Full transparency....Not The Peep Show Kind

Drunk-On-Credit Fed Chief Claims “Full Transparency”
What had me hopping mad yesterday while the President (our new cheerleader) was on TV, a new headline that flashed across CNBC…
The headline said Bernanke claims he was always a proponent for an "Open and Transparent" Federal Reserve.
At the risk of sounding like Ron Paul, this is completely contrary to what Bernanke has been so far as our Fed Chief. There has been complete secrecy regarding the Fed's operations. The Bill to Audit the Federal Reserve and its actions was stopped cold in the Senate on July 9th using procedural grounds.
Oh! Don't we love politicians who speak from both sides of their mouth?
The honest truth folks is that Obama does not want any checks and balances on the nation's check book and wants to retain the ability to print as much money as his misguided policy desires.
Me - I feel like creating my own printing press in my garage too! Difference is if I did that, I would go to jail while Bernanke is being lauded as the "savior" of the U.S. economy.
But of course, that’s what it’s like in this Government for the People, for the People.

Now We Know Why The Left Lies

Scientists Confirm the Effectiveness of The Big Lie – People Will Go To Extraordinary Lengths to Create False Justifications for Government Misdeeds
Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Adolph Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:
All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true in itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
Similarly, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, wrote:
That is of course rather painful for those involved. One should not as a rule reveal one’s secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
Science has now helped to explain why the big lie is effective.
Specifically, sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it became obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):
Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress
Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.
“For the most part people completely ignore contrary information.”
“The study demonstrates voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information”
People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.
“We refer to this as ‘inferred justification, because for these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war.
“People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war”
“They wanted to believe in the link [between 9/11 and Iraq] because it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.
As the study notes, this tendency of many people to make up false stories to explain why we went to war and then to hold on to such false beliefs in the face of contrary evidence is “a serious challenge to democratic theory and practice”. Until people learn to think more clearly and rationally, they are easily manipulated.
All a government has to do is tell a big enough lie, and many people will swallow it hook, line and sinker. Or the government can just do something big – like starting a war for no good reason (or giving trillions in bailouts to the wealthiest corporations instead of the “little people” who most need it?) – and many people will struggle mightily to themselves concoct false justifications for doing so.

ABC's John Stossel Destroys/Pulverizes/Crushes Obama's anti-American 'Health Care' Plan

ABC's John Stossel shows the inevitable cost of socialized medicine - and it's not just money.

Obamacare allows Gov't To Confiscate Old People's Bank Accounts...Amazing

Obamacare called 'euthanasia bill'Critic: 'Reflects regime worse than China's one-child policy'

