Fannie asks gov't for almost $4.6B after 4Q loss

Never learning from mistakes, the obama administration continues to shell out our taxpayer money to failing companies, taking away any incentive to improve.  After Fannie's 3rd quarter loss of $5.1 billion, we again bailed them out with an additional $7.8 billion dollars.  Now they lose $2.4 billion in the 4th quarter and we get to bail them out with another $4.6 billion!!  Fannie had lost $1.3 billion in the 2nd quarter btw.  Total tab for Fannie Mae so far...a whopping $117.2 billion dollars and counting!!!  Fannie Mae has now reported losses in 17 of the past 18 quarters!!!  (the only quarter they reported a profit was due to a one-time payment from Bank of America.)

As for Fannie's evil cohort Freddie Mac, we see a similar story.  Loss after loss, bailout after bailout.  Freddie's 3rd quarter loss...$4.4 billion and a bailout of $6 billion dollars worth of taxpayer money.  Brace for their 4th quarter loss...it's coming!

So far...bailouts of the two is approaching $200 billion dollars worth of taxpayer money.  Time to dissolve the two money sieves!  Let's protect taxpayers and get the government out of the free market!!!

By Derek Kravitz - 2/29/2012

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mortgage giant Fannie Mae said Wednesday that it lost money in the fourth quarter and is asking the federal government for nearly $4.6 billion in aid to cover its deficit.

Washington, D.C.-based Fannie said it lost roughly $2.4 billion in the October-December quarter, stung by declining home prices. Revenue was about $4.5 billion.

The government rescued Fannie and sibling company Freddie Mac in September 2008 to cover their losses on soured mortgage loans. Since then, a federal regulator — the Federal Housing Finance Agency — has controlled their financial decisions.

Taxpayers have spent more than $150 billion to prop up Fannie and Freddie, the most expensive bailout of the 2008 financial crisis. The government estimates that figure could top $259 billion to support the companies through 2014 after subtracting dividend payments.

Fannie has received more than $116 billion so far from the Treasury Department, the most expensive bailout of a single company.

Fannie's bailout money totaled roughly $16.4 billion in 2011 after accounting for dividend payments. That's up from about $7.3 billion in 2010 but down from about $32.5 billion in 2009.

Fannie officials say losses have increased in recent quarters for two reasons: Some homeowners are paying less interest after refinancing at historically low mortgage rates; others are defaulting on their mortgages.

"While economic factors, such as falling home prices and high unemployment, produced strong headwinds for our business again in 2011, we continued to grow a very strong new book of business as we have since 2009," said Michael J. Williams, Fannie's president and CEO.

When property values drop, homeowners default, either because they are unable to afford the payments or because they owe more than the property is worth. Because of the guarantees, Fannie and Freddie must pay for the losses.

Fannie's $2.4 billion loss for the fourth quarter takes into account $2.6 billion in dividend payments to the government. That compares with a loss of $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010.

In November, Freddie requested $6 billion in extra aid — the largest request since April 2010 — after it reported losing $6 billion in the third quarter.

Fannie Mae and McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac own or guarantee about half of all mortgages in the U.S., or nearly 31 million home loans. Along with other federal agencies, they backed nearly 90 percent of new mortgages over the past few years.

Fannie and Freddie buy home loans from banks and other lenders, package them with bonds with a guarantee against default and sell them to investors around the world. The companies nearly folded more than three years ago because of big losses on risky mortgages they purchased.

The Obama administration unveiled a plan one year ago to slowly dissolve the two mortgage giants. The aim is to shrink the government's role in the mortgage system, remaking decades of federal policy aimed at getting Americans to buy homes. It would also probably make home loans more expensive.

The firms' regulator, the FHFA

Exactly how far the government's role in mortgage lending would be reduced was left to Congress to decide. But all three options the administration presented would create a housing finance system that relies far more on private money. ..

Why do Americans spend more on healthcare? Because they can

By Christopher J. Conover - February 25, 2012

Americans have the highest health spending on the planet. Why? Because they can afford to do so. What few people realize is that the United States has increased its standard of living vis-à-vis its biggest competitors despite rising health expenditures (figure 1.6c).

