From Tom at Radio Free NJ

Morons,

There is no money. There is no one else’s pocket left to pick. You can’t borrow anymore, you can’t print anymore, and you can’t steal anymore from anyone else. The people who will be paying the bill to keep you from reentering the 15th century are, unlike you, working very hard. They deserve better than you spoiled pampered children are giving them.

You object to the bond market, but the bond market is just the voice of reality calling. It’s telling you that 2 plus 2 is still 4, no matter what your union bosses would have you believe. Your bosses tell you that ‘the people’ didn’t spend the money, but it’s not true. That’s exactly who has wasted the money, and now the bill is coming due. Right now the Bond Market is actually your very best friend. It’s telling you what a horrible mistake you’ve made, and giving you a chance to undo it, before it’s too late.

The standards that the Germans are living by right now are unsustainable in their own right, but they are a lot closer to reality than you are. At the very least you should pull up your pants, wipe that stuff off your face and be responsible enough to live at that level. Since it’s they who will be coming up with the bulk of your shortfall you should do it out of good manners if you can’t manage any other reason. And once you do, the rest of us will step up and pull you back from the brink.

But the truth is, we’re not going to pull you that far. If you continue to make no contribution to productivity, your life from here on out will be one of relative hardship and poverty. And frankly that’s how it should be. You can live your lives any way you like as far as we’re concerned, but no one is going to reward you for getting drunk on the beach anymore. In the modern world you’ll only get out of the system what you put into it. Either work – or learn to live without.

Socialism always was (and frankly – still is) a horrible idea. It’s the reason you’re in this embarrassing position in the first place. In the eyes of the world you all look just as stupid and spoiled as can be. You could be protesting in diapers and demanding that ‘the state’ wipe your behinds and it would only marginally affect your public image. You need to accept the fact that there are no circumstances under which politics can arrange for nothing to be equal to something. You can not make a contribution of zero and expect to get a benefit greater than that.

You’ve thrown your bottles, burned your flags, waved your signs and had your fun. Now it’s time for you to learn the lessons of history and abandon this idiocy before we finally lose our patience with you. Grow up – and get back to work.

Rich taxpayers in Maryland are vanishing

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is the latest Democrat to demand a tax increase, this week proposing to raise the state’s top marginal individual income tax rate to 4% from 3%. He’d better hope this works out better than it has for Maryland.

We reported in May that after passing a millionaire surtax nearly one-third of Maryland’s millionaires had gone missing, thus contributing to a decline in state revenues. The politicians in Annapolis had said they’d collect $106 million by raising its income tax rate on millionaire households to 6.25% from 4.75%. In cities like Baltimore and Bethesda, which apply add-on income taxes, the top tax rate with the surcharge now reaches as high as 9.3%—fifth highest in the nation. Liberals said this was based on incomplete data and that rich Marylanders hadn’t fled the state.

Well, the state comptroller’s office now has the final tax return data for 2008, the first year that the higher tax rates applied. The number of millionaire tax returns fell sharply to 5,529 from 7,898 in 2007, a 30% tumble. The taxes paid by rich filers fell by 22%, and instead of their payments increasing by $106 million, they fell by some $257 million.

John Galt must have passed through. The smartest thing a state can do is to lure rich, successful people to the area with low tax rates. It builds the tax base and it increases entrepreneurship.

(On the other hand, statists will likely try to enact more laws preventing private parties from leaving an area, or forcing them to pay taxes on capital leaving their localities. Or equally as likely, the feds will begin setting blanket interstate tax policy, which would prevent the competition of ideas between states.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/07/AR2010040703116.html

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Wednesday that Americans may have to accept higher taxes or changes in cherished entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security if the nation is to avoid staggering budget deficits that threaten to choke off economic growth.

"These choices are difficult, and it always seems easier to put them off — until the day they cannot be put off anymore," Bernanke said in a speech. "But unless we as a nation demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, in the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth."

His primary responsibility in life is to make sure that the United States continues to pay interest on its debt. He and his banking cabal will be cheerleaders for higher taxes as long as the interest payments keep rolling in.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6355N520100406

(Reuters) – The United States should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker said on Tuesday.

Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax "was not as toxic an idea" as it has been in the past and also said a carbon or other energy-related tax may become necessary.

Though he acknowledged that both were still unpopular ideas, he said getting entitlement costs and the U.S. budget deficit under control may require such moves. "If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes," he said.

Two weeks after passing a new entitlement into law, Obama’s economic advisor says we need to raise taxes to get entitlement costs under control.

The solution to big government is always more government.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/63380

There’s only one organization on Earth that can spend $2.7 billion dollars on a database system that doesn’t work that gets to stay in business. Well, I guess there are lots of organizations like that, but they are all part of the federal government.

You’ve got disinterested, overpaid bureaucrats led by political appointees who don’t really care about the process implementing a work force of unionized dimwits recruited from a pool of ACORN flops using a system engineered and administered by a legally-mandated rainbow coalition of jackasses who couldn’t cut it in the private sector.

And it’s not working so well? Hmm.

Anyway, next up, Electronic Medical Records. Yay!

Information technology problems at the U.S. Census Bureau could cause inaccuracies in this year’s constitutionally mandated count of the U.S. population, according to government auditors.

The Census Bureau is specifically having problems with two IT systems.  One is the Paper-Based Operational Control System (PBOC), which is the computer database where Census Bureau field operatives upload the data they collect from people who did not mail responses to the bureau.

The second is the Decennial Applicant Personnel and Payroll System (DAPPS), which is the system used to keep track of, and pay, the more than 600,000  temporary federal workers who help conduct the Census operations.

Last Thursday, the GAO released a report on the Census Bureau’s IT problems entitled, “Data Collection is Under Way, But Reliability of Key Information Technology Systems Remains a Risk.” The report indicated that the government has known about the problem for some time.

The report stated that last February, the GAO had testified that “key IT systems — most notably an automated system used to manage field-data collection known as the Paper-Based Operations Control System (PBOCS), and a personnel and payroll processing system called the Decennial Applicant Personnel and Payroll System (DAPPS) — were experiencing significant performance issues.”

The new GAO report concluded that IT problems have not been solved.

“Aside from the mail response rate, which is outside of the Bureau’s direct control, the most significant risk jeopardizing the cost and quality of the enumeration lies in the performance problems that continue to plague DAPPS and PBOCS,” said the report. “Indeed, neither system has yet demonstrated the ability to function reliably under full operational loads, and the limited amount of time that remains to improve the reliability of these systems creates a substantial challenge for the Bureau.”

Using the New Orleans field operations as an example, the report described how the PBOC system worked very slowly, or sometimes not at all, and that for this reason the Census Bureau had to restrict the number of field operatives who could use it.

The operating budget for the NRFU is $2.7 billion, according to Goldenkoff’s written testimony.

Goldenkoff’s also testified that the DAPPS system for handling the field workers payroll lacks capacity and is “sluggish.”

The Census Bureau’s IT deficiencies also make it difficult to accurately provide a final cost for the 2010 Census, which is currently estimated at around $14.7 billion.

“Key information technology systems continue to experience performance functionality shortfalls and these systems can affect the ultimate scheduled cost and success of the Census,” said Gordon.

Goldenkoff pointed out that not addressing the IT problems could result in the Census costing more than the estimated $14.7 billion figure.