The Cynical Economist

You Paid for It! Stimulus Dollars Fund Studies into Sexual History and Erectile Dysfunction

The NBC Investigative Unit has raised questions about two grants totaling nearly $1.5 million dollars distributed to the University of California San Francisco. The money was part of the federal stimulus program and went to studies into the erectile dysfunction of overweight middle aged men and the accurate reporting of someone’s sexual history.

HHS Sends $5.9 Million to Program Run by Obama Buddy

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President Obama’s closest friends.

The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since Obama’s days in law school and who also vacations with the first family

Barack Obama’s convenient Wall Street hypocrisy

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES SECOND ONLY TO FINANCIAL PROS IN FRAUD, STUDY SHOWS

Government workers are among the employees most likely to cheat their employers, according to a new study.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the world’s largest anti-fraud organization, found that public-sector administration employees are responsible for more than 10 percent of fraud cases, ranking behind only financial professionals. In 141 cases examined, the group found that a crooked employee costs taxpayers a median loss of $100,000.

Union Bosses’ Hypocrisy

The leaders of America’s unions have been very vocal lately in their criticism of Republicans and of business. According to them, Republicans care only about the wealthy and are unfairly targeting the workers of America with their reforms. These union leaders insist that only they can speak for regular Americans. In fact, their own salaries suggest that they have nothing in common with the average citizen. Here is a short list of some of the highest-earning, and most hypocritical, union presidents:………

DEVASTATING GRAPH REVEALS OBAMA’S UNEMPLOYMENT ECONOMY

Of the 13.3 million Americans who were unemployed in the first quarter of 2012, a staggering 29.5% have been out of work for 52 weeks or more (the official definition of long-term unemployment).   As the Pew Charitable Trusts point out, that works out to roughly 3.9 million people, or more than the population of Oregon.

The Fraud Of Austerity

When the current economic crisis began — largely caused by a government-created housing bubble — we were told that if the government spent an extra trillion dollars or so and ran up the deficit, all would be well. Did it work as advertised in the United States? No. In the United Kingdom? No. In France? No. In Italy? No. In Spain? No. And not even the left wants to talk about Greece.

The chart below shows that rather than the austerity the left is whining about, government spending has risen as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) in all of the major economies. Again, the left said unemployment rates should have come down by now, but the opposite is happening. The U.S. “official” unemployment rate has come down slightly, but the percentage of the labor force at work continues to decline, so the real unemployment rate is approximately 15 percent.

50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time?

The graphic below answers these questions. It shows the major components of federal spending 50 years ago, 25 years ago, and last year.

Florida says 180,000 non-citizens may be on voter rolls

Florida election authorities are examining about 180,000 people who they say may not be U.S. citizens but are registered to vote in the state, an official said on Friday.

Project Veritas exposes non-citizens, dead people registered to vote in NC 

Federal Workers’ 2011 Salary Data Exposed Online

Can California Be Fixed?

To sum up why California has yet another deficit — this time a $16 billion whopper — is pretty easy: The number of demonized one-percenters who pay over 10 percent in their salary to the state has been shrinking, as thousands flee with their ideas, energy, business, and capital to nearby no-tax states, and others make less money due to more and more costs and regulations — while the number of those receiving all sorts of state housing, food, medical, education, and legal support is soaring

GEORGIA WELFARE DOLLARS SPENT AT CASINOS, LIQUOR STORES, SIX FLAGS

Obama’s Budget Would Double the Interest Rate on Student Loans–After the Election

President Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal would double the interest rate on federally backed student loans from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent–eight months after the November presidential election.

The White House fiscal year 2013 plan calls for maintaining the current 3.4 percent interest rate for federally guaranteed student loans, but only through July 1, 2013, at which point it would automatically increase to 6.8 percent. Neither the president’s plan nor the Democrats’ legislation would extend the low rate beyond another year.

Yes, corporations are people - This is a must read article (watch video), by Steven Horwitz -Professor at St. Lawrence University…

Austerity Is Blamed

Denial is leading to collective economic suicide in Europe and the United States. The French on Sunday elected a socialist president who wants to raise taxes on those elusive rich and keep spending as if there is no tomorrow.

