America in Economic Decline

Erich Deagostino has forwarded a link to a Yahoo! news report that suggests that America is heading down the same road as Greece, which is nearing bankruptcy. The report notes that:

"As with Greece, America's national debt has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past decade, to the point where it threatens to swamp overall economic output. And in the U.S., as in Greece, a large portion of that debt is owed to foreign investors."

The aggressive Democratic health care socialization push will cause us to stumble further down this road.

There is a long history of cries about excessive borrowing's leading to economic crisis that have turned out not to be true. The history goes back to the 18th century. But of course, it sometimes does turn out to be true. American has defaulted on its loans before. The nation issued a currency called the Continental to finance the Revolutionary War and after the War the Continental turned out to be worthless. People who held it were defrauded. America invented modern hyper-inflation along with democracy. In response, the 19th century saw the development of hard money attitudes, which were viewed as benevolent and pro-labor. In the twentieth century labor unions' leaders realized that they could advance themselves by advocating inflationary policies that benefit Wall Street and harm their membership. In no small part as a result, labor union membership has consistently fallen. Why should workers pay dues to support leaders who betray them?

The claim that America is too big to fail should seem absurd now that we have witnessed General Motors' failure. For much of my life, GM was the largest corporation in the world and few could have imagined its failure, at least until the mid 1970s. The claim that China and other countries "need us" may be true, but eventually some will wake up to the fact that the Emperor is a pauper and will pull out, leading to a dollar crisis.

Greek labor unions are striking. But one cannot derive water from a stone, and the irrational strikes will only make matters worse.

In response to mounting American and European instability, Marc Faber on Kitco radio recommends gold, US real estate, developing countries' stocks like India and Brazil and cash. Faber says that a crash in China cannot be ruled out so that there is no rush to go into developing countries' stocks. Also, US real estate may not have much further to fall in his opinion. He says up to twenty percent further. I'm not sure of that, but given Congress's commitment to prop up real estate and stock prices, he may be right. I doubt that real estate prices could be maintained were this a market economy. But that is true of all assets.

In the meantime I have begun to have thoughts of an exit strategy as I am concerned that the US will increasingly become totalitarian under Obama and the Democratic Party. Were I slightly wealthier I would buy land in the Bahamas. Unfortunately, on a professor's salary I have to be content with hard asset investments and my house. Without a stable monetary system and with a system of economic redistribution whereby the privileged benefit from Congress's and the states' theories of beneficence, which inevitably loot those who work hard and are criminal in substance, has the American dream died?

Star Tax Program Repealed

I just recieved this from Thomas and Judith Santopietro:

>This is an important matter that we were asked to forward.

Subject: STAR program
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:42:07 -0500

Pass this one on!!

In case you are not yet aware. Governor Paterson abolished the STAR tax rebate program.

Please take 30 seconds to sign the petition link (also below).

Pass this on to all your NYS friends!! We need to get our STAR program back!!

Star property rebate program

Hi Everyone: The New York State star rebate program was abolished in the last NY State budget. Below is a link to sign a petition to re-instate it. Please take a few minutes to sign this petition and forward this to all your friends in the state. thanks!

http://www.tax.state.ny.us/star/2008/

My response to Tom:

http://www.urbanelephants.com/index.php/component/content/article/64/918-democrats-repeal-patakis-star-school-tax-relief-program-senior-citizens-hardest-hit.html


Tom--I'm not sure of the answer here but the above blog says that Star may actually increase waste in the public schools because the taxes reduced by Star are increasing the income taxes and Star reduces voter resistance to school waste. I'm not sure that's true but I'm not sure that it's not. The Manhattan Institute that the author quotes tends to be pro-corporation rather than purely tax reduction oriented. Of course, if school prices go up and school taxes go down then the difference has to be made up by someone. So Star can't be reducing taxes overall, just shifting them from homeowners to renters and corporate tax payers.

Steve Levy for Governor

Phil Orenstein of Democracy Project has blogged in support of Steve Levy's candidacy for governor. According to the video below, Mr. Levy has a strong record in Nassau County. He is a Democrat who aims to run as a "post partisan" candidate. Academics coined the term "post modern" a generation ago and "post partisan" is indubitably a corollary. Indubitably.

I am not yet convinced that Mr. Levy is the candidate of choice. We need to ask more questions.

Mr. Levy's candidacy is controversial. Mike Long, the head of the Conservative Party, suggested in the New York Post yesterday that given the massive failure of the Democratic Party to manage the state's economy competently, the Republicans ought not nominate a Democrat. This is the very sort of thing I had previously feared from Republicrat Edward F. Cox. Also, the article reports allegations that there is a corrupt deal involving Edward F. Cox's son, Chris Cox, who like his father desires a nepotism deal, and Suffolk Republican Chair John Lavalle:

"There has long been a rumor that Cox, Levy and Suffolk Republican chair John LaValle have a domino-style deal going, with the main goal being to get Chris Cox nominated in his own seven-way primary in Suffolk. Ed Cox has strenuously denied it."

If so, this is not the sort of candidacy the Tea Party ought to support. We need clarification of Mr. Levy's relationship to Ed Cox and John Lavalle.