It may seem trivial to observe that Americans spend more on healthcare because they can afford it. But it gets to the heart of an important question: Why are we so preoccupied with rising health costs in the first place? From the standpoint of the average American’s welfare—measured in terms of their standard of living—what really matters is how much they have to spend on everything else once healthcare has been purchased. We can approximate this standard of living by simply subtracting national health expenditures from the rest of GDP and then dividing by population. To make these comparisons, I have relied on Penn World Table estimates of GDP per capita, which have been carefully constructed to produce a standardized metric of living standards that allows for meaningful comparisons across countries and over time. That is, in these comparisons, a 2005 dollar has equivalent general purchasing power across each of the years and countries shown.

In the United States, real (inflation-adjusted) healthcare spending per capita has been rising faster than real GDP per capita for as long as we can measure it (back to 1929). Consequently, healthcare absorbs a growing share of GDP. But the same has been true for all our major competitors for as long as we can measure it (back to 1960). For purposes of discussion, I’m defining the nation’s major competitors as the rest of the countries in the G7 (Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Canada) since these represent our major industrialized trading partners. Countries such as China and India surely will grow in importance in the decade ahead, but right now their standard of living is far behind that of the United States.

The United States for many decades has enjoyed a far higher standard of living than in the rest of the G7. In 1960, non-health GDP per capita in Japan was 62 percent lower than in the United States. The rest of the G7 also lagged behind the United States, though by not quite as much (ranging from 43 percent lower in Italy to 19 percent lower in Canada, the country whose standard of living came closest to that of the United States). This should come as no surprise: the United States emerged as the world’s strongest industrial power after World War II, an advantage that could easily have been predicted to persist only 15 years later.

But here’s what may surprise many readers: in real dollar terms, the U.S. margin of advantage in non-health spending increased between 1960 and 2007 for every single G7 country except Japan. Moreover, even since 1980, this U.S. margin of advantage increased for every country except the UK (which saw a minuscule decline in this metric). This means that even countries which experienced a lower growth rate than the United States in real health spending per capita lost ground to the United States in their real non-health standard of living. How could that be? The absolute increase in real U.S. GDP per capita was more than enough to absorb the absolute increase in its real health spending per capita during the same period.

A concrete illustration will make this clearer. From 1980-2007, U.S. health spending per capita grew by 4.3 percent a year. In Germany, this increase was only 2.5 percent a year. One might suppose that this large difference in health spending growth rates would have allowed Germany to catch up with the United States in terms of its non-health GDP per capita. That is, if Americans were spending more on healthcare, they must be spending less on everything else. But that’s not what happened. Between 1980 and 2007, the difference between U.S. and German health spending per capita grew by more than $3,000 (i.e., Americans spent $528 apiece more than Germans in 1980, but by 2007, this difference had grown to $3,078). Had non-health GDP per capita grown by identical amounts in each country, this would have reduced the U.S. non-health standard of living by more than $3,000 vis-a-vis Germany. But the rise in U.S. GDP per capita instead was so large that it not only covered the $3,000 in added health spending, but increased the U.S. margin of advantage over Germany in non-health spending by nearly $4,000! This illustrates the enormous power of a growing economy: Americans literally were able to have their cake and eat it too.

This is a critically important truth: the United States spends more on healthcare in large part because it can afford to do so. And unless the United States suffers a sharp decline in its GDP growth compared to its competitors, this pattern can persist for many decades. Even today, the margin of advantage I have been describing remains so large that even for Canada (where the U.S. margin of advantage is smallest within the G7), the United States could afford to increase its health spending by 50 percent without entirely eradicating Americans’ higher non-health standard of living relative to Canadians.

A rich country has to spend its income in some fashion. Would critics of the U.S. health system feel better if all the extra income that found its way into the healthcare system had instead been devoted to buying pet food, lottery tickets, or fancier cars? Put another way: which would you rather be? The country that spent more on healthcare because its booming economy gave it the means to do so? Or the country whose growth in healthcare was constrained by lower economic growth? This is not to argue that we cannot and should not find ways to get rid of avoidable health spending where feasible. But it puts into perspective where the United States really sits relative to its competitors. The United States is not doing nearly as badly as some critics have alleged. Moreover, these figures raise serious questions about whether we really wish to go down the same path as other European social welfare states.

My Story...

I don't fit the stereotype of your upper-class, wealthy Republican. My parents (and extended family) were all very devout Republicans. Many in my family have served in the armed forces including three cousins (Navy), uncle (Vietnam, Navy Seal UDT), and grandpa (WWII Army vet). I grew up in a small town in a large, devout Catholic middle-class family. My mom was a hard working stay-at-home mother of six children with a college degree in nursing. My dad attended trade school and worked several manufacturing jobs after high school. He took over the family oil business (almost 100 years now) and worked hard to start several other small local businesses.