Many on the left, including European socialists, the New York Times and its economist Paul Krugman, are falsely claiming that Europe and even the United States are being saddled with austerity. Their claim is that governments are not spending enough to reduce unemployment. They want higher taxes on the most productive plus bigger government. They suffer from a collective memory loss. Don’t they remember that socialism did not work? Every time the big-government “solution” has been tried for the past two centuries, it has failed, but those on the left seem to be incapable of learning.

7 Reasons Liberal Economic Policies Don’t Work

Liberal economic policies just don’t work. In fact, the only time left-wingers have taken charge in the last 40 years without decimating the economy was during the Clinton years when Republicans in Congress balanced the budget and spent 6 years strong-arming Clinton to keep him from molesting the economy like one of his interns. This is no coincidence; it’s a natural consequence of the errant liberal view of economics…..list after the jump

Economy: Blue States Worse Than Red Under Obama

IBD compared average job growth, unemployment, changes in housing prices, per capita income and GDP growth, and gas prices for the 22 states that voted for John McCain in 2008 and the 28 states that voted for Obama .

On every indicator but one, blue states have done worse, on average, than red states.

The one measure where blue states outperformed was in gross domestic product growth, clocking an average 2.5% increase from 2009 to 2010 vs. red states’ 2.2%.

One in Three Young U.S. Workers Are Underemployed

Thirty-two percent of 18- to 29-year-olds in the U.S. workforce were underemployed in April, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment. This is up from 30.1% in March and is slightly higher than the 30.7% of a year ago

SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM - If you wonder who is “stealing” your dollars… The “Oracle” of Massachusetts 

……………..John Kerry is one of several lawmakers prominently featured in Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer’s landmark book on how elected politicians exploit their privileged positions to enhance their personal wealth.

The Massachusetts Senator’s most dubious trading activity coincided with two major political events—the financial crisis of late 2008 and the passage of President Obama’s controversial healthcare overhaul in March 2010.

Kerry was one of at least 10 Senators to trade financial stocks just days after a Sept. 16, 2008 meeting between Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, and leading members of Congress to discuss the increasingly dire state of the financial markets.

In mid-October 2008, as the Treasury was discussing which banks would be bailed out in the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP), Kerry bought up to $550,000 worth of Citigroup stock and up to $350,000 worth of Bank of America shares. Days later, the American public learned that Citigroup would receive $50 billion from the TARP fund and up to $277 billion in additional loan guarantees. Bank of America also received $50 billion from TARP.

During the contentious healthcare debate in 2009, Schweizer noted, Kerry loaded up on pharmaceutical stocks, purchasing close to $750,000 worth of shares in one company—Teva Pharmaceuticals—in the month of November alone.

Drug companies were viewed to be among the major beneficiaries of the Democratic healthcare legislation. Pharmaceuticals “kicked in $80 billion to help make the bill work, but stand to make 10 times that amount in revenues from added government and government-subsidized business,” liberal columnist Howard Fineman wrote in Newsweek.

Teva stock was trading at about $50 a share when Kerry started buying, but jumped to $62 a share after the healthcare bill was passed, an increase of nearly 25 percent. After Obama signed the bill into law, Kerry sold his Teva shares, realizing tens of thousands in capital gains………………

SMARTEST GAL IN THE ROOM - LOL Here is another one  ”smarter and better than you” democrat falling in her own trap

Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson, citing a genealogist, claimed Tuesday that Massachusetts Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren‘s ancestry includes a great-great-great grandfather who helped round up Cherokees in the days leading to the Trail of Tears.

Warren has struggled to prove her American Indian ancestry since it was revealed more than a week ago that she referred to herself as a Native American minority in the 1980s and ’90s.

“In what may be the ultimate and cruelest irony … it turns out that Warren’s great-great-great grandfather was a member of a militia unit which participated in the round-up of the Cherokees in the prelude to the Trail of Tears,” Jacobson wrote on his blog.

The Trail of Tears is the name given to the forced relocation of Native Americans after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. It led to the deaths of thousands of Indians.

Jacobson explained that this information was learned after Warren’s campaign claimed last week that her great-great-great grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford, was herself a Cherokee Indian.

