But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about the unrepentant plundering of the American people. The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith in the credit of the United States being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever in spite of stagnant revenues. If your family’s income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer? That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.

In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all. If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of cuts that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to cut. It would only take us five years to cut $1 trillion in Washington math just by holding the line on spending. That is hardly austere or catastrophic.

A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply referred to that year’s spending levels, which would hardly do us fear, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever.

We pay 35% more for our military today than we did 10 years ago for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn’t have double the population or double the land area or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.

In Washington terms a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger cut than any plan being discussed. If politicians simply cannot bear to implement actual cuts to actual spending, just freezing the budget would give the economy the best chance to catch its breath, recover and grow.

These remarks were delivered to the Save America Foundation Convention in Tampa, Florida, on Saturday, March 19, 2011.

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens,), the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.

“Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice?”

These famous words of George Washington’s Farewell Message to America strike us today with remarkable precision and force. Our First President warned us against foreign influence and foreign entanglements — yet Americans have forgotten that message.

We have allowed ourselves to be stationed in military bases all over the world. We have endless entanglements dating back decades. We are in crushing debt in part because of it and seem to be in a state of perpetual war.

As Sun Tzu warned: “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”

The security of our nation is threatened by this debt we now owe to foreigners. Our children now face what was warned against in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

“We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

This was as he warned us of two dangers to society: control of America by a “military industrial complex” and of public policy being held captive by a “Scientific and technological elite”. He warned

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.”

Yet here we stand.

- a bankrupt America with our children losing political and spiritual heritage to foreign entities.

-subject to the whims of a United Nations Security Council that appears to regard the U.S. Military as its personal ready response police force.

-Captive to a scientific and technological elite that control our domestic and foreign policy agenda.

-a deeply entrenched military industrial complex that is endangering our liberties and our democracy.

- A series of Presidents that have committed to unconstitutional acts of war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and now Libya.

- A Congress that disregards its responsibility to the nation to declare war rarely and soberly — recognizing the deep financial impact on our citizens, dangers to our country and the many losses of liberty by individual Americans that accompany such a declaration.

Our founders established in the very constitution –the bedrock of our country — that only Congress should declare war. But now this is seen as anachronistic, inconvenient and somehow trite.

Well, here is something that our founders knew that our elected leaders have forgotten: Entering into War is supposed to be inconvenient. It is supposed to be difficult. It should require national unity and a solid economic footing. It should consider the actual effect on Americans and the real American interests at stake.

No such declaration will be forthcoming. America fired its first missiles (114) at air defense system in Libya today (3/19/2011) — an act of war at the behest of an unelected, unaccountable council of 15 leaders of mostly foreign governments. People who do not have the consent of the governed in America. Made of many foreign entities who seek an end to America and who are delighting in the continued over-extension of our country — at its continued descent into endless debt as its currency becomes even more worthless. An act of war by an America with an overextended military, currency in danger of collapse. A risky action in a powder-keg of a region that threatens to evolve into the first stop in a new world war.

How can this be stopped? What should we do? Do we wait for our politicians to do the right thing on their own? If so, we will wait a long time.

We are blessed now to live in a time of Miracles. A time when Americans are rising up in the millions to say no to an oversized government with domestic policies that are a danger to their liberties and to the political and spiritual heritage of our children. It is now time for these same millions to recognize that our government over decades has made similar and even more serious errors in its foreign policy.

With the hostile actions of U.S. Military forces today, the President is now required under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to report to Congress within 48 hours of this action. The Congress has 60 days to authorize continued military action.

It is time for the Tea Party and all Americans to tell our Congressman to vote no! No more wars of selection. No more wasted taxpayer dollars on foreign misadventures. No more blood of good American men and women spilled on foreign soil. No more foreign entanglements and call to action by an unelected United Nations that is not accountable to the American people. Talk about a foreign entanglement!

Over the next several days, there is likely to be launched an advocacy campaign among many tea party groups in Florida demanding that congress vote no on authorizing military force. I ask you to go to a website and sign up for an email action alert and be prepared to respond. I ask you to go to FLAlliance.com and register. That is FLALLIANCE.com. Get your members to go there. Get them to call their Congressmen and women and tell them: use all resources at your disposal to stop military action by the U.S. in Libya. Launch similar campaign by your tea party groups around the country and by any group that recognizes this to be an unwise act — a dangerous act for the security of America.

Many of the congressmen and Senators sent to Washington by the Tea Party are engaging in uninformed saber rattling. They are being drawn in by the power circles of Washington. They are being persuaded by foreign powers that we must get further entangled and must expend our treasure and our lives abroad.

