LIBERTYandPROSPERITY.org Update
1. REGULAR BREAKFAST DISCUSSION? next Saturday, December 8 from 9:30AM to 10:30 AM.??? Business Meeting open to all Voting and Non-Voting Members from 10:45 AM to 11:45 AM.? ?Shore Diner. Tilton and Fire Roads in Egg Harbor Township.? by Parkway Exit 36.?? Business/Board Meetings are held on the second Saturday of each month at 10:45 A.M. right after Breakfast Discussion.
2. Regular live, two way talk radio on 92.1 FM (Vineland) heard in most of South Jersey, Philadelphia, and Wilmington, Saturday from 8AM to 9AM? Seth Grossman will host this week.? Thanks to Paul Porreca for guest hosting last Saturday.?? Seth Grossman will also be a guest this Monday, November 19 from 7:30 AM to 8:30 AM on 1020AM, WIBG.
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4.?? Unions kill Twinkies and Wonder Bread:? ?The work rules imposed in union contracts required Hostess, which makes Twinkies and Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks. Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks. And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa.
All of this was obviously intended to create more jobs for the unions’ members. But the needless additional costs that these make-work rules created ended up driving the company into bankruptcy, which caused the loss of ?18,500 jobs. For details, see Orange County Register of California at:?? http://www.ocregister.com/
5,? Would you loan money this money to Atlantic City??? ?Atlantic City, N.J., again delayed a $95 million bond offering on Wednesday, its largest-ever municipal deal and first since the seaside city was pummeled by superstorm Sandy.
The New Jersey gambling hub cited issues with the city’s disclosure in its bond offering documents that couldn’t be resolved in time to complete the sale. The city originally planned to sell the debt in late October, but postponed the deal after Sandy. The sale had been rescheduled for Wednesday.
“Our legal counsel said there was a question with the due diligence, and not everyone was comfortable going forward [with the deal] first thing this morning,” said Finance Director Michael Stinson, who added Atlantic City could sell the bonds as soon as next week. ?
Details in Wall Street Journal at:? http://online.wsj.com/article/
6. ?Atlantic City government wants to borrow this money because for the past five years, its tax assessor taxed casinos as if they were worth $400 million, when they were in fact selling for less than $30 million.??? The casinos appealed these assessments, but the city kept delaying their cases.??? When the cases were settled, finally ?the city had to refund millions of dollars which it had already spent.?? Rather than cut spending,? Atlantic City is borrowing the money and hoping it can repay the money over the next 20 years if property values increase again. ? The State government under Governor Christie actually increased the cost of local government by creating a special Tourism District to run half the city, and causing much waste and duplication. ? Who will pay back this money if property values do not increase.?? What if a few casinos go bankrupt???? That means every other property owner in town must not only pay high ?taxes for current city expenses, but also pay back this loan with interest. ?So far, no private businesses are investing in Atlantic City unless they are exempt from local taxes for many years–which also makes taxes higher for everyone else. ? ? This goes against one of the basic principles of LibertyAndProsperity.org–”
8.? Don’t count on our kids and grandkids to pay higher taxes!??? They won?t even be able to pay back their own student loans!? This week, total U.S. student-loan debt rose by $42 billion or 4.6% to $956 billion.???? ?Average debt per graduating student in Pennsylvania is more than $28,000, fifth-highest in the country. In New Jersey, average debt is around $23,000, tenth highest in country?.
See Philadelphia Inquirer at:? http://www.philly.com/philly/
9.? Don?t forget why we now have a ?fiscal cliff?. ???In 2008, Barak Obama was elected with a Democrat controlled Congress.??? They increased spending so much that the federal government had to borrow 42 cents for every dollar it collected in taxes.??? The Federal government borrowed one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000?one thousand billion dollars) a year for the past four years.
In November of 2010, Tea Party Conservatives organized and helped the Republicans win a majority of the House of Representatives.?? Before the election, Republican Minority Leader John Boehner promised to cut $100 billion off the Federal budget if Republicans won.?? Republicans won, but the Republicans broke their promise.? They made a deal with Democrats that allowed two more years of trillion dollar deficits, and promised budget cuts and tax hike if spending was not cut two years later.??? It is now two years later.??? Why is there suddenly a problem with keeping the deal that was made two years ago?
