Obama and EPA imperil minority welfare

“Clean Power Plan” would bring imaginary benefits – and real health and welfare damage from Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek

The Obama Environmental Protection Agency and environmental activists frequently claim that climate change will disproportionately affect poor and minority communities. In their view, this justifies unprecedented environmental regulations, like EPA's pending “Clean Power Plan” (CPP) to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fueled power plants 30% by 2030.

But what effect will the regulation itself have on poor and minority communities?

The plan will result in higher electricity costs for businesses and families, lost jobs, lower incomes, higher poverty rates, reduced living standards, and diminished health and welfare, our exhaustive recent study found. This damage will be inflicted at the national level and in all 50 states. The CPP will impact all low-income groups, but hit America’s 128 million Blacks and Hispanics especially hard.

The EPA rules will:

1) more than double the cost of natural gas and electricity, adding over $1 trillion to family and business energy bills 

2) require average families to pay $1,225 more in inflation-adjusted dollars for power and gas in 2030 than in 2012 

3) destroy millions of jobs in companies and industries that can no longer compete, here or internationally 

4) significantly reduce U.S. economic growth every year for the next two decades, causing more than $2.3 trillion in total lost gross domestic product

Compared to whites, blacks and Hispanics already spend 50% and 10% more of their incomes on utilities, respectively, 20% and 90% more on food, and 10% and 5% more on housing. The EPA regulations will significantly increase the minority family “energy burden” – the percentage of annual household incomes they must pay for residential energy bills – and thus the number of families driven into energy poverty. Inability to pay energy bills is second only to inability to pay rent as the leading cause of homelessness, so increasing numbers of poor and minority families will become homeless.

Black and Hispanic household incomes will decline by increasing amounts every year, while their food and healthcare costs will climb significantly, since those business sectors will also have to pay much more for energy. The poverty rate will increase by more than 23% for blacks and more than 26% for Hispanics.

EPA’s rule will force poor and minority families to choose between buying food, putting gas in the car, going to the doctor, buying medicines, giving to their church, saving for retirement, or making mortgage, rent and car payments. Small businesses will have to find thousands more just to keep the heat, lights and air conditioning on, without laying people off or closing their doors. Factories, malls, school districts, hospitals and cities will have to pay millions more for energy.

By 2035, cumulative job losses resulting from the rule will total 7 million for blacks and 12 million for Hispanics. Most of these losses will occur in localities where blacks and Hispanics are most heavily concentrated. The rule will especially harm residents of seven states with the highest concentrations of blacks and Hispanics: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York and Texas.

Entire communities could sink into poverty. Bread winners lucky enough to find work will be forced to take multiple jobs, commute longer distances, and suffer severe sleep deprivation. Families will have to cope with more stress, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse. Nutrition and medical care will suffer. More people will have strokes and heart attacks.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) bluntly summed up the effects of EPA’s “clean power” rules. “A lot of people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum are going to die,” he said.

Ironically, these are the very people that Obama and EPA claim to care about the most. As African-American author and news analyst Deneen Borelli observes, President Obama “is rewarding his overwhelming support by black voters with an energy policy that will significantly reduce their disposable income.” Indeed, she says, climate change is “the green movement’s new Jim Crow law.”

National Black Chamber of Commerce President Harry Alford accurately called EPA’s carbon dioxide regulation “a slap in the face to poor and minority families.”

Blacks and Hispanics work hard to provide better futures for their children. The EPA regulations will push the American dream even further out of reach for them. Their incomes will be less, their unemployment rates will increase substantially, and it will take those who are out of work longer to find another job. Blacks and Hispanics are often the “last hired and the first fired.”

These are real impacts. However, EPA refuses to consider them, much less tabulate them and compare them to supposed regulatory benefits. It won’t even acknowledge that the health and climate risks that its costly regulations will allegedly prevent are in fact speculative, exaggerated and even fabricated.

For almost 20 years, average planetary temperatures have barely budged, even as carbon dioxide levels “soared” from 0.03% all the way to 0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere. No category 3-5 hurricane has hit the United States for a record 9-1/2 years. Tornadoes, floods, droughts, polar bears, polar ice, sea levels and wildfires are all in line with, or better than, historic patterns and trends. Meanwhile, the Sahel is green again, thanks to that extra plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide, without which life on Earth would end.

Moreover, even if CO2 does drive climate change, slashing US greenhouse gas emissions would bring no benefits, since China, India and other developing nations will not be reducing their enormous emissions.

Other EPA rules are equally suspect. Its mercury regs are based on an imaginary group of US women who catch and eat 300 pounds of fish annually – and whose children would supposedly improve their IQs by an un-measurable 0.00209 points if coal-fired power plants are shut down. As to soot, EPA’s illegal experiments on 296 people found that even “dangerous” or “lethal” exposures harmed no one.

Our air is clean. We don’t need these job-killing, health-impairing EPA regulations. But our governing elites will not give up their power or perks – or their propensity for playing with people’s livelihoods, living standards, health and well-being, for virtually no climate stability, air quality or other benefits.

The good news is that all of this is not inevitable. A recent Supreme Court decision held that EPA should have considered these and other enormous costs from its “mercury and air toxics” regulations, before imposing the rules. The decision should give governors and federal and state lawmakers every incentive to resist EPA’s harmful and dictatorial actions, and not wait for the CPP regulation to go into effect.

A dozen states have already sued EPA over its Clean Power Plan, which is opposed by experts on both sides of the aisle – and even noted liberal constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. Other states should join the suit, demand a full accounting of regulatory costs, and simply refuse to implement the plan.

As currently written, the regulation calls on unelected state environmental agencies to draft their own state plans and submit them directly to EPA for review and approval. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin has signed an executive order blocking her state's environmental agency from submitting a plan. Other states have introduced legislation to the same effect. More should follow them into battle.

The grim reality is that the EPA wants states to do their dirty work for them. By submitting a plan, states will become complicit in the agency's plan to shut down affordable, reliable power generation, destroy jobs and livelihoods, and plunge minority families deeper into poverty, hardship and ill health.

