Debt, Deficits, and Deceit: Factual Figures and Real Life Examples of Private and Public Corruption That’s Driving America to Bankruptcy!
For the first time in our nation’s history, it actually pays better to sit on your ass than it does to get a job.
That’s right, the average American who sucks on the government’s titty of entitlement can now receive benefits valued at – get this – $32,748. That’s more than the nation’s average disposable personal income of $32,446! Is it any wonder that people are leaving the workforce in droves?
Of course the unemployment rate is going to continue to tick down when you have that kind of incentive not to work.
Did you ever think you would live to see the day in America when it became more profitable not to work than to have a job?
And make no mistake, this is by design and exactly how Barack Obama wants it.
Now according to the Heritage Foundation’s 2012 Index of Dependence on Government , fully 1 in 5 Americans rely on the federal government for everything from housing, healthcare and food stamps to college tuition and retirement assistance. That’s a whopping 67 million Americans, and they make for one hell of a voting block.
In fact, government dependency jumped 8.1% in the past year alone, with the most assistance going toward housing, health and welfare, and retirement. And to add insult to injury, nearly half of the US population (49.5%) does not pay any federal income taxes. And if you think that’s just coincidental, think again. This is by design – going all the way back to Wilson and Roosevelt.
According to a CNN report entitled “The New American Dream,” a full one-third of all Americans get means-based assistance. So now more than one-third of Americans are dependent on the so-called “social safety net” and 20% live entirely on government subsidy. Twenty percent! That’s incredible.
Get this, the federal government sent out a record $2 trillion to individuals in fiscal year 2010. That’s equal to the entire federal tax revenues that were collected in 2010, an astonishing 75% jump from just 2002. As of now, according to the Heritage Foundation which tracks, documents, and keeps the data: 70% of the federal government’s budget now goes to individual assistance programs.
Hell, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that’s not sustainable. And with unemployment insurance extended to ninety-nine weeks, Barack Obama knows all too well that complacency leads to dependency, dependency leads to entitlement, entitlement leads to addiction, and addiction leads to capitulation.
America is in a dilemma that goes far beyond the scope of who we vote for on November 6th. America faces a crisis of conscience, a crisis of identity. November 6th marks a monumental milestone in our country’s history. We’re at a crossroads and we have to decide whether or not we want to remain a free society that reveres free speech, free enterprise, free markets and free opportunity for everyone, or if we wanna just throw our hands up in the air and say “fuck it.” Give me my free entitlements, which of course only have the illusion of being free. But thanks to the progressive liberals who have hijacked our colleges and universities over the past 30 years, the younger generation of Americans will just have to find that out the hard way.
Riddle me this:
How is it that, according to the LA Times, in a place like Ventura County, California, 84% of retired county employees with pensions over $100,000 are now receiving MORE money per year in retirement then they ever did while working?
And how can it be possible, in this nation of incredible opportunity, that over the past 50 years, the percentage of working age men in America who have convinced the government they are “too disabled” to work has gone up five-fold?
Something has corrupted our society to the point where most people in our country think it’s ‘normal’ to defraud the government… or refuse to pay their debts… or even steal from their employers …
Did you know America has only about 5% of the world’s total population… yet we have nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners.
And why is it that, per capita, America has one of the highest divorce rates in the world?
Why do we have 40% of the world’s TOTAL credit card debt—more than the next seven countries combined?
Why do we have the highest corporate taxes?
And more drug use (legal and illegal) than any other country?
Why do we have the highest percentage of eating and mental disorders?
And the greatest income disparity between the rich and the poor, among major developed nations?
Why is it that today, in the greatest country on Earth…
Half of all Americans, at some point in their life, will be on food stamps before the age of 20? That’s an incredible statistic, isn’t it?
And when you look at America’s black population, the numbers are even more alarming: Did you know that 90% of all black children will be on food stamps at some point in their life?
Porter Stansberry, a financial analyst, in one of his recent research reports pointed out that:
In Wisconsin, a legislator named Glenn Grothman, completed a study of how single mothers have almost no incentive to get a better job or second job to improve her lot in life . . . or to even marry the father of her children.
Let’s assume, says Grothman, that you’ve got a single mother in Wisconsin, whom we’ll call Karen. She makes $15,000.00 a year. And she has two children (ages 3 and 7).
