Addiction Intervention For Illinois

Illinois, we, your family and friends have gathered here to confront you about your addiction to government spending. It is hurting you and the people around you. By every definition, your have a behavioral addiction:

"a recurring compulsion condition whereby a person engages in a specific activity despite harmful consequences to the person's health, mental state, or social life.[4][5] Behavioral addiction is considered harmful or deviant if it results in negative consequences for the person addicted and those with whom they associate."

I know that you keep saying that you can stop anytime, but for years, you have been spending way beyond your means to the point were you have billions in unpaid bills, billions in debt and even more in unfunded liabilities, yet you are unable to make serious budget cuts. You blame this on everyone but yourself, you blame this on "revenue issues," when Illinois has among the highest tax burden in the country. Enough is enough! We are going to cut you off until you are ready to face your problems!

Illinois Is On 'Verge Of Financial Disaster,' State Treasurer Says

llinois is "on the verge of a financial disaster" as payments on the state's debt have skyrocketed, Treasurer Dan Rutherford said on Monday.

Illinois faces an estimated $45 billion in principal and interest payments on its outstanding debt over the next 25 years, up nearly four-fold from the $12 billion owed in 2002, according to a position paper from the Republican treasurer, who took office in January.

Adding to the state's debt burden is $140 billion in unfunded pension and retiree health-care liabilities and $8 billion of currently unpaid bills, the paper said.

"Every household in Illinois is responsible for the repayment of $10,000 to reimburse our bondholders in the coming years," Rutherford said in a statement, adding that unpaid bills and pension and health-care liabilities would boost that total to $42,000 per household.

Illinois' widening structural deficit, huge unfunded pension liability, inability to pay the state's bills on time, cascading bond ratings and its propensity to borrow its way out of financial problems have made the state a major worry in the $2.9 trillion U.S. municipal bond market.

"We need to cut our spending and break our unsustainable borrowing cycle before we realize a further financial disaster," Rutherford said.

Even with a big income tax rate hike passed in January, Illinois is still spending about $5 billion more a year than it receives in revenue, according to the position paper, which also said the state's low bond ratings have resulted in higher borrowing costs compared with other states.

Governor Pat Quinn has been pushing the legislature for anywhere from $2 billion to $8.75 billion of bond authority to pay off bills and other obligations incurred this fiscal year.

His office said in a statement on Monday that this plan is not new borrowing, but a restructuring of debt the state owes to vendors and service providers who have been waiting months for payments.

"Governor Quinn is 100 percent committed to making good on all bills due and feels restructuring debt the state already owes at attractive rates is the least costly option for taxpayers in order to address this bill backlog," the statement said.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Brief Thoughts on Human Nature & Political Philosophy

While I share the progressive dislike of former president GW Bush, I disagree with the source of their sentiments. Their concerns were not that Mr. Bush so expanded the size of the state, but rather he was the "wrong helmsman." Most hoped for a leader who could utilize the largess of the federal government to promote social and economic transformation, whereas I as a conservative am skeptical of the "ship itself." This brings us to an underlying difference in the ways in which liberal and conservative thought tends to view man. Historically, liberals like Jean-Jacques Rousseau have viewed man either as a tabula rasa, a blank slate shaped by socialization or being born good, but corrupted by society. Conservatives have tended to believe more in a set human nature with innate vices. For this reason, liberals have been more inclined to support a powerful state that pursues the "perfection of mankind" or in the case of Che Guevara, the creation of a "new man". And conservatives have sought to limit the folly unleashed when flawed men with power seek to perfect the social and economic lives of other flawed men and communities. The great conservative commentator Jack Hunter artfully expresses these sentiments in this brief piece, in which he reserves his harshest criticism for neoconservatives who he refers to as:

 "...a collection of trigger happy John Lennons who continue to imagine a middle east that will happily embrace American values at the point of the gun, that in Iraq and now Afghanistan the scenario has yet to play out hasn't seem to deter the right wing utopians that continue to champion it."
 Here are some other excerpts that most caught my attention:

"Grandiose liberal efforts do not work not because they are simply led by the wrong kind of men, because they are lead by men period."