Citing writer and genealogist Michael Patrick Leahy, he reported that a review of that ancestor’s heritage revealed that her husband, Jonathan Crawford, apparently participated in the removal of the Cherokees from Georgia

State probes possible voting by foreigners in Florida

Florida’s elections rolls may include thousands of foreigners who might have illegally cast ballots. The state is trying to track them down.

Thousands of foreign citizens — particularly in South Florida — might be registered to vote in Florida and could have unlawfully cast ballots in previous elections.

The potential problem is largest in Florida’s largest county: Miami-Dade, where the elections supervisor is examining 2,000 potentially unlawful voters, WFOR-CBS 4 News reported Tuesday. Broward is examining 260 suspected foreign voters. One suspected noncitizen voter has been registered for about 40 years, CBS 4 found.

Fed clears China’s first US bank takeover 

The United States on Wednesday opened its banking market to ICBC, China’s biggest bank, for the first time clearing a takeover of a US bank by a Chinese state-controlled company.

Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia.

The transaction will make ICBC the first Chinese state-controlled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States.

ICBC has been the most aggressive of China’s “big four” banks in expanding overseas.

According to the Fed the bank has total assets of roughly $2.5 trillion.

It will buy up to 80 percent of the US unit of the Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia, which operates 13 branches in New York and California.

With Help of a ‘Bionic’ Suit, Paralyzed Woman Finishes London Marathon

You think running a marathon is tough? Try running a marathon wearing a 40-lb exoskeleton strapped to your lower body. And try doing it without the use of your legs.

It took her 16 days, but 32-year-old Claire Lomas has done it. On May 8, she crossed the finish line of a race that began on April 22, greeted by crowds of supporters as she emerged from under an arch of red balloons at the marathon’s end. Lomas, who is paralyzed from the chest down, wore a “bionic” suit designed to allow people with lower-limb paralysis to walk and stand, which helped her cover about two miles a day. The ReWalk suit, designed by Israeli firm Argo Medical Technologies, was recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (and, as close TV watchers will note, featured on an episode of Glee). It costs about $70,000.

 Spend More on Education, Because It’s Worked So Well

My question is: WHY DO WE HAVE TO SUBSIDIZE COLLEGE EDUCATIONS THAT STUDENTS CAN PAY FOR WITH A SUMMER JOB AND SOME PART TIME WORK WHEN THEY DIDN’T LEARN ANYTHING IN HIGH SCHOOL?

‘Don’t Go To Law School,’ ‘Move To Asia,’ And 28 Other Pearls Of Wisdom For 2012 Grads

This month, a huge batch of 20-somethings will be loosed upon the country with shiny new degrees in hand. We’ve crowd-sourced advice for the graduates of 2012 from our host of writers based on their areas of expertise. Here are 25 pearls of wisdom from Forbes. Spend them wisely….

How Mitt Romney’s Campaign Put A Damper On Obama’s Big Day

Romney Deputy Press Secretary Ryan Williams was in the audience at the OSU rally, and tweeted a picture of the empty seats — which instantly got picked up by conservative blogs. After Obama’s remarks he was swarmed by local reporters, and after giving them a standard response to the speech, he commented on the empty seats.

OBAMA LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN IN EMPTY ARENA

Barack Obama launched his campaign in unspectacular fashion today at Ohio State University, the largest college in the crucial swing state.  A photo posted to twitter by Mitt Romney’s campaign spokesman Ryan Williams reveals sparse attendance.  The above image, according to Williams, was taken during the President’s first official campaign speech.

MSNBC Host Calls Half-Full Stadium For Obama Rally “Filled Stadium” - video after the jump

MSNBC host Alex Wagner, who once said she would like to get rid of the Second Amendment, claimed that Obama gave a speech in a full stadium in Ohio this past weekend WHILE an image of the not-so-full stadium was displayed on the screen. “We have talked about attendance rates at campaign events. Mitt Romney also had a speech in Detroit at an unfilled stadium. Now this is OSU, a filled stadium. Although it was a capacity 18,300, the president had 14,000 folks out there,” Wagner said.

The awful April jobs report: Is the ‘real’ unemployment rate 11.1%?

