UN proposes a global tax on financial transactions

Call me old fashioned but didn't we fight a war about this about 250 years ago? You know that outdated notion of taxation without representation. By what authourty does the UN propose to administer this tax?

According to this statement posted by the UN, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council (emphasis mine):

"Where the world financial crisis has brought about the loss of millions of jobs, socialized private debt burdens and now risks causing significant human rights regressions through wide-ranging austerity packages, a financial transaction tax (FTT) is a pragmatic tool for providing the means for governments to protect and fulfill the human rights of their people," said the rights experts on extreme poverty, food, business, foreign debt and international solidarity.

"EU countries must take bold leadership now to pave the way towards what should eventually be a global FTT," they urged, welcoming recent EU proposals to implement the financial transaction tax across the Eurozone.

Ahhh, social justice of course. And given the UN's record of corruption and mismanagement how much of these dollars will actually find its way to the intended targets? Well the group are called the Human Rights Council so they must be good global citizens right? Well here is a partial list of members:

Libya
Cuba
China
Saudi Arabia
Russia
Cuba

Sounds like an amicable group if you want to be robbed blind. These countries are on the Human Rights Council - Seriously!

Listen, the UN jumped the shark a long time ago. Why the US and our allies give this corrupt group of bandits any credence is beyond me. Let me ask this question. Given China and Russia have veto power in the Security Council - what exactly is our reason for even being part of this group of misfits? If we pulled out of the UN tomorrow what would happen that is not happening anyway. Iran is still building nuclear weapons; North Korea is still trying to develop missiles that will reach America's mainland.

Honestly, if we pulled out of the UN it would do nothing less that de-legitimize the entire organization to the point that it would cease to exist. And that would not be a bad thing.

Stephen is King of Crap

(Editor’s Note: I have read just about everything Stephen King has written and am a big big fan of his fiction.)

Mr. King has an Op Ed over at the Daily Beast that is nothing short of a drunken profanity laced tirade. 

While I don't mind that Mr. King speaks his mind, knock yourself out big guy, but if there is anything I've learned doing what I do here at 6079 you gotta back up your words. I don't want to go through Mr. King's point with his column but rather how he tries to make his point and just how badly it hurts his cause. Let's start with this paragraph:

The Koch brothers are right-wing creepazoids, but they're giving right-wing creepazoids. Here's an example: 68 million fine American dollars to Deerfield Academy. Which is great for Deerfield Academy. But it won't do squat for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where food fish are now showing up with black lesions.

Creepazoids? Based on what? Have you ever actually met either of the Koch brothers Mr. King? Fish with lesions due to the BP Oil spill? There is no evidence that the BP spill is causing any such thing. Yet King says it as if it is fact.

In his first sentence he manages to call Governor Christie Fat. (Stay classy Stevie!) But what is really ironic about the first paragraph? Well check it out for yourself:

Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain't Santa Claus. In fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey's governor or its caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse that his brash rudeness is often taken for charm.

King has the gall to chastise Christie's 'coarseness' and then spends the next several thousand words profanely deriding the right in a seemingly stream of consciousness rant.

Again, big fan of his fiction but this one should never have made it past the editor's desk. It reflects badly on both King and the Daily Beast.

The Case of CA’s Missing Republicans

Charlie Mahtesian over at Polico has a mystery - how did the GOP in California fade into irrelevance?:

According to the latest figures from the Secretary of State's office, Democratic registration is 43.5% to 30.3% for Republicans.

The GOP actually has a majority of voters in 30 of California's 58 counties. But that number is misleading. If you look at the list of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of Democrats, they tend to be some of the more populous in the state – places like Alameda (Oakland) Los Angeles (LA), Contra Costa (Bay area), and San Mateo (Bay area) counties.

The 10 counties with the highest percentage of Republicans tend to be among the least populous counties, all of them located inland.

Wow - over a 13 point Democrat advantage in registration. How can this be when California is the state that gave us Reagan and Nixon both won two terms and carried the state each time? What has happened to cause the incredible turn around? Have the former GOPer's of the state finally seen the error of their ways and gone over to the dark side?