"Multiculturalism is well intentioned, yet is seems ever time different cultures cohabit it creates more friction than friendship."

"I've been uncomfortable with the term conservative for some of the reasons that I've already mentioned, also because so many big government Republican hacks have so damaged the term...after all GW Bush called himself a conservative, yet no other popular label better describes my philosophy, I believe in limited government primarily because I do not want other flawed men who inevitably create so many flawed systems, programs and bureaucratic schemes to have that much power over me...I am screwed up enough as it is."

Liberals seem to believe that man is inherently good and the larger the collective effort, the quicker humans can evolve tending ever closer to earthly perfection. I believe that individuals can be and many are good people despite man's overall flawed nature which does not evolve and can never be perfected on this earth. Some might find this pessimistic view of humanity depressing, but its actually quite liberating. Those who keep wondering when we will eradicate racism, sexism and religious strife often drive themselves bonkers with their futile efforts. The only way to truly due away with such problems is to eradicate man altogether as ethnic attachments, differences between the sexes and even yearning for G-d are significant constant aspects of the human experience. and that we often become jealous or nasty about such differences is also unfortunately part of our makeup."

"Conservatism recognizes man's flaws and seek to do the best with the reality at hand. Liberalism tries in vain to create its own reality and ideal, never taking into account the flawed nature of the material that it seeks to work with."

"That the ridiculously large government that we suffer under today had to  circumvent our nation's founding document at every turn to become so powerful is no accident...And seeking a return to constitutional government is much more than some cheap conservative catch phrase. Though it might seem contradictory, being a conservative in America necessarily means being a radical, because any serious attempt to actually stuff our modern federal government back into its constitutional box, a colossal unprecedented reversal of more than a century and a half of government expansion would be nothing short of a revolution."

"Will this ever happen, perhaps not, perhaps I am being utopian thinking that a return to constitutional government is even possible. Yet as liberals continue to argue that the solution to our problems is to place even more power into even fewer men, I will continue to argue for fewer laws restrained powers and smaller government, so when men do their inevitable worse we can at least minimize the damage."

Government Fundamentalists III

Government fundamentalism is most apparent in discussion of education, with the most common refrain being "thou must direct more and more resources and control to the federal department of education if thy want education to improve." A quick glance at the numbers will show that this belief is no more empirically sound than a belief in creationism or leprechauns.* Federal spending on education has steadily increased and surged under the (so called) conservative administration of GW Bush, with nothing to show for it.

*No offense should be taken by my religious readers. I do not consider a belief in the Judeo-Christian G-d to be unreasonable, rather I merely question the literal interpretation of the creation accounts present in religious texts.

Governor Quinn Issues Order 66

Governor Quinn (D - IL) has raised income taxes by 66% (from 3% to 5%) and corporate taxes by 68.5% (from 4.8% to 7%). I take a minority position among conservatives: in light of the $15 Billion deficit that Illinois faces, this was a necessary step. However, I do not look at this as a "brave act of fiscal responsibility" on the part of Illinois politicians, because their gross fiscal irresponsibility is what put us in this impasse in the first place. And before Mr. Quinn "feeds the beast" with even more of the fruits of labor of Illinois families and businesses, the proper course of action would have been to first enact major budget cuts, as well as political and pension reforms. If we are lucky, we will keep the businesses that we currently have, but rest assured, no sane businessman would choose to relocate to the high tax and spend state of Illinois.

To those who are not nerdy enough to be familiar with "Order 66," it is a reference to Star Wars.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/01/pat-quinn-illinois-tax-hikes.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0113/Illinois-tax-hike-Will-businesses-flee-to-Wisconsin

Post Office Shows Where U.S. Is Headed

Pictured Above: A Bloated & Inefficient Postal Service

Kevin Hassett is 100% correct - the post office represents the fundamental public paradigm: rising costs coupled with deteriorating services. Of course there are many poorly run private businesses, but the difference is that without public subsidies they face two options: reform or go out of business. This should be kept in mind when advocating for a greater government presence in health care and other sectors of the economy.