Forward

The Obama Promise: Five Million New Green Jobs - That is a post from 2008

• “We’ll create 5 million new, high-wage jobs by investing in the renewable sources of energy that will eliminate the oil we currently import from the Middle East in 10 years, and we’ll create 2 million jobs by rebuilding our crumbling roads, schools, and bridges.”
• “It is time to protect the jobs we have and to create the jobs of tomorrow by unlocking the drive, and ingenuity, and innovation of the American people. And we should fast-track the loan guarantees we passed for our auto industry and provide more as needed so that they can build the energy-efficient cars America needs to end our dependence on foreign oil.”
• “I won’t pretend this will be easy or come without cost. We’ll have to set priorities as never before, and stick to them. That means pursuing investments in areas such as energy, education, and healthcare that bear directly on our economic future, while deferring other things we can afford to do without.”

Source: Red Green & Blue (http://s.tt/12A0w)

Obama campaign inflates job numbers by 40 percent for pricey electric car - That is the reality in 2012 

President Barack Obama’s deputy campaign manager got her facts wrong while she was trying to support the administration’s $193 million subsidy for a luxury automaker.

“Hi, I’m Stephanie Cutter, I’m the deputy campaign manager here at Obama for America, and I wanted to arm you with the facts about the latest attack from ‘Big Oil,’” Cutter said in her May 2 video. “Let’s get the facts out, because it is important that you guys know the truth.”

Cutter’s speech appears to have been aimed at a new attack ad by Americans for Prosperity (AFP) that dinged Obama for sending “half a billion [dollars] to an electric car company that created hundreds of jobs … in Finland.“

That company is Fisker, whose auto-factory in Anaheim, Calif. produces a trickle of $102,000 Karma electric autos. Those autos are quite popular among Hollywood stars and other wealthy Democratic donors. The car made headlines in March when its sports car died on a Connecticut runway during a 65 mile per hour Consumer Reports test

America’s costliest disease

The United States is rushing toward a health and economic catastrophe, with significant repercussions on our global competitiveness and national security. The emerging obesity epidemic has no real parallel with any other health crisis in our history. In the past, we have met the challenges of epidemics and other serious diseases and emerged with new knowledge, new technologies and superior tools to better our nation’s health. We need to take the same approach with obesity, coming up with tested and reasonable programs that both address the problem and help inspire new life-saving and wealth-creating technologies.

Obesity could affect 42% of Americans by 2030

 A new forecast on obesity in America has health experts fearing a dramatic jump in health care costs if nothing is done to bring it under control.

The projection, released Monday, warns that 42% of Americans may end up obese by 2030 (up from 36% in 2010), and 11% could be severely obese, roughly 100 or more pounds over a healthy weight (vs. 6% in 2010).

U.S. health care spending ‘dwarfs’ that of other countries

The United States spends more on health care than 12 other industrialized countries, a new Commonwealth Fund study finds – but that doesn’t mean this country’s care is any better.

The U.S. spent nearly $8,000 per person for health care services in 2009, the study found, confirming that “health care spending in the U.S. dwarfs that found in any other industrialized country.

Americans Paying More in Taxes than for Food, Clothing, and Shelter

In 2012, Americans will pay approximately $4.041 trillion in taxes, which is $152 billion, or 3.9 percent, more than they will spend on housing, food, and clothing

Millions of illegal immigrants are getting a bigger tax refund than you - THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!!!

One of the workers, who was interviewed at his home in southern Indiana, admitted his address was used this year to file tax returns by four other undocumented workers who don’t even live there. Those four workers claimed 20 children live inside the one residence and, as a result, the IRS sent the illegal immigrants tax refunds totaling $29,608.

13 Investigates saw only one little girl who lives at that address (a small mobile home). We wondered about the 20 kids claimed as tax deductions?

“They don’t live here,” said the undocumented worker. “The other kids are in their country of origin, which is Mexico.”

California Assembly OKs bill on gay contractors - Whites, non gay contractors do not apply? Sure it is not a requirement, but why pass a law to identify what are they? Another “fine” creation of the looney tunes state…

For the first time, California would ask its contractors if they are gay under legislation passed Monday by the Assembly.

