A message to those who are clinging to the narrative about minimum wage, income equality and that Obamacare is working

A message to those who are clinging to the narrative about minimum wage, income equality and that Obamacare is working 

Did the recent 1st Quarter GDP growth of just 0.1% get your attention?  It should, because it makes the aforementioned mute.

• How many without jobs care one hoot about the minimum wage debate?  None!  They do not have jobs and want a steady job with benefits.  Right?

• More women are out of work since Obama took office than ever before.  Do you thing they care about wage inequality at this moment?  No!  They simply want a job with benefits to feed, clothe and keep their family together.

•  Do the millions of unemployed care one wit that Obama claims (and you) that the ACA is working?  Not at all!  They simply need a job that will enable them to pay their bills, take care of themselves and their children.

Do you feel a little foolish for taking the bait into the weeds to be distracted from the number one crisis facing this Nation?  You should.  But, you can do something to feel you are on the right side of history.  Get off the distracting narratives and onto the single most important issue of our day.  What is that?  A robust economy that is growing and creating jobs.

Yes, there are many issues this nation needs to face, but now is not the time to be distracted with the side circus. Neither party is Washington is staring the harsh reality in the face and taking resolute action on this faltering economy and lack of good paying jobs.

The above three items that have been saturating the news are not the problem.  Most of what you and many others are concerned with will be minimized or go away once we get the economy rolling and jobs are being created.

Obama's apparent Foreign policy gaffs are simply a plan that is working

Obama's apparent Foreign policy gaffs are simply a plan that is working

The talking heads are way into the weeds when it comes to Putin's aggression and Obama's foreign policy blunders.  Remember when Obama stated he would have more flexibility after the election?  Did it occur to anyone they are seeing in real time what that truly meant?

Does anyone really believe Putin would be behaving like he is with Ukraine if anyone else was in the White House?  He is behaving with impunity and not fearful at all with what the U.S. may or may not deal.  The bargain was struck with the devil a long time ago.

So, trust your own eyes and ears.  This nation cannot trust this president and he will do whatever he wishes with the same impunity.  He knows that no one in any branch of government has the courage or gall to call him out.

Tyrant to tyrant is playing out before the world and the world is pretending to not notice.

Germany's Green Energy Revolution May Be on Verge of Failure

Germany's Green Energy Revolution May Be on Verge of Failure

by The Daily Bell

Angela Merkel's Vice Chancellor Stuns, Declares Germany's 'Energiewende' To Be On 'The Verge Of Failure' ... The green energy orgy in Germany is over. The music has stopped and the wine that once flowed freely has long run out. The green energy whores and pimps can go home. In a stunning admission by Germany's Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor to Angela Merkel, Sigmar Gabriel announced in a recent speech that the country's once highly ballyhooed transformation to renewable energy, the so called Energiewende, a model that has been adopted by a number of countries worldwide, is "on the verge of failure." – NoTricksZone.com


German green fanaticism turned into national policy some years ago and the largest economy in Europe created a political blueprint to reach truly utopian goals. And now it's all falling apart. That's what happens when politicians substitute their judgment for the market's Invisible Hand. And it must be far worse than Sigmar Gabriel admits to force this kind of admission out of him.


What exactly is Energiewende (German for energy transition)?
According to Wikipedia: "It is the transition by Germany to a sustainable economy by means of renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable development. The final goal is the abolition of coal and other non-renewable energy sources."

And here's some history:

The key policy document outlining the Energiewende was published by the German government in September 2010, some six months before the Fukushima nuclear accident. Legislative support was passed in 2011. Important aspects include:

• greenhouse gas reductions: 80–95% reduction by 2050

• renewable energy targets: 60% share by 2050 (renewables broadly defined as hydro, solar and wind power)

• energy efficiency: electricity efficiency up by 50% by 2050

• an associated research and development drive

Sounds good? Here's more from the article:

... Gabriel was once the country's environment minister and a devout believer in global warming and in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. In the speech Gabriel tells the audience how the energy transformation is on the verge of failure: "Those who are the engines of the transformation to renewable energies, that's you, you don't see how close we are to the failure of the energy transformation."

Gabriel says that major reforms are thus unavoidable, and he calls efforts for energy consumers to get off the grid "pure madness". That's not what they want after all. Gabriel is now calling on companies who produce green energy for their own use to ante up as well: The complete exemption from paying feed-in tariffs is a model that is wonderful for you as a business model, but is one that is a problem for everyone else."