For the sake of their constituents, elected officials in Washington and state capitals have an obligation to fight this federal takeover of state authority. They should act soon. EPA is scheduled to release its final regulation in August, initiating a one-year period before states will be forced to comply.

As this deadline approaches, our elected officials should determine how best to confront – and resist – EPA’s latest power grab. They should remember that the jobs, economic well-being, health and very lives of millions of minority and blue-collar families hang in the balance.

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Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine. Dr. Roger Bezdek is an internationally recognized energy analyst and president of Management Information Services, Inc., in Washington, DC.

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Essential king dollar and low-energy nexus

Click Here to Visit the Larry Kudlow Website

It’s propping up a subpar economy, and could be a great backdrop to growth if Washington policy turns favorable by Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow at Kudlow and Company

The strong May jobs report -- including a 280,000 jump in nonfarm payrolls -- reminds me of the big debate over the harmful effects of a strong dollar and falling oil prices. But where’s the harm? King Dollar, along with the supply benefits of the oil-fracking revolution, may actually be propping up a subpar economy facing headwinds from heavy business taxes and overregulation.

The entire cost structure of American business benefits from lower-cost imports and the cheaper purchase price of anything when the dollar is king and energy costs sink.

American firms become more competitive. And consumers benefit from rising real incomes in response to the energy-price collapse. And it’s not only energy. King Dollar strengthens consumer purchasing power across the board.

This whole wage debate around the Federal Reserve incorrectly focusses only on average hourly earnings, which are up 2.3 percent for the year ending in May. But wait a minute. If you’re going to use hourly earnings, you have to add hours worked, which in the aggregate are up more than 2.6 percent over the past year. That yields a near 5 percent increase in worker wage income.

And because of the disinflationary effects of King Dollar and cheaper energy (the consumer price deflator is flat), the near 5 percent gain in worker wages is all real. So consumers have a lot more spending power than most economists believe. Car sales jumped by about 18 million in May. A harbinger of better retail sales?

So don’t be led astray by the pessimists. The U.S. economy is absorbing the strong-dollar/low-energy nexus with very little difficulty.

Even in the financial sector, where a number of marginal energy companies issued junk bonds, we haven’t seen the negative systemic effects on the banking system that the hedge-fund managers predicted. Bank stocks have been rallying of late, including a near 3 percent gain last week despite a 1 percent loss in stocks overall.

Now, I don’t deny some short-run negative effects from the high-dollar/low-energy play. As crude oil dropped 43 percent and King Dollar increased near 20 percent, the economy shed 2,600 jobs from oil and gas extraction and another 38,000 from total energy support services. But this is a tiny fraction of the 3.1 million jobs created over the year.

The dollar-energy pessimists also point to a negative King Dollar effect on exports and multinational profits. There may be some impact here. But let’s not forget the recessions in Europe and Japan and a weakening China. So a 2.3 percent increase in real exports is not a bad number. And when the dollar is worth more, every other export business cost is cheaper.

And yes, there has been a roughly 11 percent loss in international profits. But the story here is that the so-called currency translation effect is an accounting fiction. U.S. dollars are left overseas where they are taxed at a much lower rate than if they were repatriated. (This, of course, is part of the corporate tax problem we have.) Meanwhile, over the past year, core domestic nonfinancial profits from the GDP accounts are up 7.5 percent and overall pretax profits are up nearly 4 percent. Not fabulous, but not bad.

And when you look at the macro picture against the backdrop of King Dollar and low energy, it’s still subpar, but it’s not getting worse. The four-quarter change in real GDP is 2.7 percent. The S&P 500 over the past year is up 8 percent, with the Nasdaq gaining 18 percent. The inflation rate is nil. And jobs are growing at a steady 2 percent pace.

And what happens when Washington policy finally delivers tax and regulatory reform? The King Dollar/low-energy scenario becomes a great economic backdrop. The combination of a strong dollar, light regulation, and lower marginal tax rates sets the stage for 4 to 5 percent growth, which will get the U.S. economy back to its long-term trend.

This brings me to an interesting final point. You don’t hear much about the dollar on the campaign trail. But Ira Stoll (Future of Capitalism) and Seth Lipsky (New York Sun) point to a possible Jeb Bush sound dollar, which would be the exact opposite of the crumbling greenback and skyrocketing gold and energy prices that occurred under his brother’s administration.

In a recent TV interview, the former Florida governor said: “You can make a case that in the last few years, given our monetary policy, that we’ve been manipulating our currency. We’ve never had a time when our central bank is just printing money like nobody’s business. And that depreciates our currency.”

Well now. Jeb is certainly on the right track. Let’s hope the other candidates follow along. For a million reasons, sound money is crucial to economic growth.

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Obama launches 'Operation Fast Track'

From the art studios of A.F. (Tony) Branco at Comically Incorrect.com

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Yellen is back to the ’50s interest rates

Wrong reasons but right policies from the file of Larry Kudlow at Kudlow and Company

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Janet Yellen told us last week that the fed funds target rate will be raised slightly later this year. But after that, future rate hikes will be small and gradual over the next several years. In fact, we may never have true normalization (4 percent). In my view, Yellen is offering a back-to-the-’50s approach to interest rates. And she’s right, though for many wrong reasons.

For average folks, what might this policy mean? I’ll take a guess: No boom and no bust. No inflation and no recession. All the post-war recessions were preceded by an inverted Treasury yield curve, where short rates are higher than long rates. That won’t happen for many years. Plus, upward oil-price spikes lead recessions, but we’re now in a downward energy-price cycle.

What’s the back-to-the-’50s part? Well, from Eisenhower to JFK, short rates averaged between 1 and 2 percent, inflation was roughly 1.5 percent, the dollar was tied to gold, long Treasuries ranged 2 to 3 percent, and real growth was only 2.5 percent. And despite Ike’s three recessions, the stock market roughly doubled (from very low levels).

So that was then, and this is now. Things are different. But the ultra-low interest rates are quite similar, along with low inflation and virtually stagnant real growth.