The Democrats' proposed national health insurance plan would dictate medications, treatments and mental health services; determine coverages individuals are allowed to have; and operate with real-time access to personal bank accounts, according to a new analysis.
And it's worse, a critic said, than China's mandatory one-child policy.
"In the same way that the bill pushes elderly or the sick toward euthanasia, it is a pill that would cause economic suicide," said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. "It's a euthanasia bill for America."
Congress members have admitted they have not read the more-than-1,000-page bill, and Staver's organization is one of the first to go through it and offer an analysis.
In the Liberty Counsel analysis, Staver notes that under Section 163, the government would be allowed to have real-time access to individuals' finances, including direct access to bank accounts for electronic funds transfers.
Under Section 1308, the analysis finds, the government will dictate marriage and family therapy as well as mental health services, including the definitions of those treatments.
Will the elites control life itself? 'The Emerging Brave New World' documents the battle against the sanctity of life ethic
Under Section 1401, a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research would be set up, creating a bureaucracy through which federal employees could determine whether any treatment is "comparatively effective" for any individual based on the cost, likely success and probably the years left in life.
(Story continues below)
It also, according to Staver, "covers abortions, transsexual surgeries, encourages counseling as to how many children you should have, whether you should increase the interval between children."
The plan would allow, in Section 1401, for the collection of information about individuals' health records, both "published and unpublished," and recommend policies for public access to data.
"It reflects a repressive regime worse than China's one-child policy," Staver told WND. "It's going down the road for a government that manages the most intimate matters of your life regarding health and safety."
Further, the plan is created to be the "only game in town," he said. And as people age or get sicker, it includes mandatory "consultations" offering suggestions on how to end life sooner, he said.
The Liberty Counsel staff that did the research was "astonished" by what they found.
J. Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs for Liberty Counsel, said in a commentary the bill reflects the influence of those who now surround President Obama.
"His choice of Harvard professor and self-styled 'neo-Malthusain' John Holdren as 'science czar' provides the latest and perhaps most troubling example of just how bad America really muffed it last November," Barber wrote.
"In the name of population control, Holdren has advocated both forced abortion and compulsory sterilization through government-administered tainting of the water supply. In a book he co-authored, entitled 'Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,' Holdren calls for a 'Planetary Regime' to enforce mandatory abortions and limit the use of natural resources," he wrote.
Staver pointed to some of Holdren's outrageous suggestions, such as implanting sterility capsules in girls at puberty and extracting them only when they obtain government permission to have children. For men, he has suggested putting additives in the water system to cause sterility.
Barber wrote that Holdren has affirmed he believes there is "ample authority" under the U.S. Constitution for population growth to be "regulated."
"Even ... laws requiring compulsory abortion … could be sustained under the existing Constitution," Holdren suggested.
Nina May, founder of Renaissance Women, added to the arguments. She cited a 1948 Hitchcock movie about murder in which the victim's body is hidden in plain sight.
"The health care bill that Obama proposes has this theme at its core and has in its crosshairs the Baby Boomer engine that is pulling the derailed economy as it takes its final lap toward retirement. In less than two years, Baby Boomers will begin retiring in multitudes, expecting to reclaim the hard earned money they have been paying into Social Security. But this Health Care Bill, HR3200, has other plans for them," she wrote.
"Those 65 and older will be required to undergo mandatory 'end of life' counseling to determine if they are worthy to continue to not only live, but take much needed resources from those who are younger and more worthy to receive them. Counselors will be trained to discuss how to end life sooner, how to decline nutrition and hydration, how to go into hospice, etc.," she said.
"This will not be done without coercion. For those who have amassed assets enough to take care of themselves in their old age will have these assets confiscated in the name of fiscal responsibility, because by this time, every citizen will be entered into a national database under the guise of improved efficiency. This database will be run by a type of 'star chamber,' appointed by the president, that will determine whether or not you deserve the much needed operation your personal doctor thinks you need," she said.
The Liberty Counsel analysis also pointed out the government would be allowed to ration health care procedures, prevent "judicial review" of its decision, tell doctors what income they can have, impose new taxes for anyone not having an "acceptable" coverage, regulate whether seniors can have wheelchairs, penalize hospitals or doctors whose patients require "readmission," prevent the expansion of hospitals and set up procedures for home visits by health care analysts.
Under Section 440, Liberty Counsel said, the government "will design and implement Home Visitation Program for families with young kids and families that expect children." And Section 194 provides for a program that has the government "coming into your house and teaching/telling you how to parent," LC said.
WND reported earlier when Betsy McCaughey, the former New York state officer, told former presidential candidate Fred Thompson during an interview on his radio program the health care plan includes consultations for seniors on how to die.
"One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session," she said. "They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner."
The proposal specifically calls for the consultation to recommend "palliative care and hospice" for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions. Palliative care and hospice generally focus only on pain relief until death.
The measure requires "an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available."

Fannie Mae is back with its hand out for more. After receiving over $101 billion of taxpayers' money, now it wants $10.7 billion more.

After massive losses, Fannie asks Treasury for $10.7 billion

Taxpayers gave troubled mortgage giant over $44 billion since April, over $101 billion in total
Troubled state-backed mortgage firm Fannie Mae took a massive 14.8-billion-dollar loss in the second quarter, and asked the US Treasury for another 10.7 billion dollars in aid, the company said Thursday.
Fannie Mae and its fellow state-backed lender Freddie Mac have already received hundreds of billions of dollars as part of a virtual government takeover aimed at avoiding their collapse in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.
“Today’s results bring the company’s cumulative losses over the last two years to $101.6 billion and will bring its total draw on the Treasury to $44.9 billion since April,” noted Bloomberg.
The latest loss for Fannie Mae came on the heels of a 23.2 billion-dollar loss in the first quarter.
“Fannie Mae said it expects the quality of its assets to worsen further and to continue accumulating losses as it executes President Barack Obama’s efforts to modify or refinance loans for as many as nine million homeowners,” Bloomberg reporter Dawn Kopecki continued.
“Due to current trends in the housing and financial markets, we expect to have a net worth deficit in future periods, and therefore will be required to obtain additional funding from Treasury,” the firm’s quarterly report said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “As a result, we are dependent on the continued support of Treasury in order to continue operating our business.”
The paper continued: “To deal with souring loans, the company said it reached workout deals on 41,000 mortgages during the quarter. Loan modifications made up 40% of the total. Fannie said it expects increased activity under the federal Making Home Affordable program as mortgage services gain experience with it. The company noted trial modifications jumped in July from the second quarter.”
“In one hopeful sign, Fannie Mae narrowed its quarterly loss to $14.8 billion, or $2.67 per diluted share, down from $23.2 billion, or $4.09 per share, in the previous quarter,” noted CNN. “The company lost $2.3 billion, or $2.54 per share, in the second quarter last year.”
“Credit losses from the housing crisis are still to blame for Fannie Mae’s dour results,” the television news network continued. “The company racked up $18.8 billion in credit-related expenses during the latest quarter. However, the company reduced its provision for credit losses to $18.2 billion, from $20.3 billion in the first quarter, because of a slowdown in the increase of estimated defaults and losses per default.”
By market’s close on Thursday, shares in Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) were trading at just 79 cents.

