Free Republic

Today is Obama’s second swearing in, and despite what the Obama-adoring, Kool-Aid- drinking liberal mainstream media tells you, this is a day for sadness, not celebration. It's time to mourn for what Obama is doing to America....and even worse, for what he has planned for the next four years. The economy is in free-fall. Economists are suddenly all agreeing that Obama’s “solution” to the fiscal cliff—gigantic tax increases that are already taking big bites out of paychecks—will crater our projected economic growth for 2013. It’s bad out there, and getting worse every day. The fact is: We are in an...

Today, we're taking a preliminary look at just who owns all the debt issued by the U.S. federal government through 30 September 2012 - the end of the U.S. government's fiscal year. Our chart below visualizes what we found.The information presented in our chart above is preliminary, as the U.S. Treasury typically revises its foreign entity debt ownership data in March of each year. Overall, U.S. entities own just 65.8% of all debt issued by the U.S. federal government. Ranking the major U.S. entities from low to high, we find that: The U.S. government's military retirement fund owns 2.4%...

The Republican-led House Rules Committee late Monday approved a rule for a massive Hurricane Sandy relief package that shuts out most GOP proposals to pare back the size of the bill. The main bill provides $17 billion in relief, and an amendment made in order would add another $33.7 billion, for a total of $50.7 billion. Late last week, Republicans offered amendments that would trim the bill significantly, but few of those were made "in order" by the Rules Committee on Monday. For example, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) proposed amendments that would have slashed $22 billion from the total package,...

President Obama's latest news conference was further confirmation that his voracious appetite for spending was not satisfied but whetted by the fiscal cliff deal, which he views as an appetizer. We were told that the GOP achieved a coup in the fiscal cliff negotiations because they lured Obama into an agreement to lock in the Bush tax rates except for the highest-income earners. Never mind that Obama agreed to no spending cuts or entitlement reform after demanding a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction; they told us he'd be forced to address those matters in a couple of months in the...

This is a list of the gross National debt that countries have. National debt refers to the amount of total government debt a country has. This is also referred to as ‘public sector debt’.It is compiled using data from the IMF, Eurostat and CIA agencies.Note: National debt is different to ‘External debt‘ – External debt includes all the debts a country (both private and public sector) owe to foreigners.Note: You may see slightly different figures for government debt levels, depending how it is measured. For example, Gross US debt is 102.9% in 2011. Net US debt was 67.8%UK national...

The rout was complete, the retreat disorderly. President Obama got his tax hikes — naked of spending cuts — passed by the ostensibly Republican House of Representatives. After which, you might expect him to pivot to his self-proclaimed “principle” of fiscal “balance” by taking the lead on reducing spending. “Why,” asked The Post on the eve of the final fiscal-cliff agreement, “is the nation’s leader not embracing and then explaining the balanced reforms the nation needs?” Because he has no interest in them. He’s a visionary, not an accountant. Sure, he’ll pretend to care about deficits, especially while running for...

Congress continues to show that they view us as serfs and view your hard earned money as automatically belonging to them first…..you should just be happy that they allow you to keep some...

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 659 (Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic; Independents underlined) H R 8 RECORDED VOTE 1-Jan-2013 10:57 PM QUESTION: On Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendments BILL TITLE: To extend certain tax relief provisions enacted in 2001 and 2003, and to provide for expedited consideration of a bill providing for comprehensive tax reform, and for other purposes

The fiscal cliff isn't as scary as the looming deficit and debt crisis about to swamp the country All eyes have been on the clear and present danger of the fiscal cliff—understandably—but there's a sound in the mountain range that's even scarier than the cliff. It's the sound made by an avalanche, the trillions of dollars of debt that's heading our way, gathering speed and mass. For most people, it's out of earshot now, and that's the way our government prefers to play it in its financial statements. Liabilities are not set out there in accordance with the well-established norms...