I'm very proud of my parents. My mom taught me the importance of faith and morals. My dad instilled the importance of hard work and pride in accomplishment. The importance of reputation and how easily it could be damaged. My parents are the type of people that never complained about not having as much as someone else. They didn't ask for handouts, instead choosing hard work, dedication, and saving to get ahead in life. My parents have always been very involved in serving others and charity work. They role modeled the importance of "serving others" but made clear that it was WRONG to live off of someone else's hard work or charity if you were capable of doing without or taking care of yourself.

I don't have ties to corporate America but my dad is a small business owner, employing a number of people in the small town I grew up in. He feels the burn of insurance costs on small businesses and the burden is intensified by the cost of his own personal health insurance (family) as type one diabetes was a reality that my family lived with...also known as a "pre-existing condition" to the insurance companies (four family members).

My family was involved with charity work and fundraisers as long as I can remember, but MORALS ALWAYS CAME FIRST. When my parents found out that the money they raised for the Juvenile Diabetic Foundation by putting on an annual charity horse-show each year was being used to fund embryonic stem cell research in an effort to find a cure for diabetes, (which creates a demand or incentive for abortions), they immediately began doing the charity horse show for the Nebraska Chapter of Right to Life. They wanted a cure for my brother and sister, but not at the risk of giving up their morals.

As for myself, I was a member of the Nebraska Chapter of Teens for Life and worked with many charities. My political views tended to be more conservative but naive. My political theories or even moral beliefs had not truly been tested yet. When I went off to college I read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, and Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn and even subscribed to Ad Busters Magazine. I learned it is difficult to avoid the indoctrination that comes at you from all directions at college.

As time went on and I learned more and more about government corruption. I didn't trust government and with the help and guidance of a good friend, I began my crusade against the establishment starting with my local government. First an initiative and referendum petition aimed at removing an overnight parking ban that the city government enacted to profit off of local college students. After city hall violated city codes and state statutes by changing the wording of my petition on the ballot to confuse voters, I demanded the issue be placed on the ballot for the next election "the correct way" as required by law. I called many meetings with the mayor and city council but they refused to budge stating, "You're just a punk college kid, who are you to come in and change OUR laws?"

After the councilman from my ward of the city refused to take my requests seriously, I took out a recall petition to remove him from office. The petition was successful and forced a special election. The councilman took the matter to court to try and stop the election from going forward but the judge decided in my favor.

I became a Notary Public for the state of Nebraska and I also became certified to register voters and went around the campus registering students to vote. My next item on the agenda that I was excited about...a petition to remove the four wards that divide the city. The city adopted the four wards to separate the college from the rest of the city, in an attempt to limit the influence of the college and its students on the city and its government.

I also battled city police and came to the aid of several students on various occasions who had been arrested or ticketed when police entered their residence without warrant. I encouraged students to fight the city police in court. I used my position as an editor on the college paper to keep check of the city police by publishing illegal activities the police were involved in. On more than one occasion, judges in county court sided against the police for overstepping their bounds.

By my senior year of college, I had become jaded with government and authority. I read the teachings of Emma Goldman "The Queen of Anarchy". I read Henry David Thoreau's essays on Civil Disobedience and I engrossed myself with John Stuart Mill's "Essays On Liberty".

I also began to study the United States Constitution more closely, and read The Federalist Papers of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay along with other historical documents on our revolution and Bill of Rights. I delved deeper into US history and read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense". I began to see where we came from and why we are where we are today.

I believed and still do today, in what our forefathers intended for us in our Constitution. I began to see just why each Inalienable Right was so important to our freedom and must be protected. I began to see the failures of socialism which I had once embraced. How it eventually falls to the ever-present corruption within the government. How it destroys the incentive to work harder than you have to and how it promotes mediocrity because human nature doesn't drive us to do more than we have to do if we don't have anything to show for it. I adopted the philosophy of "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he'll eat forever."

I began to see that although corporations need to be monitored, it was actually government involvement (crony capitalism) that caused most of the problems. I learned that bigger government is NOT the answer! Forfeiting rights and freedoms to our government is NOT the answer. They are inalienable meaning they weren't given to us by our government so our government can not take them away from us.

