The Commencement Address That Won’t Be Given

Diogenes - 5/25/2012

By Robert Reich

Members of the Class of 2012,
As a former secretary of labor and current professor, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the truth about the pieces of parchment you’re picking up today. You’re f*cked.

Well, not exactly. But you won’t have it easy.

First, you’re going to have a hell of a hard time finding a job. The job market you’re heading into is still bad. Fewer than half of the graduates from last year’s class have as yet found full-time jobs. Most are still looking.

That’s been the pattern over the last three graduating classes: It’s been taking them more than a year to land the first job. And those who still haven’t found a job will be competing with you, making your job search even harder.

Contrast this with the class of 2008, whose members were lucky enough to get out of here and into the job market. Almost three-quarters of them found jobs within the year.

You’re still better off than your friends who didn’t graduate. Overall, the unemployment rate among young people (21 to 24 years old) with four-year college degrees is now 6.4 percent. With just a high school degree, the rate is double that.

But even when you get a job, it’s likely to pay peanuts.

Last year’s young college graduates lucky enough to land jobs had an average hourly wage of only $16.81, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute. That’s about $35,000 a year.  The typical wage of young college graduates dropped 4.6 percent between 2007 and 2011, adjusted for inflation.

Presumably this means that when we come out of the gravitational pull of the recession your wages will improve. But there’s a longer-term trend that should concern you.

Don’t get me wrong. A four-year college degree is still valuable. Over your lifetimes, you’ll earn about 70 percent more than people who don’t have the pieces of parchment you’re picking up today.

But this parchment isn’t as valuable as it once was. So much of what was once considered “knowledge work” – the kind that college graduates specialize in – can now be done more cheaply by software. Or by workers with college degrees in India or East Asia, linked up by Internet.

For many of you, your immediate problem is that pile of debt on your shoulders. In a few moments, when you march out of here, those of you who have taken out college loans will owe more than $25,000 on average. Last year, ten percent of college grads with loans owed more than $54,000. Your parents have also taken out loans to help you. Loans to parents for the college educations of their children have soared 75 percent since the academic year 2005-2006.

Outstanding student debt now totals over $1 trillion. That’s more than the nation’s total credit-card debt.

The extraordinary rise in student debt is due to two related facts: the cost of a college education continues to increase faster than inflation, and state and local spending per college student continues to drop – this year reaching a 25-year low.

But this can’t go on. If unemployment stays high for many years, if the wages of young college grads continue to fall, if the costs of college continue to rise, and if the college debt burden therefore continues to explode – well, you do the math.

At some point in the not-too-distant future these lines cross. College is no longer a good investment.

That’s a problem for you and for those who will follow you into these hallowed halls, but it’s also a problem for America as a whole.

You see, a college education isn’t just a private investment. It’s also a public good. This nation can’t be competitive globally, nor can we have a vibrant and responsible democracy, without a large number of well-educated people.

So it’s not just you who are burdened by these trends. If they continue, we’re all f*cked.

[Snip] 

Yes, Mr. Secretary, you may be right of the plight of the Class of 2012. But you fail to mention your part in the situation they face.....like your administration, the Clinton administration to be exact, with your blessing partook in the largest transfer of American (military and industrial) high technology to the world, costing us high wage jobs needed to remain a world leader. And your guy Obama's economic policies have stifled growth and do nothing to create jobs of any kind here for highly educated graduates, much less a common man. Yes Mr. Secretary, we're all F*ck as you say, as long as debt continues to pile up, and we spend more as you recommend.

As for the price of an education, there's not enough room here to rant about expensive universities paying stables of  professors absorbent amounts of money to write books and columns instead of the teaching they were hired to do.........  

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Hard Decisions at the G8

 The debate was long and heated.

Finally, around 2am, the the G8 had come to a decision. It didn’t make

everyone happy but a good consensus rarely does.

They would play Cranium first.

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Asshat of the Year: Are Republicans ‘Manchurian Candidates’?

Oh, How original be he......

On Friday’s basement dwelling MSNBC's  Martin Bashir show, New York Times economic columnist Paul Krugman added new dimensions to the art of hyperbolic overstatement when he wondered aloud whether the GOP in Congress wholly consisted of moles attempting to “bring down America” from within. When asked by Bashir if House Majority Leader Rep. John Boehner was working to “further undermine America’s standing” in his efforts to insist that the debt ceiling not be raised again without accompanying spending cuts, Krugman agreed and said “Sometimes you do wonder if these guys are moles –Manchurian Candidates – for I don’t know who.”

