Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Lies, Manipulations, and Distortions...

I almost spit out my breakfast this morning reading this.

The line that really, really caught my eye:

The U.S. government considers food stamps to be effective stimulus for the economy, because the recipients usually spend them right away.

Brother, if you really and truly want to help your fellow man, you will "Teach a Man to Fish".  Now, of course, that's not really fair or accurate because most of the individuals on Food Stamps/SNAP are single mothers and their children... most of whom live someplace where keeping a family cow is not really an option...

But... is saying that really going to help these people?

Not even a little bit.

The Left's inability to grasp the collective damage they are doing/going to do because of their lack of knowledge regarding simple mathematical theory, i.e. The Exponential Function (but they CAN tell you what i.e. stands for) irks me to no end.

TO NO END.

And.... Here's the funny thing... when they DO ATTEMPT to explain away their silly assertions using elementary statistical analysis, they trip all over themselves with half-truths, obfuscations, and out right lies (don't get me wrong... the RINO's do the exact same thing... may they both drop dead).

Let us take it apart, shall we?

First, let's look at the default threat. California has never failed to make its bond payments on time and in full, not even during the Depression. And there is no chance we will smudge that pristine record.

First rule in financial analysis: Past results are no guarantee of future performance.  Just because you are alive does not mean you won't die... this quote is the kind of reassurance we give to those with terminal cancer.

Next:

Payment of debt service is constitutionally protected, with bond payments required even when the state is operating without a budget. Debt service has second call on general fund dollars, right behind education. Under the California Constitution, making sure bond investors get their money is a higher priority than providing healthcare to kids, protecting the environment and keeping our communities safe.
Constitutionally protected?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ROFL! LOL!! LMAO!!

Sorry, that got away from me.... what I meant to say was that this f&*^ing jag-off miscreant of a pea brain... a person (group) that has rejected most of the U.S. Constitution, supports judicial activism and "Case Law" says that the California State Constitution has this one covered?  BULL SH*T.

The $$ coming in and going out have no idea what is written in your Constitution.  $$$'s cannot read

Here is where the lies and obfuscations get serious:

During the current fiscal year, general fund revenues are expected to total $89.4 billion. Education spending under Proposition 98 will total $36 billion. That leaves $53.4 billion available to pay debt service on bonds — more than eight times the $6.6 billion the state will need.
Got that? And it sounds good and even right, doesn't it?  Problem is, it is disgustingly self-serving Horse SH#!. California's biggest problem is its pension liabilities.  They DWARF the debt issue... and are at least 10X the bond liability.  Why does this scum-bag write this drivel?  To manipulate and motivate the the troops by LYING to them.... something only Republicans do, right?  I am getting peptic just writing this....  but wait.... it gets BETTER.

Our critics say we are addicted to spending. But the numbers show that isn't true. Thirty years ago, general fund expenditures totaled about $7.43 for every $100 of personal income. In the 2009-10 fiscal year, that ratio was almost $2 less, at $5.52 for every $100 of personal income. In the current fiscal year, per capita general fund expenditures will total $2,246, less than the $2,289 spent 10 years ago and roughly equal to the inflation-adjusted level of 15 years ago.
Dear Jerk:  You skipped accounting 101 I take it?  Bet your Latin's pretty good... Ever heard of ENRON? Well, my innumerate friend, California has the vast majority of its liabilities OFF BALANCE SHEET. Congratulations on the level of hypocrisy... it is unprecedented.

But Wait!  There's MORE!

Moreover, state and local government has grown slimmer relative to California's population. In 2009, the state had 107 state employees per 10,000 residents, the fourth-lowest proportion in the nation and 25% below the national average. California also has the sixth-lowest combined number of state and local government employees relative to population, 12% below the national average and 16% below Texas.
I swear, if this article does not stop soon I am going to blow a blood vessel...

Dear complete f*&^%ing jerk, liar, and true believer (the worst insult I can hurl):

It ain't the number of people on the payroll... its the MONEY, stupid!  If you over pay and over-benefit people, and addict them to that unsustainable state of affairs (you guys seem to grasp this when it comes to the environment, but seem to go deaf, dumb, and f*&^ing blind when the concept comes up on this issue) you will be left defending the indefensible, as this jag-off is trying to do in this article.

(Oh, and BTW... No state should EVER compare themselves to Texas (well, with the exception of Alaska)... Oil revenues mask a great many wrongs.)

OK, here come's one of the few half-truths in the article...

California's current budget woes have been caused by the devastation visited on our revenue base by the recession, not a failure to curb spending. In the three fiscal years preceding this one, general fund expenditures fell by $16 billion.
Dear Moron:  You are correct that that is half the problem.  Actually, it is only 20% of the problem... the vast majority of the disaster in waiting is on the liability side of the balance sheet... you do know what a balance sheet is?

