Who could have seen this coming?

Liability Under California Law for Making Covert Recording of Confidential Conversation

California law generally prohibits the recording of confidential communications without the consent of all participants where there is an objectively reasonable expectation that the conversation is not being overheard or recorded. To meet the Governor’s request to investigate ACORN, this Office needed the complete, unedited video and audio recordings made by O’Keefe and Giles, who are not in California. O’Keefe and Giles agreed to produce the full recordings if the Attorney General agreed not to prosecute them for violations of California’s privacy laws. This Office determined that the fastest and most efficient means to comply with the Governor’s request was to agree not to prosecute.
In light of this limited grant of immunity, we did not focus on the circumstances surrounding the conversations to determine if the recordings themselves violated California law. Nevertheless, we take this opportunity to note the legal principles governing clandestine recording of conversations in California. Whether a recording of a conversation is unlawful depends on the circumstances of the conversation and the expectations of the parties. In 1967, the California Legislature adopted the Invasion of Privacy Act, codified at Penal Code sections 630 through
638. The Act is designed to protect the right of privacy by requiring the consent of all parties before a confidential conversation is recorded. (Flanagan v. Flanagan (2002) 27 Cal.4th 766, 768-769 (Flanagan).) The eavesdropping and recording provision, section 632, provides that any person who intentionally and without consent of all parties to a confidential communication records such conversation is guilty of an alternate felony/misdemeanor. (Penal Code, § 632(a).) A private cause of action also exists for any person injured by a violation of the Act.20 (Id., § 637.2.) Section 632 defines confidential communication to include “any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto.” (Id., § 632(c).) A communication made in a public place or “in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded” does not qualify as a confidential communication under the statute. (Id.) Confidentiality “appears to require nothing more than the existence of a reasonable expectation by one of the parties that no one is ‘listening in’ or overhearing the conversation.” (Flanagan, 27 Cal. 4th at pp. 772-773.) The fact that the subject matter of the conversation might later be discussed with a third party has no bearing on a finding of confidentiality under the statute. (Coulter v. Bank of America (1994) 28 Cal.App.4th 923, 929.) Although the Act contains exemptions for particular individuals or circumstances, no exemption exists for filmmakers, the media, or journalists.

http://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/brown-releases-report-detailing-litany-problems-acorn-no-criminality

Brown Releases Report Detailing a Litany of Problems with ACORN, But No Criminality


Thursday, April 1, 2010



Contact: (415) 703-5837




SAN DIEGO – California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today released a report, including newly obtained videotapes, that shows some members of the community organizing group ACORN engaged in “highly inappropriate behavior,” but committed no violation of criminal laws.
 
Brown’s report also uncovered “likely violations” of state law, including dumping 500 pages of confidential records into a dumpster, failure to file a 2007 tax return, and four instances of possible voter registration fraud by ACORN in San Diego in connection with the 2008 election, as well as other irregularities in the group’s California operations. These irregularities have been referred to the appropriate authorities.
 
“A few ACORN members exhibited terrible judgment and highly inappropriate behavior in videotapes obtained in the investigation,” Brown said. “But they didn’t commit prosecutable crimes in California.”
 
Last September, Gov. Schwarzenegger asked Brown to investigate the activities of ACORN in California. His request was triggered by tapes made by undercover videographer James O’Keefe III that purported to show ACORN employees providing advice on how to conduct a prostitution ring and commit other serious crimes.

But new, unedited videotapes discovered through Brown’s investigation, as well as other evidence, shed clearer light on interactions between O’Keefe and the now-defunct ACORN.
 
Videotapes secretly recorded last summer and severely edited by O’Keefe seemed to show ACORN employees encouraging a “pimp” (O’Keefe) and his “prostitute,” actually a Florida college student named Hannah Giles, in conversations involving prostitution by underage girls, human trafficking and cheating on taxes. Those videos created a media sensation.

Evidence obtained by Brown tells a somewhat different story, however, as reflected in three videotapes made at ACORN locations in California. One ACORN worker in San Diego called the cops. Another ACORN worker in San Bernardino caught on to the scheme and played along with it, claiming among other things that she had murdered her abusive husband. Her two former husbands are alive and well, the Attorney General’s report noted. At the beginning and end of the Internet videos, O’Keefe was dressed as a 1970s Superfly pimp, but in his actual taped sessions with ACORN workers, he was dressed in a shirt and tie, presented himself as a law student, and said he planned to use the prostitution proceeds to run for Congress. He never claimed he was a pimp.
 
“The evidence illustrates,” Brown said, “that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor.”
 
The original storm of publicity created by O’Keefe’s videotapes was instrumental in ACORN’s subsequent denunciation in Congress, a sudden tourniquet on its funding, and the organization’s eventual collapse.

In New Orleans, O’Keefe faces a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a fine of $5,000 on reduced federal charges related to misrepresentation in gaining access to the Louisiana office telephones of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu.

Brown’s report found numerous faults with ACORN’s activities in California, including:
 
• Failure to “recruit, train and monitor its employees to ensure compliance” with state law.
 
• Likely violation of state civil laws designed to protect personal information when employees of the San Diego office disposed of 20,000 pages of records in a dumpster. These violations could result in private litigation if any of the victims were injured by disclosure.

• Four instances of “possible voter registration fraud in San Diego in connection with the 2008 election.”
 
• Failure to file a 2007 state tax return, an omission the Franchise Tax Board is pursuing.
 
• Sloppiness in its handling of charitable assets, although no misuse of those assets was found. The California Attorney General will monitor investigations into ACORN’s overall finances by the IRS and Louisiana Attorney General.
 
ACORN announced that it is closing its operations nationwide today. While a successor to ACORN in California called ACCE emphasizes that it is no longer part of ACORN, the Attorney General’s report notes that ACCE is “run by the same people, raising concerns about its ability to cure the defects in the organization.” The report notes that the Attorney General will closely scrutinize ACCE’s operations.

The full Attorney General’s report is attached. The unedited O’Keefe videotapes from California are available on the Attorney General’s website at http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/multimedia/index.php. Tapes from other states are available on request.

You can get the PDFs by going to the above URL

165 yards hits with a handgun is very impressive!

California is a two party state, when it comes to audio taping. It would be interesting to read the statute and the AG's report.

Let's see, the powerful pay lip service to ideas of "fairness" and looking out for the powerless while feathering their own nests and serving their own interests and engage in policies that harm those they allegedly advocate for.

I forget, is this the China thread?

Soros money buys a lot of lawyers.

As an INTP, per Myers-Briggs, my response is "Do you like feeling poor"? 

Per their website, it was cheaper to settle rather than continue prolonged litigation. Which is a viable scenario.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/dhs-plans-to-release-5000-illegal-immigrants-due-to-sequestration/article/2523295


DHS plans to release 5,000 illegal immigrants due to sequestration

March 5, 2013 | 1:45 pm


Joel Gehrke



House investigators learned Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials developed plans to release about 5,000 illegal immigrant detainees, although Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has denied responsibility for the decision.
 
“An internal document obtained by the House Judiciary Committee shows that Administration officials at ICE prepared cold calculations to release thousands of criminal aliens onto the streets and did not demonstrate any consideration of the impact this decision would have on the safety of Americans,” committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., announced.
 
The ICE document contains a table that proposes “reduc[ing] invoiced daily population by 1,000 weekly.” Between February 22 and March 31st, this plan would drop the number of detainees from 30,748 to 25,748.
 
“The decision to release detained aliens undermines the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to keep our homeland secure and instead makes our communities less safe and more vulnerable to crime,” Goodlatte said. “[R]egardless of sequestration, DHS actually has plenty of funding to pay for the detention of criminal aliens.  Unfortunately, it seems Administration officials are more interested in using sequestration to promote their political agenda than as an opportunity to get our nation’s fiscal house in order.”