Post Office Shows Where U.S. Is Headed: Kevin Hassett



By Kevin Hassett

Oct 11, 2010 3:07 PM CT Bloomberg Opinion

(Corrects fourth paragraph to indicate billion.)

To understand where the advocates of big government will take this country, look at the U.S. Postal Service.

Start with the fact the Postal Service is a great jobs machine, employing 712,000 people at an average annual compensation, including wages and benefits, of $83,000. And those hefty pay checks are a great source of political contributions for Democrats. In 2010, almost 90 percent of the approximately $4 million contributed to campaigns by postal unions went to Democrats. Take a guess where much of the opposition to reform comes from.

But high-priced labor, which accounts each year for about 80 percent of costs, leads to high-priced mail services, and even higher costs for taxpayers. Over the past 10 years, the price of a stamp has risen from 33 cents to 44 cents, exceeding the inflation rate at a time when computerization should have been leading to big cost savings. Even so the Postal Service lost about $6 billion this year and by its own projections it will drop a cool $238 billion over the next decade. By 2020, the last year in the projections, the Postal Service will be losing $33 billion annually.

If its losses level off and it continues to lose that much each year, the Postal Service will lose $550 billion from 2010 to 2030. If the growth rate of losses projected over the next decade continues until 2030, it will lose more than $1 trillion in that span. The fiscal black hole that the Postal Service has become is no small potatoes, even in government terms.

Broken Model

In April 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report that analyzed the operations of the Postal Service and concluded that, “USPS’s business model is not viable due to USPS’s inability to reduce costs sufficiently.”

A 2007 GAO study looked at the Postal Service’s use of facilities, and concluded that, “A 2005 contractor assessment of 651 randomly selected postal facilities revealed that two- thirds of these facilities were in less than “acceptable” condition, including 22 percent that were rated “poor.” Inspection of one facility in Dallas led the inspector to recommend that the building be immediately evacuated.

The decaying buildings provide a handy visual clue to the quality of service. Unfortunately, we don’t know how bad the service is, because the Postal Service collects data on its own service quality, but it refuses to make the data public. Isn’t it nice that your tax dollars pay for data that you’re not allowed to see?

It’s in the Mail

The Postal Service’s ability to lose mail is, of course, legendary. Here is an example of how bad it has become: last week the American Postal Workers Union had to postpone their national election of officers because so many of the ballots were lost in the mail.

The Postal Service is able to survive because U.S. law protects it with not one but two monopolies. First, it is the only entity that is allowed to deliver many types of mail. There are a few exceptions that have allowed FedEx Corp., United Parcel Service Inc. and bicycle carriers to flourish, but low- cost, high-volume letters are walled off from competition from other providers.

Second, the Postal Service actually has a legal monopoly over your privately owned mailbox. You bought it, but if another company starts to use it as a receptacle for letters, they are violating federal law.

Legal Cover

This organization has withstood political pressure for some time, in part because Postal Service advocates have argued that the monopoly is necessary because of the national objective of providing universal service. If we want to have everyone on the postal grid, they say, then the grid will be impossible to support with private markets.

This argument, of course, is specious. It would be trivial to fully privatize postal delivery with guaranteed universal service. We need only write regulations that require firms that compete for postal business to provide universal service.

The Democrats will never let us do that, of course. The political might of the public employee unions is just too great.

As with the stimulus, the American left finds itself far to the left of even the statist Europeans. Countless other nations have recognized the possible large benefits from privatizing the postal business. In 2005, Cornell University economist R. Richard Geddes reviewed the academic literature on postal reform for the distinguished Journal of Economic Perspectives, and reported that “comprehensive postal reform has been ongoing in other countries for decades.” Countries that have introduced major reforms include Germany and Sweden.

A U.S. Gain

Reforms tended to have, he reported, three characteristics. First, they would “corporatize” or privatize postal operations. Second, reforms have tended to reduce delivery monopolies. And third, regulators have guaranteed the continuation of universal service.

The possibility for real gain in the U.S. is enormous. The Postal Service owns or operates 33,000 facilities nationwide, and owns 219,000 vehicles. If we were to auction it off to private investors, the bids would likely be enormous. FedEx and UPS, for example, have a combined market capitalization of almost $100 billion. Given that, how much might a private bidder offer for the right to start a business with the Postal Service’s footprint? The $100 billion mark might be a good first guess.