As for fiscal policy in the ’50s, the top personal tax rate was 91 percent (effectively about 70 percent) and the top corporate tax rate was over 50 percent. And the economy was heavily regulated. Sound a bit similar? It wasn’t until the’60s that JFK slashed tax rates and launched a huge economic and stock market boom. But that’s another story.

Meanwhile, why might Yellen get it right today for the wrong reasons? Well, for one, she wants higher inflation, which is a mistake. We used to think that lower inflation promoted faster economic growth. And we should be watching the value of the dollar as indicated by commodity indexes, including gold. Fortunately, the dollar is trending higher and commodities lower.

So let me say this: A sound dollar and price stability should be the Fed’s only task. But Ms. Yellen is a Phillips-curver who sees a tradeoff between inflation and growth. She obsesses about the jobs market as a Fed-tightening indicator. Wrong target. More people working does not cause inflation. Bad money does.

But Yellen is right in pointing out employment problems. We have a 5.4 percent U-3 unemployment rate, the commonly watched measure. But in this cycle, the broader U-6 measure may be closer to the truth at 10.8 percent. U-6 includes part-time people who want full-time work, discouraged people who are sometimes looking for work, and people who have left the labor force.

And when you add up U6 and U3 you get something like 16 million people out of work. And then the government’s welfare-assistance programs (including disability insurance, food stamps, and Obamacare) pay people not to work, which is a key reason why the labor-force participation rate is rock bottom at 62.8 percent and the employment-to-population ratio is only 59.3 percent. This will not be fixed by the Fed. It’s a fiscal issue of tax, regulatory, and welfare reform.

So, Yellen is right about an incomplete jobs recovery. She is also right about the lack of capital investment by businesses, where more capital would boost productivity. But that’s not the Fed’s job. The most important pro-growth policy today would be major corporate tax reform -- slashing tax rates and moving to a territorial system that would bring home roughly $2 trillion stashed overseas, mostly for tax reasons. Think how much better the jobs picture would be if that money came home.

Putting that aside, the Fed is right to go slow with rate hikes. Back in the ’50s we had ultra-low interest rates for long periods of time and it was not a bad thing. The trick is to avoid Ike’s mistakes of over-taxing and over-regulating the economy.

And that brings us back to the future -- namely the 2016 presidential election.

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My 2015 commencement address

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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All manner of people are giving commencement speeches to students graduating from colleges and universities these days. It is doubtful that any will be remembered because the prospects of students depend in large part on the economy into which they are entering, the majors they pursued, their individual ambitions, and capacity for hard work. Then, too, there’s dumb luck which often plays a role.

For those graduating this year, my profound sympathy because the economy could not be much worse short of being declared an official Depression. Out of a total of 330 million Americans, there are currently 93,194,000 Americans who are not in the workforce because they can’t find a job or have given up looking.

Even in the field of manufacturing—not something you studied for—the number of jobs have declined by 7,231,000, some 37% since manufacturing peaked in the U.S. in 1979.

U.S. economic growth rate has slowed to 0.2%. In short, it is virtually non-existent. So, with your diploma in hand, unless you majored in the sciences, math or engineering, you are not likely to join the workforce any time soon. Those of you who majored in social work, theatre arts, elementary education, and something called parks and recreation, are going to be at the bottom of the salary scale for the rest of your life.

Of the previous graduates from 2008 to the present who voted for Barack Obama, just 14% have real jobs. You have had the vast misfortune of being born just in time to live through the worst presidency in the history of the nation. If, in fact, you even know the history of the nation.

You are at a further disadvantage because the curriculums of the government schools you attended have been so distorted that you have been led to believe that the Founding Fathers were all slave-owning, white elitists when in fact, many opposed slavery, the labor source of their era, and would have abolished it.

However they knew they could not get the Constitution ratified by the southern states if they did. It’s called compromising for a greater goal, the finest and currently the oldest functioning Constitution on Earth.

Depending on your race and sex, you have already been taught to blame anything that goes wrong in your life on whether you are white, black or Hispanic, male or female. If you want to know what’s wrong, look in the mirror and ask yourself what you are doing wrong or not doing right—dressing, manners, behavior, addictions, et cetera.

If you have been raised to believe in God and have spiritual values, you are likely to be mocked, though not necessarily to your face. While still the majority faith in America, Christianity is under attack from many directions, not the least of whom are homosexuals that constitute less than 2% of the population.

Their attack on traditional (and biological) male-female marriage that has been part of every civilization going back five thousand years and more will degrade society in many ways.

For many of you, graduation means years of paying off huge loans for the privilege of picking up a degree that, as noted—short of science, math and engineering—will not yield a lot of income. This will impact your lifestyle including possibly having to move back in with your parents.

It may mean putting off marriage and a family of your own for a while and your loans will affect being able to secure a mortgage on a home, but everyone is having problems doing that these days.

So, if all this looks and sound bleak, it is because it is. A real commencement speech should tell you the truth but most of them do not. They are generally filled with inspiring talk about the future.

The future you are looking at along with everyone else is fraught with danger. That, however, can be said of every “future” that every American has faced since the nation was established. It took a shooting war with Great Britain just to have a nation and Americans have been engaged in wars large and small ever since.

The threat of Communism faced Americans after World War Two and generations previous to yours waited out and opposed the Soviet Union for nearly fifty years before it collapsed. Communism is still around however in China, nearby Cuba, Venezuela and other nations who suppress their people in the name of the utopian society they claim to have.

The more recent threat is the rise of Islamism, radical Islam as practiced and supported by a significant percentage of the world’s one billion-plus Muslims. It is a cult about Mohammed based on the total domination of the world. Divided between two sects, Sunnis and Shiites, when they are not killing each other, they are killing “infidels”, anyone who is not a Muslim.

It will fall to you and your fellow graduates to fix the nation’s problems and right now its biggest one is that the federal government is too large and we are collectively facing an $18 trillion debt that must be resolved because just paying interest on it makes doing anything else difficult at best.

All of the states are in debt as well as they struggle to pay the health benefits and pensions of civil service workers, active and retired. That often doesn’t leave much money for fixing potholes and other infrastructure needs.