Which is not to detract from Levy's record. Levy's website says that he has delivered "six consecutive operating budgets, each with a General Fund tax freeze or tax cut." He says in the video that he has cut spending for two consecutive years. His website adds that he "has delivered three operating budgets with spending lower than the previous year's adopted levels -- a record that is unprecedented in Suffolk County and extraordinarily rare in any level of government anywhere."

In his blog, Orenstein points out that in his Op Ed in the New York Post Levy said "no" to:

"the exorbitant pay and pensions of the County police officers, who are the highest paid police force in the world, (which) shows he is one of the rare politicians with backbone. We need a courageous figure to govern a state with the nation’s most dysfunctional legislature. Could Levy be a ray of light for our troubled state on the verge of fiscal disaster?"

We'll see. So far, the jury is out.

Despite the allegations of insider shenanigans, according to the Daily News Levy has already taken the initiative to develop a relationship with the Tea Party. The Daily News writes that Levy will hold an informational video conference with New York's Tea Parties.

According to his site, Levy has called for a state of emergency because of New York's incompetently managed budget. In a year when there was deflation, the state increased spending by nine percent, according to Levy. New York voters are undoubtedly to blame, electing the same tax-and-spend Democrats like Ulster County's Kevin Cahill year after year. New Yorkers never saw a wasteful or corrupt Democratic Party scheme that they could not support. Newspapers like the Kingston Freeman in my county are also to blame, refusing to take any initiative in demanding fiscal responsibility and providing ongoing propaganda for the massive waste in Albany. Millions have left this state, and the remaining population is mostly on the dole, but what do the editors of the Freeman care? When Wall Street crumbles, which it will, there is going to be a serious problem, with greedy unions and corrupt contractors clawing at each other for state handouts that are no longer available. New Yorkers will, undoubtedly, blame everyone but their greedy selves.

I am concerned that I did not see a prominent statement on Mr. Levy's site of the two chief fiscal issues facing the state: (a) the badly mismanaged Medicaid system, whose waste likely amounts to in excess of 15% of the entire state budget (yes, it is fair to say that 15% of the entire New York State budget is attributable to Medicaid waste) and (b) the egregious handling of the state's unions, specifically the Service Employees International Union and the New York State Union of Teachers in facilitating massive waste. I can blame Democrats like Ulster County's Kevin Cahill for the waste, but the fact is that during 12 years of the Pataki administration things only got worse. Governor Pataki failed to live up to his mandate, failed to curtail Medicaid waste, failed to rein in the bloat associated with the SEIU and failed to rein in administrative waste in the schools. What plan does Mr. Levy have to offer?

McCain/Liberman Aim to Repeal Constitution

A friend with a Harvard law degree and a Columbia Ph.D. in the dismal science forwarded me this XPostFactoid link. With all of the horrific things going on with Democratic Party's destruction of health care and freedom, it is easy to overlook other issues. According to XPostFactoid McCain and Lieberman have put forward a bill called "The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010", which would effectively repeal a wide range of constitutional rights, to include habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence. Based on my brief review the bill does not exclude American citizens from its definition of "belligerent". Hence, any American citizen could be defined as a belligerent unless I am missing something. According to XPostFacto:

>The bill authorizes the President to establish an 'interagency team' to make a 'preliminary determination of the status' of an individual 'suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities.' That team will determine whether the suspect shall be accorded a preliminary designation as a 'high value detainee' (a.k.a. 'unprivileged enemy belligerent' -- the bill makes no coherent distinction between these terms). A final status determination is to be made by the Attorney General and Secretary of Defense; the President can only weigh in if these two disagree. Incredibly, the entire procedure from capture to final status determination is to be completed within 48 hours.

"The provision that removes all discretionary limits to this secret determination of status is in the Criteria for Designation of Individuals as High-Value Detainees. That section creates an initial impression that such "determinations" are subject to the rule of law by laying out specific criteria...But the final criterion (E) zooms to infinity: it is simply "Such other matters as the President considers appropriate...

"Thus any individual, whether a foreign national or a U.S. citizen, can be designated an 'unprivileged enemy belligerent,' forever denied access to civilian courts and subjected to indefinite detention 'without criminal charge and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners' -- that is, forever -- on the basis of such other matters as the President considers appropriate..."

The definition of "unprivileged enemy belligerent" in the bill is as follows:

>UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENT.—
The term ‘‘unprivileged enemy belligerent’’ means an individual (other than a privileged belligerent) who (A) has engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; (B) has purposely and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or C) was a part of al Qaeda at the time of capture.

Although the bill appears to refer to legitimate terrorists, it could be applied, at the president's discretion, to any US citizen, for instance, anyone who opposes health reform. For example, President Obama could say that anyone opposing health reform is materially supporting hostilities against the United States.

To avoid such a problem, the bill must be limited to non-citizens and illegal resident combatants. Any citizen or legal resident must be given due process. This would limit the authority of the president to military issues, which is appropriate.

It irritates me that I have in the past contributed to both McCain and Lieberman and they now propose a bill that permits the president to rescind citizens' basic legal rights. That is the approach used in China and Cuba. The threat of terrorism, while an important security concern, does not justify repeal of citizens' constitutional rights. At the same time, the president must have the authority to combat foreign terrorists or invaders. This can be accomplished by limiting the president's authority to combat foreign terrorists or invaders to foreigners and illegal residents.

Otherwise, XPostFacto's concerns are legitimate. The bill would open Pandora's box that much wider.