Which means we have two paths to chose between. On one, we continue to operate the Postal Service, and watch it lose hundreds of billions of dollars. Along the other, we sell it to a private contractor, avoid those losses while cashing a nice big check.

If the Tea Party activists want to fix the country, they should start by privatizing the Postal Service. If we can’t fix that, then it is hard to imagine how we will ever fix anything.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-11/check-the-mailbox-to-see-where-u-s-is-headed-commentary-by-kevin-hassett.html

Race To The Fiscal Bottom (MUST READ)

David Stockman: The U.S. Is In A "Race To The Fiscal Bottom"

By Jennifer DePaul, The Fiscal Times

Oct. 6, 2010

It’s been nearly three decades since David Stockman was the brash and brilliant enfant terrible of President Reagan’s White House, but he hasn’t mellowed with age.

Stockman, Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985, initially became famous for his zeal in slashing government spending on almost everything except defense. Less government and lower taxes, he fervently believed, would ultimately mean more prosperity for everyone. But he will be best remembered for confessing, in an interview with William Greider for The Atlantic Monthly, his disillusionment with the “supply-side” economic policies that led to soaring deficits under Reagan. “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers,’’ he declared, along with many other criticisms that nearly got him fired.

Today, Stockman is working on a book about the financial crisis, and he recently shared his thoughts with The Fiscal Times about some of today’s most pressing fiscal issues. No surprise — he’s as brutally candid as ever.

The Fiscal Times (TFT): What should the president and Congress do about the Bush tax cuts this year?

David Stockman (DS): The two parties are in a race to the fiscal bottom to see which one can bury our children and grandchildren deeper in debt. The Republicans were utterly untruthful when they recently pledged no tax increases for anyone, anytime, ever. The Democrats are just as bad — running their usual campaign of political terror on social security and other entitlements while loudly exempting all except the top 2 percent of taxpayers from paying more for the massively underfunded government they insist we need.

The fact is, the Bush tax cuts were unaffordable when enacted a decade ago. Now, two unfinanced wars later, and after a massive Wall Street bailout and trillion-dollar stimulus spending spree, it is nothing less than a fiscal travesty to continue adding $300 billion per year to the national debt. This is especially true since these tax cuts go to the top 50 percent of households, which can get by, if need be, with the surfeit of consumption goods they accumulated during the bubble years. So Congress should allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for everyone. By doing nothing, the government would be committing its first act of fiscal truth-telling in decades. In effect, we undertook a national leveraged buyout, raising total credit market debt to $52 trillion, which represented a 3.6X leverage ratio against national income or GDP.

TFT: Should the government provide more stimulus for the economy, or cut spending to bring the deficit down?

DS: We are not in a conventional business cycle recovery, so stimulus is futile and just adds needlessly to the $9 trillion of Treasury paper already floating dangerously around world financial markets. Instead, after 40 years of profligate accumulation of public and private debt, and reckless money-printing by the Fed, we had an economic crash landing, which left us with an enduring structural breakdown, not just a cyclical downturn.

In effect, we undertook a national leveraged buyout, raising total credit market debt to $52 trillion which represented a 3.6X leverage ratio against national income or GDP. By contrast, during the 110 years prior to 1980, our aggregate leverage hugged closely to a far more modest ratio at 1.5 times national income.

The only solution is a long period of debt deflation, downsizing and economic rehabilitation, including a sustained downshift in consumption and corresponding rise in national savings.

And a key element of the latter is a drastic reduction in government dis-savings through spending cuts and tax increases — and these measures need to start right now. Keynesian policymakers who say wait for the midterms to address the deficit are like battleship admirals: They are fighting the last war with the same failed strategy that gave rise to our current predicament.

TFT: Do you see the work of President Obama’s deficit commission as important or a waste of time?

DS: The deficit commission is a complete waste of time. The nation has become fiscally ungovernable because the fiscal policy of both parties is based on what is essentially the Big Lie. The earnest remonstrations of the commission’s report will be lost in the deafening partisan rancor which is certain to swell after the coming election.