I learned that "we the people" do a far better job of taking care of our poor and needy through charity and volunteering than our government does or ever could. That "forced charity" by our government is not the answer!

I moved to California and worked for the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce. I participated on the Government Affairs Committee and the Education Committee. I helped small businesses by joining an Ad-Hoc Committee and PAC set up to battle a slow growth initiative brought forth by a local group of citizens. I helped put together a book on how the city government and school district works in an effort to help educate voters. I learned a lot from my boss at the Chamber who took part in the recall of Governor Gray Davis and the election of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I decided to battle the credit card giants on a little known but illegal practice involving the creation of credit not backed by anything more than a "promise to pay". Credit accounts created by you and I. Making it impossible for the banks to provide requested debit information when credit accounts are created as required by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

For most that know me, they know how passionate I am about politics and my country. Some might believe that my passion for politics started AFTER my time in college; quite the contrary.

My passion for politics started when I was just seven years old. My earliest memories involve sitting around the living room with family at my grandparents house the Christmas after Kay Orr had just defeated Helen Boosalis to become the first female Governor of Nebraska (first female Republican Governor ever)! I was hooked! During high school I was selected to attend several leadership camps including Christian Leadership Institute and Hugh O'brian Youth Leadership Institute (HOBY). Around my junior year of high school I was selected by my local chapter of The American Legion to be my school's representative to Cornhusker Boys State, where I spent a week learning first hand about our government and how it works. Even working on legislation that could be introduced to our State Legislature and possibly become law. In college I found myself taking political science classes as electives and challenging City Hall with initiative and referendum petitions and recall elections.

After having children and moving back to Nebraska, I continued my career as a marketing director at a large biomedical company in Omaha. Eventually my wife and I decided to serve others by becoming Family Teachers (aka: house parents) at Father Flanagan's Boys Town. We lived with, took care of, and helped over 50 at risk teenagers over the course of 6 years. During my residence at Boys Town I ran for and was elected as a Trustee to the Village of Boys Town. I also started my own company "2-B Associates" in which I acted as the middle man procuring government contracts for civilian businesses. Eventually I took a position in administration with Boys Town and because my evenings and weekends were no longer occupied with work, I once again became involved with local politics. I began work on my Master's degree in Leadership from Bellevue University and I joined the Omaha chapter of the Nebraska Federation of Young Republicans where I was elected to and served on the Executive Committee. I also joined the Douglas Country Republican Party (Omaha) and was elected to the Central Committee to represent my Legislative District. I also serve on the Executive Committee and the Media/Communications and Social Media Teams for the DCRP, and am a member of Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom. I served as a delegate to the Douglas County Republican Convention (2012) and led my caucus (LD10) as caucus chair. I was elected to the State Republican Party's Central Committee (NEGOP), reelected to the County Party's Central Committee, and as a delegate to the Nebraska Republican State Convention (2012).

As for my future plans...stay tuned...tbd... =)

(updated 6/11/2012)

REPORT: Federal Aid Pushes Up College Tuition Rates

I cried foul when the obama administration decided to usurp control of yet another aspect of the American economy (Student Loans).  Soon after, he revealed intentions that included ignoring the repayment terms agreed to by borrowers, and instead allowing borrowers to repay loans on a "pay what you can afford" basis (rather than what they themselves had agreed to).  In typical "ignore personal accountability" obama fashion, he also stated his intention to ignore the repayment terms altogether, by cancelling them entirely after 20 years. 

My first reaction...Did we learn nothing from the mortgage crisis?!  Anyone can accurately predict that in an effort to decrease risks, banks will become very selective in making school loans in the future.  You can also predict that the government will step in in the name of "social justice" and force banks into making these risky loans (knowing full well that they won't be repayed and the taxpayers will again be forced into another bailout).  The excuse will be the same.  Just as they wanted to increase home ownership among the low income, they will suggest they want to grant equal opportunity at educational advancement to the lower income.

The excuse given by obama for this overreach by the federal government?  Tuition rates are spiralling out of control.  I am proud to say that I accurately predicted at that time (my friends remember the mass email I sent out), that obama's motives would achieve just the opposite outcome!  That colleges and universities would seize on the opportunity to hike tuition rates, knowing full well that the government would guarantee loans to cover tuition no matter what the cost!