Well to answer this I put on my deerstalker hat and found an article by The Wall Street Journal's Allysia Finley who interviewed Joel Kotkin a leading U.S. demographer. In the article Mr. Kotkin makes the case that over the past 20 years the Democratic Party has done nothing short of running anybody who is productive out of the state:

Now, however, the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment since Greeks are ostensibly happier. But as Mr. Kotkin notes, Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.

And when Mr. Kotkin talks about red tape he means it. For example, look at the state's current cap-and-trade law AB32 will raise the cost of energy and drive out even more manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Meanwhile California's electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average. Golly, if I had a manufacturing company that relied on electricity to produce my product I might look elsewhere if I were looking to relocate.

But just how bad is the net population loss problem for California? I mean we are talking about CALIFORNIA here, the land of milk and honey for crying out loud, how bad could it be? Mr. Kotkin again:

Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.

Of those 4 million that have left the state! - I'm just asking here, how many do you think were the homeless folks watching porn for free in a San Francisco Library? I'm gonna go with exactly zero. My guess is that the people leaving are those gosh-darn productive folks who are being punished with draconian regulations and taxes (10.3% top rate for millionaires and 9.3% top rate for those who earn over $48,000). More from Kotkin:

And Democrats want to raise taxes even more. Mind you, the November ballot initiative that Mr. Brown is spearheading would primarily hit those whom Democrats call "millionaires" (i.e., people who make more than $250,000 a year). Some Republicans have warned that it will cause a millionaire march out of the state.

That said, "It's really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that's trying to accumulate enough to raise a family, maybe send their kids to private school. It'll kick them in the teeth."

Well at least the GOP's loss isn't to conversion but rather flight. According to the United States Census Bureau Texas, Arizona, Washington and Arizona are the top destinations for Republicans Californians leaving the state. All of which coincidentally are much more business friendly. And I for one do not think it is a coincidence that both Republican numbers and the general population are decreasing in the Golden State.

College Degree: Bad bet for taxpayers?

OK - I got a great investment opportunity for you. Sshh - don't tell anybody, I'm gonna let you in on the ground floor. Here it is. You invest $1 trillion and get absolutely nothing in return. I know - I know sounds like a deal huh?

If you think that is a bad investment keep reading because that is exactly what we are about to see when the student loan bubble bursts.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau came out with a study suggesting that student debt has hit $1 Trillion. Wow That's a lot of scratch, we must have the most educated folks in the world if we've spent that much on college education. But wait here are a few other facts via College Board Advocacy & Policy Center:

• It takes about 5 years to earn a degree
  
• Only 57% earn a degree within 6 years
  
• Of those who earn a degree most are in useless disciplines
  

OK so after 5 to 6 years you graduate with a Women's or African Studies degree, spending 10's of thousand (public university) 100's of thousand (private university) along the way, and once you are out you can't understand why no one will hire you.

Wait a minute at this point I want to show you something:

That's my shocked face!

The way we look at a college education this day is wildly distorted. From birth we were trained to think that 1) we had to go to college or we would be shoveling shit in the pig sty 2) Follow your heart and you will succeed 3) everybody else is doing it so you have to as well.

Unfortunately there is no market rationalization in the decision process. Nobody told you that if you spend a fortune getting a Fashion Design degree from Notre Dame that there is a 99.9% chance you will be waiting tables after graduation and owe $300,000. No one said to the prospective Library Science major that there are enough Library Science graduates each year to staff every single library in the world twice over.

My early morning shocked face!

So ultimately what this means is that consumers have borrowed $1 trillion dollars (most from taxpayers) betting it on future revenue in Fashion Design, Women's Studies, African Studies, Library Sciences etc. If my broker came to me with this proposition as a long-term investment I'd fire him. But unfortunately that's what we are stuck with thanks again to the wisdom of our elected officials who consistently make unbelievably bad decisions with our money.

How do we fix this? We have to make the prospective graduate and the university pay the price for stupid decisions. If someone chooses to get a degree that is perfectly worthless or the university offers a degree that is perfectly worthless then the taxpayers have the right to NOT fund it. If someone decide to get a degree in something worthwhile then we can talk. What ticks me off is the fact that the folks funding this boondoggle (taxpayers) don't have a say.

Put another way, if my daughter came to me and said she got accepted to Stanford and she was majoring in Women's studies I'd say good luck with that. If she wants me to pay it is incumbent upon her to show me what I will get for my investment. If it's waiting tables after 4 years I would just have to turn that one down.

