The right to free ice cream isn't spelled out in the constitution, but when has that ever been a problem for "progressives."

I have to admit I’m growing a little weary of politics. Perhaps it’s the Arizona controversy and the left’s ability to ignore logic and its apparent inability to read. It seems our population is fine with being ignorant. It’s easier to be angry and upset with Arizona than to actually realize that its law not only mirrors the federal law, but provides additional protection from racial profiling. So if we boycott Arizona, shouldn’t we boycott Washington?

Then, on the other side, there are those who spend time theorizing about the President’s birth certificate. The Republic has a lot of problems, but the President’s birth certificate isn’t one of them. The average American’s knowledge of our current fiscal situation is abysmal. Sure, most Americans can tell you that the economy is not doing well, but how many people cared before 2008? Most Americans are frustrated by the business cycle, not the 40-plus years of governmental mismanagement of finances.

For the United States to right this fiscal Titanic it would take a huge majority in Congress to do it. I don’t see how this is possible as long as the Democrats have the support of 40 percent of voters. The Democratic party doesn’t have a plan to balance the budget or reduce our debt, only plans to run us into the ground financially. Sadly, neither does the Republican establishment. Eventually this economic policy leads to California.

“So goes California so goes the nation,” or so the saying goes. California is our homegrown version of Greece. The citizens of California want big government, but they don’t want to pay for it. The indelible Mark Steyn has an article about the situation in Greece, but it’s just as relevant to California and the United States.

The problem facing the Western world isn’t very difficult to figure out: we’ve spent tomorrow today, and we can never earn enough tomorrow to pay for what we’ve already burned through. When you’re spending four trillion dollars but only raising two trillion in revenue (the Obama model), you’ve no intention of paying it off, and the rest of the world knows it.

Most liberals I know haven’t thought this far ahead. They’re in favor of free health care like they’re in favor of free Baskin Robbins ice cream. The ice cream tastes good, it’s available in 31 flavors, and no one really cares who’s paying for it. I too am in favor of free ice cream because providing it to Americans would be a helluva lot cheaper than free health care.

Eventually we end up like Greece, except there will be no one left to bail us out. There’s no Tea Party in Greece. It’s the Government Party there. Almost everyone is employed by the state and they all want to keep their 14-month annual pension (that’s not a typo; they get paid for 14 months of work in a 12-month period). Think that can’t happen in the United States? It’s happening already.

In Yonkers, more than 100 retired police officers and firefighters are collecting pensions greater than their pay when they were working. One of the youngest, Hugo Tassone, retired at 44 with a base pay of about $74,000 a year. His pension is now $101,333 a year.

It’s what the system promised, said Mr. Tassone, now 47, adding that he did nothing wrong by adding lots of overtime to his base pay shortly before retiring. “I don’t understand how the working guy that held up their end of the bargain became the problem,” he said.

“It’s what the system promised.” What happens if the system is broken? I apologize, but I really don’t feel sorry for able-bodied men who retired at the age of 40. What are these people contributing to society? Being a police officer is a respectable job, but it shouldn’t mean that 15 to 20 years service equals 30-plus years of pension. Obviously some of these pensions are related to disability, but not all of them. Until progressives take this problem seriously the United States is headed to bankruptcy.

The short term looks good, but the long run is very very bleak unless we change our fiscal problems. It’s good news for President Obama and bad news for whoever replaces him in the future.

Home Depot Inc., the largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, is adding store jobs for the first time in four years in anticipation of a rebound in sales.

“We have already added to our payroll this year,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frank Blake said in an interview yesterday in Atlanta, where Home Depot is based. “As you have positive transaction growth, you need more associates to handle that in the stores. We are going to lean into our skis a little bit.”

Other areas that are showing improvement are railway freight and an increase in private sector jobs. What is driving the rebound? It’s not the government. It’s the American entrepreneurial spirit. The business cycle isn’t dead and as the Dow marches closer to 11,000 it’s worth reminding people that the United States is still a very prosperous nation.