Napolitano said that it wasn’t her decision, even though ICE is part of DHS. “Detainee populations and how that is managed back and forth is really handled by career officials in the field,” she told ABC.
 
She also confirmed that the releases would continue. “We are going to manage our way through this by identifying the lowest risk detainees, and putting them into some kind of alternative to release,” Napolitano said at a Politico event, per The Daily Caller.
 The New York Times profiled a “low risk” detainee released by ICE. The detainee was taken into custody “when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time.” NRO’s Jim Geraghty asked, “If convictions for ‘simple assault, simple battery and child abuse’ make you ‘low-risk,’ what do you have to do for Janet Napolitano to consider you ‘high-risk’?”

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http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/05/obama-admin-wants-to-deport-christian-homeschoolers/

Obama Admin Wants to Deport Christian Homeschoolers



By: Todd Starnes 
3/5/2013 03:01 PM




The Romeike family fled their German homeland in 2008 seeking political asylum in the United States – where they hoped to home school their children. Instead, the Obama administration wants the evangelical Christian family deported.
 
The fate of Uwe and Hannelore Romeikie – along with their six children – now rests with the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – after the Dept. of Homeland Security said they don’t deserve asylum.
 
Neither the Justice Dept. nor the Dept. of Homeland Security returned calls seeking comment.
 
“The Obama administration is basically saying there is no right to home school anywhere,” said Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association. “It’s an utter repudiation of parental liberty and religious liberty.”
 
The Justice Dept. is arguing that German law banning home schooling does not violate the family’s human rights.
 
“They are trying to send a family back to Germany where they would certainly lose custody of their children,” Farris told Fox News. “Our government is siding with Germany.”
 
Farris said the Germans ban home schools because “they don’t want to have religious and philosophical minorities in their country.”
 
“That means they don’t want to have significant numbers of people who think differently than what the government thinks,” he said. “It’s an incredibly dangerous assertion that people can’t think in a way that the government doesn’t approve of.”
 
He said the Justice Dept. is backing that kind of thinking and arguing ‘it is not a human rights violation.”
 
Farris said he finds great irony that the Obama administration is releasing thousands of illegal aliens – yet wants to send a family seeking political asylum back to Germany.
 
“Eleven million people are going to be allowed to stay freely – but this one family is going to be shipped back to Germany to be persecuted,” he said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
 
The fear of persecution is why an immigration judge granted the family political asylum in 2010.
 
German authorities demanded the family stop home schooling. They faced thousands of dollars in fines and they initially took away their children in a police van.
 
German state constitutions require children attend public schools. Parents who don’t comply face punishment ranging from fines to prison time. The nation’s highest appellate court ruled in 2007 that in some cases children could be removed from their parents’ care.
 
“Families that want to have an alternative education can’t get it in Germany,” Farris said. “Even the private schools have to teach public school curriculum.”
 
After authorities threatened to remove permanent custody from the Christian couple – they decided to move to the United States.
 
Uwe, a classically-trained pianist, relocated their brood to a small farm in the shadow of the Smokey Mountains in eastern Tennessee.
 “We are very happy here to be able to freely follow our conscience and to home school our children,” he told Fox News. “Where we live in Tennessee is very much like where we lived in Germany.”
 
Uwe said he was extremely disappointed that their petition to seek asylum was appealed by the Obama administration.
 
“If we go back to Germany we know that we would be prosecuted and it is very likely the Social Services authorities would take our children from us,” he said.
 
Uwe said German schools were teaching children to disrespect authority figures and used graphic words to describe sexual relations. He said the state believed children must be “socialized.”
 
“The German schools teach against our Christian values,” he said. “Our children know that we home school following our convictions and that we are in God’s hands. They understand that we are doing this for their best – and they love the life we are living in America on our small farm.”
 
Farris said Americans should be outraged over the way the Obama administration has treated the Romeike family – and warned it could have repercussions for families that home school in this nation.
 
“The right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children has been at the pinnacle of human rights,” he said. “But not in this country.”
 
Todd Starnes is the host of Fox News & Commentary, heard daily on more than 250 radio stations. He’s also the author of “Dispatches From Bitter America.” His website is www.toddstarnes.com

Inspired by Doug


http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/28/news/economy/wesbury_q_and_a/index.htm

Mr. Sunshine's happy economic outlook
By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writerDecember 28, 2009: 10:12 AM ET


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Economics is known as the dismal science, but not every economist is a pessimist.

Brian Wesbury might be one of the more optimistic forecasters out there. He's proud of being dubbed "Mr. Sunshine" by well-known short-seller Doug Kass. The chief economist at First Trust Advisors, a Chicago asset manager, Wesbury has one of the most bullish assessments on the economy. His new book trumpets that optimism in its title: "It's Not As Bad As You Think."



 
Economist Brian Wesbury, aka Mr. Sunshine
Wesbury predicts economic growth of 5% or more in the last three months of this year, nearly twice the average forecast, followed by at least 4.5% growth in 2010.

He sees job growth returning as soon as December of this year. Unemployment, now at 10%, will fall to about 8.5% by the end of 2010, he believes. That's about a percentage point better than most economists' estimates. In 2011, he says, the rate will drop to about 7%.

He's bullish on housing, too: He says things are improving so fast in real estate that by the third quarter of 2010, there could be a seller's market for new homes.

Wesbury maintains this rosy view even though he believes government action to rescue the economy hurt more than it helped.

He blames the financial meltdown not on lack of government oversight, but on mark-to-market accounting, which required banks and Wall Street firms to value the assets on their balance sheet at current market prices. Those rules, which caused massive losses when the housing bubble burst, were significantly loosened earlier this year. That easing, he argues, was the key to reopening the flow of credit and reviving the economy.

Despite his policy worries, he believes the economy can overcome the headwinds caused by government intervention to post solid growth. Here now is a question-and-answer session with Mr. Sunshine, Brian Wesbury.

How quickly do you think we'll start to see substantial job growth of 200,000 or more needed to help lead to a sustained decline in unemployment?

Typically when you are in a V-shape kind of recovery, that happens pretty quickly. I expect by very early spring or late winter we'll be seeing significant job growth. Retail sales are up at an annualized rate of 7% in the last six months. Manufacturing output is up 8%. Inventories are very low. What that means is I think we've fallen behind, companies have waited almost too long to try to catch up, so we'll see this thing accelerate pretty quickly.

What are the primary drivers you see behind that kind of growth?

Easy money by the Fed, pent-up demand, that's two of the factors. Mostly, we're rebounding from a panic. But look at the pent-up demand for cars, for houses. We're only starting 550,000 houses at an annualized rate. Just population growth alone says you need about 1.5 million a year. We're down to about a seven months' supply. That means if builders don't start right now, by the third quarter of next year there will be shortages of housing.

Do you believe that TARP and stimulus and the other money that the government has pumped into the economy has hurt the recovery?

It made people believe that we have to have government save the economy. I don't believe that. The Fed created the bubble. There's no doubt about it. Then the question is how do you deal with those problems, do you let the market deal with them or the government deal with them? We let the government deal with them. But nothing turned the economy and market around until we changed mark-to-market rules. That's when banks were able to start raising money, that's when stocks started to go up.

Is it difficult to be an optimistic supply-side economist at a time that even Arthur Laffer, the dean of supply-side economists, is writing a book called "The End of Prosperity"?

I'm not having any difficulty. What I find interesting is how negative many conservatives are. I'm a short-term bull on the economy. I'm a long-term worrier. You can worry about the policies, you fight against them, but you should be long stocks at the same time, because they're undervalued, and the economy is going to come back strong.