Look at what would happen if Karen gets a much better job (paying 3-times her current salary) or if she marries the father of her children, David, who makes $30,000.00 per year.
Karen would now be part of a household that brought in $45,000.00 a year—obviously much better than the $15,000.00 a year she used to bring in, right?
But as Grothman shows, getting more than a 100% increase in household take-home pay is not a good deal for Karen at all… Because look at the laundry list of government handouts she and her children will suddenly lose:
Low-income housing assistance: $7,560
Wisconsin Shares (a local day care program): $9,200
Earned Income Credit: $5,520
Food stamps: $5,328
Badger Care (a Wisconsin health insurance supplement): $3,300
Energy Assistance: $688
Milwaukee School Choice (free private school tuition): $6,440
Add it all up, and the total benefits Karen loses if she marries David, the father of her two children is . . .
$38,036.00 in tax-free benefits
Hell, with these kinds of incentives, it’s no wonder that 41% of the births in America are now to single
mothers.
And here’s another example of municipal fraud that Stansberry points out in Bellwood, Illinois.
Bellwood is a small, mostly black residential suburb of about 20,000 people, located just South of O’Hare Airport.
But the little town of Bellwood made news when a story came out in the Chicago Tribune about a local (white) official named Roy McCampbell.
You see, for running this little suburb West of Chicago, Mr. McCampbell made an astonishing amount of money. In his final year before retirement, McCampbell pulled in a whopping $472,255.00
So it begs the question: How did he make so much more money than any other municipal executive in the entire state of Illinois? Remember, this is Obama’s home state, well let’s say adopted home state since the publisher of his first book even stated that Obama was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia, but that’s altogether another show.
According to McCampbell, he did the work of 10 people for Bellwood. He claims he was the comptroller, administrator, public safety CEO, finance director, budget director, human resources director, mayoral assistant, corporation counsel, property commission director, and development corporation officer. Damn, he’s one talented son of a bitch.
But hold on… it gets better…
As part of his contract, McCampbell was allowed 5 MONTHS worth of sick days each year, starting in May of 2008.
That’s right 5 MONTHS worth of sick days every single year.
Now because it’s impossible for anyone to take five months of sick days in a year (especially if you’re an Einstein like McCampbell would certainly have to be, he was able to get paid for many of the sick days he never took.
And that brought his salary up to close to half a million dollars a year.
And when he was asked about his pay, McCampbell told the Tribune: “I didn’t hold a gun to anybody’s head to get this. I’m not trying to do anything bad.”
And wait… it gets even better…
McCampbell also was given a free car and free gas—all paid by the taxpayers, who also covered his premiums for health and life insurance, as well as his pension contributions.
Damn, you can’t make this shit up.
And when McCampbell was asked by the Tribune if he ever felt like he was being overpaid, he told the paper, “I truly didn’t.”
And to top it all off, taxpayers are still not done paying Mr. McCampbell…
Because of salary bumps, bonuses, and cashing out his unpaid sick leave, McCampbell was able to dramatically increase his final year’s pay, which in turn gives him a pension estimated as high as $264,000.00 a year.
So here is the kicker: McCampbell, who was 55 years old when he retired, could conceivably live another 30 years or more… which could make his inflated pension worth $8 million dollars.
And don’t forget, he didn’t contribute a single penny towards his pension—that was covered by the taxpayers too!
That’s a prime example of the America we live in today. There’s Roy McCampbells in every state, town, and municipality across America.
Let me give you another example:
How about the tollbooth worker from New York whose average salary was $70,000 a year. That in itself is unbelievable, but the thing that makes this story so outrageous is how this guy was able to legally “steal” millions of dollars from taxpayers in the years ahead.
What this guy did was work tons of overtime and cash in dozens of sick days, which more than doubled his last year’s salary, to $150,000.00. And because his pension is based on his last year of work, he gets a pension of $120,000.00 a year for the rest of his life! That’s 71% more than his highest year of regular pay.
And he’s only 50 years old, which means taxpayers could easily be on the hook for $5 million or more in total.
And like I said, these stories are not anomalies.
The exact same thing is going on in every state, in every county, and in every municipality of America. We have state funded janitors, firefighters, cops, mayors, councilmen, administrators, etc., retiring as early as possible (some in their mid-40s), setting themselves up for payouts of millions of dollars for the rest of their lives.