... Many in attendance seemed unable to fathom what Gabriel was unloading: the heady days at the green energy feeding trough are over – live with it. The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) here writes: The responsible persons in attendance at the Hessen-based photovoltaic SMA Solar and all the other profiteers of the EEG feed-in act saw their jaws drop when this late and blunt admission was made."

No doubt, many in the audience had a hard time digesting Gabriel's news because they were previously subject to a kind of groupthink that stubbornly refused to take into account various economic principles.

In fact, economic illiteracy is an inherent part of green mythology. The entire belief system is based on the idea that government force can be used for good, and that certain ends, and certain enforcers, are entitled to wield that force.

This is certainly a kind of sociopathic groupthink, but it is common in government because there are no countervailing forces. In today's Western, expansionist government systems, the media, colleagues, even much of the electorate is focused on legislative results. The idea is that once a law has been passed it will miraculously adjust surrounding society in predictable ways.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Real economics – Austrian, free-market economics – shows us there are certain immutable economic rules. The most important rule is that for outcomes to be predictable and utile, the process itself must be subject to the rigor of competition, what Adam Smith called the Invisible Hand.

Unfortunately, the entire modern, democratic process has been designed to circumvent the Invisible Hand of competition. Over and over, laws and regulations are created and imposed on the populace without any consideration as to whether these are viable.

Green energy itself stands as a good example of the dysfunction of this sort of process. In Germany, wind, solar and other "environmentally friendly" forms of energy production were mandated without regard to cost factors. But it is impossible to long continue to generate energy when the process itself is not efficient.

In other words, if the creation of energy is in the long term more expensive than the goods and services being produced, the entire effort is doomed to failure. Rather than being sustainable, the process ITSELF will be unsustainable. And that is the position in which Germany now apparently finds itself.

According to Wikipedia and other sources, German officials and legislators created laws that "guaranteed a fixed feed-in tariff for 20 years, guaranteeing a fixed income" for producers. Yet this guarantee was probably generated without doing a proper cost-benefit analysis. Now German taxpayers are stuck paying bills they cannot afford.

Not only that, but Germany is closing coal and nuclear powered plants at an accelerated rate. And the new energy creation must be deployed via power lines that must either be built or upgraded.

The result is that German consumers are facing ever higher energy bills, so much so that a rising percentage of Germans are choosing to have their power shut off rather than pay escalating fees.

Notice, in the excerpted article, Gabriel calls "efforts for energy consumers to get off the grid 'pure madness'." The implication seems to be that those who have created the mess are not about to let those who might pay for it find other forms of energy consumption.
All of this sounds both desperate and amateurish, but as the article informs us, "Gabriel is not only the national economics minister and vice chancellor to Angela Merkel, he is also head of Germany's socialist SPD party, which is now the coalition partner in Angela Merkel's CDU/SPD grand coalition government."

Thus, this pronouncement is not one being made by a junior minister but by an official at the very highest level of German government. And in reading the feedback below the article, one is made aware that Gabriel himself, despite his desperate pronouncements, recently made clear his support for a further expansion of the program – including additional windmills, wind power and solar power!

It is to be expected that Gabriel will continue on his destructive course, because he is beholden – as are most important Western politicians – to globalist priorities. Internationalism seeks to control human behavior by controlling the fundamental building blocks of life ... food, water, air, etc.

Green energy is an important part of this agenda. However, that does not make green solutions any more efficient, practical or economical.

This is one reason why High Alert sorts through numerous elite dominant social themes to find which ones may be practical and profitable and which ones probably are not.
Alternative energy on a large scale will probably not prove any more practical today than it proved the last time these sorts of solutions were tried out, in the 1970s.

Others solutions, however, featuring marijuana and organic food are far more feasible. Sometimes, of course, these solutions are directly in line with elite memes and sometimes they have developed to counter them.

In the case of green energy, Germany is showing us once again that the energy oriented dominant social themes are not be easily imposed, and even when imposed are very difficult to sustain. That doesn't mean that the globalists will stop trying ...

Conclusion
The feedback – cited above – concludes: "Beatings will continue until morale improves – the eternal motto of Social Democracy. Equal suffering for all."