20% And Rising!! Where's The "Hope?"

Panic: Unemployment rate already at 20%!!!

Really, how hard is it to find a job? Was June’s horrid numbers, in which 467,000 people lost their jobs compared to 345,000 in May, a one-time fluke? Or does it mean that all those Wall Street economists who believe the economic recovery is starting are dead wrong?
Not to scare you, but the situation is actually worse than it seems. Over the years, the government has changed the way it counts the unemployed. An example of this is the criticized Birth-Death Model which was added in 2000. The model is designed to account for the birth and death of businesses and the resultant lag in survey data. Unfortunately, the model doesn’t work that well during economic contractions (like we have now) and consistently overstates the number of jobs being created each month.
John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics specializes in removing these questionable tweaks to the government’s statistical data to better align current numbers with the methodology used to gather historical data. After reviewing the data, Williams believes that “the June jobs loss likely exceeded 700,000.” David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff notes that the fall in the number of hours worked in June (to a record low of 33 per week) is equivalent to a loss of more than 800,000 jobs.
There are similar issues with the way the unemployment rate is measured. The headline rate only jumped from 9.4% to 9.5% because of a drop in the number of people in the workforce. The more inclusive “U-6″ measure of unemployment, which includes discouraged workers, jumped from 16.4% to 16.5%. But even this doesn’t adequately capture the situation on the ground: Back in the Clinton Administration, the definition of discouraged worker was changed to only include those that had given up looking for work because there were no jobs to be had within the last year.
By adding these folks back in, William’s SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure rose to a jaw-dropping 20.6%. Separately, the Center for Labor Market Studies in Boston puts U.S. unemployment at 18.2%. Any way you cut the numbers, the situation is very bad. According to David Rosenberg, one-in-three among the unemployed have been looking for a job for more than six months and still can’t find one.

VAT YOU!!!