Krugman stated that President Barack Obama had correctly embraced the counterintuitive notion that the way to avoid succumbing to the fate of debt-laden Greece is to "run an unsustainable high national debt." In Mr. Krugman's world there is never enough taxation and government spending despite the common knowledge Keynesian economics is proven a failure. 

No Mr. Krugman, I suggest you stick your head out of that Ivory Tower and really look at what your chosen savior has done to this country.

It has been said repeatedly, but only because it so often bears repeating, that it was Krugman who took to his blog in the New York Times hours after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot through the head by an extremist, to blame the episode on Republicans. And for his 9/11 Anniversary column was awarded the prestigious Diogenes' 2011 AssHat of the Year Award  by unanimous vote.

Once again Mr. Krugman, My Middle Finger Salutes You!

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Beautiful Women and Cutting Taxes - Swedes Know the Score

April 20 - 9:06PM

Advice from a successful – and tax-cutting – Finance Minister

Anders Borg

When Europe’s finance ministers meet for a group photo, it’s easy to spot the rebel — Anders Borg has a ponytail and earring. What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.

Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. ‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ he says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.

Keep Reading

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Your Government in Action.....

The food stamp program, managed by the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing food stamps to more than 46 million people in the USA.

 Meanwhile, the Park Service, also managed by the Department of Agriculture, threatens to prosecute those who "Feed Wild Animals".........because the animals may grow dependent upon us and not take care of themselves.

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Obama the Destroyer

President Obama, like the vast majority of  America's progressives and their toadies in media, have whined about “income inequality.” According to The National Review Online income inequality has shrunk during this administration. Unfortunately, it has shrunk for the wrong reasons:

"In the last two years, it’s way down. Recessions are bad for the rich. If you care about inequality per se, recessions are great. That appears to be true, so in 2009 the top 1% I calculated at 17.6%. I’ve seen other calculations a tad under 17%, but it’s basically gone from 23.5 to 17. What’s interesting about 17 is that inequality in 2009 is actually lower than it was during any year of Bill Clinton’s second term."

“The Rich” have taken a hit during this administration. Thanks to President Obama not getting the economy running, the percentage of money millionaires made is 20% less than when Obama took office. And we're not talking about overnight Hip-Hop millionaires or your over payed Athletics here either, we're talking business owners and such.  Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit, has frequently called President Obama the “Worst. Jobs. President. Ever.” I think it should be:
"The. Biggest. Wealth. Destroying. President. Ever."

Most presidents increase the country’s wealth. President Obama’s policies have shrunk American wealth. It isn’t just “the rich” that’ve gotten hurt, either. There are more people on food stamps now than ever before. The middle class has shrunk significantly. At some point, people will know that Obama a) a harmful to their bank accounts health, b) has pursued policies that won't ever create wealth or prosperity and c) has increased debt, both personal and national, at a faster rate than any other president in U.S. history.President Obama’s stimulus fed his political allies. His policies have assisted his rich bundler's and union thugs alike. Everyone else has pretty much gotten the shaft.

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President Recommends Slacks for Slackers

Middle Finger News Service - President Obama is urging anyone seeking the many jobs he's  created, to ditch the unemployed look and dress for success if they really want a spot back among the American working class elite.  

Last night, Obama told supporters who paid exorbitant sums of money for a mediocre chicken dinner and to hear him try to speak:

"Listen, people, I'm creating the jobs out there - if you really want back into the American work force, you need to trade in those lounge pants for a pair of slacks and show the rest of us you really want it. This isn't class warfare, this is just some friendly advice from a wealthy employed American to 9.1% of the country."

Obama's non-campaign/campaign bus trip comes as his $447 billion jobs bill remains stuck in the Senate two weeks after introducing it because Senate Democrats "hadn't gotten around to it" yet. Senate Majority Leader "Dingy Harry" Reid (D-NV) acknowledged the delay, saying he and the others had been "a little sidetracked" watching Ken Burn's "Prohibition" series on PBS. 

 "You never know when a future employer could be in the 12 Items Or Less line in front of you at Wal-Mart. You just  never know. I'm not saying you need to be all dolled up when you're filing for your third unemployment extension, but those ratty sweats you're wearing, they were made by offshore workers - dressed in slacks. I think you catch my drift."