Whatever problems you will encounter, keep in mind previous generations often encountered much worse, such as those in the 1930s during the Great Depression and in the 1940s who fought World War II, and those from the 1950s and 1970s who were called on to fight the Korean War and the war in Vietnam; more recently those who fought the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Respect their sacrifices and their courage.

If you want to see the government grow even larger along with the debt, vote for Hillary Clinton. She’s still mentally and ideologically stuck in the 1990s, plus she has engaged in behavior that would get anyone else put in jail. You have a large choice among Republican candidates and eventually it will narrow to someone capable of tackling the future.

The best I can do is to wish you good luck. You’re going to need it.

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A survival blueprint for America

From the files of Ken LaRive at the Lafayette Examiner


I think, most likely, that the next several essays will be dedicated to information gleaned from a new book I am reading called “America 2020, The Survival Blueprint,” by Porter Stansberry.

It got my attention by an infomercial done by Ron Paul, who was not only very articulate and practiced, but promised to give a viable solution to what seems evident to be a mega economic crash looming on our horizon.

I saw right off, within the first fifty pages, that this crash can not be stopped for a variety of reasons. In essence, it is because there is no opposing counter-force greater than the corporate and banking onslaught that is dismantling and bleeding us dry.

BLOC countries want to displace the Petro Dollar, and have lost confidence in the Petro Dollar's ability to be a stabilizing and uniting force. Our military is out of control, and we are creating enemies that are uniting to oppose a Military Industrial Complex that is unaccountable to the American tax payer, and our Congress, and is above our Constitution and International Law.

Just a day before 9-11 Donald Rumsfeld stated that there was over 2.2 trillion missing from the Pentagon, and the next day those records were destroyed by a phantom plane that looked like an ICBM missile. Just so happens it destroyed those records in the Pentagon, along with most all CIA and FBI records in building Seven, the forgotten building that fell at free-fall later that day in New York.

Though it had sustained minimal damage, it fell as fast as a dime tossed in the air, without resistance... Along with that, our spending, which has now given us a National debt of of 18.7 trillion, almost doubling since Obama has been in office, shows no accountability as to where this money is being spent, as it is printed out of thin air... And the American population is oblivious to these facts, as they struggle to survive in a dying economy, and new racial hatred promoted to divide us... phew, let me start another paragraph.

Meet Former Congressman Ron Paul

Here are a few facts to consider, if you have the stomach for such things...

The National debt is one thing, but if one adds up all government, corporate, and consumer debt, that number is about $60 trillion. It is so large that there is no rate of interest that could sustain us? With just a 6% interest on this debt, it would cost one trillion a year just to pay that acquired interest.

Now I'm not an economist, but I'm no moron ether, because it is public record that the Government brings in less them $3 trillion a year in taxes. Taxes. Can you wrap your mind around that?

The debt is divided into three main areas of the economy, all bubbles ready to burst.

“The largest threat is the U.S. Corporate bond market, particularly junk bonds.” These are bonds, called high yield bond, that are issued by less than credible and creditworthy companies, and historically yield less than 5% annually. And yet, in the mid-2014, were up over 6%. Why?

It is because banks are issuing unprecedented credit to less than investment-grade firms. High risk, in debt, without working capital, and any negative in the economy would cause default... It happened in 2007, and how did that go? Have we lost our ever-loving minds?

To counter this the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates at near zero, and this causes the American consumer to spend instead of save. There is, better sit down, a policy by the Federal Reserve to buy billions, if not trillions in Mortgage backed debt, junk bonds, and Treasury Bonds is causing a bull market in bonds.

As the Feds buy these bonds it pushes bond rates down, forcing other bond buyers to take more chances with sub-quality bonds having higher yields. Can't say I understand this convolution completely, but what goes up as a bubble will always come down, and when it certainly does, it will wipe out a huge amount of capital, your life savings.

Debt issuers would have already defaulted, but keeping interest rates artificially low has made it possible for risky investments to refinance their debt at a lower rate, just like the adds telling us on TV that Obama has instituted an ability to refinance your home or business, another finger on the same hand strangling our future... and all of it is debt, on the backs of our children.

Student Debt now totals more than $1 trillion. The average college student graduates with a 24K debt, and immediately upon graduation racks up on average more that 6K in debt by his new shiny credit card. With his annual income being averaged at $36K, in our economy of food stamp recipients, that is a personal debt-to-income level of almost 100%.

Is that sustainable? It is a bubble about to pop, and it will be catastrophic. Oh, but everything is just fine America, as Big Brother manages every aspect of your life from cradle to grave. Bernie Sanders is said to be running for President next election. He is a Socialist Progressive, and the perfect figurehead when everything come to an end. Say goodbye forever to your Constitution, you civil liberties, as we default in this so called “sub-prime” crisis.

The Automotive sector is the third bubble about to burst. Where once a car loan was low risk to the lender, now anyone can get a loan. But, buy, buy! Good credit and a substantial down payment is replaced with a seven year loan, borrowing money for the down payment, with 34% of this debt being sub-prime credits. One imbalance, one downward trend, and it will pop, and the sound will be heard all across our nation.

Sub-prime lending was the cause of the housing bust, and we are doing it all over again, and this time it could be far worse, with a depression that will be long-lasting, because we have no mechanism, like a manufacturing base, to pull it back up.

The United States is now the biggest debtor in human history, and our children will be burdened with far more then having to live in squalor... they will have to fight not only world bank carpet baggers who will swoop down on all nations defaulting, but fight in another world war that will dwarf all others, as we try to defend our shores from the hordes wanting what is left. But it is far worse than even that.

The same banks will profit. I'd like to think that they would be held accountable for what they have so orchestrated, but finding them will not be easy, as one corporation owns another, and another, they are well hidden...

It is not just corruptions, however, immoral and desolate, but actual ignorance as to the mechanisms that creates and destroys economies. In the next essays to come I will try with all that I can muster to find the truth of this matter, and hopeful have the ability to explain it. It is the Petro Dollar that has ushered in this new, and very false sense of security, since WW2, and has become an unsustainable future.