If we get strong growth in 2010, are you worried that it will be taken as an affirmation of the kind of government intervention in the economy that you decry?

Yes. I want to always see the economy do well. What I don't want is people to take the wrong lessons from this. That's why I think conservatives are making a huge mistake right now arguing that just Obama breathing every day will cause the stock market to go down and you should buy gold and head to the hills. The economy is bouncing back, it's going to be stronger than people think. That's only going to make it easier for (conservatives') political opponents to argue that they saved the day by spending lots of money.

In your book you try to strike down a number of generally accepted economic problems that you argue are overstated. Do you think that reports about continued tight credit for both consumers and small businesses are overstated? How can the economy see the kind of growth you're expecting if credit is so tight?

It's absolutely true that credit is tighter than it was, but it's not the sort of thing that will stop the economy. Money is like a flood. You can try to stop the water, but it is always going to find its own level somewhere. When the Fed prints this much money, it's going to find its way into the system. We're seeing the same kind of reduction of credit we've seen in other recessions in the past, and none of those stopped the recovery.

Isn't it tough to argue that you're not a starry-eyed optimist since you go to almost every Northwestern University football game and you're counting on your Chicago Cubs to end a century-long drought and win the championship this year?

Every year I predict they're going to the World Series. That way I know I'm going to be wrong about one thing. We hope that the long history is eventually broken. So this is my counter-cyclical nature. I'm an optimist on the economy and the long history of the economy shows I'm usually right. But I guess the Northwestern Wildcats and the Cubs usually don't fulfill my dreams.

Interview has been condensed and edited.

"After the ACORN prostitution hoax fell apart, O'Keefe and his Project Veritas group released a series of heavily edited undercover sting videos attempting to document voter fraud, most of which collapsed under scrutiny, sometimes spectacularly so."

You want to stand behond that BD? Go to the youtube channel below and you can view the uncut Project Veritas videos unedited. You'll note that the MSM never posts the uncut video of anything they do. Yes?

http://www.youtube.com/user/veritasvisuals

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/mediamattersagendasandactivities.html

Media Matters: Agendas, Activities, and Worldviews

By Jacob Laksin
Discover The Networks
2005


Established in May 2004, Media Matters is a self-styled "Web-based, not-for-profit…progressive research and information center" whose animating mission is to "systematically monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation." Falling under the category of "misinformation," however, is not merely "news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible," but also that which "forwards the conservative agenda."

Functioning, in effect, as a clearinghouse for leftwing outrage, the organization's stock in trade is feigning outrage at perspectives that clash with the far-left prejudices of its directors. As a consequence, Media Matters has a well-earned reputation for portraying honest differences of opinion as lies or worse.

In this, the organization takes its cues from its founder and CEO, the self-described former "right-wing hit man" turned left-wing hit man, David Brock. A former dirt-dishing reporter for the conservative magazine The American Spectator in the 1990s, Brock today claims to have undergone a political epiphany. He has renounced his past writings, critical of liberal figures from Anita Hill to President Bill Clinton, as a confection of lies and slanders. But the evidence suggests that while he now identifies with the political left, his modus operandi is unchanged. As his tell-all books, Blinded By The Right and The Republican Noise Machine demonstrate, dishing dirt and distorting the facts remain his stock-in-trade.

A case in point is Brock's justification for Media Matters. In Brock's judgment, and against all evidence, the mainstream media has fallen under the sway of conservative ideology, thus explaining, in Brock's conspiratorial view, the many discussions about "liberal bias" in prominent media outlets. "The right wing in this country has dominated the debate over liberal bias. By dominating that debate, my belief is they've moved the media itself to the right and therefore they've moved American politics to the right," Brock says. Hence the supposed need for Media Matters: "I wanted to create an institution to combat what they're doing."

During a February 2005 talk at the leftwing Center for American Progress, Brock said: "We have seen the mainstream media increasingly accommodating conservatism and this is not an accident. This is the result of coordinated and financed effort by the right wing to pressure, push and bully the media to do that. The media today is a political issue. I believe it is conservatives that have politicized it." The same theme pervades Brock's 2004 book, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy, in which he claims that the "most important sectors of the political media—most of cable TV news, the majority of popular op-ed columns, almost all of talk radio, a substantial chunk of the book market, and many of the most highly trafficked Web sites," provide a "structural advantage for the GOP and conservatism." It does not seem to occur to Brock that such alternative media outlets, unlike the ostensibly non-partisan news media that they charge with liberal bias and that reach many times the audience, are designed specifically to express conservative opinions.

Although polls indicate that Americans overwhelmingly reject the assertion that mainstream media outlets espouse a conservative bias, the claim has found an enthusiastic audience among increasingly bitter Democrats and leftwing political operatives eager to account for the diminished fortunes of the Democratic Party and the dwindling appeal of welfare-statism and liberal appeasement attitudes as a governing ideology. So when Brock announced his intention to counter the supposedly bullying influence of conservatives on the media, leftwing billionaires lined up to bankroll his cause.

Standing behind Brock was John Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration and the head of the "progressive" Washington DC think tank, the Center for American Progress. Beyond helping Brock develop Media Matters, Podesta provided Brock with office space in the capitol for his fledgling outfit. Well-to-do liberals followed in short order. Media Matters received over $2 million in seed donations from a roster of affluent donors. (This was a sum larger than a ten year budget for a site like www.frontpagemag.com.)

The list of Brock's donors included Leo Hindery Jr., a former cable magnate; Susie Tompkins Buell, a co-founder of the fashion company Esprit and a close ally of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York; James Hormel, a San Francisco philanthropist who nearly served as ambassador to Luxembourg during the Clinton administration; Bren Simon, a Democratic activist and the wife of shopping-mall developer Mel Simon; and New York psychologist and philanthropist Gail Furman. Media Matters, which can accept tax-deductible contributions under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code, has also benefited from the patronage of Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Corp. Lewis, a longtime consort of leftwing financier George Soros, has disbursed more than $7 million to so-called "527s," activist groups that affect political neutrality in order to solicit unlimited contributions under a provision of the Internal Revenue Service tax code.

Media Matters has not always been forthcoming about its high-profile backers. In particular, the group has long labored to obscure any financial ties to George Soros. The tactic met with success until December 1, 2004, when conservative journalist and author David Horowitz published a column in Front Page Magazine connecting Media Matters to Soros. Horowitz's allegations prompted an indignant response from Media Matters, subtlely titled "Proven Liar Horowitz said Media Matters Ignores the Facts," accusing him of dealing in "outright falsehood." Wrote Media Matters: "Horowitz asserted that Media Matters has received funding from billionaire philanthropist George Soros. To date, neither Media Matters nor its president and CEO David Brock has received any money from Soros or from any organization with which he is affiliated." (emphasis added)

But in March 2003, the Cybercast News Service (CNS) had detailed the copious links between Media Matters and several Soros "affiliates"—among them MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress and Soros confederate Peter Lewis. Confronted with this story, Media Matters was forced to retreat from its phony defense (but did not offer any apologies to Horowitz). A Media Matters spokesman cautiously explained that "Media Matters for America has never received funding directly from George Soros" (emphasis added), a transparent evasion.

Nor were groups cited by CNC the only connection between Media Matters and Soros. As investigative journalist Byron York has noted, another Soros-affiliate that bankrolled Media Matters was the New Democratic Network. In addition, Soros is reported to be involved in the newly formed Democracy Alliance, a partnership between some 80 affluent leftwing financiers who have each vowed to contribute $1 million or more in order to build up an ideological infrastructure of leftwing thinks tanks and advocacy groups. News reports reveal that one of the main beneficiaries of the Alliance's funding will be Media Matters. Brock, for his part, has no hesitation about conscripting his organization into the embryonic movement that aims to amplify the agenda of the political left. "I view Media Matters as part of a large machine that's being built," Brock told an interviewer in August of 2004. The organization's budget has kept pace with its escalating importance to the political left. By August of 2004, Media Matters' operating budget had already doubled to $4 million.

