions of tax cuts and chucking phony government programs into the latrines are presented to  him in any format. A private dollar is a damned dollar as far as he is concerned. He knows how to spend your money better than you do.

“But the deficit worriers have it all wrong. Under current conditions, there’s no trade-off between what’s good in the short run and what’s good for the long run; strong fiscal expansion would actually enhance the economy’s long-run prospects.”

We can all be relieved now. Massive debt is not a problem. Our krugmaniacal one has soothed our worries. Has he read about the source of the Asian debt fiasco from 1997?[8] Does Krugman know about the economic metric: debt-to-GDP ratio? At the end of 2009 our debt will be greater than our GDP.

From 2003 he bashes Greenspan for the deficit:

“Two years ago you [directed at Alan Greenspan] acted as George W. Bush's enabler; you share part of the blame for our plunge into deficit. But now the situation is truly dire. If you waffle now, and take the easy way out, your reputation -- and the country's finances -- will quickly pass the point of no return.

In your initial remarks you more or less acknowledged the grim fiscal outlook. As your discussion of ''accrual'' accounting made clear, you know that if the federal budget took into account the future liabilities of Social Security and Medicare -- as it should -- it wouldn't show the ''modest'' deficits the White House talks about; it would show a government deep in the red.

Moreover, since you advocate accrual accounting, you obviously realize that the ratio of debt to G.D.P. is a highly misleading number. Properly measured, the U.S. fiscal system is already ''unstable'' -- and the new Bush proposals would quickly push it past what you called the ''point of no return.''”[9]-- On the Second Day, Atlas Waffled By Paul Krugman Published: February 14, 2003

Gee, now deficits don’t matter when Democrats want to wield some power. What happened to Krugman’s moaning about the debt ratio? Gone!  Presto! The mealiest utterances of certain mouths apparently shift from cheek to cheek as the political winds drift.

The explanation is now trumpeted forth with song and tinsel:

“The claim that budget deficits make the economy poorer in the long run is based on the belief that government borrowing “crowds out” private investment — that the government, by issuing lots of debt, drives up interest rates, which makes businesses unwilling to spend on new plant and equipment, and that this in turn reduces the economy’s long-run rate of growth. Under normal circumstances there’s a lot to this argument.”

He now soars into the stratosphere with some history on tax increases that seem to now be unwise.

“The first took place in 1937, when Franklin Roosevelt mistakenly heeded the advice of his own era’s deficit worriers. He sharply reduced government spending, among other things cutting the Works Progress Administration in half, and also raised taxes. The result was a severe recession, and a steep fall in private investment.

The second episode took place 60 years later, in Japan. In 1996-97 the Japanese government tried to balance its budget, cutting spending and raising taxes. And again the recession that followed led to a steep fall in private investment.

Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that trying to reduce the budget deficit is always bad for private investment. You can make a reasonable case that Bill Clinton’s fiscal restraint in the 1990s helped fuel the great U.S. investment boom of that decade, which in turn helped cause a resurgence in productivity growth.

Slick Willie’s “fiscal restraint” was forced upon his slimy person by Newt Gingrich and a Congress that decapitated his socialized medicine monster and destroyed the cancerous federal welfare machine. That boondoggle was, unfortunately, replaced by ‘education’ where incompetents are paid too well to mangle the basics of education and replace them with leftist and racist anti-white propaganda. Just look at Washington, D.C. What a pitiful mess.

This guy has no shame as he must choke on the reality that the beneficial effects of Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were ongoing at the time and Clinton’s spending and phony legislating was not big and slimy enough to break down the growth until he left office and then we had a recession.

Krugman on debt:

“Should the government have a permanent policy of running large budget deficits? Of course not. Although public debt isn’t as bad a thing as many people believe — it’s basically money we owe to ourselves — in the long run the government, like private individuals, has to match its spending to its income.”

Here are some numbers to think about: At a current $10.6 trillion debt level the government spent $412 Billion[10] last year on debt service. The budget was $3000 billion so that works out to 312/3000 or just under 14% of the tax revenues. Due to printing money[11] and other follies we seem to have already spent some $4.28 trillion on bailouts according the CNBC.com[12] Unless Krugman has some special arithmetic that allows him to use imaginary numbers in his political counting. He seems to pick out numbers that support these prejudices. His arithmetic is as pathetic as his reasoning power.

He lies when he says — it’s basically money we owe to ourselves- because he conveniently omits the mere $2.8605 trillion of debt the Asians and others hold in our T-bills and other instruments.[13] Here are some:

Source: Department of the Treasury/Federal Reserve Board

November 18, 2008

The breakdown: Treasury Bills   276.8 and T-Bonds & Notes run 1544.9 

Krugman closes with standard, monolithic Keynes:

“But right now we have a fundamental shortfall in private spending: consumers are rediscovering the virtues of saving at the same moment that businesses, burned by past excesses and hamstrung by the troubles of the financial system, are cutting back on investment. That gap will eventually close, but until it does, government spending must take up the slack. Otherwise, private investment, and the economy as a whole, will plunge even more.”

 He fails to mention that the carbon cap taxes might add another 100 bln or more to the cost of just living. He fails to mention that bailing out Detroit, California, New York, New Jersey and Michigan can cost another 100-200 bln in this next year alone. California[14], whose phony drug-crazed society will run a 28 bln dollar deficit will NOT change its phony education, harboring and celebrating illegal aliens, free housing, the phony Global Warming[15] and Carbon Caps[16], and EcoNazism[17]  and that 28 will soar to 40 by 2010.

My analysis [edited from this previous blog[18]]:

What we are looking at here is an ideological socialist who willingly contorts any fundamental tenets anywhere in the theory or history of economics in a manner so as to service the expediency of the far-leftist political vision and echo the elements of the current political crisis. He is a crisis monger. Economic theory aside, he really does hop and clap when he hears his master’s voice. His view of economics is obviously faulty if we read his works and note that tax cuts are never appropriate and government can never be too big or oppressive. He is off tax hikes for the moment as his party sees great danger in this essential socialist maneuver. There is no balance in his views as he omits any reference to market theory or fundamental capitalism. We can only celebrate and acknowledge him for his earned image as a trusty leftist lackey and heap praise upon him for fittingly performing his role as an ideological sycophant who deserves his Nobel Prize if it can be universally accepted for what it really is.

Given his mechanical ideology and immunity from the basics of economics and reason, we can safely check out his noisy screeds as the first place to look for the wrong thing to do in our society.

My prediction:

What we face here is first a depression and then hyperinflation as the printing presses smoke and groan under the pressure to add another zero to the dollar bill about every few months. That will, we understand, lower the national debt and we will be able to pay off china from the proceeds from the sale of a single junked Toyota car or maybe the cost of a dozen pizzas if you leave off the mushrooms. And, this will be a great opportunity for more government to ‘help’ us out with our society. How about a nice 4-5$ tax on a gallon of gasoline so we can ‘save the planet?’

Great work Paul. You are to be celebrated as a Bellwether in Reverse.

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com