A cause to unite the tea party and the Occupy Wall Street crowd.
The Occupy Wall Street protesters aren’t good at articulating what they want, but one of their demands is “end corporate welfare.” Well, welcome aboard. Some of us have been fighting crony capitalism for decades, and it’s good to have new allies if liberals have awakened to the dangers of the corporate welfare state.
Corporate welfare is the offer of special favors—cash grants, loans, guarantees, bailouts and special tax breaks—to specific industries or firms. The government doesn’t track the overall cost of these programs, but in 2008 the Cato Institute made an attempt and came up with $92 billion for fiscal 2006, which is more than the U.S. government spends on homeland security.
That annual cost may have doubled to $200 billion in this new era of industry bailouts and subsidies. According to the House Budget Committee, the 2009 stimulus bill alone contained more than $80 billion in “clean energy” subsidies, and tens of billions more went for the auto bailout and cash for clunkers, as well as aid for the mortgage industry through programs to refinance or buy up toxic loans.***
This industrial policy model of government as a financial partner with business can sound appealing, but the government’s record in picking winners and losers has been dreadful. Some of the most expensive flops include the Supersonic Transport plane of the mid-1970s, Jimmy Carter’s $2 billion Synthetic Fuels Corporation (the precursor to clean energy), Amtrak, which hasn’t turned a profit in four decades, and the most expensive public-private partnership debacle of all time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have lost $142 billion of taxpayer money. A few other illustrative industry handouts: (more…)
Despite bipartisan promises to cut spending after the 2010 elections, Washington politicians are still voting to make the government even bigger and more expensive than ever.
Don’t believe me?
Even though the federal government is nearly $15 trillion in debt, it’s spending at record-high levels. Federal spending has gone up 5 percent in the first nine months of this year alone.
Just last week, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate passed three new spending bills to increase 2012 funding above 2011 funding levels. The bills will increase spending for the Department of Agriculture by $6.4 billion; for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development by more than $2 billion; and for the Commerce, Justice, and State departments by more than $694 million.
Barack Obama spends much of his time these days running for re-election, campaigning as a populist, bashing millionaires and extolling the Occupy Wall Street movement. Although “populist” means different things to different people, the Oxford American dictionary says it describes a politician who seeks to represent the interests of ordinary people. So how does the president measure up as a true populist? Not well.
Food prices are an important component of the living expenses of ordinary people, especially the elderly or families struggling to make ends meet. Last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast that food prices will rise by 3.5%-4.5% this year, the sharpest year-to-year increase since 1978. (That year, by the way, was prelude to 1979-80 double-digit inflation, when prices at one point in 1980 were soaring at nearly 15% annually.)
Commodity futures prices for animal feed staples like corn and soybeans are riding high. Oil and gold blipped upward again last week after a hiatus that followed the end of the QE2 monetary stimulus. Overall, dollar inflation is approaching an uncomfortable 4% annually.
So what else is happening? The economy picked up a little steam in the third quarter, growing at an annual rate of 2.5% on the strength of higher consumer spending and business investment. But personal disposable income, inflation adjusted, dropped 1.7%, the first decline since the 2009 recession. The personal savings rate fell back to the recession level, a meager 4.1% of personal income. Why should anyone save, when money-market accounts yield only a skimpy half a percentage point?
What we have here looks like the early stages of stagflation. (more…)
Even Rube Goldberg would recoil in horror from this regulatory contraption.
Dave Juday
October 31, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 07
A food versus fuel debate has raged for the past few years as ethanol consumes more and more of the U.S. corn supply. Ethanol will use about 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop this year, and for the first time ever, more corn will go into motor fuel production than into feed for livestock. As the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has pointed out, since Congress mandated the use of ethanol in the nation’s fuel supply, corn use by ethanol mills has increased by 382 percent, yet with a limited supply of farmland and the need to grow other crops, plus some less than ideal weather conditions this year and last, corn production has increased only 5.4 percent over the same period.
As a result, ethanol policy has been a major contributor to reduced red meat production. Per capita beef supplies for next year are projected to be at their lowest level since 1955. Food inflation is rampant—especially in categories where corn is a significant input. To date, poultry prices are up 3.4 percent over last year, milk and dairy is up 9.1 percent, pork is up 7.5 percent, and hamburger is up 10.4 percent. All categories are projected to increase even more next year. Moreover, the impact is not just domestic, as more than 60 percent of the world’s tradable corn supply originates in the United States.
Food versus fuel is not the only market distortion caused by the federal mandate to use ethanol in the U.S. motor fuel supply. The federal regulations and mandates of what feedstocks may be used to make which biofuels are now creating chaos within the fuel sector—which hits motorists and taxpayers in the pocketbook, too. (more…)
SACRAMENTO – The nearly five-hour drive from the Sacramento area to Yreka, in Siskiyou County by the Oregon border, was a reminder not just of the immense size and beauty of California, but of the vast regional and cultural differences one finds within our 37-million-population state.