Much of this success is attributable to Media Matters' nakedly partisan mission. That mission is essentially to smear and defame every conservative spokesperson, reporter, TV anchor or public figure that comes in its sights. Typically Media Matters labels any conservative viewpoint as "a lie" "false" "a smear" "racist" or some other anti-intellectual epithet designed to discredit rather than dispute its political opposition. Media Matters compiles an archive of these distortions which the leftwing network spreads throughout the Internet.

An August 19, 2005 posting on the Media Matters website was headlined "The Angry Right Smears Cindy Sheehan." It focused on remarks made by conservative commentators critical of the anti-war activist. Notably, however, Media Matters made no effort to rebut the arguments advanced by those commentators, evidently deeming it axiomatic that the mere reproduction of conservative opinion was sufficient demonstration of its falsehood. Indeed, the only "smear" that appeared on the site was the one hurled by a Media Matters writer at David Horowitz, whom the organization denounced as "reliably offensive." Earlier, in December of 2004, Media Matters had attempted to convict Horowitz of "racial insensitivity." The organization provided no evidence for the incendiary charge. Instead, it adduced several instances in which Horowitz had criticized public figures, including Democratic Party figures like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for expressing racist opinions themselves.

Besides Horowitz, Media Matters nurses a special contempt for conservative and nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh. Inevitably in its zeal to shatter Limbaugh's credibility, Media Matters routinely engages in unwarranted attacks. In June of 2005, for instance, the organization lashed out at Limbaugh for his opinion on the so-called Downing Street memo, which accused the Bush administration of manipulating evidence and otherwise fudging facts in order to promulgate its policies. "Limbaugh baselessly suggested Downing Street memo 'may be a fake,'" screamed a Media Matters headline. Yet, as Media Matters was forced to acknowledge in the compass of its attack, Limbaugh's remarks, far from being "baseless," were actually derived from a report that had appeared in the Associated Press. Moreover, Media Matters itself was unsure of the veracity of the AP's account, describing it tentatively as an "apparently inaccurate AP account." This did not lead it to exonerate Limbaugh, however.

It is a measure of Media Matters' disdain for Limbaugh that the organization has put its website at the service of his most virulent critics. When liberal MSNBC host Keith Olbermann pronounced host Rush Limbaugh the "worst person in the world" in August of 2005, Media Matters gleefully splashed the slander on its website. In 2004, David Brock even hired Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin to conduct a survey focusing on, among other media-related topics, public perceptions of Limbaugh. Journalist Byron York recounted the survey's not quite earth-shaking revelations: "Among other things, Garin found that a majority of those surveyed believe Limbaugh often presents views that are biased, 'rather than impartial and balanced.' Garin also found that a large part of Limbaugh's audience is politically conservative." York noted that Media Matters assigns two full-time researchers to monitor Limbaugh's statements and transcribe his program. That's something money can definitely buy.

Media Matters' zeal to bury conservative viewpoints under a mountain of smears is not surprisingly accompanied by a disdain for the First Amendment. In August 2004, Tim Chavez, a columnist for The Tennessean, reported receiving an email from a Media Matters employee named Melissa Salmanowitz. In it, Salmanowitz, a Deputy Director of Media Relations at Media Matters, pressed Chavez to write about Media Matters' efforts to get chain book retailers to ban sales of Unfit for Command, a book critical of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Chavez did not comply. Media Matters launched a month-long assault on Unfit for Command and the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," the group responsible for the book, devoting its website to a blitz of denunciatory articles that attempted to discredit its members as, alternatively, Republican shills and liars.

Driving Media Matters' fusillades against the Swift Boat veterans was its partisan support for Democrat John Kerry. Even as it paid lip service to fairness, stressing that "honest scrutiny of [John Kerry's] record might be 'fair game,'" its provenance as a Democratic Party hit squad made the Media Matters team's gesture of objectivity seem even more empty than usual. Media Matters spent the months leading up to the 2004 presidential campaign dismissing conservative criticism of Kerry as nothing more than "distortions." To take one example, Kerry's critics disproved his claims that he spent Christmas of 1968 "sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia." Rather than making a concession to this reality - which was generally conceded -- Media Matters brazenly portrayed all attacks on Kerry's record as "unfounded, contradictory, and discredited." The leftwing Tides Foundation, evidently impressed by Media Matters' willingness to place pro-Democratic partisanship above accuracy, gave Media Matters $100,000 in 2004 for what it described as "voter education."

The length to which Media Matters went to protect Kerry from conservative critics was representative of its intimacy with the Democratic Party, whose operatives, led by Podesta, were in fact responsible for its creation. Prior to founding Media Matters, David Brock met with a number of leading Democratic Party figures, including Senator Hillary Clinton, former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and former Vice President Al Gore. Today, more than a few of the organization's roughly 30 staff members are Democratic operatives. To cite just a handful of examples, Dennis Yedwab, the chief communications strategist for Media Matters, is the erstwhile director of strategic resources at Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Similarly, Brock's personal assistant, Mandy Vlasz is a Democratic pollster and a veteran consultant to Democratic campaigns, including the 2000 Gore/Lieberman campaign. Katie Barge, the director of research at Media Matters, formerly presided over opposition research for Senator John Edwards' unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign.

In its short history, Media Matters has established itself as one of the most vocal and irresponsible combat organs of the Democratic Party. In 2004 the organization boasted that its website had elicited some 150,000 comments in its discussion forums and that over 22,000 subscribers had registered to receive its e-mail alerts. Brock has also become a regular feature on leftwing radio stations like Air America, where he appears every Wednesday. The show, according to Brock, "is a great means for us to be able to disseminate our material…" More specifically, programs like those of Air America provide Brock with a venue to defame conservatives as individuals who "are simply willing to lie," and who "are not necessarily trying to win these arguments on a factual level" - a perfect self-description. Media Matters staffers are also favorites of such supposedly non-partisan radio programs as National Public Radio's On The Media, which invites them to complain, as Media Matters senior advisor Jamison Foser did during a July 2005 appearance, that media coverage of the Bush administration is insufficiently critical.

Media Matters? You really want to use that as a source, BD? 

You don't need to be a meteorologist to tell when someone is pissing on your leg as they tell you it's raining.

Fcuk the 'pub establishment.

I still don't buy Wesbury's claim. With the massive increases in federal spending, GDP would have to have grown even more massively, right?

The stock market couldn't possibly be distorted by QE-infinity, could it?

Wesbury is selling a product. In evaluating anything, it's crucial to look at the source documents.

Every lefty I talk to rejects the 100.00 an hour minimum, but can't explain why or give me what a "living wage" should be.

I think we need to raise the minimum wage to 100.00 an hour, so everyone can be rich!

New O’Keefe Video: Cops Say ‘You’re On Your Own’ Without Gun

March 6th, 2013 - 4:59 am




#Invalid YouTube Link#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1AQ1WBb81BE





 










James O’Keefe’s latest video shows the ugly truth: if you don’t own a gun, you are on your own. In the video, he goes into police stations (predominately in the anti-gun Northeast) and collects a shocking harvest of responses from officers about how the police have no ability to protect them. Traffic and time prevent effective responses to 911 calls.  O’Keefe’s undercover protagonist pushes the issue, “well, how am I supposed to protect my family if I don’t have a gun?”
 