Hell, we put Bernie Madoff in jail for a lesser crime. He was an amateur compared to these public pension administrators.
They’re thieves, plain and simple. I mean, come on! What actuary in their right mind would ever put their stamp of approval on that kind of voodoo math? A bought and paid for actuary, that’s who.
And this kind of voodoo math happens at every level of government–starting at the very top. Hell, we have them in Congress. You wanna be set for life? Run for Congress and get paid $174,000.00 a year for eight months of work, accomplish nothing, hang on for five years, and get a lifetime pension, lifetime healthcare, and no not ObamaCare, but real healthcare, and a ton of other perks, all courtesy of you and me, the American taxpayer.
USA Today reported on how various legislators around the country pad their salary, to boost their last year’s salary, and thus their lifetime pension. I quote:
“Kentucky legislators add their annual allowance for stationery — up to $1,500 for senators and $750 for House members — plus another $15,000.00 to $17,000.00 a year in expense payments to the salary on which pensions are based. Mississippi legislators get two pensions that on average add up to 165% of their salary. Connecticut lawmakers can increase their pensions up to 50% by including mileage reimbursements that add as much as $15,500.00 a year to the salaries used to calculate their pensions.” End quote.
Keep in mind too that these government employees have never had to risk a dollar of their own money. They essentially have lifetime job security. They rarely have to work beyond a 40-hour week.
Yet government employees are now paid millions by taxpayers to retire early, often on pensions fattened by gaming the corrupt system.
It’s a goddamn disgrace and another prime example of the Corruption that’s got a chokehold on America.
Mark my words, in the coming years, most Americans won’t even recognize the nation we are about to become.
Things that we have taken for granted for several generations are not going to be around in 20 years. And there’s a good chance that America–as an exceptional place of freedom and self-reliance–will never again exist in the way that it did 50 years ago.
And what’s the primary culprit for the demise of our country?
Entitlement mentality and free money.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you, but over the past few decades, the U.S. government has essentially gorged itself on free money.
We’ve done it two ways:
By borrowing absurd amounts of money and creating an enormous amount of “new” money out of thin air.
Keep in mind: This is money we didn’t earn. It’s money we don’t deserve . It’s deceitful. It’s dishonest… and it’s corrupt.
You see, today, we the American people have borrowed, and still owe to our creditors, more than $16 trillion dollars.
That’s more than our entire GDP… it’s about 5-times what the government brings in via tax revenues each year. It’s more money than any nation has borrowed in the history of mankind. It’s more debt than all of bankrupt Europe owes…combined.
$16 trillion is a number so big that the average American has become oblivious to it.
But the important point to know is that we’re spending $2.4 trillion just in transfer payments and interest on our this debt. That doesn’t include any other functions of our government. Meanwhile, we’re only collecting $2.3 trillion a year in income, payroll and corporate taxes.
I want to make sure this is clear: Even if we cut every other government program – including the entire military budget – the tax revenue the government collects can’t even cover the cost of the interest on our debt.
And every year, this interest compounds.
If that weren’t enough . . . we continue to pile onto this debt . . . to the tune of about $1.5 trillion per year. That’s because today, even with all the warnings about taking on too much debt and balancing the budget, we still borrow about 43 cents out of every dollar the government spends.
Get this: Our average annual deficit from 2000 through 2008 was $190 billion. Our average annual deficits since 2008 have been $1.3 trillion. That means we are spending a TRILLION dollars more than we bring in, every single year.
Mark my words: We will never, ever, ever be able to legitimately pay back all the money we have borrowed.
In fact, it won’t be long before we can no longer even afford the interest we are paying on these loans. And anyone who would tell you otherwise is an idiot and a liar. Obviously, this is going to have huge implications for our country in the coming years.
Think about this . . .
Without so much free money, we could not afford to have 49% of the households in America paying ZERO taxes.
Or twice as many people (over 22 million) working for the government than all the people working in U.S. manufacturing combined (about 11 million).
We couldn’t afford to have 1 in 6 Americans getting anti-poverty aid… and HALF of all Americans on food stamps at some point in their lives.
We could not afford to hand failing banks, carmakers, and other businesses $7.7 TRILLION in the big bailout of 2009. Yeah, you heard me, $7.7 trillion dollars. Bloomberg fought the government all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to get access to the real size of the bailout. It went through nearly 30,000 pages and found that the Fed handed out a hell of a lot more money than Congress ever thought . . . and that it helped the banks make $13 billion in extra income over the past few years. Wow, what a friend.