TFT: You spent many years as a public official. What do you consider your greatest contribution?

DS: For a flickering moment I helped revive a vision of small government based on low taxes, the denial of weak fiscal claims rather than weak clients, and social progress through liberation of the nation’s entrepreneurial endowments and energies. But that vision has been subsequently crushed by 30 years of fiscal profligacy, warfare state adventurism and crony capitalist policies championed by the lobbies of K Street, the financiers of Wall Street and the farmers, homebuilders, energy producers and sick-care companies of Main Street. After the abomination of the Bush/Paulson bailout of the big banks, the state has no boundaries whatsoever. So fiscal policy is now just a fiscal food fight.

TFT: What’s your biggest regret from your years as President Reagan’s budget director — was it talking to Bill Greider for the Atlantic article?

DS: I do not regret talking to Bill Greider at all. My alleged “confessions” were inadvertent, but in historical hindsight the article was just the wakeup call that was needed at that delusionary hour. By the fall of 1981, we had just gone through an orgy of tax-cutting which reduced the revenue base by a staggering 5 percent of GDP, far more than Reagan had asked for, due to the pile-on of goodies for oil and gas, property developers, equipment vendors, homebuilders and scores of other special interests. At the same time, domestic spending had been cut by less than 1 percent of GDP and even that was being offset several times over by an explosion of defense spending. It was a formula for fiscal catastrophe. Grieder’s piece colorfully dramatized this condition, and helped trigger a slow march of policy — the tax increases of 1982-84 and the slowdown in the defense buildup — backward from the precipice.

TFT: With the midterms just a month away, do you think the GOP will gain as many seats as some are predicting, and if so, will that doom Obama's agenda?

DS: The Republicans will undoubtedly gain a lot of seats, if not congressional majorities. But the main result of that will be not only to doom the Obama agenda, which deserves to be stopped, but also any chance of addressing the fiscal issue until April 2013 at the earliest. Unfortunately, since we are in a chronic debt deflation, the GDP deflator is heading toward zero and real growth may limp along at 1 to 2 percent. That means that money GDP is growing at the shockingly low rate of 2 to 3 percent, or not even $40 billion per month. By contrast, the built-in deficit will result in $100 billion of bond issuance each and every month — meaning that through at least the spring of 2013, our national debt will be growing two or three times faster than the economy. So we are rolling the dice big time in a global bond market which is now a volcano of leveraged speculation and massive front-running of the expected multitrillion quantitative easing 2.0 (i.e. debt monetization) by the Fed. In this environment, one hiccup and it’s game over.

TFT: Your assessment of the Obama's presidency at this point?

DS: Obama’s presidency is a profound disappointment. So far, he’s proven that when Republican’s start elective wars, Democrats can’t end them; when Republicans empty the Treasury, Democrats can’t replenish it; when Republicans put a middle-class destroying money printer at the head of the Fed, Democrats reappoint him; and when the Republicans unleash an orgy of dangerous speculation on Wall Street, Democrats pass a contentless, 2,300 page, enabling act which will do nothing to protect Main Street from another financial meltdown, even as it keeps K Street fully employed.

TFT: What will happen to health care if the Republicans become the majority party?

DS: Health care accounts for 17 percent of GDP and is the dysfunctional heartland of crony capitalism. They only thing which will change if the GOP becomes the majority is that the RNC will collect more of the vigorishes.

This article originally appeared at The Fiscal Times and is republished here with permission.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/david-stockman-us-is-in-race-to-the-fiscal-bottom-2010-10#ixzz17x1dEFug

The Great Reckoning

We are very, very deep in debt, yet the most modest proposals of spending cuts or social security reform sends Democrats into hysterics and very few Republicans recognize the need for to increase taxes. I predict that neither party will take serious measures and sooner or later we will face a great reckoning, a severe correction brought on by unsustainable economic and social structures. The size and scope of government with sharply contract and the many individuals, groups and industries that have become utterly dependent on the grandiosity of the state will be forced to dramatically change their behavior. Without heavy state subsidies, social pathologies like single motherhood will become a luxury that few will be able to afford. The sharp contraction of the welfare state will limit opportunities of extreme individuality and force individuals to turn to family, community and (gasp) churches. This great reckoning will even be felt in the philosophical realm, progressive positions that treat economics as arbitrary, wealth as a given, individuals as victims of, rather than creators of their social and economic realities will be increasingly untenable. And faced with growing scarcity, intellectual and cultural relativism will become luxuries few can afford. Stay tuned; exciting times lay ahead.

