Artist's Impression Of Small Business In Obama's America | Zero Hedge

Artist's Impression Of Small Business In Obama's America

Cynics, skeptics, and fiction-peddlers...

Source: Townhall.com

'The Great White Hope' – Patrick J. Buchanan - Official Website

'The Great White Hope'

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group … death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.”

The big new killers of middle-aged white folks? Alcoholic liver disease, overdoses of heroin and opioids, and suicides. So wrote Gina Kolata in The New York Times of a stunning study by the husband-wife team of Nobel laureate Angus Deaton and Anne Case.

Deaton could cite but one parallel to this social disaster: “Only H.I.V./AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this.”

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LET’S PUT GOVERNMENT IN CHARGE « The Burning Platform

LET’S PUT GOVERNMENT IN CHARGE

Via Townhall

The Stunning Parallels Between The United States And Nazi Germany « The Burning Platform

The Stunning Parallels Between The United States And Nazi Germany

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Most Americans may not like to hear this, but the truth is that modern day America very closely resembles Nazi Germany.  If you initially recoiled when you read the headline to this article, that is understandable.  After all, most of us were raised to deeply love this country.  But I would ask you to consider the evidence that I have compiled before you pass judgment on the matter.  Most citizens of this nation know that something has gone deeply wrong, and I would suggest that just like the Nazis, all of the pageantry and beauty in our society masks an evil which has grown to a level that is almost unspeakable.  And just like the Germans, we don’t do ourselves any favors by turning a blind eye to what is going on.  The following are some stunning parallels between the United States and Nazi Germany…

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As Insurance Losses Mount So Do Refusals: “Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare” | MishTalk

As Insurance Losses Mount So Do Refusals: “Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare”

A McKinsey study shows Obamacare insurers lost money in 2014 and the losses doubled in 2015.

Amazingly, the study concludes there’s nothing to worry about because “30 percent of insurers nationwide were profitable.”

Meanwhile, outright refusals to accept Obamacare mount. “Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare” is now a frequent response.

Cont..... 

America's Fukushima: Is This the 4th Recent Nuclear Disaster to Strike the U.S.? | The Daily Sheeple

America's Fukushima: Is This the 4th Recent Nuclear Disaster to Strike the U.S.?

By Brandon Turbeville

Is there any nuclear site in the United States that is not currentlycollapsing, leaking or otherwise posing a major health or environmental risk? Certainly there are, but that number is becoming smaller and smaller.

In addition to three other nuclear disasters unfolding across the country, a fourth has now arisen. This new disaster is located in Washington state in a facility known as the Hanford site.

One week after 19 workers were sent for medical evaluation as the nuclear waste tank was being transferred because of a leak, 3 more workers are now being reported as injured at the site. According to RT, the workers inhaled radioactive fumes – the same issue facing the 19 previously hospitalized workers. This brings the injured number of workers up to 22.

The Hanford site has reportedly been leaking massive amounts of radiation for more than two weeks. By no means a recent facility, the Hanford nuclear site is one of the original nuclear facilities in the United States, having been part of the Manhattan Project itself. Weapons-grade plutonium was stored at this facility for use in atomic weapons, one of which was dropped on Hiroshima.

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Unhappy America: Will the United States Collapse Due to an Internal Societal Meltdown? | The Daily Sheeple

Unhappy America: Will the United States Collapse Due to an Internal Societal Meltdown?

Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the United States of America?

All great nations eventually fall, and the United States is not going to be any exception.  Many of those that write about the decline of our once great country tend to focus on external threats, and there are certainly many that could be talked about.  But perhaps even more ominous is the internal societal meltdown that we see happening all around us.  According to Real Clear Politics, recent surveys show that 67 percent of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track, and only 26 percent of Americans believe that it is headed in the right direction.  So even though we are tremendously divided as to what the solutions are, the vast majority of us can see that something is deeply, deeply wrong with America.

Personally, I spend a lot of time writing about our economic problems.  We have piled up the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, last year the middle class became a minority for the first time in our history, and 47 percent of all Americans couldn’t even pay an unexpected $400 emergency room bill without borrowing the money or selling something.  But I don’t want to focus on economics in this article.

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47% Of Americans Can't Even Come Up With $400 To Cover An Emergency Room Visit | Zero Hedge

47% Of Americans Can't Even Come Up With $400 To Cover An Emergency Room Visit

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

If you had to make a sudden visit to the emergency room, would you have enough money to pay for it without selling something or borrowing the funds from somewhere? 

Most Americans may not realize this, but this is something that the Federal Reserve has actually been tracking for several years now.  And according to the Fed, an astounding 47 percent of all Americans could not come up with $400 to pay for an emergency room visit without borrowing it or selling something. 

Various surveys that I have talked about in the past have found that more than 60 percent of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck, but I didn’t realize that things were quite this bad for about half the country.  If you can’t even come up with $400 for an unexpected emergency room visit, then you are just surviving from month to month by the skin of your teeth.  Unfortunately, about half of us are currently in that situation.

Earlier today someone pointed me toward an excellent article in The Atlantic that discussed this, and I have to admit that The Atlantic is one of the last remaining bastions of old school excellence in journalism that you will find in the mainstream media.  Of course I don’t see eye to eye with them on a lot of things philosophically, but there are some really hard working journalists over there.