Sacramento is Government Central, a land of overly pensioned bureaucrats and restaurant discounts for state workers. But way up in the North State, one finds a small but hard-edged rural populace that views state and federal officials as the main obstacles to their quality of life.
Their latest battle is to stop destruction of four hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River – an action driven by environmentalists and the Obama administration. Most locals say the dam-busting will undermine their property rights and ruin the local farming and ranch economy, which is all that’s left since environmental regulators destroyed the logging and mining industries.
These used to be wealthy resource-based economies, but now many of the towns are drying up, with revenue to local governments evaporating. Unemployment rates are in the 20-percent-and-higher range. Nearly 79 percent of the county’s voters in a recent advisory initiative opposed the dam removal, but that isn’t stopping the authorities from blasting the dams anyway.
These rural folks, living in the shadow of the majestic Mount Shasta, believe that they are being driven away so that their communities can essentially go back to the wild, to conform to a modern environmentalist ethos that puts wildlands above humanity. As the locals told it during the Defend Rural America conference Oct. 22 at the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds, environmental officials are treading on their liberties, traipsing unannounced on their properties, confronting ranchers with guns drawn to enforce arcane regulatory rules and destroying their livelihoods in the process.
This video is a history of how the U.N.’s Agenda 21/Sustainable Development was developed and how it is being implemented to restrict our personal rights and liberties.
Most Americans are unaware that one of the greatest threats to their freedom may be a United Nations program known as Agenda 21. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Sustainable Development created Agenda 21 as a sustainability agenda which is arguably an amalgamation of socialism and extreme environmentalism brushed with anti-American, anti-capitalist overtones.
A detailed history on sustainable development, definitions, and critical actions can be found here. Section III of the Agenda 21 Plan addresses local community sustainable development. The Preamble and Chapter 28 discuss how Agenda 21 should be implemented at a local level. The United Nations purposely recommends avoiding the term Agenda 21 and suggests a cleverly named alternative: “smart growth.” The United Nations Millennium Papers – Issue 2 (page 5) says this of Agenda 21 and smart growth:
Participating in a UN-advocated planning process would very likely bring out many of the conspiracy-fixated groups and individuals in our society such as the National Rifle Association, citizen militias and some members of Congress. This segment of our society who fear ‘one-world government’ and a UN invasion of the United States through which our individual freedom would be stripped away would actively work to defeat any elected official who joined ‘the conspiracy’ by undertaking LA21. So, we call our process something else, such as comprehensive planning, growth management, or smart growth [emphasis added]. (more…)
UNITED NATIONS AGENDA 21 – SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The following information is condensed from a Special Report on Sustainable Development that was written by Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center, located in Warrenton, Virginia. For more detailed information, please contact ampolicycenter@hotmail.com or at their website www.americanpolicy.org where the full Special Report on Sustainable Development can be found.
WHAT IS AGENDA 21 AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?
Sustainable Development can be traced back to a United Nations policy document called Agenda 21 which was adopted at the U.N.’s Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. Sustainable Development calls for changing the very infrastructure of the nation, away from private ownership and control of property to nothing short of central planning of the entire economy. In short, it’s all about wealth redistribution, all in the name of protecting the planet.
We have all heard the key terms it hides under – Cap N Trade, global warming, population control, gun control, open border and illegal immigration, higher taxes, higher gas prices, refusal to drill American oil, education restructuring, International ID’s, natural health supplement control, food control, farming “reform”, control of private property, Social Justice, land use, environmental protection, development diversity, open space, critical thinking and last but not least, sustainable development. These are not random topics but a complete agenda of control that is part of the Sustainable Development/Agenda 21 blueprint. (more…)
THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MULTIPLE WEBSITES AND SOURCES FOR INFORMATION ON THE GREEN AGENDA (U.N. AGENDA 21). CONCERN OVER OUR ENVIRONMENT IS BEING USED BY THE GREEN AGENDA TO RESTRICT OUR LIBERTIES.
KEEPING INFORMED IS THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT YOURSELF.
Oct 2, 2010 – Most people tend to think of environmentalists as warm, cuddly hippies that just want all of us to love one another and to do what is right for the.
29 min – Sep 13, 2007
TED Talks Architect Norman Foster discusses his own work to show how computers can help architects design buildings that are green…
Browner’s exit reinforces concerns Obama is preparing compromises on his once -ambitious green agenda to try to build working arrangement with Republicans …
Oct 5, 2010 – Regulation: When Democrats lecture us about lower-cost clean energy and planet-friendly conservation, what are they actually talking about?
Green Agenda is a participatory method for developing and implementing local sustainable development strategies and plans with active involvement of the …
Hijacking Evangelicalism to Push the ‘Green‘ Agenda. By Paul Chesser on 5.20. 11 @ 11:23AM. Back in 2006 a few environmentalists produced the Evangelical …
Oct 4, 2010 – Regulation: When Democrats lecture us about lower-cost clean energy and planet-friendly conservation, what are they actually talking about?
Azerbaijan celebrates 20 years of independence from Soviet rule this year and has made giant strides in this time. The priority has been economic growth and …