The measure, Assembly Bill 1960, would enable the owners of businesses that contract with the state to identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. It would not require them to do so.

China’s Vanishing Trade Imbalance

Something unexpected has happened to China’s economy, however. Its surplus with the rest of the world has largely disappeared.

An Audacious Promise: The Moral Case for Capitalism

Milton Friedman once said that every time capitalism has been tried, it has succeeded; whereas every time socialism has been tried, it has failed. Yet President Obama has oddly claimed that we’ve tried free-market capitalism, and it “has never worked.” This is rather remarkable.

Where’s the Collateral?

The global “recovery” is based not on reducing debt but on increasing it. Nice, but where’s the collateral? The basic idea of debt is that credit is extended based on collateral, i.e. something of enduring, tradable value, or an income stream that isn’t reduced to zero by non-discretionary spending and taxes.

Too Busy for A Summer Job? Why America’s Youth Lacks Basic Work Skills

Do today’s kids make terrible entry-level workers? That’s a question much on employers’ minds as graduation season kicks off and young adults begin their first full-time jobs. We’ve all heard the stories: assistants who won’t “assist,” new workers who can’t set an alarm, employees who can’t grasp institutional hierarchies.

WELFARE FRAUD CAUGHT ON CAMERA 

A Memphis investigative team caught welfare fraud on camera, as customers at a local grocery store bought beer and condoms with EBT cars

How to Keep the Poor Poor

Media personality Tavis Smiley and Princeton philosophy professor Cornell West have just published their latest contribution to American poverty propaganda, “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.”

The book should have a second subtitle: “How to keep the poor poor and blacks enslaved to government.” To the extent this book is taken seriously by anyone, the result can only be more, entrenched poverty.

Smiley and West’s message is simple. America today consists of a few powerful, rapacious rich people and a lot of unfortunate, exploited poor people. The rich are rich because they are lucky. The poor are poor because they are unlucky. And the only way to solve the problem is activist government to manage the American economy and redistribute wealth.

It’s as if the wealthy belong to a different species of life with no common thread of humanity linking who they are to those who have less. The idea that “haves” might have been once “have nots,” or that that they did something to become “haves” that today’s “have nots” might consider doing, never enters the equation.

Even if Smiley and West conceded that there might be some element of personal responsibility in how one’s life turns out, their portrait is of an America now so unfair, that personal responsibility is irrelevant. There is no hope for anyone to rise, according to this book, without government boosting them using other people’s money.

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 2.4 percent since the second half of 2009, which hardly represents a comeback, Stanford University economics professor Ed Lazear said Wednesday.

“The problem is, this is not a recovery at all,” he said on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.” “We haven’t made up for the lost ground, and that’s unprecedented.”

Lazear, who also chaired President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006 to 2009, authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece this week, titled, “The Worst Economic Recovery in History,” in which he used historical data to argue that the current period of growth is anemic at best.

In the article, Lazear writes: “The Great Depression started with major economic contractions in 1930, ’31, ‘32 and ‘33. In the three following years, the economy rebounded strongly with growth rates of 11 percent, 9 percent and 13 percent, respectively.”

……………………………………

Lazear noted that the Dow was near 14,000 pre-recession and now struggles to maintain 13,000.

“It’s four years later,” he said. “We should be is approximately 12 percent better, and we’re not.”

Lazear laid blame for the economic sluggishness with the Obama administration’s policies on trade, taxes, regulation and health care, all of which “have not been conducive to business growth.”

Why am I calling atheism a religion?

Once atheists start organizing and start going to conventions, put written rules on conduct, follow and admire a god like leader (that being Christopher Hitchens) and have complete trust and confidence  (faith), that the faith of others  in Allah, Christ , Buddha or whatever is just a fairy tale bullshit, they themselves turn into the atheism religion followers.

The lack of believe, that there is a God is actually a believe, that there is no God.

I personally have no problem with that. As long as you do not interfere with my believes and leave me alone to believe whatever I want – we are all good

Watch the video and believe whatever you want.

Hilarity starts at 1:00 mark…..

LOL Later at 2:40 Muslims and Atheist shouting at each other “infidels”…

Atheists chant at Muslim protesters – 2012 Atheist Convention