1. Abolish several departments. Agriculture, Education, and Homeland Security do not need entire departments. These departments are either too big, obsolete, or just useless. I’m sure there are other departments that can go as well. One of Bush’s biggest mistakes was creating the Department of Homeland Security.
2. Reduce the number of government employees, reduce wages, and reduce pensions. Government employees’ wages have been going up the past two years. It’s time these people start sacrificing like the rest of us. Federal and State pensions are absurd. We’re basically paying able bodied people not to work.
3. Raise the entitlement age for Medicare and Social Security. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this to happen. If there’s one thing elderly people do well, it’s vote.
4. Temporarily cut the payroll tax. This would be much more beneficial for the average American than the stimulus package.
5. Halt the stimulus package. Use the allotted funds to help pay for the shortfall in payroll receipts.

That’s just a short list of things to do. I could think of others, but this would be a step in the right direction. I don’t expect Obama to take up any of these ideas any time soon. Politicians love to talk about reducing waste, but they lack the courage to do it.

It was a year of Hope — at first in the sense of “I feel hopeful!” and later in the sense of “I hope this year ends soon!”
It was also a year of Change, especially in Washington, where the tired old hacks of yesteryear finally yielded the reins of power to a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as Nancy Pelosi. As a result, Washington, rejected “business as usual,” finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it, and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at it.

One of the biggest problems facing the White House in 2009 was how do you deliver on a campaign of change? Our government is a sausage factory. It’s very difficult to institute change. The idea that Obama was some grassroots outsider going to Washington was always a myth. I suspect that many of the grassroots are currently disillusioned, but they’ll inevitably come back to the fold.
Dave Barry sums it up very well. After eight years of spending us into bankruptcy the Democrats decided spending more was the answer. It’s astounding. If the Democrat leadership doesn’t tack back to the center soon the economy is going to suffer.

The Economic Cycle Research Institute, a New York-based independent forecasting group, said its Weekly Leading Index rose to a 47-week high of 123.9 in the week to Aug. 7 from a downwardly revised 121.7 the prior week, which was originally
reported at 121.8.

Meanwhile, the index’s annualized growth rate leapt to a 26-year high of 13.4 percent from last week’s five-year high of 10.4 percent, which ECRI originally reported at 10.5 percent. It was the index’s highest yearly growth rate reading since the week to Aug. 26, 1983, when it stood at 13.9 percent.

“With WLI growth surging, the odds are rising that the early stage of this economic recovery will be stronger than any since the early 1980s,” said Lakshman Achuthan, Managing Director at ECRI.

From the beginning I thought the economic woes that started in 2008 were fed in part by the media’s obsession with Bush. Four years of non-stop negative coverage contributed to the panic last fall. I’m not saying the coverage created a recession, but it helped contribute. Perception is a integral part of the economy. The fact that 2008 was an election year didn’t help the press.

For Obama, 2012 could be a very easy reelection if the economy is booming. What’s Obama’s plan to put the United States back on a solid economic foundation? Social Security and Medicare must be addressed and Bush’s prescription drug program needs to be repealed.

Bottom Line: My reading of the New York Fed’s Treasury spread model suggests that an economic recovery is probably already underway, and the Fed’s model predicts the end of the recession in 2009.

Unfortunately for the United States there’s only one logical conclusion to all the spending going on today in Washington. First if the economy is indeed recovering it has nothing to do with what the government has done since September. In fact everything that the government has done in that time has created a crisis for the future. The last two presidents seem to think that printing trillions of dollars and letting the Chinese pay for it is a sustainable economic solution.
Unless there’s a huge change in fiscal polity the economic judgment day is coming. If the newly submitted budget is any indication our current president isn’t concerned. Why should he be? These kind of fiscal policies sometimes take a decade before everything comes unraveled. They’ll be building the man a monument right next to Lincoln in ten years.