FEBRUARY 24, 2012 - By JACK HOUGH



Why College Aid Makes College More Expensive 

"New research shows how federal spending on higher education can backfire."

Federal aid for students has increased 164% over the past decade, adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board. Yet three-quarters of Americans and even a majority of college presidents see college as unaffordable for most, and that sentiment has been steadily spreading, the Pew Research Center reports.

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Two new studies offer clues on why. One measures the degree to which some colleges reduce their own aid in response to increased federal aid. The other suggests federal aid is helping to push college costs higher.

Recipients of federal Pell Grants have, by definition, limited means to pay for college, so they are likely to qualify for grants and price breaks given out by schools, too. But schools view a student's sources of federal aid before deciding how much to give on their own, rather than the other way around. The result is a crowding out effect, where some schools give less as the government gives more.

Lesley Turner, a PhD candidate at Columbia University, looked at data on aid from 1996 to 2008 and calculated that, on average, schools increased Pell Grant recipients' prices by $17 in response to every $100 of Pell Grant aid. More selective nonprofit schools' response was largest and these schools raised prices by $66 for every $100 of Pell Grant aid.

Aid from schools over the past decade has increased about half as fast as federal aid, according to the College Board.

Perhaps worse for students than a crowding out effect is the Bennett Effect, named for William Bennett, who 25 years ago as Secretary of Education wrote for the New York Times, "Increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions."

If subsidies puff up buying power and shift prices higher, as economics courses teach, could federal aid for college help create an affordability problem? After all, the federal government began spending more on college aid with the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the full funding of Pell Grants in 1975. Since 1979, tuition and fees have tripled after adjusting for inflation. That's much faster than the increase for real estate and teacher pay.

There have been mixed findings on the Bennett Effect in recent decades, with some studies finding a dollar-for-dollar relationship and others, none at all. Determining why college costs are rising is a difficult task, after all. Stephanie Riegg Cellini of George Washington University and Claudia Golden of Harvard take a new approach, focusing on for-profit schools. Some of these are eligible to participate in so-called Title IV aid programs (named for a portion of the aforementioned Act) and some not.

After adjusting for differences among schools, the authors find that Title IV-eligible schools charge tuition that is 75% higher than the others. That's roughly equal to the amount of the aid received by students at these schools.

Studies like these suggest that if one goal of government is to make college affordable, aid should become more thoughtful instead of merely more plentiful. And the total cost of federal spending on college isn't fully known. That's because spending on loans dwarfs that on grants. Student loans recently eclipsed credit card debt.

With credit cards, borrowers pay high interest rates to make up for their lack of collateral. Many many student loans have subsidized rates; others have low rates based on the assumption that a college education is a good financial risk for lenders.

If costs outpace the ability of graduates to find jobs with good pay, and repayment rates on these loans slide, taxpayers could end up feeling the crunch.

Refuse Obamacare's State Health Exchanges:

excerpts from my dcrp post:

The DCRP's statement on the issue is that beginning to implement part of obamacare "just in case" is NOT the answer. Other organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and The Platte Institute for Economic Research agree.

Heritage Foundation scholar Ed Haislmaier warns that, "States should refuse to create any type of ObamaCare-compliant Exchange and send back all federal ObamaCare grants."

There should be discussion on how best to go about preventing/limiting the effects of obamacare on Nebraska if the Supreme Court rules the wrong way. As far as we know, this discussion currently is NOT taking place and we simply would like to encourage it, as opposed to beginning implementation of obamacare before the Supreme Court has even ruled on the case.

Nebraska is not the only state refusing to implement these health exchanges before the Supreme Court rules on the matter.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed Executive Order 10-12 in August 2010 that prohibited all executive department and state agency participation in federal health reform unless required by law or directed by the governor’s office. Florida Governor Rick Scott decided to wait for a Supreme Court ruling before continuing with implementation. Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell currently is planning not to comply with law after the Florida court ruling that PPACA is unconstitutional.  Add Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to the list as well!

As Peter Suderman of the blog "reason.com" points out, "States whose legislators oppose last year's health care law have a number of reasons to refuse to participate in implementing its requirements, particularly when it comes to the exchanges. Refusing to play ball with the federal government ensures that the federal government will have to take responsibility for the complex details of the law's implementation. Given that Missouri's residents voted overwhelmingly last year to reject one of ObamaCare's key features, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, it's clear enough where the state's voters stand. Finally, there's the constitutional question: Shouldn't states currently challenging the law's constitutionality—like Missouri—steer clear of implementing it?"　