Without all this free money, we couldn’t afford all the ridiculous things our government spends money on, like free cell phones and TV converter boxes for the poor, or free breakfasts and even dinners for upper-middle class school kids.
Without this free money we couldn’t afford to pay farmers not to farm. Did you know that between 1995 and 2009, we the taxpayers gave farmers $250 BILLION in agricultural subsidies? Most of which goes to large and very wealthy farming corporations.
We couldn’t afford to spend $1 billion a year to insure and replace rich people’s beachfront homes on the coast of Florida, California, Texas, New York, and the Carolinas, because no private insurance company in its right mind is willing to take these risks at such low prices.
We couldn’t afford to hand out corporate welfare to the companies that seek favors, tax credits, bailouts, waivers, and new regulations in their own industry. That’s why colossal companies like Pfizer, Boeing, General Electric, Archer Daniels Midland, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, AIG, and General Motors employ vast armies of lobbyists.
We couldn’t afford to pay a retired teacher, who contributed $62,000.00 to the pension system… $1.4 million in pension benefits, plus $215,000.00 in healthcare benefits over his lifetime.
Listen to this quote from David Crane (a former California aid to the governor) about his state’s pension system …
“This year (2010) we’re spending 10% less on higher education than we did 10 years ago, parks and recreation 40% less, environmental protection 80% less, while spending on pensions is up 2,500%.”
Without free money we couldn’t afford the outrageous promises we’ve made in the form of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
We couldn’t afford to pay unemployed people to stay unemployed for nearly two years.
A Harvard economist named Robert Baro concludes the obvious and I quote:
“Generous unemployment-insurance programs have been found to raise unemployment in many Western European countries in which unemployment rates have been far higher than the current U.S. rate.” Baro also estimates that without the generous unemployment benefits, the jobless rate would have dropped from 9.6% in the fall of 2010, to 6.8%.
Do we really want to live in the quasi-socialist world of Western Europe? I’m afraid more and more Americans do!
Did you know that these and other entitlements (excluding net interest) account for 56% of all federal government spending? Yes, more than half of all the money we spend goes to these entitlement programs.
It won’t be long before those programs consume ALL government spending.
And here’s the thing, the $16 TRILLION debt is nothing compared to the $15 TRILLION shortfall in Social Security, the $20 TRILLION unfunded prescription drug benefit, and the $85 TRILLION unfunded Medicare liability.
Folks, free money is the most corruptive force in America today. We are literally and morally bankrupt— experts at gaming the system for handouts and freebies.
As Charles Sykes says in his book, A Nation of Moochers:
“Contemporary politics is dominated by the freebie. Cash for Clunkers: Other people buy you a car (and destroy perfectly good ones in the process). Home credits: Other people help you buy a house. Pork spending: Other people pay for your goodies. In the ultimate moocher culture, someone else buys your food, provides housing, heating, transportation, takes care of your kids, pays for your health care—and gives you a free cell phone.”
Hillary was right, it does take a village to raise a (man)child.
Here is the Gods honest truth. America is already bankrupt, we just haven’t filed the paper work yet. And unless we have a peoples revolt and enact massive reform measures, including a constitutional amendment or two, eventually, it’ll all come to a crashing hault.
And when will that be? When the US dollar ceases to be the world’s reserve currency.
And we just took a giant step closer to that reality on September 6th when Russia agreed to sell China all the oil it wants using the Chinese Yuan and not the over-inflated, over-circulated and over-printed American dollar, the consequences of which I’ll save for another show.
If you don’t think inflation is roaring its ugly head, think again. And it’s nothing, absolutely nothing compared to what we’re going to feel in the coming months and years.
I’m Kevin Lehmann and thanks for listening to Catch Kevin: No Holds Barred! If you want to comment on the show, you can do so in the comment box on CatchKevin.com. You can also subscribe to CatchKevin.com, follow me on Twitter at Kevin A. Lehmann and join me on Facebook and Linked-In. If you like the show, please share the link on your Facebook page and email it to your friends and family. If you didn’t and disagree with me, I’ll defend your right to do so to my death.
Until next time, Godspeed