Everywhere from FoxNews.com to CNBC.com, I suddenly see commentators warning of pending doom, economic collapse, and a new Great Depression. Welcome to my club. Perhaps America's politicians and economists should have paid attention to an entrepreneur and small businessman that has been warning of economic collapse and a new Great Depression publicly for over two years. More importantly, none of the current commentaries mention the "why's" of this slow motion economic collapse...beyond the obvious -- mountains of deficit and debt. None of them mention the dysfunctional structure of the current U.S. economy and the massive changes in the work ethic...

“Fiscal Cliff” in plain English Lesson # 1: * U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000 * Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000 * New debt: $1,650,000,000,000 * National debt: $14,271,000,000,000 * Recent budget cuts: $38,500,000,000 Now, let's remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget: * Annual family income: $21,700.00 * Money the family spent: $38,200.00 * New debt on the credit card: $16,500.00 * Balance on the credit card: $142,710.00 * Total budget cuts so far: $38.50 Got It ? ..... OK now,,,,,,,,,,,, ------------------------------------------------------------------ Lesson # 2: Here's another way to look at the "Debt Ceiling": Let's say, you come home from work...

Congress has done such a beautiful job handling the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling that president Obama felt it mandatory to issue an Executive Order Giving Biden, Congress Pay RaisesPresident Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden. According to disclosure forms, Biden made a cool $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he'll now make $231,900 per year. Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little...

Video at this LINK

WASHINGTON – Getting Republicans to agree to a tax increase on “the rich” is not the ultimate aim of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress, says noted tax activist Grover Norquist. “This is just the first act of a two- or three-act play,” Norquist said in an exclusive interview with WND. Norquist, president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform, said the first act “is to get congressional Republicans to put their fingerprints on what amounts to a minor tax increase.” “After raising taxes on the rich a little bit, the Democrats will come back for serious tax revenue,”...

On November 19, Pravda’s Xavier Lerma wrote an article asserting that President (I use the term loosely) Barack Obama had been re-elected “by an illiterate society.” Some conservatives have been wont to dismiss and ridicule some of the dead-on assessments of the former Soviet newspaper since it was once in fact a Soviet newspaper. Some of this dismissal and ridicule did occur relative to Lerma’s piece; I think however, that such observations made by those who have been there and done that ought to be considered, if not heeded. Lerma writes “He [Obama] is a Communist without question promoting the...

The best thing the Republicans could do right now is to give Obama everything that he wants. Those of us who think, rather than feel, understand that Obama’s course will end up with the United States going bankrupt, because there isn’t enough money on the planet, much less the US, to pay for all the goodies the Democrats want to bestow on their favored constituents. Just to give you an example of how hopeless the situation is, the combined net worth of the Forbes list of America’s 400 wealthiest people is just over $1.7 trillion. So if you confiscate 100%...

Do you want to understand the magnitude and imminence of America’s financial calamity? I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about it over the years, but an accountant, Hal Mason, has prepared a five-and-a-half-minute YouTube video that does a pretty good job of bringing it all home simply and starkly. I advise every American to take a few minutes to view it if you want to understand why Washington is plunging off the fiscal cliff, even while the Democratic and Republican establishment talk about averting it. All one really needs to do is view the 2013 budget from a high...

In the duh department we have this: * * * * * * * * * * * The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure. * * * * * * * * * * * Did you get that?...

With Barack Obama re-elected to the White House for four more years, half the country is wondering what we can do to limit the damage. I actually have an answer. In January 2011, after Republicans took over the House, I launched a campaign that now appears to be our only hope of killing off Obamacare, making Obama’s lame-duck second term a nightmare (for him, that is) and actually moving Washington toward a return to limited, constitutional government. And all it takes to do it is the cooperation of the House Republican majority. After Republicans took control of the House in...

Alan Greenspan Just Called Out Republicans For Exploding Entitlement Spending Linette LopezNovember 7, 2012, 10:48 AM Alan Greenspan is on Bloomberg talking to Betty Liu about the economy and the fiscal cliff in Obama's second term. The former Fed Chairman is just as worried about the issue as everyone else on the Street, and he doesn't really think the election changes much (from Bloomberg): I think it's a very dangerous situation largely because presumption we can resolve this issue without physical pain, spiritual pain or any sort of economic pain whatsoever.... no matter how we resolve it there are negative...