Beware the (Other) Hidden Tax
(Queue Jaws theme music in your head. By the way, it’s Shark Week on Discovery Channel… no affiliation on my part obviously, I just love it.)
No, this article is not about the indirect hidden tax – inflation -- we are so fond of discussing. It’s about a particularly insidious, direct, hidden tax that has already swept across Europe and (we think) is now bound for the U.S.
We’re talking, of course, about the “value-added tax” or VAT.
Former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman and former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan both (along with many others in Congress) recently expressed the opinion that the VAT tax is coming to the U.S. fairly soon.
Here’s what Greenspan said: “I don’t like the value-added tax, but I agree with Roger [Altman]. I think that there is a fairly significant probability that the least worst solution to the problem will end up to be a value-added tax, because it’s the only thing that raises revenues in significant quantities without significantly impacting on the economy.”
Before we get into the “hidden” nature of the VAT and the real-world impacts of it, let’s provide some background.
What Is a VAT?
A value-added tax (VAT) is a fee that is assessed against businesses by a government at various points in the production of goods or services – usually any time a product is sold, resold, or value is added to it.
For tax purposes, value is added whenever the value of a product increases as a result of the application of a company’s factors of production, such as labor and equipment.
Every company that handles a product during its transformation from raw materials to finished goods must pay a VAT. For example, tax is charged when a manufacturer sells to a wholesaler and again when a wholesaler sells to a retailer.
The total VAT accrued during the production of a good is reflected in the price of the item sold to final consumers, because each reseller along the way passes through its VAT costs. In this way, VAT is quite similar to a national sales tax. In other ways, it is quite different.
Perhaps a comparative example will help clarify.
Consider the manufacture and sale of the economist’s staple hypothetical good – the widget.
Scenario 1: Manufacture and sale of one widget without any sales tax
A widget manufacturer spends $10.00 on raw materials and combines these materials with labor to make a widget.
The widget manufacturer then sells the widget wholesale to a widget retailer for $12.00, leaving the manufacturer with a $2.00 profit.
The widget retailer then sells the widget to a widget consumer for $15.00, making the retailer a profit of $3.00.
Scenario 2: Manufacture and sale of one widget with a North American (Canadian Provincial and U.S. State) sales tax of 10%
The widget manufacturer spends the same $10.00 on raw materials to build a widget, but it must certify that it is not a final consumer.
The widget manufacturer charges the retailer the same $12.00, first checking that the retailer is not an end-consumer, leaving the manufacturer (again) with a $2.00 profit.
The widget retailer then sells the widget to a widget consumer, but this time for $16.50 [$15.00 x (1 + 10%)] and pays the government $1.50, leaving the same profit of $3.00.
Scenario 3: Manufacture and sale of one widget with a VAT of 10%
This time, the widget manufacturer pays $11.00 [$10.00 x (1 + 10%)], and the seller of the raw materials pays the government $1.00 in VAT.
The widget manufacturer charges the widget retailer $13.20 [$12.00 x (1 + 10%)] and pays the government $0.20 in VAT ($1.20 less $1.00 paid in first stage), leaving the manufacturer with the same $2.00 profit ($13.20 sale price less $11.00 cost of materials less $0.20 VAT in second stage equals $2.00).
The widget retailer charges the widget consumer $16.50 [$15.00 x (1 + 10%)] and pays the government $0.30 ($1.50 less $1.20 already paid in first and second stages), leaving the retailer with the same $3.00 profit ($16.50 sale price less $13.20 purchase price less $0.30 VAT in third stage equals $3.00).
So, you see, the total tax paid to the government in both scenarios 2 and 3 is $1.50, and the entire tax burden is ultimately placed on the end consumer, who must pay $16.50 for a widget that would only cost $15.00 absent the sales tax or VAT.
Hidden Nature of VAT
Remember, the total tax, regardless of the stage of production at which it was collected, ends up being added to the final sales price.
No matter how many steps there are in the production process, a fixed percentage of the final price of the product would represent the value-added tax, just as a retail sales tax is a fixed percentage of the final product price. Unlike a sales tax, however, the cost of the VAT to consumers would be hidden because it is baked into the advertised retail prices of goods and services.
Many consumers, of course, would recognize that the VAT existed, but it is not likely that they would realize the magnitude of the levy. For instance, gasoline consumers generally understand that gas taxes exist. But because gas taxes are incorporated in the advertised retail price of gasoline, few are aware that taxes comprise a substantial share of the retail price. (The average gasoline tax in the U.S. is about $0.46 per gallon. That’s $9.20 in taxes to fill a 20-gallon tank.)
Real-World Impact of VAT
Many countries already impose VATs (over 130, in fact), and the results of this real-world experiment have been dismal.
VATs are associated with both higher overall tax burdens and more government spending. In 1966, before the VAT swept across Europe, the average tax burden for advanced European economies (the EU-15) was 28.4% of GDP, fairly similar to the U.S., where taxes consumed 25% of economic output, according to data from the OECD Factbook 2009:Economic, Environmental, and Social Statistics,an annual publication of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
European nations began to impose VATs in 1967, and now the EU requires all members to have a VAT of at least 15%.
What are the results? Scary, to say the least.
By 2007 (the most recent data available), calculations using OECD data determined that the average tax burden for EU-15 nations has climbed to 39.9% of GDP. That’s a 40% increase since 1966. The tax burden also has increased in the U.S., but at a much slower 13.2% rate, rising to 28.3% of GDP for the year 2007.
Furthermore, according to European Commission figures, government spending during 1965 in EU-15 nations averaged 30.1% of GDP, roughly comparable to the 28.3% of economic output consumed by U.S. government spending. By contrast, in 2007, government spending consumed 47.1% of economic output in the EU-15, significantly higher than the 35.3% burden of government spending in the U.S.
Another argument for the VAT concedes it will increase the overall tax burden but lead to lower taxes on personal and corporate income. The evidence from Europe indicates otherwise. Taxes on income and profits consumed an average 9.1% of GDP in the EU-15 during 1966, which gave Europe a competitive advantage over the U.S., where they ate up 12.4% of GDP.
By 2007, calculations using OECD data show that the tax burden on income and profits climbed to 14.1% of GDP in the EU-15, slightly higher than the 13.9% figure for the U.S.
Conclusion – What Else?
Other than triggering more government spending and higher aggregate tax burdens, what other effects does a VAT have?
VATs slow the economy and destroy jobs. By taking resources from the productive members of society and transferring them to the government (which produces nothing and creates no wealth), VATs slow economic growth and undermine job creation. The economic damage caused by a VAT is made worse due to the increase in the aggregate tax burden.
VATs impose heavy administrative costs on businesses and taxpayers. VATs force businesses to serve as tax collectors for the government. Under this system, every company and entrepreneur is forced to keep records on every purchase and sale throughout the production process and submit detailed, time-consuming, costly forms to the government.