Who plays and who really pays?

Chris Kobus has a must read post over on Right Wing News. Chris, rightfully, asks:

Why does CNN point out that majority want higher taxes on the rich, but don't point out that the majority pay no federal income taxes? And that bottom 40% actually get money back?

Chris goes on with a series of charts and graphs to show just how imbalanced our tax code is.

Fact: Top 1% Pay More Fed Income Taxes Than Bottom 95%! Bottom 51% Pay None. Bottom 40% GET MONEY BACK!

Now rather than pointing out the Media bias (Chris does a much better job than I could), I want to throw out a few solutions. In the comments section I laid out a couple of possibilities:

I see a huge issue in our current tax code. What if we changed the code to one of two ways:

1. Abolish the income tax entirely and replace it with a national sales tax. This would by definition make sure that all Americans participate in paying for the government and have a say by voting with their dollars.

2. This one's more radical and surely has no chance. But if you are a chronic welfare recipient, then you give up your right to vote. This of course is much more cumbersome and creates a huge verification issue (not to mention Constitutional dilemma). But it would certainly incentivize those wishing to be a part of the democratic process to get off the dole. Not to mention reduce the number of democratic votes by at least half.

Once welfare recipients realize their access to the treasury is no longer there, they will have to, gasp, change their behavior.

I could go on and talk about the flat tax and other changes to the code but all these solutions have one thing in common. And that is if Democracy is going to work, then the entire citizenry will have to participate. And that means not only voting but paying as well. Our current tax system rewards bad behavior while discouraging good behavior. And this, my friends, is a recipe for disaster for the republic.

She of the Angry Perm and limited math skills

(Ed Note: Full credit for 'She of the Angry Perm' is from Monica Crowley from The Five on Fox News.)

Okay, for the month of July, I started a new drinking game where every time the talking heads from the left (Obama, Biden, Wasserman Shultz, Carney, anyone who works for MSNBC, etc.) says the word 'balance', as in "a balanced approach" I had to take a drink. I've been hammered drunk for the entire month of July. Fortunately, the debt nonsense is over. So, after my three-day raging hangover I decided to take a look-see at what the aforementioned talking heads' latest talking point is. Drum roll please - Surprise everyone. Apparently, when no one was looking, the economy has suddenly turned around!

Whew! That's a load of my mind. Maybe now I can get back to some serious drinking… right after I take a quick look to see what's on MSNBC. Oh, hey there's good ol' Debbie Wasserman Shultz talking up the economy on MSNBC (emphasis mine):

"Well, we're going to focus on what we know is the number one priorities on Americans ease minds right now, that is creating jobs and continuing to get this economy turned around. If we have to drag the Republicans with us, then we'll do that, but, you know, it's been a whole lot of months, eight months they have controlled the house with no jobs bills coming to the Floor. Hopefully now with this compromise on the debt ceiling behind us, with the opportunity, with the economic to sit down and focus on longer-term deficit reduction that will have some balance(damn gotta take a drink) and ask some sacrifice for our most fortunate,"

"We are creating jobs each month in the private sector."

Well thank you Debbie, now I can nurse my hangover without worry, right? Let's just take a quick peek at some of the latest economic news. I'm sure Ms. Wasserman Schultz's research is spot on.

Oh, looky here, some economic news this week from the Bureau of Economic Analysis that came out July 29th:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the second quarter of 2011, (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 0.4 percent.

A whopping 0.4 percent! Holy cow looks like Angry Perm girl's got a point.

Look some more sterling news today from Reuters:

Overall manufacturing fell 0.8% in June, new orders down 1.9%

Wow, only down 1.9%! She's really on a roll!

And lastly, let's take a look at the latest Job numbers from ADP via CNBC:

The pace of private sector job growth slowed in July with employers adding 114,000 positions, a report by a payrolls processor showed. Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast the ADP National Employment Report would show a gain of 100,000 jobs. June's private payrolls were revised down to an increase of 145,000 from the previously reported 157,000.

Wow, well done Debbie! Well done indeed. I swear these guys should have Charlie Sheen stumping for them, all they do in the face of any bad economic news is simply say "I'm Winning!" Okay, back to drinking!