Reflections From a Murky Pond

It’s Not Real Money Now, Is It?

Democrats in Congress – all of whom voted “Bah Humbug” on the tax cut bill which President Trump described as a Christmas gift to the American taxpayers – and various of their more strident constituencies have boldly stated that a $1000 – $2000 tax cut wasn’t real money to poor and middle-class American families.

The funny thing is that $1,000 a year, or about $40 a paycheck, was real money back in 2011 when Obama lambasted House Republicans for refusing to extend the payroll tax cut.

Ending the payroll tax cut will cost the typical family making $50,000 a year about $1,000 a year, which is a lot of money for struggling families. President Obama explained today:

Our failure to do this could have effects not just on families but on the economy as a whole. It’s not a game for the average family, who doesn’t have an extra 1,000 bucks to lose. It’s not a game for somebody who’s out there looking for work right now, and might lose his house if unemployment insurance doesn’t come through. It’s not a game for the millions of Americans who will take a hit when the entire economy grows more slowly because these proposals aren’t extended.

That $1,000 a year works out to about $40 a paycheck that families won’t have to spend or save. Although opponents of the payroll tax cut might say $40 isn’t much, we know that’s not the case.

— Barack Obama
What Does $40 Mean to You?

It sure seems that $1000 – $2000 a year was really real money when Obama was President. Back then, it seemed to mean a whole lot to a lot of people in every state in our country. It’s just not real money now when it’s the GOP giving it back to the people, at least not in the minds of the Left and their politicians.

Tags: America | Congress | Democrats | Economy | Hypocrisy | Liberals | Money | Panic | Politics | Progressives | Republicans | Stupidity | Tax Cuts | Taxes

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2017 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

“Hillary-ian” or some more grammar-positive version thereof should be added to the lexicon as an adjective denoting unparallelled and/or unrivaled hypocrisy and chutzpah.

It’s My Turn! And I Am A Vagina!

At her first official campaign event, held at Kirkwood Community College in Monticello, ID, Clinton identified campaign finance reform as one of several pillars of her 2016 presidential campaign.

We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all — even if it takes a constitutional amendment.

— Hillary Clinton

She proclaimed this mere days after announcing her latest candidacy and stating that she was looking to raise as much as $2.5 billion to fund her latest bid to be POTUS.

To put that in perspective and context, in 2008 Obama spent $748 million vs McCain’s $352 million, and in 2012 Obama spent $722 million vs. Romney’s $450 million. Indeed, the totals expenditures by all candidates were approximately $1.68 billion and $1.33 billion respectively in the total course of the 2008 and 2012 election cycles.

So Hillary is looking to garner and spend in this election approximately 188% of the money that all the candidates together spent in the last presidential election.

But don’t worry! Hillary, once she’s had her turn, is committed to campaign finance reform and getting money out of politics.

Tags: 2016 Elections | America | Campaign Finances | Clinton | Democrats | FEC | Hillary | Hypocrisy | Idaho | Money | PACs

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2015 at 9:28 am and is filed under 2016 Election, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

OK, as all students of real and accurate American history know, Big Labor, i.e., labor unions, have always had a complex and often antagonistic relationship with Blacks. This has changed little over the last century. The only change has been the unions choosing to catch wayward Blacks and keep them on the unions’ plantations rather than clubbing them down in streets as they used to do.

But oh how the unions hate it when the Blacks leave the plantation. How dare those “uppity niggers” accept monies from individuals that the unions and their paid-for politicians fear and loath such as the Koch brothers.

A powerful government workers’ union will end its support for the United Negro College Fund after the group accepted $25 million from the conservative powerhouse Koch brothers and the college fund’s president appeared at a Koch event.

In a letter made public Thursday, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said it will no longer partner with or raise funds for the fund, known for its iconic motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Naturally, the AFSCME’s President, Lee Saunders wasn’t satisfied with merely refusing to further support the United Negro College Fund. He also had to take UNCF’s President and CEO, Dr. Michael Lomax to task for his uppitiness.

