The Right Lane update 6.25.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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Ex-Soviet era spy chief: 'Disinformation' alive and well under Obama
Highest-ranking defector reveals secret strategies that are destroying America

The highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is at it again. A quarter century ago, in his international bestseller "Red Horizons," Pacepa exposed the massive crimes and corruption of his former boss, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, giving the dictator a nervous breakdown and inspiring him to send assassination squads to the U.S. to find his former spy chief and kill him. They failed. On Christmas Day 1989, Ceausescu was executed by his own people at the end of a trial whose accusations came almost word-for-word out of "Red Horizons."  After courageously defecting to the United States, which he now proudly calls home, Pacepa became a major asset to the Central Intelligence Agency's efforts to deal with the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union. The CIA has praised Pacepa's cooperation for providing "an important and unique contribution to the United States," and President Ronald Reagan (seen below holding Pacepa's "Red Horizons") reportedly referred to it as "my bible for dealing with dictators."  His book "Red Horizons" and condemnation of the Obama administration CANNOT be ignored.

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Random Thoughts By Thomas Sowell
Random thoughts on the passing scene:

Edmund Burke said, "There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men." Evil men do not always snarl. Some smile charmingly. Those are the most dangerous. If you don't think the mainstream media slants the news, keep track of how often they tell you that the Arctic ice pack is shrinking and how seldom they tell you that the Antarctic ice pack is expanding. The latter news would not fit the "global warming" scenario that so many in the media are promoting.

Someone has referred to Vice President Biden as President Obama's "impeachment insurance." Even critics who are totally opposed to Barack Obama's policies do not want anything to cut short his presidency, with Joe Biden as his successor.

People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?

Given the shortage of articulate Republican leaders, it will be a real loss — to the country, not just to the Republicans — if Senator Marco Rubio discredits himself, early in his career, by supporting "comprehensive" immigration reform that amounts to just another amnesty, with false promises to secure the border.

Ever since I learned, as a teenager, that the "Saturday Evening Post" magazine was actually published on Wednesday mornings, I have been very skeptical about words. "Gun control" laws do not control guns, "rent control" laws do not control rent and government "stimulus" spending does not stimulate the economy.

It is hard to think of two people with more different personalities than New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama. But they are soul mates when it comes to thinking that they ought to take a whole spectrum of decisions out of citizens' hands, and impose the government's decisions on them.

Maybe the reason for the New York Yankees' low batting averages has something to do with the fact that so many of their batters seem to be swinging for the fences, even when a single would score the winning run.

President Obama's denial of knowledge about the various scandals in his administration that are starting to come to light suggests that his titles should now include Innocent-Bystander-in-Chief.

It has long been my belief that the sight of a good-looking woman lowers a man's IQ by at least 20 points. A man who doesn't happen to have 20 points he can spare can be in big trouble.

When Attorney General Eric Holder argued that a "path to citizenship" for illegal immigrants was a "civil right" and a "human right," that epitomized the contempt for the public's intelligence which has characterized so much of what has been said and done by the Obama administration.

You know you are old when waitresses call you "dear."

Although many people have been surprised and disappointed by Barack Obama, it is hard to think of a president whose policies were more predictable from his history, however radically different those policies are from his rhetoric.

When any two groups have different behavior or performance, that plain fact can be turned upside down and twisted to say that whatever criterion revealed those differences has had a "disparate impact" on one of the groups. In other words, the criterion is blamed for an injustice to those who failed to meet the standard.

Have you heard any gun control advocate even try to produce hard evidence that tighter gun control laws reduce murder rates? Does anyone seriously believe that people who are prepared to defy the laws against murder are going to obey laws against owning guns or large capacity magazines?

I may be among the few people who want Attorney General Eric Holder to keep his job — at least until the 2014 elections. Holder epitomizes what is wrong with the Obama administration. He is essentially Barack Obama without the charm, so it should be easier for the voters to see through his lies and corruption.

Despite political differences, it is hard not to feel sorry for White House press secretary Jay Carney, for all the absurdities his job requires him to say with a straight face. What is he going to do when this administration is over? Wear a disguise, change his name or be put into a witness protection program?

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Soaring National Debt Remains a Grave Threat  By Alison Acosta Fraser and J.D. Foster, Ph.D.
Federal government debt has nearly doubled since President Barack Obama took office and is projected to increase 50 percent over the next decade—and then rise rapidly thereafter—under existing policies.[1] As federal debt has soared, so have concerns about America’s future.