7.?? And this “fiscal cliff” over a $16 trillion deficit is just the beginning:
?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?
“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. . .?? ??Details in Wall Streeet Journal at:? http://online.wsj.com/article/
8. Seth Grossman?s draft column for the Current and Gazette newspapers. ?Please forward your suggestions for corrections and improvements to Seth Grossman at 609-927-7333:
?Gov. Chris Christie?s approval rating has increased to the highest score ever measured for a New Jersey governor, according to a Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll released Tuesday.??? According to a Quinnipiac survey of registered voters, 72% approved of Christie?s job performance, up from 56% last month. . . ?? Wall Street Journal 11/30/2012
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool ALL of the people ALL of
the time.”?? Abraham Lincoln, 1856
Last week Christie announced that he was running for re-election as Governor.? The 42 Republican State Committee members (two from each county) immediately endorsed him.
The same political ?experts? who previously warned that only ?moderate? Mitt Romney could lead Republicans to victory against Obama this year, are already warning Republicans that only someone like Chris Christie can win in 2016.
So what exactly did Christie do in New Jersey during the past three years to make him such a popular Governor and Presidential role model?
The short answer is he did what Democrat Barack Obama did as President.?? He manipulated lazy, biased, and dumbed down? TV networks and daily newspapers to get away with these lies:
First, Christie lied when he said he cut the state budget by $11 billion, and brought state taxes under control.??? Christie did? the opposite.? Democrat Corzine?s last 2009 budget for state government was $28.8? billion when the one-time Obama ?stimulus? of a billion dollars is taken out.?? Christie?s next budget for 2010 was a half billion higher at $29.3 billion.? But Christie also added billions to property tax bills by cutting more than a billion dollars of state rebates to homeowners, local towns, and school districts.?? He also stiffed the state pension funds by about $3 billion.??? And he hiked electric rates by forcing utilities to charge us extra for ?green energy?, and that spending that money on state government instead.
And Christie put the state even deeper into debt by spending $200 million borrowing $750 million more for more expensive union-built construction for state colleges.
Second, lied when he said his work with Democrats fixed the state?s? pension system.?? If you do the arithmetic, you quickly see that Christie?s ?reform? did nothing but grab more money from younger teachers and government employees so the fund won?t go broke until a few more years of baby-boomers retire.
Third, Christie lied when he bragged that his ?business friendly? government gave the economy a ?Jersey Comeback?.??? The truth is that Christie put anti-business, forced union monopoly and? environmental extremists into key positions.? They, together with big hikes in tolls, taxes, insurance, and electric bills made New Jersey one of the worst states to do business in.??? Even Ocean Spray Cranberry had to leave.
In the ?pay to play? world of Republican Christie and the Democrats he deals with, ?business friendly?? means giving special permits, money, and tax breaks to a handful of insiders (like the Revel Casino and companies that assemble Chinese solar panels and expensive windmills in the ocean).?? But even they fail as soon as the taxpayer? give-aways run out.
In? three years, Republican Governor Christie gave New Jersey nothing but higher taxes, electric bills, tolls, and debt, a lower income, wealth, and opportunity.
So why is Christie the most popular Governor ever????? Like Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Hugo Chavez, and every popular dictator in history, Christie used a crisis to distract from his failures.
Falsely broadcasting to the world that the casinos were flooded and that the Atlantic City Boardwalk was destroyed? was very bad for business. ??So was needlessly keeping thousands of people away from their homes and work for days after the storm.
But? the TV networks and daily newspapers made this very good for the political careers of both Republican Governor Christie and Democrat President Barack Obama.
If the Governor had allowed and encouraged private citizens and business owners to go back to their homes and jobs the Tuesday morning after the storm, he would have drastically cut losses from mold damage, theft, government overtime, and lost business, wages, and tax collections.
But by boosting the losses to $30 billion, Christie can now blame the storm for his failures during the past three years.?? And the national media will cheer Republican Christie as he undermines the efforts of other Republicans to cut federal spending? and end the trillion dollar a? year deficits that are killing the national economy.