Obamanomics in action: Private sector pay at all-time low, welfare handouts at all-time high

"This what change looks like." - Barack Obama

From USA Today, as reported on Ben Hart's "Escape Tyranny." Click here for the full story.

America's slide to a welfare state has been put on greased skids under the Obama administration. Income from the private sector has nosedived to an all-time historical low, while "income" from government welfare benefits has exploded to an all-time historical high under Obama.

And liberals are tickled about it. "It's the system working as it should," crows liberal economist Paul van der Water.

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds.

At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

Those records reflect a long-term trend accelerated by the recession and the federal stimulus program to counteract the downturn. The result is a major shift in the source of personal income from private wages to government programs.

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes...

...The shift in incomeshows that the federal government's stimulus efforts have been effective, says Paul Van de Water, an economist at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

"It's the system working as it should," Van de Water says. Government is stimulating growth and helping people in need, he says. As the economy recovers, private wages will rebound, he says.

Economist Veronique de Rugy of the free-market Mercatus Center at George Mason University says the riots in Greece over cutting benefits to close a huge budget deficit are a warning about unsustainable income programs.

Economist David Henderson of the conservative Hoover Institution says a shift from private wages to government benefits saps the economy of dynamism. "People are paid for being rather than for producing," he says.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Obama blasts lack of controls on Internet, much like...

Barack Obama lashed out at citizen journalism in a college commencement address Sunday, in comments that sounded strangely familiar. From this morning's AFP wire story:

US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media...

..."You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia...

...He bemoaned the fact that "some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.

"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."

Sound familiar? From Reuters, Mar. 14:

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who is criticized by media freedom groups, called on Saturday for regulation of the Internet and singled out a website that he said falsely reported the murder of one of his ministers.

"The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done. Every country has to apply its own rules and norms," Chavez said...

...Social networking web sites like Twitter and Facebook are very popular among Venezuela's opposition movements to organize protests against the government. Chavez has complained that people use such sites to spread unfounded rumors...

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Will the media breathlessly report on this gender gap?

I would think not.

Radio host Michael Graham, writing in today's Wall Street Journal. Click here for the full column:

If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. And if you've been to a tea party, you know Momma ain't happy at all.

Forget "angry white men." In the male-dominated world of conservative politics, the tea party stands out as a movement of energized and organized women. In particular, moms...

...a recent Quinnipiac poll of voters found a majority of tea party supporters—55%—are women. To put that in perspective, only 48% of women voted for George W. Bush in 2004. And just two years ago, President Obama won 56% of the female vote...

...When I asked Christen Varley, the Boston tea party leader, she said it's because moms tend to be "the CEO's of our households. We do the shopping, bill paying, budgeting, etc. We know less money means less freedom. Maybe if the president and Congress did the grocery shopping, they'd know why we're mad."

Dana Loesch, talk host and co-founder of the St. Louis tea party, believes the tea party movement is the modern conservative version of "the personal is political."

"Motherhood itself has become a political act," says Ms. Loesch. "And the tea parties are an extension of our need as moms to protect the future for our children."

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Congress loans Greece $6.8 billion...borrowed from China

From Senator Jim DeMint, run by The Daily Caller. Click here to read the full column.

Congress didn’t learn their lesson after the $700 billion failed bank bailout and let world leaders shake down U.S taxpayers for international bailout money at the G-20 conference in April 2009. G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors asked the United States, the IMF’s largest contributor, for a whopping $108 billion to rescue bankers around the world and the Obama Administration quickly obliged.

Rather than pass it as stand-alone legislation, President Obama asked Congress to fold the $108 billion into a war-spending bill to send money to our troops...

...Right now, 17 percent of the IMF funding pool that the $40 billion bailout is being drawn from comes from U.S. taxpayers. If that ratio holds true, that means American taxpayers are paying for $6.8 billion of the Greek bailout. Although the $108 billion extra that Congress approved for the IMF in 2009 hasn’t yet gone into effect, you can bet that once it does Greek bankers will come to the IMF again with their hat in hand. And, if other European Union countries see free money up for grabs they could ask the IMF for bailouts when they get into trouble, too. If we’ve learned anything from the Wall Street bailouts it’s that just one bailout is never enough.

To hide the bailout from Americans already angry with the $700 billion bank bailout, Congress classified it as an “expanded credit line.” The Congressional Budget Office only scored it as $5 billion because IMF agreed to give the United States a promissory note for the rest of the bill...

...Of course, money isn’t free and there are member nations of the IMF that won’t be in a hurry to pay it back. Three state sponsors of terrorism, Iran, Syria and Sudan, are a part of the IMF. Iran participates in the IMF’s day-to-day activities as a member of its executive board.

If the failed bank bailout and stimulus bill wasn’t enough to prove to Americans the kind of misguided, destructive spending that goes on in Washington this will: The Democrat Congress, aided by a few Republicans, used a war spending bill to send bailout money to an international fund that’s partially-controlled by our enemies.

Greece collapsed because it pursued a massive welfare entitlement system funded by runaway spending on lavish private and public employee benefits and a government-directed health care system -- all policies pursued by Democrats.

So who will bail us out when Democrats cause our collapse?

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Letter to the editor - Leesburg Today

In his Apr. 19 response to local resident Debora Lavin attacking programs aimed at helping the incarcerated, local activist Jonathan Weintraub inaccurately characterizes a lawsuit brought against the state of Iowa by an activist group that hopes to outlaw public expressions of religious faith.

Weintraub’s creative wording and only partial retelling of the case seems intended to mislead the reader. The material he apparently drew his information from never uses “prosecuted” to describe a routine First Amendment challenge. Having successfully sued one government body and currently suing another on First Amendment grounds, I have never used the term “prosecuted” to describe such suits as it would mislead newspaper readers.

And while Weintraub made sure to quote the initial 2006 U.S. District Court injunction he never mentioned the appeals court ruling just months later tossing it out and allowing the program to operate. That decision was made by former United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and two respected appellate judges, Judges Roger L. Wollman and Duane Benton.

While Weintraub attempts to paint a lavish fictionalized portrait of a vengeful federal prosecutor striking down those Weintraub disagrees with in a scene out of a Hollywood movie, the reality is the highly-regarded program was in fact upheld by a former Supreme Court justice and two respected federal judges, and PFM still provides much-needed assistance to Iowa’s prison inmates.

For yet another week, Weintraub’s colorful conspiracy theories and attacks on those different than he prove to be more subterfuge than substance.

Donny Ferguson
Alexandria

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Today in History: Legislators demand more pi

On this day (May 5) in 1897, the Indiana House of Representatives passed a bill by Democrat State Rep. Taylor I. Record changing pi to 3.2. Indiana schools could use pi for free, but anyone else using pi in a math equation could have to pay royalties to Dr. Edwin Goodwin, a Taylor constituent who developed it.

The bill was headed to passage in the Senate when a mathematics professor who happened to be in the Capitol was shown the bill by a proud legislator. After coaching state senators on the idiocy of what they were doing, it was tabled and never passed.

(HT to Lawrence Reed)

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com