Our constitution and Bill of Rights was once a viable part of our nation, and it ushered in an unparalleled and viable economy of free enterprise called the industrial revolution. Unfortunately, our country was sold out by traitors, and our future given to a banking cartel of international central banks and a Federal Reserve who is above our government and rule of law ...and we have been bleed dry now for over a hundred years.

They now own not only our land, but the Liberty promised to out children. I personally do not see, other than armed conflict, any way to take our country back. All I can hope for is to survive the coming inevitable storm. And what I find, I will share with you...

"Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.” ~ Mason Cooley

Author's Note: We can do more than survive this coming train wreck. We can thrive. There seems to be many ways to prosper in ciaos, and one way is acquiring tangible silver. Of all of the precious metals, this seems to be the best buy now, at 16.6 today.

You should have 5 to 10 percent of your total assets in tangible silver. Something you can hold in your hand... and it is suggested you by junk silver, dimes, quarters, and half dollars. And I will give you a method for buying... with more ideas next time...

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New economic policies from the private sector

From the art studios of A.F. (Tony) Branco at Comically Incorrect.com

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An Obama economic disaster

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know a Warning Sign When You See It

Commenting on the rioting in Baltimore, the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henniger was almost to the end of his April 30 text when he said “On Wednesday morning, the year’s first-quarter GDP growth rate came in—0.02%.

Next to nothing. For the length of the Obama presidency, with growth significantly below norm, unemployment for blacks aged 24 and younger has hovered between 30% and 40%. That’s the real powder key, not the police.”

Most Americans do not put the state of the economy at the heart of everything else is occurring. Instead they listen to politicians apply the blame to everything other than themselves.

President Obama spent his entire first term blaming George W. Bush for the bad state of the economy he inherited, but instead of addressing it, he increased it by imposing ObamaCare, radically altering how many would be hired while others were cut to a part-time status. The bill added a number of taxes as well.

When 2015 arrived in January CNS News reported that “A record 92,898,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in December, as the labor force participation rate dropped once again to 62.7 percent, a level it has not seen in 36 years,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Remember those unemployed young blacks? In March the BLS noted that a record of 12,202,000 black people were not in the labor force. The unemployment rate for black people in March was 10.1 percent, which is nearly double the overall unemployment rate of 5.5 percent.

For black teens, age 16 to 19, the unemployment rate was even higher at 25.0 percent, meaning that one in four black teens who were actively seeking a job did not have one.

By the beginning of April, the BLS reported that “a record 93,175,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in March, as the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, the lowest level seen in 37 years.”

Also in April, the BLS reported that “a record 56,131,000 women, age 16 years and over, were not in the labor force the previous month, as the participation rate for this group dropped to 56.6 percent—a 27 year low.

It was no surprise that the Department of Agriculture reported that “The number of beneficiaries who receive compensation from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, has topped 46,000,000 for 37 straight months.”

The U.S. Census Bureau started 2015 with news that one out of five young adults—white, black, Hispanic—and ages 18 to 34, currently live in poverty! That’s 13.5 million people, “up from one in seven (8.4 million people) in 1980.”

If all this strikes you as very bad news, it gets worse. In February, the Daily Caller’s White House Correspondence, Neil Monro, reported that “President Barack Obama has quietly handed out an extra 5.46 million work permits for non-immigrant foreigners who arrived as tourists, students, illegal immigrants or other types of migrants since 2009.”

“’The executive branch is operating a high parallel work-authorization system outside the bounds of the (immigration) laws and limits written by Congress (and which) inevitably reduces job opportunities for Americans,’ said Jessica Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies” which filed the FOIA request the revealed this travesty.

So it didn’t matter to Barack Obama that millions of Americans were out of work while the White House masterminded a secretive program to provide non-Americans access to the jobs that were available.

We are living in the midst of an economic disaster and despite the often rosy headlines the reality is one that Stephen Moore, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, took note of in January in The Washington Times. He identified “hidden indicators” of the true state of the economy as 2015 began:

“The $1 trillion growth gap. This economic recovery is the lowest in 50 years”

“The restless recovery. It’s been 10 years since Americans in the middle class got a pay raise that kept pace with inflation.”

“Inequality is worse. The Gini coefficient (as measured by the Census Bureau), the left’s favorite measure of income inequality, rose each of Mr. Obama’s first four years in office, breaking all-time highs in both 2011 and 2012, and it remains high.”

“The debt has grown by $7.3 trillion. When Mr. Obama entered office the national debt was under $11 trillion. Now it’s more than $18 trillion…it will be $19 trillion when he leaves office.”

The record speaks for itself. Americans are worse off today than when Obama took office in 2009. In the years since then he has totally failed to take the best understood steps to push back against a recession and unemployment.

He has expanded the federal government. He has failed to initiate a reform of the nation’s tax code to stimulate investment and expansion.

The nation’s first black President has so poorly served the interests of the African-American population that they are worse off today. He has practiced “equal inequality” by afflicting our other demographic groups, younger workers, woman, and everyone else who has been left unable to afford college and unable to purchase a home and start a family.

These years will be seen in retrospect as a desert of opportunity.

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Hey Baltimore - Ya'll being played

From the personal files of an unhyphenated American, Lloyd Marcus

Dear Family and Friends:

Though you have not confronted me or organized an intervention, I know many of you do not understand why I dislike Obama, vote Republican and joined the Tea Party. Y'all think, Obama is black, we're black – so, what is my problem?

Dad told me that grandmother, 101 years old when she passed, cried when Obama was elected. I get that and totally understand. Still, I could not go brain-dead and hop on the elect-the-first-black-president bandwagon. As a matter of fact, I was stunned by how alone I was in considering who Obama was as a candidate and what he planned to do if elected.

Democrats and the media sold Obama as America's Great Black Hope. They protected him by hiding Obama's anti-American friends and writings. I learned that Obama is another standard “liberal” Democrat con artist, only more extreme; sure to continue the Democrats screwing of black folks.

For those unfamiliar with political terms, in a nutshell, “liberals” are those who believe that man can perfect himself and is capable of controlling everything. Ninety-nine percent of the time, liberals reject God's laws and question His existence. “Conservatives” tend to be God fearing (reverencing) folks. I'm a conservative Republican.