Organized lies (propaganda) will not solve anything - Neither from the Left nor from the Right.

22 comments:

bureaucrat said...

The benefits generated from "food stamps" and unemployment comp is designed to keep people fed and housed during periods of economic weakness -- like now -- with jobs fleeing these shores. It is not to "stimulate the economy" no matter what they say. It is to keep people housed and fed temporarily. Without it, you have people in the streets and in breadlines, with today's media taking lots of pictures. It is the reasonable thing to do, and the most politically expedient. Without it, you aren't teaching "anyone to fish." You are making desperate people hungry and mad. People riot over less.

Dextred1 said...

Jeffers, Check this link out. Has just about everything you need about federal budget.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/06/federal-spending-by-the-numbers-2010

Some highlights

A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including “over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold.” The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece.

Improper or fraudulent Medicare spending now totals $47 billion annually—12.4 percent of its budget.

Audits showed $34 billion worth of Department of Homeland Security contracts contained significant waste, fraud, and abuse.

PioneerPreppy said...

The question is how long can they keep this sham going?

The creative finances and lies have got to catch up with us sometime. Just a matter of when.

Anonymous said...

California will never be allowed to default on their bonds. They are owned by too many of the oligarchs, clipping their coupons from Palo Alto to Palm Beach.
Just as in Europe, the sovereign monetary authority, run by the oligarchs will make the bonds good. That is why the Irish submitted. Only the icelanders had the cojones to tell them to stuff it.
The oligarchs will never allow the cascade of defaults start, even if Ron Paul is overseeing the Fed. Remember Hank Paulson, GWB's Treasury Sec and the origins of bailout in the Fall of 2008?
As George Carlin said, There's a club and you ain't in it.
Rational Liberal

bureaucrat said...

(Those Federal VISA/Mastercard credit cards, of which I have one, are supposed to be checked by an "approving official," and a lot of the ripoffs were by 19 year old soldiers and sailors who let the access to credit get the better of them. Moving military around constantly makes it extra hard to police credit card use. My bet is that a lot of those credit card holders had to pay back a lot of their stupid purchases, once they were exposed.)

(Oh, and I agree about the Medicare waste. Medicare pays invoices sent to them immediately, apparently without any review ahead of time at all. You would think they'd wait 30 days to check the invoices, but I would bet Congress forces them to pay those bills immediately, and that is where a lot of the ripoffs occur.)

We ain't so dumb. :)

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

RatLib:

California will absolutely, positively default on their debt OR their pension obligations OR some combo of the 2... no doubt they will call it something else.

Same thing with SS/Mcare.... if you rage the retirement age 5 years in total, you have effectively defaulted... default does not mean ZERO payback... it means a haircut... in the case of Cal, the haircut is going to be pretty big.

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

BTW Rat Lib:

I just outlined a disgusting piece of propaganda from your side of the aisle... it is nearly impossible to FIND a news article that is not similarly FOS...

WTF? Why are you bringing up the Oligarch thing? The point is the level of propaganda coming out of the Left's corner would seem to support my contention that they have no defenses... if they did, they would speak plainly and truthfully, no? Are you suggesting that Cal, and then the U.S., will not put up on the austerity rack? Of course it will... and why? Whose policies and ideas PUT us in this position?

Please spare me the military budget lecture... you'd be preaching to the choir... but that is only 25% of the problem.

Liberals, rational or otherwise, are simply loathe to admit (as are those on the Right) that their belief systems and life's work have been a gigantic failure.

If you dispute this... please point out a single socialist/communist system that works and can be sustained.

PioneerPreppy said...

Having been a 19 year old soldier I would sure like to see some proof that one has been given a government issue credit card. That has to be the most remarkable work of BS I have ever heard.

Even after my commission I had access to a card once in a blue moon when the mission required some form of civilian refueling.

Let's see I wish I could find that article from last Summer detailing the education convention in Jersey or the social services one in Nevada. 19 yo soldiers my ass.

Damn I can't wait for the austerity hammer to swing a few times on government employee benefits and pensions.

bureaucrat said...

There were incidents where military recruiters (the 19 year olds trying to recruit 17 year olds) were indeed getting into trouble with those "few limits" cards when they first came out. They weren't the only group abusing the plastic (and the government under the contract paid those charges immediately), but it wasn't too hard to see that demographic group getting too jiggy with an (mostly) unlimited purchase card.

As time went on, we all got better at selecting the card users. But again, it doesn't matter too much. The overwhelming majority of Federal dollars are not spent on credit cards. The cards are/were primarily for "micropurchases."

Dan said...