Used properly, debt can safely finance private and government investment in productive capital to support economic growth. But too much debt can ruin a family, a business, or a nation.[2]
Fiscal Outlook Bleak
Some in Congress and the media argue that the recent improvement in the deficit means no more need be done this year to rein in spending. While deficits have improved somewhat due to the fiscal cliff tax increases and discretionary spending cuts from the Budget Control Act, this improvement is transient. By the end of the decade, the deficit will again approach $1 trillion as entitlement spending takes off.
Recent progress on the deficit is also woefully inadequate. Debt will continue to soar over the next decade: Debt held by the public will increase from $11 trillion in 2012 to $19 trillion in 2023. Debt subject to the legal debt limit—which includes debt owed to federal trust funds such as Social Security’s—will swell by $9 trillion, reaching $25 trillion after a decade. The result is highly likely to eventually spur exceptionally high interest rates and a slower economy.
U.S. Debt Levels Dangerous and Becoming More So
Recent and projected growth in U.S. government debt poses a serious hazard to the nation. Clearly, high levels of government debt mean that substantial government resources must go toward paying interest on that debt, often called servicing the debt. And a growing body of research supports the economic theory that high levels of debt relative to the size of the economy, sometimes called the debt ratio, eventually lead to unusually high interest rates and slower growth.
One traditional explanation relating government debt ratio and interest rates, referred to as “crowding out,” observes that government borrowing subtracts from domestic saving available to private borrowers, who then bid up the price of their borrowing, which, of course, is the interest rate they pay. That works in a closed economic system, but that is not the way the world works today.
Rather, the ability to tap into foreign savings by borrowing from abroad, as the U.S. is doing, appears largely to defuse this simple crowding-out effect at moderate debt ratio levels. This may explain in part the U.S.’s currently low interest rates. However, the foreign appetite for any nation’s debt is not unlimited. At some point, U.S. debt issuance would become so great relative to foreign demand that market resistance would drive up U.S. interest rates just as though the conventional crowding-out effect were in full force.
Rising Debt, Rising Interest Rates: The Developing Consensus
The relationship between interest rates and government debt issuance depends on many factors, yet one abiding conclusion stands out: When debt gets high enough or rises fast enough, markets notice and interest rates rise.
A team of prominent economists recently delvedmore deeply into the influence borrowing abroad has on the interest rate effects of government borrowing by including in the analysis a nation’s current account deficit—essentially the net value between the value of what a nation exports and the value of what it imports. Their results strongly suggest that the ability to borrow from abroad at moderate levels of debt likely reduces borrowing costs as expected, but the advantages of being able to borrow abroad rapidly dissipate as foreign bond buyers respond more quickly by demanding higher interest rates as either the debt share or the current account deficit increases.
The authors further observed that interest rate problems “can arrive quickly and dramatically once the debt loads and current-account deficits get sufficiently high.”
Rising Debt and Slowing Economies
A growing body of evidence supports the view that high levels of debt are associated with reduced rates of economic growth. This message has been clouded by revelations of substantial methodological flaws in the widely cited work of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. However, subsequent work corrected the flaws and reaffirmed the fundamental conclusion regarding the dangers of excessive debt.
Heritage’s Salim Furth notes that “in the end, all of [the] corrections and critiques show that countries with debt above 90 percent of GDP grow on average 2.0 percent less per year than low-debt countries and 1.0 percent less per year than countries with debt levels between 60 percent and 90 percent of GDP.”
The U.S. government debt ratio has already risen dramatically and is expected to grow rapidly late in the decade. The literature accords with theory in suggesting that a high and rapidly rising debt ratio should increase interest rates and weaken the economy. Yet interest rates remain near historic lows, and the economy, while disappointing, is growing.
Two key factors suggest that the traditional relationships between debt and interest rates and economic growth will resume. First, the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing is intended to push down long-term interest rates. But the Fed is already planning to phase out this program.
Second, persistent extreme uncertainty in global financial markets has heightened the safe haven aspect of the United States, which consequently lures vast sums of foreign capital from riskier locales, thus pushing down U.S. interest rates. However, at some point, as foreign tensions subside and the U.S. debt ratio rises, the attractiveness of U.S. debt to foreign lenders will decline. The likely outcome for both factors suggests that the recent period of abnormally low interest rates will end.
A Nation at Risk, a Clock Ticking
The U.S. economy is slowly recovering, but President Obama’s massive deficits, soaring debt, and tepid support for reforms to render America’s entitlement programs affordable pose a grave economic threat.
Recent welcome yet inadequate progress in the deficit combined with currently low interest rates despite rising debt are beguiling policymakers and the nation about the risks stemming from America’s irresponsible fiscal policy, lulling them into complacency. Not merely the calm before the storm, economic conditions brought about by developments abroad and monetary policy at home have effectively anesthetized financial markets against the risks of U.S. fiscal profligacy. The anesthesia, however, will prove temporary. Interest rates will almost certainly rise past the normal levels now forecast, and the economy will suffer—all largely due to budget deficits now being incurred and to the inaction to address the even greater, entitlement-driven deficits in the years immediately ahead.
—Alison Acosta Fraser is Director of and J. D. Foster, PhD, is Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Herita Foundation

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http://thelookingspoon.com/images/blog/2013/obama_gets_interrupted.jpg

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"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 1823

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