The Shocking Truth About Regulatory Costs

The Shocking Truth About Regulatory Costs

by The Daily Bell

Regulatory Costs Are World's No. 10 Economy ... After years of rapid growth during the Obama administration, the cost of federal regulations is now bigger than the entire economies of all but nine countries in the world. That's according to the latest annual report on the regulatory state issued by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, titled "Ten Thousand Commandments." Compiling reports of compliance costs from various government agencies and outside sources, author Clyde Wayne Crews found that the "regulation tax" imposed on the economy now tops $1.86 trillion. By comparison, Canada's entire GDP is $1.82 trillion. India's is $1.84 trillion. – Investors.com

Dominant Theme: Regulations are part of the cost of doing business.

Surprised? The article also notes that on a per-household basis, federal regulatory costs average nearly US$15,000. That is reportedly a bigger sum than individual and corporate income taxes combined. Also, US regulations are not "capped" nor are they subject to specific legislative oversight. In theory, regulations and regulatory costs can simply continue to grow until they become literally unaffordable.


Here's more:

The problem, Crews notes, is that the combined cost of this "tax" never shows up anywhere in the federal budget — or any other official report — even though it is now bigger than individual and corporate income taxes combined. As a result, "policymakers find it easier to impose regulatory costs relative to undertaking more government spending," Crews notes, "because of the lack of disclosure and accountability for regulatory costs."

Among the findings in the report: On a per-household basis, federal regulatory costs average $14,974, which is more than the typical household spends on just about anything else. When regulatory costs are combined with federal spending, Washington's share of the economy rises to an eye-popping 31%.

There are currently more than 3,000 rules in various stages of implementation at 63 federal agencies; 191 of the rules are "economically significant," which means that they will impose more than $100 million in annual compliance costs. Nearly 670 of these rules will affect small businesses.

Last year, regulators issued 3,659 rules. That's equal to one new rule every 2 1/2 hours of every day, or nearly two federal rules issued every business hour. In 2013, there were 51 regulatory rules written for each law passed, which the CEI says is a measure of how much power Congress has delegated to unelected regulators.

This "Unconstitutionality Index" — as the CEI calls it — averaged 34 under Obama, nearly twice the average rate during the George W. Bush years. The Obama administration has had 42% more "economically significant" rules in the pipeline, on average, each year than the Bush administration.

At the same time, Obama's regulators have let state and local governments increasingly off the hook, putting fewer regulations affecting them in the pipeline than during the Bush or Clinton years. The CEI report includes various recommendations for making regulatory costs more transparent and readily available to the public.

The West's regulatory mania – for how else is it to be described – is not based on any sort of economic science that we know of. In fact, to be sure, economics is NOT a science, but it is certainly a discipline rooted in certain fundamental truths, and regulation would seem to contravene those truths.

The main modern truth of economics is something called marginal utility, which is basically, among some other things, the idea that prices vary at the margins, especially, and that only the marketplace itself can determine prices.

The "discovery" of marginal utility (by an economist living in Austria in the 1850s) gave rise to both the "Austrian School" based on free-market principles and neo-classical economics.
Karl Marx and Thomas Malthus were both classical rather than neo-classical economists. Their models did not take into account the idea that marketplace competition could create variable pricing that would undo their static forecasts. Both Marx and Malthus made significant predictions subsequently proven wrong.

What emerges from an acceptance of neo-classical economics is the idea that forecasting itself is flawed and that no numeric analysis, no matter how complex, can accurately predict the future.

This is the main reason why Austrian economics is neither popular with nor popularized by the mainstream media and mainstream academia. Governments are run based on forecasts, and free-market economics clearly shows that accurate forecasting is not feasible.

Central banking provides forecasting every month about what the volume and price of money should be. But 100 years of history shows – via endless depressions and recessions – that these forecasts are often wrong.

Governments make laws and in the modern era these laws are increasingly buttressed by regulations, yet both laws and regulations are forecasts – imposed on society based on a legislative vision of necessary solutions. Again, it is free-market economics that explains why despite a torrent of legislative actions over decades throughout the West, living standards are dropping not rising.

Every law, every regulation, every forecast that is acted on within a context of government demands is what we call a price fix, mandating an action of some considerable expense to society and insisting that those actions are initiated. Yet it is accepted as a matter of course by both the media and academia that price fixing doesn't work.