AFSCME President Lee Saunders said the actions of the college fund’s president “are not only deeply hostile to the rights and dignity of public employees, but also a profound betrayal of the ideals of the civil rights movement.”

Saunders’ may be too politically correct and savvy to speak frankly, but there’s no real doubt that his personal attack upon Lomax was anything but a dog-whistle for “Oreo,” “Uncle Tom,” “Sell-Out,” and/or “Race Traitor.” It’s pretty obvious that Saunders and the AFSCME can’t abide by Blacks who aren’t beholden to them.

Of course, the funny side of this is that Saunders and the AFSCME don’t have much of a whip to crack over the backs of the UNCF. They’ve donated between $50,000 and $60,000 annually to the UNCF for its AFSCME/UNCF Union Scholar Program over the last 11 years and the Koch Brothers just gave the UNCF $25,000,000 – 38 times that total amount.

Tags: AFSCME | America | Blacks | Charity | Koch Brothers | Labor Unions | Lomax | Money | Politics | Racism | Saunders | UNCF

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2014 at 7:43 am and is filed under Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

It’s an old axiom that a sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. A corollary to this would be that a sufficiently advanced scientist is indistinguishable from a magician or other magical entity.

There are, in the latter case, ways to distinguish the scientist from the magician or other magical entity…
 

Yep! The only magic scientists and researchers have is mendicant magic in that many of them do seem to be able to conjure funding out of the aether…as long as they are practicing orthodox, “white magic” at least. Those following a purer path don’t do so well at all.

Tags: Beggars | Corruption | Funding | Humor | Junk Science | Magicians | Money | Research | Science | Scientists

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2014 at 9:05 am and is filed under Humor, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

America, like all nations, is and always has been under threat from foreign powers. Like the peoples of all nations this is something that Americans are used to and something that they can deal with…or could deal with. Things has changed and the new threats to America are both existential and difficult to deal with.

The new threats aren’t military; they’re economic. They’re also not the run of the mill threat to international trade. No, the new threats to America are foreign governments choosing to punitively divest themselves of US sovereign debt and eliminating the use of the US Dollar as their nations’ reserve currency.

Russia has bluntly pointed this out.

MOSCOW, March 4 (RIA Novosti) – An adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that authorities would issue general advice to dump US government bonds in the event of Russian companies and individuals being targeted by sanctions over events in Ukraine.

Sergei Glazyev said the United States would be the first to suffer in the event of any sanctions regime.

“The Americans are threatening Russia with sanctions and pulling the EU into a trade and economic war with Russia,” Glazyev said. “Most of the sanctions against Russia will bring harm to the United States itself, because as far as trade relations with the United States go, we don’t depend on them in any way.”

Glazyev noted that Russia is a creditor to the United States.

“We hold a decent amount of treasury bonds – more than $200 billion – and if the United States dares to freeze accounts of Russian businesses and citizens, we can no longer view America as a reliable partner,” he said. “We will encourage everybody to dump US Treasury bonds, get rid of dollars as an unreliable currency and leave the US market.”

Do not mistake me; in no way would I normally think this was a credible threat at this time. These are not, however, normal times and the Russian cultural psyche has proved itself willing to use “scorched earth” tactics. They’re also fairly strongly allied with China, who could both tolerate the damage to themselves from divesting themselves of US sovereign debt and eliminating the use of the US Dollar as their nations’ reserve currency. In point of fact, China would likely benefit from doing so in short-term. Hence, while the threat is not imminent, it is credible.

This, in all likelihood, isn’t going to happen. What is going to happen is that the Obama Regime will not push for sanctions against Russia for just about anything. And this, in turn, means less than it might since Europe’s flagging and vulnerable economy is dependent upon trade with Russia.

The important point is the threat is credible, extremely serious, and has been made. This not only shows the soft and flaccid underbelly of the America of the 21st century, it’s removes one of America’s greatest weapons, our trade.

Tags: America | China | Debt | Deficit | Geopolitics | Glazyev | Money | Politics | Putin | Russia | Sergei Glazyev | Vladimir Putin

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2014 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.