Liberal Democrats have played blacks for over 50 years. Obama is simply their latest front man, brilliantly covered in a black skin disguise.

Now, before you go off on me, calling me an Uncle Tom and worse, hear me out.

The recent Baltimore riots perfectly illustrate my point. Rioters expressed anger over high black unemployment, poor schools and poverty. Well guess who has controlled Maryland politics for the past 50 years? Liberal Democrats. And yet, they still keep playin' blacks with their standard lie – vote for us and we'll fix everything with our programs and block racist Republicans from keepin' y'all down and lynching you.

Meanwhile, there hasn't been one Republican in sight in Maryland for 50 years in a position to affect anything. And yet, all the problems liberal Democrats promised to fix have gotten worse. Y'all been played. Also, how long will y'all fall for their lie that the lack of jobs is Bush's fault? Obama has been president for six years.

Y'all bein' played!

Aunt Bummie and four of her five sons were on welfare their entire lives. Theirs was a fatherless household. Only Poochie (Lawrence) her eldest remarkably worked his way through college. Aunt Bummie and four of her sons died early.

Sleeping over from time to time, at 9 or 10 years old, I felt the depressed vibe of their household and knew their lives were tragic. I felt sorry for them. I felt their envy of my dad living with us.

When President Reagan tried to wean folks off of total government dependency, Democrats and their media buddies told blacks that Reagan was a racist mean old white man who hated blacks. That was another lie.

Don't get me wrong, a government safety net is fine. But, addicting people to cradle to grave welfare is evil; robbing folks of pursuing their God given gifts and potential. Liberal Democrats hope to get as many folks as possible hating the rich and hooked on welfare to keep the masses voting Democrat.

A friend ranted about mean Republicans in congress cutting food stamps for the poor. Another Democrat lie. After six years of Obama, more folks than ever are receiving food stamps (over 47 million).

Remarkably, a third of the country is out of work. Many quit looking for jobs, deciding to ride Obama's government gravy train. Come election day, they will vote Democrat. And guess who is hardest hit by Obama's job killing policies? Black folks.

Here's another Democrat scam. Democrats love to rant about evil Republican “draconian” cuts to welfare programs. Well, the truth is no program ever gets less money than it did the previous year. In Washington, a cut means congress will not give a program as much of an “increase” as first projected.

Despite Democrat control for 50 years and government programs out the ying yang, Baltimore blacks are suffering more than ever; high school dropouts, no jobs, still murdering each other, high out-of-wedlock births, poverty, high incarcerations and fatherless households. Even after spending trillions of taxpayer dollars fighting poverty since 1965, Democrats tell the poor and blacks they're gettin' screwed by rich white folks.

They're playin' y'all.

Obama's response to the Baltimore riots is typically liberal Democrat; more government programs and blaming Republicans.

Some of you will view Obama as your homey no matter what. It's a black thing. I get it. But, Obama does not feel the same about you. If he did, Obama would not be flooding the country with uneducated poor illegals who suck up your welfare and your jobs. He only cares about creating new Democrat voters.

He's playin' y'all.

Meanwhile, y'all say, what is up with Peanut (my childhood nickname)? He just “don't” get it.

I pray that I have opened your eyes and that you will think twice before voting for another Democrat.

Love, Lloyd (Jr.)

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee

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Zero inflation holding the economy together

Free trade will give it a strong boost by Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow at Kudlow and Company

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Don’t expect any miracles from the economy. But don’t expect a collapse either.

In political terms, it’s kind of a Mexican standoff. Team Obama says they saved us from another Great Depression. And they point out that 3.1 million jobs have been created in the last 12 months.

Republicans counter that this is the slowest post-WWII recovery on record and that real GDP is roughly $2 trillion below potential. They add that the labor-force participation rate is 62.7 percent, a 39-year low, and that there are at least 15 million people who work but can’t get jobs.

Yet both sides may actually come together for a major pro-growth initiative: an Asia-Pacific free-trade deal that will lower tariffs and other barriers. Lower tariffs are lower taxes.

Democratic labor unions don’t like this. Neither do isolationist Republicans. They both think American wages and jobs will be damaged. But as House Ways and Means chair Paul Ryan argues, free trade is a positive sum -- both sides benefit -- not a zero sum.

Export-related jobs typically create higher wages. And one-in-five American jobs depend on trade. Moreover, the spread of market capitalism and free trade in China, India, Vietnam, South America, and parts of Africa has lowered dollar-a-day abject poverty by 80 percent over the past three decades. (Pope Francis, take note.) And with hundreds of millions of people entering the global middle class, America’s low-cost producers are seeing their markets expand.

Of course, a strong corporate tax cut, on a territorial basis, with easy repatriation of overseas profits, would give U.S. businesses large and small even lower costs and greater competitiveness. But the corporate tax cut is not going to happen -- at least until after the 2016 election.

So we’re left with a trade deal that may well happen. President Obama is working with Republicans to persuade Democrats to come on board with trade. Obama deserves credit.

Meanwhile, back to the economy, real-GDP (RGDP) growth was barely above water at 0.2 percent in the first quarter. Bad winter weather undoubtedly played a roll. But consider this: A year ago we had a decline in economic growth of 2 percent -- again, largely due to the weather -- but the next two quarters rebounded by nearly 5 percent.

So if you look at four-quarter trends for perspective, RGDP actually rose 3 percent over the past year. And business investment increased nearly 5 percent, despite a big cutback in energy-company capex.

In addition, exports over the past year increased 3 percent and imports 5.5 percent. People keep telling me the strong dollar is killing our exports. But they forget two things: King Dollar has led to across-the-board price drops, boosting consumer and business real incomes. And if exports keep slowing, blame the lack of production out of Europe, China, Japan, and elsewhere.

And you can’t overlook the very core of the American economy: private consumption plus private investment (C + I). It’s been rising at roughly 3.3 percent year over year for the past several quarters. Not bad. And profits and stock markets hover near record highs.

Then there’s the most underrated factor in today’s economy: zero inflation. This is totally pro-growth. It’s a tax cut.