July 31, 2010

What Can't the U.S. Afford?

By Jack Curtis

Most know that the country is broke, paying its bills with borrowed or magic money under an overhang of debt nobody's talking about repaying. The politicians who lead the country while repeating that this is somebody else's fault keep spending without mentioning what will have to be given up for a balanced budget. In fact, Congressional Democrats have so far refused to even provide a budget for this cycle, likely a response to the coming November elections. But 2010's plan is known and it's reasonable to expect 2011 to be similar.

Spending was budgeted to exceed income for a deficit of $1.17 trillion; reality now is $1.47 trillion per the Office of Management and Budget. That's what must stop to balance the budget. Here's the budgeted 2010 spending with percentages, in billions:

Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid $1,447.7B 40.76%
Health, Veterans, Housing, Education, Community Svc. $226.5B 6.38%
Defense $663.7B 18.69%
Interest on National Debt $164.0B 4.62%
Transportation, Energy, Environment $109.3B 3.08%
State Department, Foreign Aid etc. $51.7B 1.46%
Homeland Security, Justice $66.6B 1.88%
Agriculture, Commerce, Labor $53.1B 1.49%
Corps of Engineers, Nat'l Infrastructure Bank, NASA $28.8B 0.81%
Science, Small Business $7.7B 0.22%
Interior, GSA, Disaster Costs $23.6B 0.66%
Treasury $13.3B 0.37%
Other Programs required by law $571.0B 16.08%
Other Discretionary $124.8B 3.51%
TOTAL SPENDING $3,551.9B 100%


The $1.47 trillion cutback needed to balance the budget is about 41 percent of the total; neither party's politicians want to talk details about cutting that much from federal programs that directly affect so many voters, especially approaching an election. But unless taxpayers are willing to pay a great deal more to government, the cutting must be accomplished before too much longer; a country can't overspend its income indefinitely just as individuals can't. In billions for easier comparison to the table, the needed spending reduction is: $1,470.0B.

Together, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Defense (Iraq, Afghanistan etc.) are almost 60% of the spending; everything else is insignificant by comparison. The 16% other category covers many smaller programs that shouldn't be considered as a lump.

The politicians of both parties have created the problem by promising more than the economy can provide as older users of promised benefits increase and new young, well-educated, employed workers to pay for the benefits decrease. The problem is complicated by the declining family earnings brought on by globalization (another government product) and by Democratic policies that add costly services like ObamaCare, raise living costs like green energy programs or increase existing benefits like endless (until after elections, anyway) unemployment insurance extensions.

The unmentionable (by either party) truth is, federal spending has to be cut by 41% to balance the budget and that ignores the equally needed cuts at state and local levels for similar reasons. Consider for a moment the effect on a family of four with a $150,000 mortgage, $9,000 credit card balances and typical car payments if their combined wages of $80,000 were suddenly permanently reduced to $47,200. Government, unlike the family, can't receive absolution and a new start from a bankruptcy court.

Combined federal, state and local government debt (owed by taxpayers) is nearly $150,000 per taxpayer and rising. To pay that off over 30 years at 5% would require payments of about $805 per month per taxpayer. For a two taxpayer family, it's $1,610. That 41% spending reduction doesn't provide for debt repayment so spending will have to shrink further. Then, there's the fact that both Social Security and Medicare taxes are no longer sufficient to support the costs of the programs. That isn't provided for either. The real spending cut needed to balance the budget is considerably more than 41%. That's what the politicians are looking at and refusing to face because after all, it's their programs and promises that have produced the situation, something they cannot admit.