So where should the discussion start on how to go about opposing the implementation of obamacare?

Do we start with the example of Texas and affirm Nebraska's Sovereignty under the 10th Amendment, designating that all compulsory federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties, or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding, be prohibited or repealed?
We could join 16 other states that have considered measures to create an "Interstate Freedom Compact," joining forces across state lines to coordinate or enforce opposition; four states now have enacted laws. We could encourage participation in the compact from all 27 states currently challenging obamacare in court.

We could take a lesson from Catholic Bishops and refuse to enact a law that oversteps federal boundaries, challenging the President to flex his muscles and battle a majority of the Union. Several states considered bills that propose the power of "nullification," seeking to label the federal law "null and void" within the state boundaries.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "In response to the federal health reform law, now known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and separate state reform initiatives, some members of at least 45 state legislatures have proposed legislation to limit, alter or oppose selected state or federal actions. In general many of the opposing measures, in 2010 and 2011 focus on not permitting, implementing or enforcing mandates (federal or state) that would require purchase of insurance by individuals or by employers and impose fines or penalties for those who fail to do so. The seek to keep in-state health insurance optional, and instead allow people to purchase any type of health services or coverage they may choose. They also contradict or challenge specific policy provisions contained in the 2010 federal law."

There are plenty of other options discussed here.

And that's what this is all about…to get discussion rolling rather than throwing up the white flag!!! Let's take the lead!!!

Not Enough “Rich” to Cover the Deficit

Barack Obama would have us believe that if the "rich" would just pay their fair share our economic woes would disappear. History tells us that the opposite approach – lowering the tax burden on everyone, including higher earners –  is the real path to economic growth and higher tax revenues.

With all of Barack Obama's overblown rhetoric about the "rich" paying their fair share, what effect (other than making it more difficult for job-creators to add to their staffs) would higher taxes have on reducing deficits?

• Those earning more than $10 million per year earned a total of $240 billion in 2009. That would fund federal government operations for a mere 18 days.
• If every dime earned by taxpayers making over $1,000,000 was paid in taxes, it would still not cover the federal deficit.
• Even doubling federal income taxes for every taxpayer would fall short of a balanced budget by $400 billion.

So, let's sum up. The rich don't have the money to bring order to our budget chaos, nearly half of all "taxpayers" pay no federal income taxes at all, and a large number receive more in refunds than they had withheld in taxes.

What is the answer?

The only remaining solution is to drastically scale back Obama's Solyndra-type projects, hack away at waste in government, eliminate redundant federal bureaucracies and take a meat cleaver to whole programs that the federal government should leave to private industry.

Read the article in the Daily Mail.

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/39534 

IRS: Not enough rich to cover the deficit

August 5, 2011 by Don Surber

Soak the rich, eh?

They do not have the money.

A report from the Internal Revenue Service found that the rich — 8,274 people with incomes of $10 million per year or more — earned a total of $240 billion in 2009.

Even of you confiscated every dime they earned, you would barely have enough money to cover government spending for 24 days.

Of course, about a quarter of that money already goes to the federal government for federal income. So make that 18 days.

Another 227,000 people earned $1 million or more in 2009.

Millionaires averaged taxes of 24.4% of their income — up from 23.1% in 2008.

They, too, did not earn enough money to come anywhere close to covering the annual deficits that are $1.5 trillion a year.

Barack Obama was the first president to sign a budget with a $1 trillion deficit into law.

In fact, all the taxpayers — including the ones who get a refund check bigger than the withholding taxes they paid — have the money.

From Reuters: “Total adjusted gross income reported on tax returns, measured in 2009 dollars, was $7.626 trillion, down from $8.233 trillion in 2008 and $8.989 trillion in 2007. Total adjusted gross income was up only slightly from the $7.475 trillion reported in 2001, when there were 10 million fewer taxpayers. Adjusted gross income is the amount on the last line of the front page of a Form 1040 tax return.”

Individual tax collections totaled $1,175,422,000,000 in 2009 — or 15.4% of all income.

Doubling federal income taxes for everyone would still leave us $400 billion or so shy of balancing the budget.

We must cut. We cannot afford to buy everything we want.

Hal Daub Quote on Capitalism & Charity:

"You have to have jobs to have profit, and you have to have profit to have charity." - Hal Daub, DCRP Elephant Remembers 2012.

