I’m not sure whether COVID-19, first identified in Wuhan, China, in the U.S. qualifies as a true disaster. Putting the disease in perspective, we might look at current influenza illnesses. According to Centers for Disease Control estimates, between Oct. 1, 2019, and March 14, 2020, there have been 390,000 to 710,000 hospitalizations as a result of the flu, 38,000,000 to 54,000,000 flu illnesses and 23,000 to 59,000 flu deaths. That’s compared with, as of March 27, a total of 85,356 cases of COVID-19 resulting in the deaths of 1,246 people.
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ~ George Orwell
I was recently doing some research about the aftermath of some natural disasters that took place here in America. I was shocked to find that the articles I was looking for – ones that I had read in the past – were pretty hard to find, but articles refuting the sought-for pieces were rampant. Not just one event, but every single crisis aftermath that I looked up, had articles that were written after the fact stating in no uncertain terms that the hunger, chaos, and unrest never happened.
Apparently we, the preparedness community, are all wrong when it comes to the belief that after a disaster, chaos erupts and civic disorder is the rule of the day.
McCain, when a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy was a Navy pilot (they call themselves aviators). July 29, 1967 while on the deck and in his plane on the carrier U.S.S. Forrestal he managed to screw up procedures (officially denied and covered up by him and the Navy and also even promoted on Wikipedia if you care to look–reason to follow). He did a smart ass punk attention getting trick by doing a “wet start” up of his jet.
While the FBI was raiding the offices of Trump’s lawyer yesterday afternoon, the CBO published a blockbuster report evidencing the Donald’s own raiding party. To wit, in roughly 90 days of fiscal madness between December and February, Trump and his GOP allies piled $459 billion onto next year’s (FY 2019) deficit.
That eruption of red ink consisted of $285 billion for the tax bill and $174 billion of spending add-ons for defense ($56 billion), domestic programs ($105 billion) and additional debt service ($13 billion). For FY 2019 alone the added debt amounted to 2.3% of GDP, and turned an awful fiscal situation into an outright disaster.
Indeed, the real “watershed moment” yesterday was not that Mueller went after the keeper of Trump’s legal skeletons, but that CBO let the real monsters out of the fiscal closet, translating Trump-O-Nomics into the scariest budget numbers ever seen.
Have they all lost their collective minds? Look I get that some people are leaning Democrat versus Republican and vice versa and that’s fine, but what exactly are voters getting? If, on the one hand, you think Democrats tax and spend too much you get Republicans on the other hand who cut taxes with disproportional benefit to the top 1% and then spend even more. Fiscal conservatives? Please.
In early February the US government was already scheduled to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year.
A week later and that figure is already out the door as this week as both parties agreed to expand spending caps seemingly preparing for World War III. An incremental hundreds of billions of dollars to the military budget alone in just 2 years. What for? To what end? It’s a bonanza for defense contractors surely and the president apparently wants a parade, but have we entered the math no longer applies zone?
Your government at work with your tax dollars. Loan billions to brain dead teenagers so they can pretend to get smart in college. When they fail miserably due to the fact after twelve years of public school government indoctrination they can’t read, write or add, the government pays slimy collection agencies to get these unemployed dolts to pay up. Not only has $600 billion of your tax dollars been pissed down the drain on loans to dumbasses, you now get to spend billions trying to collect the billions that will never be collected. Clusterfuck is too kind of a word to use for this program Obama initiated to pump money into the economy and fake the true unemployment rate. I bet you can’t wait until the government has full control of your healthcare.
The federal government has, in recent years, paid debt collectors close to $1 billion annually to help distressed borrowers climb out of default and scrounge up regular monthly payments. New government figures suggest much of that money may have been wasted.
Nearly half of defaulted student-loan borrowers who worked with debt collectors to return to good standing on their loans defaulted again within three years, according to an analysis by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For their work, debt collectors receive up to $1,710 in payment from the U.S. Department of Education each time a borrower makes good on soured debt through a process known as rehabilitation. They keep those funds even if borrowers subsequently default again, contracts show. The department has earmarked more than $4.2 billion for payments to its debt collectors since the start of the 2013 fiscal year, federal spending data show.
On this day in 2003, the United States, along with coalition forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiates war on Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” President Bush and his advisors built much of their case for war on the idea that Iraq, under dictator Saddam Hussein, possessed or was in the process of building weapons of mass destruction.
Cato: GOP health-care bill retains the very Obamacare regulations that are threatening to destroy health insurance markets
DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised legislation that “fully repeals Obamacare.” Monday night, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives released legislation it claims would repeal and replace Obamacare. Tuesday afternoon, Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Capitol Hill to pressure members of Congress to support the bill. On Wednesday, two House Committees will begin to mark up the legislation. House and Senate leaders are hoping for quick consideration and a signing ceremony, maybe by May, so they can move on to other things, like tax reform and confirming Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch.
Everyone needs to take a step back. This bill is a train wreck waiting to happen.
Following today’s extremely disappointing US GDP growth data, we have the final nail in the coffin of President Obama’s economic reign. Not only is the average annual growth rate of just 1.48% during Obama’s business cycle the weakest of any expansion since at least 1949, he has just become the only President to have not had even one year of 3% GDP growth.