The U.S. probably can't afford nearly half of what it's buying with borrowed and magic money; the income to pay for it isn't there. When the flow of fools' gold stops, the people directly and indirectly tied to that flow of fiat and borrowed money will be unemployed and those who depend on their spending will, too. That is a lot of unemployment to add; there will be no money for unemployment benefits on that scale. A balanced budget will not fund military superpower, let alone foreign wars and it will not fund retirement and medical care on the current scale, forget the additions from ObamaCare.

Great Britain has replaced its Labour Party with its Conservatives; they are shutting off spending and cutting back, the opposite of the U.S. Democrats. The Brits are decentralizing their struggling National Health Service while the U.S. adds ObamaCare.

The Democrats have run out of other peoples' money to fund their promises; the Republicans have run out of money to support superpowerism. When they admit that, much of their campaign funding will dry up along with the believability of their promises. So they will not admit it, just as they don't admit that unemployment is about 21% rather than the jiggered numbers they publish (See: shadowstats.com).

Every level of government is raising taxes, sucking more money from the only productive parts of the economy. The impact of the increases has yet to be felt; it will be severe. And the Democrats' leaders want much more of that, though some of their following is losing enthusiasm. What the Republicans want remains unsaid; something that, if one thinks about it, is scary. Their leadership and the Tea Parties have not accommodated but neither appears readier than Democrats to recognize the reality of a nearly 50% percent spending cut. No more do most citizens, but from the 2010 budget model, that's the price of living within the country's means. It's what the U.S. can afford. Continuing to ignore reality is what the U.S. can't afford.

Questions on Obamacare

Unless supporters of ObamaCare can provide satisfactory answers to the following questions, they should be forced to wear dunce caps in public:

1. Government run entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare have massive unfunded liabilities, in other words they are fiscally unsustainable. What leads you to believe that ObamaCare will be any different? Is it not absurd to undertake a whole other entitlement program while Social Security and Medicare are so deep in the red?

2. An underlying problem in private and public health care is sky-rocketing costs. What leads you to believe that ObamaCare will be able to address this issue without rationing? And if ObamaCare does not address this issue, will rising costs not make this program unsustainable?

3. ObamaCare will add at least $1 trillion dollars to our record national debt. Would it not be more reasonable to first cut the deficit (by at least $1 trillion) before we so drastically expand government spending?

Illinois Governor Patt Quinn

Pat Quinn Being Sworn In As The Governor of Illinois

"I Patrick J Quinn solemnly swear to accelerate the exodus of Americans from Illinois (net loss of 736,000 in the last decade) by raising income taxes by 50% (from 3.0% to 4.5%). Realizing that no single policy can ensure success, I will work with state, county and city officials to maintain our ranking as the state with the 11th highest property taxes in the county."

"And I solemnly swear to accelerate the exodus of jobs (175,000 in 2008) from the State of Illinois by raising business taxes by 66.7% percent (4.8% to 7.2%). In doing so I will ensure that we sink even lower in the rank of job creation (45th out of 50 states over the last 6 years)."

"I promise that throughout my reign as governor I will not blame our deficit on the 68% per capita increase in spending that we witnessed between 1998 - 2008, instead blaming it on a short fall in tax revenue, even though tax revenue increased by $7 billion between 1998 - 2008. And I will protect the great accomplishments of my predecessor Rod Blagojevich, such as:

-expanding Medicaid eligibility to 400% of poverty from 185%. So, families with incomes of up to $80,000 now can get taxpayer-supported health care.

-which has resulted in a 62.96% expansion of the state's medicaid rolls (from 1.7 to 2.7 million) between 2000 - 2008.

-allowing unfunded liabilities for the pension program to nearly double over the decade to $70 billion, in part because the state has routinely robbed the pension fund to finance current programs, much like the federal government raids social security.

-prompting a lawsuit by the Department of Justice by instituting a law that prohibited Illinois employers from using the E-Verify system."

Governor Quinn ended his speech by offering heartfelt thanks to the Illinois Electorate for the "mindless devotion that they have shown to the Democratic Party and the big government branch of the Republican Party..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123759961761001591.html