Why the UK Is Ditching Socialized Medicine

By Arnold Ahlert · Tuesday, February 21, 2012

There is more than a little irony attached to the Obama administration's determination to pursue socialist, EU-style "solutions" to America's problems, even as the European Union is coming to grips with the bitter realities such socialism produces. And while Greece and its financial problems receive some media coverage in the United States, there is a much bigger story flying under the mainstream media radar: in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has introduced a bill seeking to partially privatize the National Health Service (NHS). Why? Because the British government is "hoping to avoid a Greek-style financial meltdown."

The system's defenders are upset. The Times of London is reporting that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is in the eye of the storm. "Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot," said an unnamed "Downing Street source." "He's messed up both the communication and the substance of the policy." The source further contended that Lansley was "a disaster" and "a law unto himself." The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing also want the bill withdrawn, as do members of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, the Royal Medical Colleges, including the Royal College of GPs. Unions, including the Royal College of Midwives, want to "kill the bill" as well, while Labor Party leader Ed Miliband accused Mr. Cameron of failing to listen to the experts.

Cameron refuses to back down, insisting there's too much bureaucracy in the system, and that it interferes with patient care. "If we were as good at treating cancer as the average European country, we would save 5,000 lives a year," he contended. He further noted that reform will create "a fair system that stops the private sector from picking off contracts and the public sector from providing an inflexible monopoly." Yet he insisted that "health care for all, free at the point of use, unrelated to the ability to pay" will remain the animating features of the system.

Such euphemisms are at odds with reality. Last November, the NHS's Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire, running at a loss of $8 million a year on revenues of $143 million, was given over to Circle, a private health care company. Circle was brought in to cut bureaucracy and improve efficiency, and it is the first private company to take over an entire British hospital. Earlier this month, an NHS "watchdog" at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ruled that a breakthrough drug used to extend the lives of men with late-stage prostate cancer was too expensive to be included in the system. NICE makes calculations based on the "cost of the drug to the NHS according to the number of men likely to be treated." NICE will pay for some end-of-life drugs for rare diseases. But the current, though unofficial, threshold for QALY (quality-adjusted life year) drugs has been $80,000 for renal cell carcinoma. "Therefore the £63,200 ($101,000) cost per QALY for abiraterone would still not be deemed a cost effective use of NHS resources," said a NICE statement.

Such rationing -- and it is rationing -- is nothing new. A 2011 report revealed that independent medical providers were experiencing a growing number of patients choosing to pay for their own care after having treatment delayed or denied altogether by an NHS primary care trust (PCT). A survey of 101 influential industry figures revealed that 34 percent believed "budgetary pressure in the NHS" was the principle cause. At the annual meeting of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) earlier this month, members contended that they were "increasingly being asked to make decisions based on financial rather than clinical reasons and to ration their care," further noting that such rationing "was on a scale that had never been seen before across both acute and non acute NHS services."

Last November, such rationing reached a scandalous level. A study by the Co-operation and Competition Panel (CCP) revealed that Primary Care Trust (PCT) heads were imposing arbitrary spending caps, denying patients treatment for procedures such as hip replacements and cataract removals -- and that waiting times for services were being deliberately extended "so that patients would go private or die before they were seen" to slash costs. Secretary Lansley was furious. "For too long, Labour turned a blind eye to unfair practices within the NHS which harmed patients," he said. "No right-thinking person could possibly understand how anyone could delay a patient's treatment unnecessarily. If patients need treatment, they should get it as soon as possible, and where they choose."

"As soon as possible" is yet another euphemism. Brits have a legal right under the NHS Constitution to start their hospital treatment -- within 18 weeks after a referral by a GP. Yet referrals require diagnoses, and the wait for those is increasing as well. The Guardian reports a 92 percent increase compared to last year in the number of people waiting more than the NHS's recommended six-weeks for a diagnostic test at an NHS hospital. In other words, even under optimum conditions, people suffering from afflictions such as heart disease and cancer will face more than a five-and-a-half month wait before getting the treatment they need.
Such waiting times have their consequences. A London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine study released last June revealed that British women have the lowest breast cancer survival rate among Europe's richest nations. Furthermore, cancer survival rates in general continue to lag behind other EU nations, despite ten years of efforts to improve them. And for some cancers, such as lung cancer, the gap is actually widening.