Obama has also found himself in a deadlock with congressional Republicans who think the government should let the unemployed dress how they want since they have so little else to hold onto. However, the president says it's this exact mentality that has led to the fashion crisis in Europe and the widespread acceptance of large men in tiny speedos.

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Perspective:

The Economy of Commander Zero

Taking bets Obama's speech Thursday will call for more spending!

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Report: Queen Michelle has Spent $10m Taxpayer Dollars on Vacations Alone in the Past Year

Robbie Cooper's take on the Frequent Flyer First Lady over at UrbanGrounds.com 

 "So much for the shared sacrifice and all that other bull shit that has been pouring out of the mouth of King Barrack Slayer of Growth™.

"This is the same woman who thinks that Air Force 2 and Marine 2 as the family mini-van. The same woman who took a separate plan to Martha’s Vineyard for their family vacation, instead of hopping on the same plane that her husband was on. Because she wanted to get their 4 freak’n hours earlier than her hubby."

 $10m in luxury vacations in just one year by Michelle. And the year’s not even over yet."

Read the story here. 

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Excuses Excuses Excuses.......

Headlines Culled from Weasel Zippers

Dem Rep. James Clyburn: "S&P Downgraded U.S. Because They Want To Look Better In Europe…"

DNC Chief Wasserman Schultz Blames "Tea Party Tyrants" For U.S. Credit Rating Downgrade…"

Tim Geithner: Obama’s Policies “Absolutely Not” Responsible For S&P Downgrade…

Bawney Fwank Blames Military For S&P Downgrade…

ABC’s Cokie Roberts On S&P Downgrade: “The Problem Here Is The Constitution Of The United States Of America”…

Top Obama Adviser David Axelrod Calls S&P’s Credit Rating Cut “A Tea Party Downgrade”…

John Kerry (D-Gold Digger) Takes Just Enough Time Off From Spending His Wife’s Millions To Blame "Irresponsible, Reckless And Absolutist” GOP For S&P Downgrade…

......and from everyone's favorite idiot leftist windbag comes this.....

 

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As the stock market dives and confidence of the American people in the Obama administration's  policies continue to drop due to lack of leadership, all we get is excuses! The only thing they haven't blamed is racism.......oh wait....here comes  Dem Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.  

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For Immediate Release....

via Mr. Pinko@ IOTW

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The Earl of Ketchup takes to the Senate Floor and Channels the Founding Fathers.

If The Founding Fathers Were Here Today They Would Vote Against Balanced Budget Amendment.

  

“As I have said in the past, the most compelling argument against this amendment doesn't come from me or from anyone on the floor. It actually comes from the real experts, the people who framed the Constitution of the United States. If they were here on the Senate floor today, they would against this amendment because it violates the Constitution's basic tenet which is major rule” .......Senator John Kerry Heinz

-snip-

No Mr. Kerry, if the founders were here they would be tar and feathering politicians like yourself and parading you down Pennsylvanian Ave. in the back of a wagon for all to see! And only that after they had run out of rope.

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Can We All Say "The Great Society"?

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Can Obama be Defeated? Two Views

Update: links have been fixed.
.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had approval ratings close to, and even lower than the 45 percent level where Obama's popularity now stands, and both suffered big midterm setbacks in congressional elections. Both presidents went on to win re-election.

 
But unlike 1984 and 1996, things are dramatically different. Ronald Reagan was tough, an expert negotiator and was able to deal with Tip O'Neal, then Speaker of the House, to lower taxes and bring prosperity back to America. Bill Clinton, while maybe the kind of guy you would want to hang out with and have a beer, was as shady as Richard Nixon but a excellent campaigner and successful politician, in part because of the newly elected Republican House Speaker called his hand and presented him with the list of promises made to the people that helped usher in a republican controlled house in 1994. Clinton had the sense to sign the bills, and of course then take credit.

 
But Barack Obama is neither a great communicator nor the savvy politician his fore-mentioned predecessors were. Nor are the times similar. Obama took a bad situation and day by day has made it every increasingly worst, while ignoring the will of the people.

 Can the former community organizer/ back bench junior Senator who charismatically fooled America into believing he was the answer to America's problems, get re-elected to the most powerful office in the land?

 
I found two very interesting points of view on this subject.  It's going to be a very interesting 18 months till the election.

From Mary Poppet comes the view of one of my favorite columnist Dr. Walter Williams.