This is a fundamental disconnect that exists at the heart of Western democracies.
How can neo-classical economics be accepted – as indeed it is throughout the West – and how can price-fixing be known as destructive while every part of the Western governing paradigm continues to pursue these obviously problematic acts?

Laws fix prices in ways that cannot be predicted. So do regulations. If the costs are great – and growing bigger – while the utility of imposing legislative solutions is impractical, why do Western governments continue down this path? And why does mainstream media not scrutinize what is going on in greater detail?

Of course, we know the answer to that. Regulatory efficiency is a bedrock dominant social theme, one that the globalist elite depends upon to help it reach its internationalist goals. No regulation ... and government begins to shrink; and if government loses power, then it loses value as a critical tool of manipulation.

From an investment standpoint, regulation is an increasingly critical component of any industrial endeavor. Depending on the regulatory environment, businesses can either expand successfully or wither and die.

When recommending investments and new ventures, the High Alert brain trust is careful to examine potential regulatory impacts. That's one reason to be involved in industries – like marijuana – that are relatively new and thus less encumbered and controlled by regulation as they emerge into the mainstream.

But the larger perspective is surely discouraging. Society – certainly US society – cannot continue long down this path. A critical mass of economic distortion must be reached sooner rather than later. Rome took several centuries to die, but Roman businesses were afflicted by taxes and coin shaving, not a modern regulatory regime. It could be that the ongoing flood of regulations proves more destructive to the West than either fiscal or monetary policy.

Conclusion
Perhaps a case can be made for regulation, or at least minimal regulation, but what is occurring now is neither logical nor defensible. The modern epidemic of regulation combined with taxation and monetary inflation (along with court-imposed corporatism) are reasons why the ascent of the Western socioeconomic model has been evidently curtailed and why, sooner or later, the West is headed for a fall.

Supreme Court got it right – let's judge by "the content of the character"

Supreme Court got it right – let's judge by "the content of the character"

By Michael Busler

The recent ruling by the Supreme Court allowing the state of Michigan to ban the use of Affirmative Action when determining admission into college has raised quite an uproar from both sides of the debate. Some argue that this ruling will lead to further discrimination. But isn't this ruling an example of what Dr. Martin Luther King wanted when he said that all people should be judged by the "content of their character" and not by the color of their skin?

In 1961, President Kennedy signed an executive order which said that government contractors should "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin." The intent was to affirm the federal government's commitment to equal opportunity for all qualified persons.

In 1965, President Johnson signed an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion and national origin. These two orders and some later modifications were intended to level the playing field for all Americans regardless of skin color or national origin. At the time the legal doctrine of "separate but equal" was being overturned, but racial prejudice was still prevalent, even though the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 which essentially outlawed discrimination.

Because of the long history in the U.S. of poor treatment of people of color, reversing this trend took some time. Our leaders realized that legislating people's attitudes was a difficult task, so that affirmative action was needed to ensure fairness. But in 2014, do we need affirmative action?

The reality today is that any person can reach any employment status, even up to and including becoming President of the United States. As a result, many Americans believe that Affirmative Action is no longer needed and may actually be doing more harm than good.

Take, for instance, recent comments by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She wrote a 58 page dissenting opinion to the 6-2 vote of the majority. She said that race still matters today and without affirmative action many blacks, including herself, would not be where they are today. Abandoning affirmative action, she noted, shows a misunderstanding of the nature of injustice and is out of touch with reality.

It seems somewhat disturbing that Justice Sotomayor believes she may not be on the Supreme Court if affirmative action did not exist. That means she is admitting that there were likely more qualified people then her, but they were not nominated because they were not a minority. So those people were discriminated against because of their skin color. Isn't that in conflict with the intent of the law? Does she mean that without affirmative action, her qualifications for the position would not have been sufficient for her nomination?

Regarding admissions into college, applicants are judged on their score on the SAT, their high school record, and the intangibles that are used to allow the admissions officers the ability to determine which applicants are likely to be successful at the school. In other words, they make their admission judgment based on their perception of the "content of the character" rather than any physical traits.

But if applicants of color are disproportionately poorer than other classes, aren't they at a disadvantage since lower income people simply cannot afford the extras that wealthy individuals have? The answer is yes. But the colleges look for achievement, leadership qualities and the ability to overcome obstacles. This can be displayed by people of all socio-economic classes.

