Guest post by Steve Oliver

The current #Occupier of the White House loves to tell us about the “failed policies of the past…”  But let’s have a look at what the real failed policies of the past are:

The War on Poverty.  According to the Census Bureau, in 1966 the poverty rate was 11.8%.  It has remained in a range between 8.7% and 12.3% for the last 46 years.  Fail.  Giving money to people with no strings attached does not eliminate poverty.  Helping those who cannot help themselves is a moral obligation, but the able-bodied need to work and pay their bills and taxes like the rest of us.  

Guest post by Charles Seavey

The Federal Reserve owns $849 billion in mortgage-backed securities. Total reserves are $2,872 billion, so mortgage-backed securities comprise 30% of reserves. (No wonder the dollar can’t bounce, even with Europe falling apart.)

See: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/Current/

To give a sense of the scale of this unprecedented investment in questionable private securities, currency in circulation is $1,052 billion so the Fed owns almost as many mortgage-backed securities as there are dollars in existence.

We hear over and over that there are “big budget cuts” and that government budgets have been “cut to the bone” and that there is “nothing left to cut.” What is the truth behind government budgets? The cuts are a myth. And the idea that austerity hasn’t worked is pure fiction, because we haven’t had any austerity in the United States. Governments have continued to spend like drunken sailors, and cries of “nothing left to cut” are merely  fraud on taxpayers.

The Milwaukee Public School system gives us an excellent example of this. For years we’ve heard about budget cuts and how individual schools are suffering. We hear about how teachers don’t have basic classroom supplies, and how “budget cuts” are leading to classrooms with 40 children.

Image courtesy of MacIver Institute

I am a firm believer that government employees are too highly compensated. While the perception is that these people are public servants, doing work out of the goodness of their hearts for little pay…. the reality is that they are  mediocre employees who took their jobs because they are secure jobs which require little performance for far too much pay. (Yes, I realize there are some government employees who are exceptional. But I believe that the vast majority are average at best.)

Last week the MacIver Institute released its findings related to sick leave benefits accrued by retiring state workers in Wisconsin. As you probably expect, the results show that state workers are receiving benefits unlike those of any private sector worker.

As the United States goes back to normal, following our remembrance of September 11, 2001, one of the most offensive bits of “normal” continues at airports. We, the citizens of the United States, allow the Transportation Security Administration to shame, humiliate, and violate us every single day. (See a photo of the kind of thing I’m talking about here.)

Today I focus on one Thedala Magee, a TSA employee who violated Amy Alkon in an airport. What Thedala Magee did, as described by Alkon, is nothing short of sexual assault. But it was sanctioned and allowed by our government in the name of “safety” at airports.

You may have already heard the story about Thedala Magee’s lawyer, Vicki Roberts, sending a threatening letter to Amy Alkon, demanding $500,000 for publicly saying that Magee raped her.

It’s hard to believe that our elected officials and the people they appoint to important jobs can be this stupid. But it’s true. They are.

Recently, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stated in a interview on MSNBC that food stamps and welfare are stimulus programs. As if that wasn’t funny enough, he went on to claim that every dollar given out in food stamps creates $1.84 in economic growth.

Are you done laughing yet?

Last week, the Council of Economic Advisers of the Executive Office of the President released its quarterly report on The Economic Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The numbers are stunning, to say the least. Our federal government has spend $666 billion to date, with another $106 billion that it is obligated to pay but has not yet paid.

I have written plenty about Milwaukee Public Schools and their failure to educate children, despite their out-of-control spending. Teachers and administrators always claim that more money is the answer to all their problems. And the money is for the children!!!

This is obviously not true:

Last week, Reason Magazine ran an excellent article entitled “General Motors Will Never Repay Taxpayers.” I don’t really have anything to add in the way of commentary, but wanted to reprint some of the information here for your enjoyment.

I was against any and all bailouts from the very beginning. I truly believed that the markets should be allowed to work. If one or more of the automakers had a business model that could not survive in today’s economic climate, than it should have been allowed to die. There would still be demand for cars that would need to be made up somewhere, and another car company would have filled that need (at little or no cost to the taxpayers).

Sam Antar, former CFO of massive fraud Crazy Eddi talks on Fox Business Network about how the U.S. government uses accounting tricks to conceal the reality of the federal budget.