The underground or
"black" economy is rapidly rising, and the fault is mainly due to
government policies.
Here is the evidence.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) released a report last week
concluding that 7.7 percent of U.S. households, containing at least 17 million
adults, are unbanked (i.e., those who do not have bank accounts), and an
"estimated 17.9 percent of U.S. households, roughly 21 million, are
underbanked" (i.e., those who rely heavily on nonbank institutions, such
as check cashing and money transmitting services).
As an economy becomes
richer and incomes rise, the normal expectation is that the proportion of the
unbanked population falls and does not rise as is now happening in the United
States.
Tax revenues are
falling far more rapidly at the federal, state and local level than would be
expected by the small drop in real gross domestic product (GDP) and changes in
tax law that have occurred since the recession began.
There is a new
kid in town and his name is "Chrome OS" as for Google Chrome. It's the new
operating system to be interactive with Google
Cloud.
Google is out to
change the world more than they already have, and havingapplications
stored on the Internet in a specified zone, known as a "cloud",is the new way
to store information.
I have written
about the "Cloud" in earlier articles and there is a huge push forthis new avenue
of computing. If you have all your information stored in the nebulous cloud
on the Internet, your going to need a vehicle to connect with it. That vehicle,
friends is Chrome, Google's new browser that will do just that. Justwhat will Chrome
do for Google's cloud users? So how is this different from the way we currently
compute? A lot.
Here's the question of the week:What if King Canute had been a liberal?
You know the ancient tale.Canute (985-1035), son of Sven Forkbeard, Viking ruler of both Scandinavia
and England,
tired of the endless flattery of courtiers trying to curry his favor, ordered
his throne brought to the seashore at Bosham in West Sussex
on England's
southern coast.
Ensconced on his throne wearing his royal robes and
commanding his courtiers to stand around him, he delivered a Royal Order to the
sea to stop the incoming tide so that his royal feet should not get wet.The sea did not obey, the tide washed over
his feet, whereupon he railed at his flatterers:
"Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power
of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and
sea obey by eternal laws."
But what if Canute had been a liberal?What if he really believed he could command
the tide - and continued to believe it as the tide washed over him and
threatened to sweep him out to sea?
Wouldn't that remind you of Democrats facing the tide of
2010?Of glowarmers commanding the tide
of truth to stop?Of the OPM (Obama
Propaganda Media) denying the very existence of tides?
Valletta, Malta. This small European island country in the Mediterranean
south of Sicily and close to the
north coast of Africa is where civilization emerged from
the Stone Age. It is where Western
Civilization was saved from being conquered by Islam.
Today, Malta
is under siege again, from another horde of Moslem invaders. This time, there are no Knights of Malta to
protect the Maltese - almost 100% of whom are Christian Europeans - and the
barbarian aliens invading their nation are aided by barbarian liberals within
Europe. The story is both ancient and is
at the vanguard of the future. Europe's future, America's future, and the future of Christianity vs. Islam.
An interesting pattern has been developing in my life lately. Over the last
year, we've had more get-togethers in our neighborhood than in the twelve years
we've lived here. I've heard from long time friends more often, and tonight I
just got word of an Alumni game - the first one ever - for the Community
College I attended for a year way back in 1977.
These are all welcome developments, but I don't think they are random.
Things are not good in the US
right now. Our economy is in deep trouble, and people know it. We are less safe
now with our present foreign policy... and people know it. More than I have even
felt in my life, I am aware of the potential threats of deep economic problems
and a distrust of my government.
I think a lot of people are feeling that it just matters more right now to
be connected to family, friends, and neighbors than it has mattered in a long,
long time. Here are a few
suggestions that can help you to make the most of your connections with them.
Just plain nuts: That's the only possible characterization for last night's
(12/02) presidential declaration of surrender in advance of a renewed campaign
in Afghanistan.
President Obama will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan
-- but he'll "begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan
in July of 2011." Then why send them?
If you're going to tell the Taliban to be patient because we're leaving,
what's the point in upping the blood ante? For what will come down to a single
year by the time the troops hit the ground?
Our president is setting up our military to fail -- but he'll be able to
claim that he gave the generals what they wanted. Failure will be their
fault. He's covering his strong-on-security flank, even as he plays to our
white-flag wavers. His cynicism's worthy of a Saddam.
This isn't just stupid: It's immoral. No American president has ever
espoused such a worthless, self-absorbed non-strategy for his own political
gratification.
There is a saying among climate scientists: "No problem, no money."
The emails, from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain, indicate collusion to deny the data on which the computer models were constructed to other researchers, and to keep scientists skeptical of global warming from being published in peer reviewed journals.
"The now non-secret data prove...that most of the evidence of global warming was simply made up," said Frank Tripler, a physics professor at Tulane. "Not only are the global warming computer models unreliable, the experimental data on which these models are built are also unreliable."