Since we have elected an African-American to hold the highest position in the country, any individual can now become anything he / she wants. Granted some start from a much lower economic class than others, but we have no control over our birth situation. We simply know that we must "play the hand we are dealt". There are many of us, born into low income, who have faced some discrimination because of a physical, religious or cultural trait, yet managed to achieve success. By banning affirmative action we are closer to Dr. King's words: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

We should abandon affirmative action to remove race from the equation entirely, so that we can judge by the content of the character.

Obama acts like arrested-development adolescent

Obama acts like arrested-development adolescent

Rhetoric resembles that of an argumentative teen

By George Will


WASHINGTON — Recently, Barack Obama – a Demosthenes determined to elevate our politics from coarseness to elegance; a Pericles sent to ameliorate our rhetorical impoverishment – spoke at the University of Michigan. He came to that very friendly venue – in 2012, he received 67 percent of the vote in Ann Arbor’s county – after visiting a local sandwich shop, where a muse must have whispered in the presidential ear. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had recently released his budget, so Obama expressed his disapproval by calling it, for the benefit of his academic audience, a “meanwich” and a “stinkburger.”

Try to imagine Franklin Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan talking like that. It is unimaginable that those grown-ups would resort to japes that fourth-graders would not consider sufficiently clever for use on a playground.

When Theodore Roosevelt was president, one of his good friends – he had been best man at TR’s 1886 wedding – was the British diplomat Cecil Spring Rice. When visitors to Washington wanted to learn about TR, they asked Rice about him, and Springie, as TR called him, would say: “You must always remember that the president is about 6.” Today’s president is older than that. But he talks like an arrested-development adolescent. Anyone who has tried to engage a member of that age cohort in an argument probably recognizes the four basic teenage tropes, which also are the only arrows in Obama’s overrated rhetorical quiver. They were all employed by him last week when he went to the White House briefing room to exclaim, as he is wont to do, about the excellence of the Affordable Care Act. First came the invocation of a straw man. Celebrating the ACA’s enrollment numbe! rs, Obama, referring to Republicans, charged: “They said nobody would sign up.” Of course, no one said this. Obama often is what political philosopher Kenneth Minogue said of an adversary – “a pyromaniac in a field of straw men.”

Adolescents also try to truncate arguments by saying that nothing remains of any arguments against their arguments. Regarding the ACA, Obama said the debate is “settled” and “over.” Progressives also say the debate about catastrophic consequences of man-made climate change is “over,” so everyone should pipe down. And they say the debates about the efficacy of universal preschool, and the cost-benefit balance of a minimum wage increase, are over. Declaring an argument over is so much more restful than engaging with evidence.

A third rhetorical move by argumentative adolescents is to declare that there is nothing to argue about because everything is going along swimmingly. Seven times Obama asserted that the ACA is “working.” That is, however, uninformative because it is ambiguous. The ethanol program is “working” in the sense that it is being implemented as its misguided architects intended. Nevertheless, the program is a substantial net subtraction from the nation’s well-being. The same can be said of sugar import quotas, or agriculture subsidies generally, or many hundreds of other government programs that are, unfortunately, “working.”

Finally, the real discussion-stopper for the righteous – and there is no righteousness like an adolescent’s – is an assertion that has always been an Obama specialty. It is that there cannot be honorable and intelligent disagreement with him. So last week, less than two minutes after saying that the argument about the ACA “isn’t about me,” he said some important opposition to the ACA is about him, citing “states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid for no other reason than political spite.”

This, he said, must be spiteful because expanding Medicaid involves “zero cost to these states.” Well. The federal government does pay the full cost of expansion – for three years. After that, however, states will pay up to 10 percent of the expansion’s costs, which itself will be a large sum. And the 10 percent figure has not been graven on stone by the finger of God. It can be enlarged whenever Congress wants, as surely it will, to enable more federal spending by imposing more burdens on the states. Yet Obama, who aspired to tutor Washington about civility, is incapable of crediting opponents with other than base motives.

About one thing Obama was right, if contradictory. He said Americans want politicians to talk about other subjects – but that Democrats should campaign by celebrating the wondrousness of the ACA. This would be candid because it is what progressivism is – a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates and other coercions. Is the debate about it over? Not quite.