I would tend to agree with Rational Lib except- the real wealth doesn’t exist to back up the paper assets. So, either it collapses into bankruptcy or money gets printed resulting in Dilution/inflation. Put another way

“The financial system exists in a symbiosis with the “real” economy. Each system has its own set of growth dynamics. Financial systems tend to grow exponentially at compound interest…. what Richard Price described as the “geometric” growth of a penny invested at 5 percent at the time of Jesus’s birth, growing to a solid sphere of gold extending from the Sun out beyond the orbit of Jupiter by his day (1776).” link

Either way real wealth isn’t there to back up the claims so somebody has to eat the loss. The only question is how it’s accomplished. If it’s from the top down then the uber-wealthy become less wealthy with some of them becoming poor. However, if it’s from the bottom up as you suggest, the result will probably be a repeat of 1848. Europe is already a powder keg however extend and pretend seems to be working so we may be late to the party-again.

Anonymous said...

Food stamp total cost from the Cato Institute: Just under $75 billion.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/food-stamp-price-tag-rising/

Bailout to banks from Fed audit:
Citigroup $1.6 Trillion, Morgan Stanley $2.o Trillion, Goldman Sack $0.6 Trillion from Taibbi's piece on the socialist Bernie Sander's in RS.

I think that's why I mention the oligarchs. And ain't gonna stop. It wouldn't stop even if they get rid of the Fed. They'll just run it out of Treasury.

Actually, from the oligarchs point of view, $75 billion is pretty cheap to keep the torches and pitchforks at bay.

The left/right/black/white/brown/gay/abortion/culture war BS is just to keep the peasants confused and hating on each other.

There's a club, and you ain't in it.
Rational Liberal

Anonymous said...

Rat-Lib,

If that $75B along with the rest of the nanny state exists just to mollify the masses, then the whole liberal thing is just a big lie. It is a ruse to hide the power grab. Makes rational-liberal kind of an oxymoron

Regards,

Coal Guy

bureaucrat said...

On a totally unrelated topic :), oil closed over $90 a barrel today .. the first time since the 2008 bubble.

Anonymous said...

A communist/socialist system that works? China. Its working a lot better over than anywhere else in the world right now.

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

"The left/right/black/white/brown/gay/abortion/culture war BS is just to keep the peasants confused and hating on each other."

Of course! Been saying that here for years... but what's that have to with the propaganda?

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

Anon @ 3:01pm:

Get a nickname or register...I don't want to waste brain cells on straw men...

China works? Really? Clearly you have never been there.

K said...

A communist/socialist system that works? Cuba. I have never been there and I base my guess on what I've read.

China has a lot of serious problems that will just get much worse. If I had to live in either country in 2020, I'd rather be in Cuba.

Anonymous said...

K,

Cuba? How many years of famine did they have there after the fall of the USSR? Give me a break! Castro (both of them) have given up on Communism and are now somewhat to the right of Obama.

Yeah Cuba...

Same for China.... They gave up on Socialism in practice and let a more or less free market reign. The leaders of China are now more or less vicious thugs without a cause.

Regards,

Coal Guy

Anonymous said...

Coal Guy, You might want to look up the difference between coincidence and correlation...That would explain why the left, right and even libertarians can often agree on the same policy, but coming from very different directions based on very different reasoning.
The motives of social justice and oligarchy can lead to a coincidence of policy....while still retaining very different motives.
Hell, even Pat Robertson now says it's ok to smoke dope;-))

Anonymous said...

Preceding note to Coal Guy from Rational Liberal...we don't want any wiki leaks anonymity here.
Rational Liberal

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

K:

You are WAAAAAAY out of bounds.

I have lived in an around Miami for nearly 20 years of my life... I love Cuban culture... the Castro regime is NOT cuban culture... they are a bunch of thugs... the island might be a tropical paradise... the politics? Not so much.

People like you and I, people that express themselves publicly in opposition to the Castro's would meet their end stood up in front of a firing squad.

K said...

If the test is just a communist/socialist system that works, then Cuba works better than China. Supposedly, Cuba is more self sufficient in food production and difference in wealth between the haves and have nots is less. Cuba also has a healthier environment than China. I guess that the suffering from Mao's famine was worse than Castro's. Also, at least for me, being shot to death in Cuba is preferable than being enslaved by the CCP (this is prefered way the CCP deals with its political prisoners. They call it "re-education").

What this thought exercise is really just a variation of determining which is the least worse of the worst, i.e. is it better to be eaten alive by piranhas or sharks?

A better thought exercise would be determining which country or province or city, in the world (or North America, if it would be easier to figure out) it least dominated by government. I would like to read a post by you, Greg, on this subject, if you would be willing to write it.