An average annual GDP growth of 1.48% during Obama’s two terms…
As a reminder to a few blinkered media types, this means President Obama’s “recovery” has officially been the worst recovery in US history (despite adding almost $10 trillion to the national debt)…
Both outgoing President Obama and lingering Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen are making claims about the number of jobs added under their leadership.
Obama (during his farewell press conference last Friday): “Since I signed Obamacare into law, our businesses have added more than 15 million new jobs,”
Sounds impressive, unless you look closely at the numbers.
First, about the 15 million new jobs added since Obama signed Obamacare into law. The black box in the chart below shows the real average hourly wages since 2010 (through 2014). They were declining.
Seeing a lack of competition in many of the health law’s online insurance marketplaces, Hillary Clinton, President Obama and much of the Democratic Party are calling for more government, not less.
Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement will almost certainly have to change to survive. The two parties agree that for too many people, health plans in the individual insurance market are still too expensive and inaccessible.
The hits just keep on coming for Obamacare. It is increasingly difficult to find people in support of the healthcare reform law as it currently exists. Though, the NY Times is truthfully just calling for more Obamacare, specifically a “public option”, which will be bankrolled by the taxpayer. Once again, ZeroHedge said it best:
Millions of Americans face higher premiums, bigger deductibles
Getty Images
A mother holds her sick daughter at a clinic in Aurora, Colorado.
Obamacare was supposed to reduce health expenses for Americans, but that’s not how it’s working out.
Although many have benefited from government subsidies or the ability to buy insurance, health-care costs continue to rise and eat up a bigger percentage of household budgets.
In a recent though little-noticed study, economist Ann C. Foster at the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that health costs made up a record 8% of an average household’s budget in 2014, the last year for which data is available.
That’s a 40% jump compared to 10 years ago, and a 21% increase since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act took effect.
In Part One of this article I addressed the deceit of Hillary Clinton and politicians of all stripes as they promise goodies they can never pay for, in order to buy votes and expand their power and control over our lives.
I created the chart below for an article I wrote in 2011 when the national debt stood at $14.8 trillion, with my projection of its growth over the next eight years. I predicted the national debt would reach $20 trillion in 2016 and was ridiculed by arrogant Keynesians who guaranteed their “stimulus” (aka pork) would supercharge the economy and result in huge tax inflows and drastically reduced deficits. As of today, the national debt stands at $19.7 trillion and is poised to reach $20 trillion by the time “The Hope & Change Savior” leaves office on January 20, 2017. I guess I wasn’t really a crazed pessimist after all. I guarantee the debt will reach $25 trillion by the end of the next presidential term, unless the Ponzi scheme collapses into financial depression and World War 3 (a strong probability).
The total disregard for the most perilous issue confronting the nation by politicians of all stripes is a national disgrace, proving beyond a doubt the elite ruling class has no conscience, no sense of morality, and no loyalty to the common people or future generations. The sociopaths who act as if they are in control addressed the 2008 global debt meltdown by adding tens of trillions in new debt to an already unsustainable system, setting the world on a course towards total financial collapse and world war.
Last week, we shared with readers a fascinating presentation that Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio made to NY Fed staffers at the 40th Annual Central Banking Seminar held on Wednesday, October 5, 2016. In it, Dalio pointed out that thoughts which dared to question the economic orthodoxy, and which were once relegated to the fringe blogs, have become the norm, pointing out that it is no longer controversial to say that:
…this isn’t a normal business cycle and we are likely in an environment of abnormally slow growth
…the current tools of monetary policy will be a lot less effective going forward
…the risks are asymmetric to the downside
…investment returns will be very low going forward, and
…the impatience with economic stagnation, especially among middle and lower income earners, is leading to dangerous populism and nationalism.
He further notes that the debt bubble which was not eliminated during the financial crisis of 2008, has since grown to staggering proportions, and notes that “the biggest issue is that there is only so much one can squeeze out of a debt cycle and most countries are approaching those limits.”
In a staggering moment of honesty caught on tape, former President Bill Clinton admits to a group of voters in Michigan that Obamacare is a complete disaster and is wreaking havoc on the middle-class and “small-business people.” Per the video published by the NY Post, Clinton says that Obamacare is fine for those who are eligible for subsidies but admits that that hardworking “people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half and it’s the craziest thing in the world.”
“You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care, and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half and it’s the craziest thing in the world.
On the other hand, the current system works fine if you’re eligible for Medicaid, if you’re a lower-income working person. If you’re already on Medicare or if you get enough subsidies on a modest income that you can afford your health care.
But the people getting killed in this deal are the small-business people and individuals who make just a little bit too much to get any of these subsidies.“
Per The Hill, the comments from Bill come at an awkward time as Obama is set to deliver a “major speech” in Florida touting the astounding success of ObamaCare. Moreover, the comments seemingly contradict Hillary on the issue as she has largely embraced Obamacare on the campaign trail while suggesting that small modifications may be needed to “fix” certain components of the legislation.
If you listen to the madness long enough, every once in a while the talking heads will slip and actually speak the truth. Though, as always, we’re sure Bill will be pulled off the campaign trail, in short order, and reprimanded for his moment of honesty before being re-released into the wild with new talking points singing the praises of Obamacare’s many “achievements.”
DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images
Getty Images