“You’re own your own,” is the common response. Others suggest defending your family with bleach, 2 x 4′s, yelling, or holding a cell phone to your ear and pretending you are talking to the police. It demonstrates the immorality of gun control policies in places like New York and New Jersey. One New York cop says a “shotgun or rifle is a luxury.”   A government acts immorally when it prevents you from defending the lives of your children. If you care about keeping your family free from violence, move South.

It's my understanding that all Chevy Dolts currently send smoke signals for help when bursting into flame.

OMG! Militarized police use armored vehicle to......take an armed subject into custody without injury.

http://durangoherald.com/article/20130305/NEWS01/130309833/Standoff-concludes-peacefully-at-Vallecito-Reservoir-dam



Standoff concludes peacefully at Vallecito Reservoir dam


 By Dale Rodebaugh , Shane Benjamin Herald staff writers

Article Last Updated: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 10:18pm
 
 





A three-hour standoff ended peacefully Tuesday after law enforcement removed a La Plata County woman from her car near the dam at Vallecito Reservoir.


Suzanne Alsum, 41, faces charges of theft, prohibited use of a weapon and vehicular eluding, said Dan Bender, spokesman for the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office.


The incident began shortly before 9:40 a.m., when someone reported Alsum had stolen a rifle. A deputy who was responding found Alsum’s vehicle headed southbound in the Vallecito area.


The deputy followed the vehicle, and pulled Alsum over near the dam, Bender said.


She was uncooperative and refused to get out of the vehicle, he said. She called her daughter during the traffic stop and threatened to kill herself or have deputies kill her, Bender said.


The Sheriff’s Office SWAT team and the Bayfield Marshal’s Office responded. They placed spike strips in front of and behind her car, and an armored vehicle was brought in.


At some point, Alsum threw a revolver from the car, but deputies were unsure if she had other weapons.


Negotiators counseled the woman through a public-address system because cellphone service at the reservoir is not good, said Undersheriff David Griggs.


“Everything ended peacefully, although we had to break out a couple of windows of her vehicle,” he said.


Deputies eventually reached through the windows, grabbed her hands and took her into custody, Bender said.


The standoff came to an end about 12:30 p.m.


Traffic on County Road 501 was stopped during the standoff.


The woman is suspected of being under the influence of alcohol and medication, Bender said. She was taken to Mercy Regional Medical Center, where she was in critical condition Tuesday night as a result of a possible overdose, Bender said.




daler@durangoherald.com

I don't think anyone is rooting for apocalypse. As far as those number Wesbury cites, what's the source? I can't imagine how they could be true with record levels of federal spending going on.

Wow, this would be a big deal if someone else was president.

Don't know about the wounded, but like the Ambassador's autopsy, they are being hidden.

If Gandhi and King were facing Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler or any other ruthless totalitarian, they'd be just another bit of human remains in another mass grave, forgotten to history.

The fact that the book cites the "palestinians" as having used non-violence is a big clue. 

Where would would Europe's Jews be if they used non-violent resistance to the nazis? Perhaps the allied troops at Normandy should have thrown down their rifles and peacefully protest the nazi war machine into compliance.

I ordered the book, but I'm not expecting much by ivory tower idiocy.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/final-note/who-are-biggest-holders-us-debt

Who are the biggest holders of U.S. debt?

Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Flags fly over the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C.

by Kai Ryssdal
Marketplace for Monday, June 4, 2012

Story.This final note today, an observation about U.S. government debt. Treasury bonds -- now that interest rates on the 10 year are the lowest they've ever been.

You know how we always talk about foreigners -- China, especially -- being the ones who hold all our debt?

Not true at all. We saw an item on CNBC's website today listing the top 15 buyers of Treasuries. There's China, of course at No. 3. Japan at No. 5. That's it for countries in the top 10.

The biggest holder of U.S. debt? The Social Security Trust Fund. And No. 2?

C'mon, any guesses?

Yep, the Fed. Can you say 'quantitative easing'?

**So, how long are we going to be able to pay our Visa with our Mastercard?

http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.199/pub_detail.asp

The most recent period of PLA modernization very likely began shortly after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, when the Chinese Communist Party leadership reversed the formerly low priority given to military modernization, in order to better defend the Party from perceived heighted internal and external threats.

___________________________________________________

http://www.economist.com/node/21552193

The build-up has gone in fits and starts. It began in the early 1950s when the Soviet Union was China's most important ally and arms supplier, but abruptly ceased when Mao Zedong launched his decade-long Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. The two countries came close to war over their disputed border and China carried out its first nuclear test. The second phase of modernisation began in the 1980s, under Deng Xiaoping. Deng was seeking to reform the whole country and the army was no exception. But he told the PLA that his priority was the economy; the generals must be patient and live within a budget of less than 1.5% of GDP.

A third phase began in the early 1990s. Shaken by the destructive impact of the West's high-tech weaponry on the Iraqi army, the PLA realised that its huge ground forces were militarily obsolete. PLA scholars at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing began learning all they could from American think-tanks about the so-called “revolution in military affairs” (RMA), a change in strategy and weaponry made possible by exponentially greater computer-processing power. In a meeting with The Economist at the Academy, General Chen Zhou, the main author of the four most recent defence white papers, said: “We studied RMA exhaustively.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/03/05/dem-state-senator-to-rape-victim-having-a-gun-on-you-probably-wouldnt-have-stopped-him-you-know/

Dem state senator to rape victim: Having a gun on you probably wouldn’t have stopped him, you know
posted at 6:01 pm on March 5, 2013 by Allahpundit

Via Katie Pavlich, who reminds us that Colorado is the same state that brought us the urination defense to sexual assault in lieu of carrying concealed plus this moron mumbling about women with guns maybe taking potshots at innocent men whom they only think are rapists. The thing to remember as you watch the clip, in which an honest to goodness state legislator reasons that because the victim couldn’t karate the rapist off of her then a gun probably wouldn’t have worked either, is that there really are no “good” arguments against women arming themselves against sexual assault. Gun-control fans resort to idiocy like this vis-a-vis rape simply because they’ve got nothing better on the shelf than “well, maybe try blowing a whistle to alert the police instead.” In fact, per Pavlich’s post, the victim here was attacked just 50 feet from a campus police station (yes, Bob Beckel, it does happen) and since it was after hours, there was no help on the way. Which, as Jeffrey Goldberg notes, is not uncommon when a crime’s in progress:

An important, and overlooked, fact of the Sandy Hook tragedy is that it took police 20 minutes to arrive at the school. The police are spread too thinly across many American communities to stop shootings in their first moments. And armed civilians have been instrumental in stopping shootings at New Life Church in Colorado, Pearl High School in Mississippi and elsewhere.

This hasn’t stopped some Democrats from arguing against armed self-defense. Some left-wing commentators, members of a class not previously known for its love of the police, think their fellow citizens don’t possess adequate faith that law enforcement will protect them…

Shortly after Sandy Hook, a blogger at the Washington Monthly, making the unfounded assumption that the police provide Americans with flawless protection, asked, “Isn’t one of the fundamental reasons of forming any kind of government in the first place to provide for a common defense, instead of having to bear the totality of that burden all by yourself?” Yes, but this misses the point entirely. When the government’s provision of defense is inadequate, as it usually is during a mass shooting, you have to defend yourself.
When you boil down Hudak’s “statistical” argument, what she’s really saying is that guns are so dangerous that society’s better off leaving women unarmed and tolerating a certain amount of rape than letting them arm up and risking extra gun thefts and shootings. Note to House Democrats: I encourage you to run on that message in 2014 as part of your big “yay, gun control” platform. Suggested slogan: “You’re safer when you’re defenseless.”