It is time for Congress to tell the President to return American Military forces home. Close our foreign bases. End our military action. Grow Strong again America and then we will have true national security and no country or entity will lightly threaten the United States Again. They will remember these words from George Washington’s Farewell Address.

If we remain one People, under an efficient government, the period is not far off, when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or War, as our interest guided by justice shall Counsel.”

Copyright © 2011 David McKalip

Mainstream voters support Ron Paul 58% over Obama, while the Political Class support Obama by 95%.  Of course, the Political Class are voters who trust the government and politicians far more than your average citizen.

View the Rassmussen Report here.

Peter Schiff

As the unemployment rate crossed the double digit barrier for the first time since Michael Jackson learned to moonwalk, President Obama announced that he will convene a “jobs summit” to finally bring the problem under control. Using all the analytic skill that his administration can muster, the President is determined to figure out why so many people are losing their jobs and then formulate a solution. That’s a relief; for a while there, I thought we were in real trouble! In fact, the absolute last thing our economy needs is more federal government interference. If Obama really wants to know what’s behind entrenched joblessness, he should start by looking at the man in the mirror.

Obama is pursuing, with unprecedented vigor, the same policies that have for decades undermined our industrial base and yoked us to an unsustainable consumer/credit driven economy. This doubling down on Washington’s past failures is destroying jobs at an alarming rate. Today we learned that the September trade deficit surged by 18.2%, the largest gain in ten years. Much of the deficit resulted from Americans spending Cash-for-Clunkers stimulus money on imported cars – or “American” cars loaded to the sunroof with imported parts. In exchange for more domestic debt, we have succeeded only in creating foreign jobs.

An article in this week’s New York Times by veteran writer Louis Uchitelle confirmed a fact that I have been alleging for years. Uchitelle pointed out that foreign outsourcing of component manufacturing has led to consistent overstatement of U.S. GDP and productivity. The connection goes a long way to explain why we keep losing jobs even as GDP is apparently expanding.

As our economy becomes less competitive due to higher taxes, burdensome and uncertain regulations, and capital flight, more manufacturing and services will be outsourced to foreign firms. However, the flaw in GDP calculation allows the output of those foreign workers to be included in our domestic tally. Since we count the output but not the worker responsible for it, government statisticians attribute the gains to rising labor productivity. To them, it looks like companies are producing more goods with fewer workers.

The reality is that we are producing less with fewer workers. The added “productivity” comes from higher unemployment and larger trade deficits. This is a toxic formula that will have lethal economic consequences.

Don’t expect the brain trust at the President’s job summit to fret much about these details. That public relations stunt will likely ignore the root cause of the economic imbalances and instead stress the need for government spending on training and education, i.e. more public debt. The unemployed do not need government theatrics, they need actual jobs. But as long as the government props up failed companies, soaks up all available investment capital, discourages savings, punishes employers, and chases capital out of the country, jobs will continue to be lost.

To really fix the unemployment problem, the President must look past his peers in government and academia to understand how jobs are actually created. In the private sector, all individuals have a choice to either work for themselves or someone else. Since labor is far more productive when combined with capital (office equipment, machinery, business models, and intellectual capital), those who lack these assets themselves often choose to work for others who have sacrificed to accumulate them. This increased productivity is shared between the worker and the owner of capital, and both are better off.

However, for one person or company to choose to offer a job to another, there must be an incentive to do so, and they must have the necessary capital. In the first place, employers must commit to paying wages and benefits, comply with government mandates and regulations, and subject themselves to potential lawsuits from disgruntled employees. All of these costs must be measured against the extra profits an employer hopes to earn by hiring an additional worker.

If profit opportunities exist, jobs will be created. Otherwise, they will not. Of course, anything the government does to raise the cost of employment, such as a higher minimum wage, mandated heath care, or greater regulatory burdens, not only prevents new jobs from being created but also causes many that already exist to be destroyed. Anything that diminishes the profit potential of extra hiring will diminish the number of job opportunities that are created. Also, since it is after-tax profits against which employers measure risk, the higher the marginal rate of income tax, the less likely employers will be able to hire.

Finally, in order to hire workers, employers must have access to capital to expand operations. Anything the government does to discourage capital formation automatically diminishes job creation. By running the largest federal deficits in history, Barack Obama is diverting all available capital to the Treasury, and is in effect waging a war against private capital formation.

If the President’s summit truly intends to find the root cause of unemployment, his advisers don’t need Bureau of Labor statistics or complex modeling software, just the courage to drop their dogmatic belief in central planning and embrace the laws of economics.