All of the above is what is currently driving David Cameron towards outsourcing medical services to private providers. He has convened a healthcare summit taking place today, and he is currently under attack for not inviting several of the professional medical societies and other health workers to the meeting. In a bit of unintended irony, left-wing newspaper The Guardian has a headline claiming the Health and Social Care Bill currently under consideration will spell the end of "health care services as we know it." Shadow Health Minister (the opposition party's counterweight to the acting Health Secretary) Andrew Gwynne is apoplectic, noting that no national healthcare standards could lead to "variations in every part of the country in terms of what care you actually receive," that Brits "could even find ourselves in the horrendous situation of people having to pay for services that are completely free in other areas," and that reform will take the country back to the "failed free-market ideology of the 1980s..."

Better to be equally miserable, apparently.

UK healthcare costs are currently $194 billion per year and consume 18 percent of the UK's budget. The projected "cuts" in spending for 2013 that have people up in arms? As of now, a $6 billion increase in spending to $200 billion. Much of the animus likely stems from the fact that Britain has grown used to massive amounts of healthcare spending that can no longer be sustained: between 2000 and 2010, the NHS budget doubled in real terms. Furthermore, British debt as a percentage of GDP was almost 80 percent in 2010.
Which brings us across the pond, so to speak, where America's debt level reached 102 percent of GDP last year, long before the full effects -- and true costs -- of our own stab at government-run healthcare have yet to be realized. Joseph A. Morris, a former Reagan White House lawyer who now serves on the board of the American Conservative Union, explains what Americans should infer from Britain's travails. "Europe's message to the world is no longer that the socialist dream of the cradle-to-grave welfare state is an easy achievement," he said. "Rather, it is the shouted warning that it is a fool's paradise. The bills are coming due and the only real alternatives -- serious financial reform of government or national bankruptcy -- are not pleasant."

The president isn't listening. The total dismissal of such "unpleasantness" was epitomized by Mr. Obama's release of a $3.8 trillion budget, a document so unserious that Senate Leader Harry Reid won't even bring it up for a vote this year. As for the "revenue-neutral" healthcare bill this administration has long touted, the Heritage Foundation found $700 billion in additional, guaranteed costs. As for "unanticipated costs" (progressive-speak for costs that should be anticipated)? If a large number of businesses choose to cancel coverage and dump their employees into the public exchanges, another one trillion dollars could be added to the cost of the bill. Furthermore, it must be noted that one part of it, the CLASS Act, has already been dumped, due to its fiscal unsustainability.

So why would we continue to pursue such an approach to healthcare, even as the latest cautionary tale from the European Union emerges? Sally Pipes, an American health policy expert who leads the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco put it best. "They [President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi] are ideologues," said Pipes. "They don't care whether the system really works or not. They have an ideological goal in mind." One this troika seems doggedly determined to pursue, even if it drives the country bankrupt in the process.

That's not ideology. That's insanity.

Nearly Half of Americans Don't Pay Income Tax

Talk about living at other's expense!!!  I have always hated the term, "living off of the government".  No you aren't!  We ARE the government...you are living off of US!!!

Chart of the Week: Nearly Half of All Americans Don’t Pay Income Taxes

Rob Bluey: February 19, 2012

This year’s Index of Dependence on Government presented startling findings about the sharp increase of Americans who rely on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance. (See last week’s chart.)

Another eye-popping number was the percentage of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, which now accounts for nearly half of the U.S. population. Meanwhile, most of that population receives generous federal benefits.

“One of the most worrying trends in the Index is the coinciding growth in the non-taxpaying public,” wrote Heritage authors Bill Beach and Patrick Tyrrell. “The percentage of people who do not pay federal income taxes, and who are not claimed as dependents by someone who does pay them, jumped from 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009.”

That means 151.7 million Americans paid nothing in 2009. By comparison, 34.8 million tax filers paid no taxes in 1984.

The rapid growth of Americans who don’t pay income taxes is particularly alarming for the fate of the American form of government, Beach and Tyrrell warned. Coupled with higher spending on government programs, it is already proving to be a major fiscal challenge.

“This trend should concern everyone who supports America’s republican form of government,” Beach and Tyrrell wrote. “If the citizens’ representatives are elected by an increasing percentage of voters who pay no income tax, how long will it be before these representatives respond more to demands for yet more entitlements and subsidies from non-payers than to the pleas of taxpayers to exercise greater spending prudence?”