#Invalid YouTube Link#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RgXsCnrYZGY

You take this book seriously? 

See http://www.amazon.com/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent/dp/0231156820. If you choose to read the book, I'd love to discuss it with. (That is a serious offer; and the discussion can be an aside, Crafty, so as to not clog the forum with much of this discussion; my intention is not to bugger you).


For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories.

Let's take this to another thread. I'll look up the book, but the intial premise is laughable.

True, but the protests that YOU were talking about were Tiananmen Square. You chose the place, not me. And that doesn't change the fact that TS is closed in.

I'm not sure how you are defining "closed in", but I can tell you that having been there in person, Tiananmen Square is hardly closed in by most any definition.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8070177.stm

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/03/05/breaking-hugo-chavez-is-dead/

Breaking: Hugo Chavez is dead; Update: Democratic rep mourns; Update: So does Jimmy Carter
posted at 5:21 pm on March 5, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

Well, that’s that: Chavez’s lieutenants have been insisting for months that the Venezuelan president would be making a full recovery from his cancer-related operations and that Venezuelans had no cause for alarm — but they’ve been getting notably less vociferous about the whole thing recently, and that charade is officially over. The Associated Press is reporting that the longtime socialist-Marxist leader died on Tuesday afternoon:

Vice President Nicolas Maduro, surrounded by other government officials, announced the death in a national television broadcast. He said Chavez died at 4:25 p.m. local time. …

Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba in June 2011 to remove what he said was a baseball-size tumor from his pelvic region, and the cancer returned repeatedly over the next 18 months despite more surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. He kept secret key details of his illness, including the type of cancer and the precise location of the tumors. …

Two months after his last re-election in October, Chavez returned to Cuba again for cancer surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane. He was never seen again in public. …

After a 10-week absence marked by opposition protests over the lack of information about the president’s health and growing unease among the president’s “Chavista” supporters, the government released photographs of Chavez on Feb. 15 and three days later announced that the president had returned to Venezuela to be treated at a military hospital in Caracas.
Update: So, what’s next for Venezuela now that their corrupt, destructive, America-hating, socialist leader is no more? Either Vice President Nicolas Maduro or National Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello will become interim president for thirty days while the country engineers a special election — and without Chavez to figurehead his “Chavismo” movement, the outcome isn’t necessarily a sure thing.

[A]lthough his cronies and their Cuban handlers are maneuvering to hold on to power, a Chavista succession is neither stable nor sustainable. With more audacious leadership among Venezuela’s democrats and intelligent solidarity from abroad, Chávez’s legacy might be buried with him.

The foundations of Chavismo are being shaken by an impending socioeconomic meltdown, a faltering oil sector, bitter in-fighting in his own movement, complicity with drug-trafficking and terrorism, rampant street crime, the inept performance by Chávez’s anointed successor, and growing popular rejection of Cuban interference, corrupt institutions, and rigged elections. Beset by these challenges and with Chávez no longer at the top of the ballot, the regime will use every advantage to engineer a victory in a special election to choose a new president.
Update (AP): Speaking of Maduro, he’s a low-rent anti-American populist crank from the same mold as his former boss. If you thought that Chavez shoving off might make way for detente between the U.S. and Venezuela, think again:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was infected with cancer by “imperialist” enemies, his No. 2 alleged on Tuesday, adding that the socialist leader was suffering his hardest moments since an operation three months ago…

“We have no doubt that commander Chavez was attacked with this illness,” Maduro said, repeating a charge first made by Chavez himself that the cancer was an attack by “imperialist” foes in the United States in league with domestic enemies.

“The old enemies of our fatherland looked for a way to harm his health,” Maduro said, comparing it with allegations that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, may have been poisoned by Israeli agents.
Read this old Hitchens piece from 2010 about seeing Chavez’s crankery up close. Even his lackey Sean Penn couldn’t break through the wall of paranoia, which included skepticism about the moon landing.

Update (AP): The main plot right now is Chavez’s death and the subplot is creepily affectionate reminiscences from some of his fellow travelers on the left. (John Sexton notes on Twitter that Chavez ultimately proved too tyrannical even for Noam Chomsky.) Soon, though, as the shock of the news about his demise recedes, those two will reverse positions. Here’s your early leader for useful idiot of the day. He’s a congressman, of course:

Jose E. Serrano ✔ @RepJoseSerrano 
Hugo Chavez was a leader that understood the needs of the poor. He was committed to empowering the powerless. R.I.P. Mr. President.


Update (AP): No surprise here:

George Galloway @georgegalloway 
Farewell Comandante Hugo Chavez champion of the poor the oppressed everywhere. Modern day Spartacus. Rest in Peace.

Update (AP): David Frum points to this piece from a few years ago estimating that the Man of the People had amassed a private fortune of $2 billion.

Update (AP): Michael Moynihan’s acidic obit at Newsweek is the one you’ll want to read. As he reminds us, there was no monster Chavez wasn’t willing to hug in the name of anti-American camaraderie. He was a proud supporter of Saddam, Mugabe, Qaddafi, and of course Bashar Assad, not because they overlapped much philosophically beyond authoritarianism but because they were all antagonists of the United States. That was Chavez’s core shtick — anti-colonialist vaudeville at the expense of the west’s superpower.

Update (AP): You outdid yourself on this one, Jimbo. I want to say “unbelievable,” but no, it’s quite believable.

Statement From Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on the Death of Hugo Chavez

Rosalynn and I extend our condolences to the family of Hugo Chávez Frías. We met Hugo Chávez when he was campaigning for president in 1998 and The Carter Center was invited to observe elections for the first time in Venezuela. We returned often, for the 2000 elections, and then to facilitate dialogue during the political conflict of 2002-2004. We came to know a man who expressed a vision to bring profound changes to his country to benefit especially those people who had felt neglected and marginalized. Although we have not agreed with all of the methods followed by his government, we have never doubted Hugo Chávez’s commitment to improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen.

President Chávez will be remembered for his bold assertion of autonomy and independence for Latin American governments and for his formidable communication skills and personal connection with supporters in his country and abroad to whom he gave hope and empowerment. During his 14-year tenure, Chávez joined other leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean to create new forms of integration. Venezuelan poverty rates were cut in half, and millions received identification documents for the first time allowing them to participate more effectively in their country’s economic and political life.

At the same time, we recognize the divisions created in the drive towards change in Venezuela and the need for national healing. We hope that as Venezuelans mourn the passing of President Chávez and recall his positive legacies — especially the gains made for the poor and vulnerable — the political leaders will move the country forward by building a new consensus that ensures equal opportunities for all Venezuelans to participate in every aspect of national life.

Yes!

I'd like to see the source of the numbers he cites. I'm not buying it.

When we refinance our debt these days, who is buying it?

Even if we are not racking up debt on unfunded liabilities, those continue to metasticize at incredible rates.

Actually the protests did spread to other cities, though Beijing was the center of it all.

Xinjiang has had both peaceful and non peaceful protests, both tend to get shut down with automatic weapons fired by the PLA and PAP.

Unarmed populations are easily dominated.

Gee, our catastrophic debt isn't as catastrophic as some would say? I feel much better now.

So, every American alive right now just needs to come up with a spare quarter million dollars and not worry about the interest rates.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578127374039087636.html

Cox and Archer: Why $16 Trillion Only Hints at the True U.S. Debt
Hiding the government's liabilities from the public makes it seem that we can tax our way out of mounting deficits. We can't. By CHRIS COX AND BILL ARCHER

A decade and a half ago, both of us served on President Clinton's Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, the forerunner to President Obama's recent National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. In 1994 we predicted that, unless something was done to control runaway entitlement spending, Medicare and Social Security would eventually go bankrupt or confront severe benefit cuts.

