An Unsustainable Trend

Glenn Beck presented a fascinating, if troubling, chart on this evening's program.

Starting in, I believe, 1935 or 1939, the chart compared private sector vs. government job creation through the present day.

While the private sector line began far above the government one, its slope was shallower, and it exhibited some variability.

By contrast, the government employment line had a higher slope and appeared to have a much more constant, unwavering pattern.

Chillingly, the lines crossed in 2007, then showed private sector jobs plunging significantly below the government employment curve.

That's right. Currently, and for the past 3 years, the US employs more people in government jobs than in private sector jobs.

Scared yet?

As Beck noted, the government employees are paid with tax dollars. Taxes come from working residents of the US.

How long can we have fewer workers supporting the larger number of government workers?

California's Big Grab For Your Money

Sickening, isn't it?

The Govenator of California, Arnold Schwarzennegger, has appealed to the federal government to give his state $8B to help cover the shortfall in its proposed 2010-11 $103B budget.

Staggering out of last year's near-bankruptcy, which included California issuing script, instead of paying its bills, the nation's one-time economic powerhouse has become a wayward, spendthrift liberal bastion.

One state legislator is on record as laughing off the idea of cutting the state's expenses to fit within its available, tax-funded revenues.

Thus, California wants Congress to tax every other state in order to pay for about 8% of its bloated spending plans. Here are two gems from an LA Times article,

"Families are struggling, we have an incredibly high unemployment rate, and we can't afford to cut these programs any more," said Nancy Berlin, director of California Partnership, a statewide coalition of advocates for the poor based in Los Angeles. "Sacramento has got to pull it together and find another way out of this. They can't take more from low-income families. If they do, we will find more people on the streets."

"There is a strong case not only here in California but across the country for continued federal aid to the states," she said. "Absent additional assistance we could see state governments prolonging the national economic downturn by continuing to cut their budgets."

Apparently these people don't understand a few realities. First, Congress passed a $787B 'stimulus' bill last year. How can that not be sufficient for California's needs? Second, the answer to unpleasant choices is not always to run to Washington and beggar the rest of the country to bail you out. Finally, 'federal aid to the states' is another way of saying, 'let's weaken the states and become even more dependent upon the already overpowering federal government.'

I would like to believe that Representatives and Senators from 49 other states know enough to say "no" to any aid to California.

Why should every other state work to balance its spending with its revenues, while California gets a free ride to spend everyone else's money?

Steny Hoyer Soaks The Rich

CNBC employs a nearly-communist political reporter named John Hargrove. Hargrove also writes for the NY Times, which pretty much tells you all you need to know.

When Hargrove interviews Democrats, he generally just nods and withholds followup questions, as if he's receiving Truth from the Mount.

Yesterday, I saw a clip of some of Steny Hoyer's remarks in an interview with Hargrove. Hoyer is the House Democratic Majority Leader.

Asked by Hargrove if Democrats were out to "soak the rich," Hoyer denied it.

Then promptly set about confirming it.

He solemnly intoned that all Democrats want is for the "rich to pay their fair share."

Code words for "soaking the rich."

And, it's the Progressive in our progressive income tax rates. Rather than everyone pay an equal share of her/his earnings, the Democrats feel that those who make more are not entitled to what they earned.

Because they earned more, may amass more wealth from their own efforts, that wealth actually belongs to the government and the rest of society.

Let's face it. Once you depart from a flat tax, government is engaged in theft of property and an open-ended grab on anyone's wealth anytime they feel they need it. If one progressive rate is valid, why not double it? Or triple it?

Once government, or Steny, decides that one higher rate is a "fair share," who is to say another liberal won't feel that said rate is unfairly low?

This is just classic Democratic populism. They deny engaging in class warfare, then immediately turn around and declare it.

Hoyer ended, of course, by claiming that all the Democrats were really doing is reversing unfair "tax cuts for the rich" from the Bush years.

From Steny's words, you can tell he has zero grasp of macroeconomics. Or any economics, for that matter.

Steny, when was the last time the US economy prospered under marginal income tax rates which had been increased on those earning more money?

Never.

Opportunities In The Senate

The backlash of Wonderboy's election's effect on the Democrats in Congress is already becoming apparent.