The Fed’s monetary machinations haven’t worked. The M2 money supply has hovered around 6 percent for years, with nominal GDP (NGDP) around 4 percent. The monetarist experiment went nowhere. And that’s a good thing, as excess bank reserves never circulated through the economy and the velocity (turnover) of money continues to fall. But the strong greenback is holding prices down, including energy. Gold prices have been stable for years.

So NGDP at 4 percent with zero inflation leaves room for 4 percent real growth. It’s a good spot for the economy. But if the Fed had its way and raised inflation to 2 percent, RGDP might be crowed out to 2 percent or less. Why do we want that?

Paul Volcker used to argue that low inflation increases real growth. He was right. But Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen argue that higher inflation increases real growth. They are wrong.

American economic growth has fallen way behind its long-term performance trend. Instead of 2 percent growth we need 4 or 5 percent.

This leads me to a final thought: It was Arthur Laffer and Robert Mundell who created the ultimate pro-growth mix of monetary and fiscal policy. Keep the dollar sound for price stability and reduce marginal tax rates to rejuvenate supply-side incentives.

That mix worked in the JFK 1960s and in the Reagan-Clinton 1980s and 1990s. Add in a strong dose of free trade and deregulation, and the Laffer-Mundell hypothesis will return us to our long-term economic path and renew American leadership worldwide.

Question is, will the GOP take that growth model and run with it?

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A Hillary challenge: Return to JFK growth agenda

But it looks like she’s going the wrong way from Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow at Kudlow and Company

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When John F. Kennedy was elected president he surprised both Democrats and Republicans with a bold tax-cutting plan to solve the problem of a moribund economy. He had campaigned on “getting the country moving again,” and had set a 5 percent economic-growth target, but he never specified how he was going to do it. Then he opened everyone’s eyes with a plan to lower marginal tax rates across-the-board.

JFK’s advisors proposed a traditional Democratic approach: temporary targeted tax cuts. But Kennedy insisted on lower tax rates that would create much higher rewards for work, saving, and investment. And Kennedy argued that his lower tax-rate incentives would so expand the economy that after a few years his tax cuts would pay for themselves.

He was right.

After his plan went into action, the economy boomed and revenues went up. And there was no inflation because he insisted on a sound dollar that maintained the post-war link to gold. Later on, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter would throw out JFK’s growth model piece by piece. The economic results were disastrous. But Ronald Reagan turned back to the Kennedy approach in the 1980s and thus launched a 25-year prosperity.

So why am I thinking so much about the JFK tax cuts these days? Two reasons: Economic historian Brian Domitrovic and I are writing a book on this. And Hillary Clinton just announced she’s running for president -- and I have a challenge for her.

Hillary’s smart, hard-working, and experienced, and she’s not going to be anybody’s pushover. So I challenge her to think outside today’s liberal-left Democratic orthodoxy and return to a true, JFK-style growth agenda.

Today’s greatest domestic challenge is to restore economic growth. The trend line used to be near 3.5 percent. Now it’s barely 2 percent. This is not the American way.

But it’s my contention that if Mrs. Clinton chose pro-growth policies such as her husband (working with Newt Gingrich) implemented -- reduced investment-tax rates, rollbacks of unnecessary regulations, budget restraint -- she could shock and electrify the country.

Would she do it? Would she attempt to bring back the JFK/Bill Clinton Democrats and stop the Bill de Blasio/Elizabeth Warren Sandinista Democrats?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look good.

It’s early in the campaign, and Hillary’s already talking about taxing the rich, punishing CEOs, redistributing income, regulating more, and spending more. Her buzz terms are women’s pay, parental leave, care-giving leave, and paid sick days. As AEI columnist Jim Pethokoukis writes, liberalism is not exhausted.

Already, Hillary is going wrong. And she will be proven wrong if this is her agenda.

Take the idea of a growing CEO-employee pay gap. It’s not true. The AFL-CIO has created a phony argument, taking the pay of 350 CEOs from America’s biggest companies, comparing that to average worker wages, and coming up with an executive pay gap of 333-1. According to AEI scholar Mark Perry, the AFL-CIO is cherry-picking numbers. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the average salary of roughly 250,000 U.S. CEOs is a modest $200,000, which puts the so-called executive pay gap at only 4-1.

Then there’s the women’s pay gap -- another big Hillary theme. It’s a 77-cents-on-the-dollar myth. If you account for key factors such as education, choice of industry, hours worked, experience, and career interruptions, the difference between average male and female wages shrinks to 5-to-7 cents on the dollar, according to Romina Boccia of the Heritage Foundation.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute adds that women today earn 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 50 percent of master’s degrees, 51 percent of doctorates, and nearly half of law degrees. Meanwhile the unemployment rate of adult women (4.9 percent) is lower than that for adult men (5.1 percent).

And Mark Perry argues that if you factor in fatal occupational injuries, such as for logging, roofing, and mining, all male-dominated fields, there is no female pay-equity difference at all.

As for taxing rich people, the Wall Street Journal reports that the top 20 percent of earners pay 84 percent of income taxes, and that the 3 million in the top 1 percent, who make about 17 percent of total U.S. income, pay nearly half the income tax. Meanwhile, the bottom two-fifths of earners are net tax recipients.

These are just a few examples of the mistaken numbers and policies that Hillary is promoting. There’s nothing pro-growth in this. Instead of JFK, Hillary’s going third-term Obama. And that means America will remain in its economic quagmire if she is elected.

It’s a pity. Hillary has a great opportunity to provide new leadership and energy to the country and the Democratic party. I’m offering her a challenge, but it looks like she won’t take it. That’s one key reason why she will be defeated in November 2016.

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Liberals go crazy over the Obama depression

From the files of Judson Phillips, Founder of The Tea Party Nation

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Liberals go crazy when real Americans start talking about the Great Obama Depression. While it is true the economic downturn began before Obama was in the White House, his policies have helped continue it and make it worse.

Many Americans just blithely go about their lives. They know things are worse but wait, there is a new Iphone out they can go get. The Romans understood this concept so they had bread and circuses.

The drive by media, still in the tank for Obama will not talk about how bad things are. Just how bad is our economy now?