Eighteen years later, nothing has been done. Why? The usual reason is that entitlement reform is the third rail of American politics. That explanation presupposes voter demand for entitlements at any cost, even if it means bankrupting the nation.

A better explanation is that the full extent of the problem has remained hidden from policy makers and the public because of less than transparent government financial statements. How else could responsible officials claim that Medicare and Social Security have the resources they need to fulfill their commitments for years to come?

As Washington wrestles with the roughly $600 billion "fiscal cliff" and the 2013 budget, the far greater fiscal challenge of the U.S. government's unfunded pension and health-care liabilities remains offstage. The truly important figures would appear on the federal balance sheet—if the government prepared an accurate one.

But it hasn't. For years, the government has gotten by without having to produce the kind of financial statements that are required of most significant for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. The U.S. Treasury "balance sheet" does list liabilities such as Treasury debt issued to the public, federal employee pensions, and post-retirement health benefits. But it does not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security and other outsized and very real obligations.

As a result, fiscal policy discussions generally focus on current-year budget deficits, the accumulated national debt, and the relationships between these two items and gross domestic product. We most often hear about the alarming $15.96 trillion national debt (more than 100% of GDP), and the 2012 budget deficit of $1.1 trillion (6.97% of GDP). As dangerous as those numbers are, they do not begin to tell the story of the federal government's true liabilities.


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.
Why haven't Americans heard about the titanic $86.8 trillion liability from these programs? One reason: The actual figures do not appear in black and white on any balance sheet. But it is possible to discover them. Included in the annual Medicare Trustees' report are separate actuarial estimates of the unfunded liability for Medicare Part A (the hospital portion), Part B (medical insurance) and Part D (prescription drug coverage).

As of the most recent Trustees' report in April, the net present value of the unfunded liability of Medicare was $42.8 trillion. The comparable balance sheet liability for Social Security is $20.5 trillion.

Were American policy makers to have the benefit of transparent financial statements prepared the way public companies must report their pension liabilities, they would see clearly the magnitude of the future borrowing that these liabilities imply. Borrowing on this scale could eclipse the capacity of global capital markets—and bankrupt not only the programs themselves but the entire federal government.

These real-world impacts will be felt when currently unfunded liabilities need to be paid. In theory, the Medicare and Social Security trust funds have at least some money to pay a portion of the bills that are coming due. In actuality, the cupboard is bare: 100% of the payroll taxes for these programs were spent in the same year they were collected.

In exchange for the payroll taxes that aren't paid out in benefits to current retirees in any given year, the trust funds got nonmarketable Treasury debt. Now, as the baby boomers' promised benefits swamp the payroll-tax collections from today's workers, the government has to swap the trust funds' nonmarketable securities for marketable Treasury debt. The Treasury will then have to sell not only this debt, but far more, in order to pay the benefits as they come due.

When combined with funding the general cash deficits, these multitrillion-dollar Treasury operations will dominate the capital markets in the years ahead, particularly given China's de-emphasis of new investment in U.S. Treasurys in favor of increasing foreign direct investment, and Japan's and Europe's own sovereign-debt challenges.

When the accrued expenses of the government's entitlement programs are counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax collections annually. That is the total of the average annual accrued liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs, plus the annual cash deficit.

Nothing like that $8 trillion amount is available for the IRS to target. According to the most recent tax data, all individuals filing tax returns in America and earning more than $66,193 per year have a total adjusted gross income of $5.1 trillion. In 2006, when corporate taxable income peaked before the recession, all corporations in the U.S. had total income for tax purposes of $1.6 trillion. That comes to $6.7 trillion available to tax from these individuals and corporations under existing tax laws.


In short, if the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of these American taxpayers, plus all of the corporate taxable income in the year before the recession, it wouldn't be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities. Some public officials and pundits claim we can dig our way out through tax increases on upper-income earners, or even all taxpayers. In reality, that would amount to bailing out the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon. Only by addressing these unsustainable spending commitments can the nation's debt and deficit problems be solved.

Neither the public nor policy makers will be able to fully understand and deal with these issues unless the government publishes financial statements that present the government's largest financial liabilities in accordance with well-established norms in the private sector. When the new Congress convenes in January, making the numbers clear—and establishing policies that finally address them before it is too late—should be a top order of business.

Mr. Cox, a former chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee and the Securities and Exchange Commission, is president of Bingham Consulting LLC. Mr. Archer, a former chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, is a senior policy adviser at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865571048/The-real-national-debt-is-far-worse-than-you-think-critics-say.html?pg=all

The real national debt is far worse than you think, critics say
By Eric Schulzke, Deseret News

Published: Friday, Jan. 18 2013 10:30 p.m. MST
   
   
   
 
 
With the U.S. government now poised to hit a $16.4 trillion legal federal debt barrier, another fiscal and constitutional crisis looms. Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman has called for a $1 trillion coin. Others think the coin idea is absurd. Last week, the Obama administration, after dancing around it for days, officially disavowed it.

Shutterstock

Enlarge photo»
Summary While everyone focuses on raising the debt ceiling past $16.4 trillion, a handful of accountants and policy activists argue that the real debt is much, much higher and is only hidden by irregular accounting practices that hide the truth.
 Goodbye fiscal cliff, hello debt ceiling.

With the U.S. government now poised to hit a $16.4 trillion legal federal debt barrier, another fiscal and constitutional crisis looms. Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman has called for a $1 trillion coin. Others think the coin idea is absurd. Last week, the Obama administration, after dancing around it for days, officially disavowed it.

But still others think the coin idea simply misses the point.

“Congress doesn’t even know what the real numbers are,” said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tennessee. “The real national debt isn’t $16 trillion. I wish it were that low. The real national debt is closer to $60 or $80 trillion.”
“The federal government is the last accounting-free zone in America,” Cooper said.

Cooper belongs to a small but vocal band of policy advocates who argue that the entire fiscal reform debate ignores the scope of unworkable promises made to one generation and unbearable burdens placed on the next.

That chorus includes two former GOP congressional leaders, Christopher Cox and Bill Archer, who in November published an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal calling for “real accounting.”

“The U.S. Treasury ‘balance sheet’ does list liabilities such as Treasury debt issued to the public, federal employee pensions, and post-retirement health benefits,” Cox and Archer wrote. “But it does not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security and other outsized and very real obligations.”

Bipartisan fiasco

The trouble, critics argue, is that the government uses “cash accounting” for its largest liabilities — which mean they only score Medicare and Social Security obligations on the books as debt as payments come due.

Real accounting — the “accrual accounting” used by private industry — scores debt burdens the moment obligations are made.

The IRS does not allow any corporation that makes more than $5 million to use cash accounting, said Sheila Weinberg, who heads the Institute for Truth in Accounting, “because it is so unreliable and possibly misleading.”

ITA is a nonpartisan advocacy group that lobbies to change the way state and federal governments do their bookkeeping. Over the years, Weinberg has been a close ally of Cooper on this issue.

Cooper, a Democrat, says that both parties are fully culpable. Bush administration officials in 2007 and 2008 blocked a push to put social insurance obligations on the federal books. And Cooper calls the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit, a pet project of Bush adviser Karl Rove, “quite possibly the worst piece of legislation in American history.”

At the Institute for Truth in Accounting’s website, two debt clocks rapidly click upward. The official clock listed now exceeds $16.5 trillion, already past the legal ceiling. The other clock is labeled “The Truth.” That clock now stands at more than $72.5 trillion.

“If we had good financial statements,” said Michael Scott, a veteran of the Treasury and the Security Exchange Commission, “you would understand that every plan that exists today — whether Simpson-Bowles, or Paul Ryan, or others — does nothing to balance the budget on a fully costed, accrual basis.”