Whereas the liberals currently can muster 60 votes among their party, plus renegade, vocally-independent but still dyed-in-the-wool liberal Joe Lieberman, it's looking like those days are already numbered.

Dodd's and Dornigan's "retirements" are effectively resignations to avoid defeat. Add the Massachusetts seat vacated by the finally dead Teddy Kennedy- brainless long before his actual passing- and that of the appointed Colorado Democrat, and you already go from 60-40 to 56-44.

If Boxer goes down in California, and Harry Reid in Nevada, as expected, you move to 54-46.

Now, that's change you can believe in!

What Democrats Like Kent Conrad Don't Get

This morning held some big political news if you are a conservative. Two of the most-hated most liberal Democratic Senators, Dodd of CT and Dornigan of ND, announced their retirement.

Dornigan's fellow Democratic Senator from ND, Kent Conrad, made an absolute fool of himself this morning on CNBC, waxing on about how great a loss for the country it is that Doddering Chris Dodd, bribe-taker extraordinaire, is leaving the Senate.

Now, Conrad himself is also implicated in the 'Friends of Angelo' Countrywide sweetheart mortgage loans. But it was stomach-turning to listen to him extol Dodd's "institutional memory" and being so crucial to the financial sector.

Honestly, if it weren't for Dodd, perhaps we wouldn't have even had the financial meltdown. Dodd was key in letting Fannie and Freddie loose to bulk up by securitizing risky mortgages.

That Conrad can't see Dodd, or himself, as the problem, and actually thinks Dodd added value while in the Senate, shows how big a problem we have in Washington.

Conrad is so clueless as to fail to see how Dodd's own constituents have finally had enough of him. He's only "retiring," of course, because he faced a pasting from the wife of the owner of the World Wrestling Federation.

I guess that was going to be too much for Dodd to handle.

Napolitano's Vigilance

Pretty amazing stuff, wasn't it?

Our Homeland Security Secretary claimed that finding a bomber on a plane qualified as a successful interception.

Maybe we should use Napolitano as the canary in the coal mine on similar, bomb-laden, "secure" flights.

What's really surprising is how Wonderboy's minions have dusted off the word "terrorism."

That was fast!

Hopefully, our First Rookie will toss Napolitano to the wolves for her incredible lapse as the primary executive responsible for the nation's domestic security from terrorism.

The Coming Tipping Point For Liberals In America

Here's a quote attributed to Margaret Thatcher,

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money [to spend]."

So true. For Britain, with its smaller economy, Thatcher was present in the 1980s to take advantage of that event, and turn the country's economy and political sentiments around.

The US, having the world's reserve currency and, until recently, a competing global communist power to frighten investors, has had it much easier.

We've run deficits for almost every one of the past 70 years!

However, as I contend in a discussion with a colleague this weekend, the US is about to arrive at its economic day of reckoning. Rather than a politically-driven change in American tolerance of its liberals-cum-socialists in the current administration and Congress, the stimulus will be economic.

Per Thatcher's remark, I believe that 2010 will see the first Treasury auctions go less than fully bid. Along with significantly higher rates for what is bought.

With a health care bill potentially passed and signed this month, more stimulus spending and the prospect of 'cap and tax' legislation, investors are beginning to doubt America's ability to service its debt.

Whether spending were reined in, or not, it's going to be the tax increases which light the domestic powder keg of anger and frustration.

My colleague routinely and, I believe, correctly notes that the average American voter doesn't really pay attention to, much less understand, what Congress and the administration are doing. But when global limits on US borrowing and an uncontrollable higher interest rate on US debt combine to force higher taxes, I predict political change will be coming.

With a vengeance.

I'm not talking about anger over a single bad health care bill, or runaway spending by one Congress.

I'm talking about the payback for 70 years of unrestrained use of the national credit card by Congress and too many administrations.

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but the size of the economic and financial dilemma which will almost certainly soon face us may well provoke similarly outsized political reactions. Sweeping Congressional losses, a redefinition of parties as they sit in Congress, and maybe even a Constitutional Convention.

My colleague estimated a 1 in 5 chance of a failed Treasury auction or similar economic event that could start this ball rolling.

I estimate a 4 in 5 chance.