The U.S. government has spent more than $79 billion since 1989 on global warming research and related policies, according to the Science and Public Policy Institute. Somehow, the Associated Press and other major media never mention this in their never-ending stream of stories hyping apocalyptic "climate change."
Do you think that it will someday dawn on the media that scientists can be for sale, that $79 billion can buy a lot of global warming?
Today, December 3rd,
the White House is hosting a "Jobs Summit."What should the attendees be advising the president? Unlike Ronald
Reagan, President Obama was schooled in law, not in economics. Thus, he may not
understand that there is really no mystery as to why we have our current
unemployment, and how we can regain full employment.
It would, of course,
have been no mystery to Ronald Reagan, who was fond of saying:"Government is not the solution to our problem; government
is the
problem."That is, the recipe for more
jobs is simple:lower taxes, fewer
regulations.
Job creation should
be at the top of the administration's domestic priorities, because the
inability to find a job causes more misery and hardship to far more Americans
(and particularly to those who can least afford it) than the lack of health
care for the 10 percent who are uninsured or potential global warming ever will.
If the president
really wants to see employers go back to hiring large numbers of people, the
administration will do the following:
A prefatory note before we begin this Thanksgiving Edition
of the HFR:I am celebrating in
particular the at-long-last completion of The
Jade Steps.The final chapter, the Epilogue, was
finished this week.
Once the final edit is done, it will be available as an
E-Book, and then in a print edition.It
is one of history's most epic sagas of heroic love and liberation - and one of
the most unknown, misunderstood, and distorted.
As I have said, The Jade Steps is a true story. Every
principal event described actually happened, every named person really lived
and had that name. It all happened almost 500 years ago, but it still
remains the cause of the civil war within Mexico's soul. Mexico will never rise out of
the Third World and overcome its inferiority complex towards America until this spiritual
wound is healed. That is the purpose of this book-- and hopefully, the movie.
***
Hear that sound - the wails of fury, the gnashing of teeth
of the world's Fascist Left over its defeat by tiny little Honduras?
The reason is history.Not the childish make-believe of your kid's grammar school play of how
the noble Squanto taught the helpless Mayflower Pilgrims how to feed
themselves.No, the real thing.Here it is.
The real history of the Mayflower Pilgrims was recounted by
their leader, William Bradford (1590-1657) in his book Of
Plymouth Plantation, completed in 1647.It is from Bradford that we learn of Squanto, who
did indeed show the Pilgrims how to "set" or plant corn (a new unfamiliar crop
for them).Then we learn that the
Pilgrims taught the Indians how to grow more corn than they ever had before:
"The Indeans used to have nothing so much corne as they have
since the English have stored them with their hoes, and seene their industrie
in breaking up new grounds therwith."
Reading the real history of the Pilgrims is so revelatory
that I want you to see it at length.The
Pilgrims landed in December 1620, suffered a horrible winter, figured out how
to fish and hunt that spring and summer so that there may have been some sort
of feast with friendly Indians in the fall of 1621 - although Bradford
doesn't recount the incident.
But by 1622 they were starving.There was no "Thanksgiving" that year.There was the next - for 1623 saw the
Pilgrims in well-fed abundance, and thus was the year of the real First
Thanksgiving.What made the difference?Here are Bradford's
own words describing Anno Dom.1623:
It was nighttime.Streetlamps spread a mist of light into the Jardin de la Conchita, where
Tim and Cindy Jorgensen had been listening for hours to Maria Consuelo tell her
story.Now she was finished, and Tim and
Cindy were speechless.They sat in
stunned silence, until Cindy finally stammered, "That... that is the most
extraordinary story I have ever heard - and it is true, it's real history, it
all really happened?"
Maria smiled gently."Yes, it's all true.There are
witnesses who wrote it down, like Bernal. It is one of the greatest stories of heroism
in the history of mankind - and it is the tragedy of Mexicans that they have
spit on it."
"But how is that possible?" Tim protested."Why isn't La Malinche worshipped as the
great heroine of Mexico?"
"She is to us, the mestizos
who are her descendants - but not to the criollos,
and they have always controlled Mexico."
To The Point wishes all TTPers and all Americans a Joyous Thanksgiving for 2009. No people in history have more to be thankful for than those blessed to be Americans.
President Barack Hussein Obama has little interest
in, understanding of, or affection for free markets, so he fails to understand
that the fundamental relationship between government and the economy is that of
parasite to host.
Some functions of government are absolutely
essential to a free economy. But though
government can consume wealth, and redistribute wealth, it can't create
wealth. And unless wealth is created, there is nothing to consume or
redistribute. That's why -- even
when government is doing something we all agree must be done or most of us want
to have it do -- government is a parasite.
All it has is what takes from the producers of wealth.
A healthy host can support a lot of
parasites. A sickly host cannot. So for our sickly economy to recover and to create an increase in overall employment, one necessary condition is to start firing government workers who are parasites on and not producers of wealth.