No free goods

Until 1990, private management teams “would give labor generous pensions and post-retirement benefits because they saw these as free goods,” said Scott, who has worked extensively with both private companies (United Airlines) and public entities (the Postal Service) to restructure fiscal failure.

Corporations stressed for cash, he said, would make vague promises payable in the distant future and leave them off the books. “But once they started to put it on the balance sheet and had it flow through the income statement, people started to see how expensive the benefits were.”

In 1990, accounting standards for private business changed, requiring them to put pensions and post-retirement health care on their books. “This caused enormous problems for companies like Ford, Chrysler, the legacy airlines and the steel industry,” Scott said, leading to several bankruptcies and even radical pension restructuring in the private sector.

But for the government, loose accounting continues.

Like Cooper, Scott sees the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit, which narrowly passed with Republican support, as a watershed moment in fiscal irresponsibility.

Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget, which answers to the White House, priced the bill at $395 billion over a 10-year window, Scott said. But the Medicare actuaries, whose job is to predict the future using today’s data, looked at the same bill and decided that over 75 years it was a $16.6 trillion unfunded liability.

The unfunded liability is the amount of unpaid bills that would remain if current tax and benefits policies continued without change.

"Would a congressman have voted for it if the price tag had said $16.6 trillion?” Scott asked.

What surplus?

A mild-mannered accountant, ITA’s Sheila Weinberg has been fighting the budget transparency battle since the 1990s, when she realized that both parties were making promises they could not fulfill. In 2000, she became incensed when Al Gore wanted to put the budget “surplus” into a lockbox, while George W. Bush wanted to return it to the voters.

“What surplus?” Weinberg asked.

Weinberg really gets piqued when members of Congress “guarantee” Social Security benefits. “It’s a crime to promise people benefits and then not put money aside to pay those benefits,” said Weinberg. In fact, she notes, Social Security by law cannot make payments once the money has run out.

Last year, Weinberg catalogued 42 such “guarantees” on congressional websites. “Social Security benefits may be modest,” reads the website of Rep. Jan Schankowsky, D-Illinois, “but they are guaranteed — unlike retirement savings lost in the Great Recession.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander M. Levin, D-Missouri, issued a similar statement on the 75th anniversary of the Social Security Act. "On this 75th Anniversary, millions of Americans can attest to the strength, and value, of Social Security’s guaranteed benefits,” Levin said.

If Weinberg had her way, Levin, Schankowsky and scores of other representatives and senators would be taken to the woodshed for “guaranteeing” to taxpayers benefits the federal financial statements view as not binding obligations.

Skeptical auditors

The real numbers are hiding in plain sight, but to find them you have to look in the fine print of the “Nation By the Numbers” table in the federal government’s Consolidated Financial Statement.

That table shows “total liabilities” of $17.5 trillion in 2011, which combines debt held by the public and binding commitments to veterans and federal employees. But underneath that line in smaller font is a line for social insurance. That item adds $33.8 trillion to the tab. Another miscellaneous line adds $6.4 trillion.

“If you want to see what the total burden that every child born has to pay his share of, it’s the $17.5 trillion plus the $33.8 trillion plus the $6.4 trillion,” said Hal Steinberg, a member of the Federal Advisory Accounting Standards Board, which sets federal accounting standards.

Even the $33.8 trillion is hotly disputed, as auditors, who want real bookkeeping, find themselves at odds with bureaucrats, who want lower numbers.

The 75-year unfunded liability for total social insurance liabilities in the federal financial statement are pegged at $30.9 trillion in 2010 and $33.8 trillion in 2011 — both a huge drop from 2009, when the burden stood at $45.9 trillion. Why the sudden drop?

The reason, Steinberg said, is that “The Affordable Care Act is assuming there will be tremendous savings in Medicare costs,” savings won through “productivity gains” and by slashing doctors’ fees.

But many experts doubt either of these savings will materialize, and among the skeptics are Medicare’s own actuaries and the external auditors. “The numbers through 2009 got an unqualified opinion from the auditors,” Steinberg said. “In 2010 and 2011, the auditors had to qualify their opinion, because the actuaries said that they did not think those cost projections would necessarily hold up.”

A letter from Medicare actuaries in May 2011 said, “In our view, the scheduled physician payment reduction is implausible and there is a strong likelihood that the productivity adjustments will not be sustainable in the long range.”

No promises

Medicare and Social Security obligations are not included alongside veterans and employee benefits in national debt figures, Steinberg said, because FASAB has determined that Social Security and Medicare are not binding commitments.

“Current law says that when the Social Security trust fund runs out of money, which would be in the year 2033, they are prohibited by law to continue to make payments of the full amount," Steinberg said. "They can only make payments to the extent that they have contributions coming in."

“There is no exchange transaction here,” Steinberg said, as when an employee works in exchange for guaranteed benefits. In essence, Social Security is a government benefit that can be changed at any time. And because there is no contract to break, there is no accounting liability.

“When the (FASAB) board was looking at the best way to report this,” Steinberg said, “the feeling was not to put this on the balance sheet as a liability. It really wasn’t a liability.”

Perhaps equally to the point, he added, “The number would end up being so large that no one would be able to relate to it.” For both reasons, Steinberg said, FASAB chose to separate the social insurance liabilities in a separate location in the report.

Weinberg at the Institute for Truth in Accounting said she could live with scoring Medicare and Social Security off the books, but only if policy leaders made it clear there is no commitment.

She gets her hackles up when policymakers try to have it both ways, treating these programs as sacred promises for political gain — but hiding the cost in the books.

Weinberg said the no-promises-day-to-day approach would work if a few criteria were met. Payroll taxes should be treated as a “tax,” she said, not a “contribution.” Politicians and government officials must stop referring to “trust funds” and “guarantees.” If they do, she wants it legally treated as fraud. Personalized annual Social Security statements must no longer be mailed to taxpayers. Finally, Weinberg wants a serious education campaign undertaken to correct the record in taxpayers’ minds.

Weinberg is not holding her breath. “Politicians aren’t stupid,” she said. “They do these books on a cash basis because they don’t want to increase the deficit but they want to get re-elected.”

Eric Schulzke writes on national politics for the Deseret News. He can be contacted at eschulzke@desnews.com

"Right now the federal debt is $16.5 trillion"

I wish that were true. It's not.

Strange, it's almost like Obama wants to disarm the American people.....

Hey, I don't make 'em, just post them here.

http://www.amazon.com/Flashback-Dan-Simmons/dp/0316101982

Want to read a book about a dystopian future that appears to have been distilled from much of the discussion here? Read "Flashback". Aside from the theme discussed here, it's well written and full of great action sequences in a near future we might recognize, or god help us, live to see....

Yes, in 1989, the PLA, although it was huge was very much a 3rd. world army with little ability to do much with it's forces outside China's borders.

Tianenmen Square is hardly closed in. It's massive in scale.

Gutting America's economy-check! (Cloward-Pivenomics)

Disarm the "Bitter-clingers-in progress

Gutting America's Military-Check!

Empowering America's enemies-Check!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpollaro/2011/02/08/america-poised-for-a-hyperinflationary-event/

America, poised for a hyperinflationary event?


It is a long standing proposition of many, supported on both theoretical and historical grounds, that one of the surest roads to hyperinflation is one grounded in a government whose answer to every economic and social problem is to borrow and spend the problem away, supported by a central bank able, willing and ready to finance the effort.  That support is of course to simply print the money through which to buy the debt so issued by the government – what is euphemistically called monetizing the debt – thereby exploding the supply of money and eventually trashing its value.

READ IT ALL.