The Economic Collapse Blog just released some staggering statistics.

Among other shockers are these:

• Incomes fell for the bottom 80 percent of all income earners in the United States during the 12 months leading up to June 2014.
• According to one recent report, 43 million Americans currently have unpaid medical debt on their credit reports. (Didn’t Obamacare work out so well for everone?)
• For each of the past six years, more businesses have closed in the United States than have opened. Prior to 2008, this had never happened before in all of U.S. history.
• If you have no debt at all, and you also have 10 dollars in your wallet, that you are wealthier than 25 percent of all Americans. 
• The average American must work from January 1st to April 24th just to pay all federal, state and local taxes.

America is in a complete economic collapse. This is the total and complete destruction of America as an economic superpower.

As bad as that is, the government is stuck on stupid. Both Democrats and Republicans want Amnesty. Amnesty will break the back of our economy. Millions of new illegal aliens will be on welfare, skyrocketing the costs of welfare and public services.

Both Democrats and Republicans want to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership, a super free trade agreement. Under this agreement, which Congress will basically have to pass to find out what is in it, American jobs will be lost. American businesses will be put at a competitive disadvantage with foreign businesses.

2016 truly is America’s last chance. If a Democrat is elected President or if Jeb Bush is elected, it really is game over for America. The Great Obama Depression will become the Great Bush Depression (or the Great Warren Depression) and America will go the way of other fallen superpowers.

America has a choice. Elect someone like Ted Cruz who will change things or we can live the words of Ronald Reagan who warned us one day we would be telling our children and grandchildren what it was like to grow up in America, when it was a free and great nation.

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Presidential perception of the little guy

From the art studios of A.F. (Tony) Branco at Comically Incorrect.com

Get a Daily Dose of Humor or Reality from A.F. (Tony) Branco

• Editorial cartoonist
• Net Right Daily
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• Liberty Alliance
• ConservativeDailyNews.com

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King dollar - Naysayer nonsense

A strong greenback is a very good thing indeed from Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow at Kudlow and Company

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Despite the conventional criticisms of the financial commentariat, both theory and evidence argue for a strong, stable, and reliable currency as a crucial channel to prosperity. Just think of the reverse: If you could devalue your way into prosperity, Argentina would be the center of the world economy.

But lately, a loud and growing chorus is blaming the rising U.S. greenback for just about everything. “Multinational profits will suffer.” “Imports and trade deficits will hammer the economy.” “Stocks will fall.” “Recession looms.”

Wall Street insists that King Dollar is bad. It is wrong.

This falsehood is a near cousin to the idea that falling energy prices will wreck the economy. Also wrong. Energy will slow, but the rest of the economy will benefit.

In fact, the rising dollar, a key factor in the oil-price plunge, provides a double tax cut for the economy. Both will also promote world recovery.

Over the past year, the dollar has appreciated about 20 percent. So what happened? The S&P 500 is up 11 percent and the American economy has actually improved. While the underlying economic-growth rate is still a soft 2.5 percent, real GDP was up 3.5 percent or more in four of the last six quarters. And nonfarm payroll jobs have increased 3.3 million in the past 12 months, much better than the 2.2 million jobs gain of the prior period.

And the inflation rate is nil. The consumer price deflator is flat. Import prices for the 12 months ending in February are down 9.4 percent. And finished-goods producer prices have slumped 3.4 percent.

What’s happening? The dollar is up and oil prices are down. The economy, jobs, and stocks are up, and inflation is down.

How could this be bad?

So let me dust off some of my golden oldies: King Dollar is a very good thing. King Dollar has far-reaching benefits that way offset any temporary small costs. King Dollar is pro-growth.

And if investors gain confidence that King Dollar will stay firm, global capital will flow into U.S. dollar markets. That means, according to investment strategist Jason Trennert, a strengthening dollar pays for a bit lower profits with stock-multiple expansion.

Modest currency-conversion costs of U.S. corporate income earned abroad may temporarily translate into slower profits -- at least in GAAP-accounting terms. But this is small stuff. Actually, most of that money stays overseas to benefit from lower taxes. And many companies, especially technology firms, have demonstrated shrewd hedging acumen to take advantage of the King Dollar trend.

Anyway, as a result of the strong dollar, every import that American companies use for their products -- be it autos, computers, or mobile phones -- is vastly cheaper. And when products are finished in the USA, figuring in lower domestic-wage demands and interest rates, cheaper U.S. products will lead to stronger exports because of a sound dollar.

Remember Japan in the 1970s and ’80s, when the yen was running over 300 to the dollar (today it’s 120) and the country was a massive export machine? There you go. A strong currency leads to cheap exports from lower interest rates, zero inflation, and strong competitiveness.

In fact, the King Dollar/plunging-energy-price combination has substantially reduced the cost structure of American businesses, making them more competitive. And at the same time, the buying power of consumer incomes is significantly increased as prices for energy, food, and virtually all goods and services have dropped.

And as economic editor John Tamny puts it, “When investors invest, they’re hoping to get back the dollars they invested, plus an additional dollar return.” Tomorrow’s dollar should be worth the same as today’s. That’s the confidence value of currency stability.

How about some more history?

Between 1982 and 2000, as the dollar increased 178 percent, King Dollar (with lower tax rates and lighter regulation) presided over a stock market gain of 1,099 percent, a jobs increase near 40 million, and 3.5 percent average annual real GDP.

During the recent dollar decline period, from 2001 to 2011, as the dollar fell 25 percent, jobs increased a paltry 2.3 million, real GDP growth averaged less than 2 percent, and the S&P gained a measly 15 percent.

And don’t forget the dreadful 1970s: The dollar plunged, the economy suffered through years of stagflation, and the real value of stocks fell significantly.

Yes, the world’s currency system is in disarray. Europe and Japan are depreciating (won’t work) and the U.S. is appreciating (nurturing growth). Yes, we need a new monetary system. Yes, we need better currency and policy coordination.

In any event, as the Fed slows its accommodation, and while pro-growth corporate tax reform is in the air, King Dollar is on the rise.

Stop whining, folks. It’s a good thing.

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