The article where I found the 47 percent figure comes from The Atlantic, and it is entitled “The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans“.  It was authored by Neal Gabler, and he says that he can identify with the 47 percent of Americans that don’t have $400 for an unexpected emergency room visit because he is one of them…

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So Mathematically, It’s Over (In More Ways Than One) « The Burning Platform

So Mathematically, It’s Over (In More Ways Than One)

Guest Post by Karl Denninger

Trump won New York last night with roughly 60% of the primary vote.

With it, and the delegates that came with it (at least 89 of the 95 total), he has essentially shut out Cruz, who no longer has any rational mathematical way to reach 1237 delegates.

Cruz (and Kascich’s) only hope now is to actually steal the nomination from the man who has the greatest delegate and vote count at the convention.  While one can argue that “this is all part of the rules” it’s also how the Republican Party, if it occurs, will destroy themselves just as the Whigs did.

The GOP establishment would probably be perfectly content with Hillary as President, as they’d then have their “foil” to rant about for the next four years.  So be it, should they so choose.

But arithmetic doesn’t care about politics, nor does it respect such banal garbage.

We don’t have four more years when it comes to the health care budget disaster, both at a government and private level, that is about to rain down upon this nation.

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Doug Casey: The Real Problem is Government | International Man

The Real Problem is Government

I give a good number of speeches each year. For some time I've asked audiences a question: "What useful purpose does the U.S. government serve?" I do that not to be challenging or provocative, but to actually find out if anyone else can think of a useful purpose the government serves. The question at first shocks, then amuses and then perplexes almost everyone because it is both so obvious and outrageous that no one ever thinks of asking it. Most people accept the institution of government because it has always been there; they have always assumed it was essential. People do not question its existence, much less its right to exist.

Government sponsors untold waste, criminality, and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little of value in return. Its contributions to the commonweal are wars, pogroms, confiscations, persecutions, taxation, regulation, and inflation. And it's not just some governments of which that's true, although some are clearly much worse than others. It's an inherent characteristic of all government.

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Imploding Pensions Take The Rest Of US Down With Them « The Burning Platform

Imploding Pensions Take The Rest Of US Down With Them

Guest Post by John Rubino

It’s the same story pretty much everywhere: Cities and states promised ridiculously generous (by today’s standards) pensions to teachers, cops and firefighters, failed to sufficiently fund the plans and invested the money they did have very badly. And now the weight of the resulting unfunded obligations are crushing not just plan recipients but entire communities. Here’s a representative case:

Oregon PERS unfunded liability swells to $21 billion

(KTVZ) – This week, Oregon’s Public Employee Retirement System Board received an earnings report on the status of the PERS fund investment. The report said Oregon’s PERS fund fell by 4 percent in 2015, a loss of nearly $3 billion — and a Central Oregon lawmaker said that means major reforms are more urgent than ever.“The blow to PERS from the Moro court case left Oregon with an additional $5 billion in unfunded liability,” Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, said Tuesday. “Now PERS is an additional $8 billion short of its target.”

In that ruling nearly a year ago, the state Supreme Court overturned the vast majority of the PERS reform cost-saving provisions enacted by the 2013 Legislature.

The current unfunded PERS liability now exceeds $21 billion, up from $18 billion last year, he noted.

PERS Communications Director David Crossley said while the PERS fund earned just over 2 percent last year, it did not achieve the “assumed savings rate” of 7.75 percent, so the liability increased by about $3 billion.

He noted that PERS had positive earnings, but lost value because it pays out about $3.5 billion in benefits a year.

PERS rates for school districts and local governments will rise in July 2017, Knopp said, forcing school districts to lay off teachers, reduce school days, increase class sizes, and cut programs like art and PE. Local governments will also have to make cuts to public safety and other critical services.

This combination of worse-than-expected investment returns and legal barriers to cost savings is playing out across the country. See Fitch downgrades Chicago after “worst possible outcome” in state supreme court pension reform bid.

What follows — “…forcing school districts to lay off teachers, reduce school days, increase class sizes, and cut programs like art and PE. Local governments will also have to make cuts to public safety and other critical services” — is also playing out in most states and cities.

And this, remember, is at the tail end of an epic bull market in financial assets. If pension plans aren’t fully funded now, they’ll fall into an abyss in the coming correction.

The result: everyone gets poorer. Or more accurately, everyone discovers that they were never as rich as they thought they were, and that the down escalator they’re on has a long way to go.

At the risk of belaboring the point, imploding pensions, like most other modern problems, can be traced back to easy money. Put a monetary printing press in the hands of government and the resulting corruption flows from Washington outward to every state capital and mayor’s office. With interest rates artificially low and inflation artificially high, generating 8% returns as far as the eye can see looks not just possible, but easy. So promising benefits based on high rates of return seems reasonable to elected officials anxious to buy labor peace. And once the Ponzi scheme is in place, there’s no way to turn it off without creating chaos.

The only solution (again at the risk of repetition) is to take the easy money program to its logical extreme and devalue the dollar by an amount large enough to make nominal pension benefits affordable. That’s functionally the same as honestly cutting benefits and will impoverish everyone who doesn’t own lots of real assets, but it will be easier to hide.

HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO OBAMACARE « The Burning Platform

HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO OBAMACARE 

Via Investors.com

OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENTS « The Burning Platform

OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENTS

Via Townhall