"Can President Obama be defeated in 2012? No. He can't. I am going on record as saying that President Barak Obama will win a second term. Nine percent unemployment? No problem. Obama will win. Gas prices moving toward five dollars a gallon? He still wins. The truth is, there simply are no conditions under which Barak Obama can be defeated in 2012. 

Obama's re-election is really a very, very simple math problem." 

Consider his 10 point presentation here No Matter What--Obama Wins in 2012. 

But on the other hand........
from Jeffery Lord over at the American Spectator.

President Obama will not be re-elected. Period. Why? Obamaflation has arrived, and this is what it looks like."

Milk. A gallon of skim. At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:

January 11, 2011: $3.20

February 28, 2011: $3.24

March 6, 2011: $3.34

April 23. 2011: $3.48

That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year. The third year of the Obama misadventure.

Then there's the celery. Same sized bag. Same store.

January 11, 2011: $1.99 a bag.

March 6, 2011: $2.49 a bag.

A rise of 50 cents in 54 days.

"WHAT SEEMS TO HAVE LEFT Obama strategists clueless is the fundamental historical fact that inflation comes slowly. Milk today, celery tomorrow, and gas almost every day. Then, too late, there's a collective gasp of recognition by Americans walking around the grocery store that it's no longer just the milk and the celery but the soup, the chicken, the hamburger and perhaps now critically -- the Excedrin."

"It is such moments that elect a Ronald Reagan in 1980."   

Consider the following here Obamaflation Arrives.

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Narcissism and Ignorance Have Never Been Virtues, Mr. President

Barack Obama is two years into his presidency and he’s managed so far to post an even worse record than George W. Bush. His economy has lost over 3 million jobs, consumer confidence is at half of its historical average, unemployment is over 9 percent and has been that way for well over a year. To what extent is Obama's lack of executive experience  responsible for this?  It has been said the early George Bush and Obama have a lot in common. The difference between them, which is why Obama is the more dangerous for the economy, is he has proved he has very little by way of a skill set to understand the kinds of complex problems that he needs to address. But what he does have is an arrogance, if not unbounded confidence in himself.

Last spring Obama brought together a group of presidential historians for what was supposed to be the first of many meetings.  He was curious about the rise of the tea party, curious as to whether there had been precedents for this sort of backlash against the established order. He listened to these experts on the American presidency, but was prickly and didn't give anything away.

What most engaged Obama before his rise to the highest office in the land was his own biography.   Where so many of his predecessors had sought comfort and guidance in the ordeal of past presidents , there was no great deference in him to the burdens those forty-two men carried. He didn't look like those other presidents on the dollar bills, he said early in his political odyssey.

A president steeped in history would have never pushed ObamaCare on so thin a reed of public approval. Americans haven't ever worshiped at the altar of charismatic leadership like some peoples have, for we have been the most skeptical of peoples. We may have trusted several of their presidents through wars and economic downturns, but we have insisted on the wisdom of the public and on the ability of this republic of laws, institutions and precedent to see our way out of great dangers. 
Obamabots  nod to American history with evocations of FDR’s New Deal and superficial parallels to JFK. But Kennedy had seen combat, was a Cold Warrior and believed in the burdens of American power. He would have never journeyed abroad to apologize on behalf of his country.

If he was indeed a student of history as Obama described himself in his 2009 Cairo speech, our president would have known that a command economy is alien to the American temperament and that liberal unfettered government spending was bound to arouse the antagonism of the American people. We were not all Keynesians after all, and the American people, much to liberals’ wonderment, do care about budget deficits and the future they leave their children. It’s time to let  John Maynard Keynes RIP and admit his failed theories have helped bankrupt many of the western democracies.

The era of charisma, which began when Obama was swept into office by delirium and enthusiasm has drawn to a close. The ‘Styrofoam Greek Columns’ and his  pedestal have been wheeled  away, and replaced with a golf cart.

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Hypocrisy and the Entitlement Mentality

Years ago I could see an uninformed, mostly politically ignorant voter casting a ballot for Democrats because they truly believed a politician with a “D” beside their name was dedicated to looking out for the poor and downtrodden of society.   
But today, a vote for any Democrat by those same voters is clearly just another way of saying, "Don't take away my entitlements; go take away the hope those soccer playing first graders have of living  the American Dream. They should only be allowed to eat at the troff after I spend my life gorging on my government entitlement provided sustenance. It's mine" 

A vote for a Democrat is a vote for continuing fiscal irresponsibly . You're telling the four-year-old eating a delicious ice cream cone, "Screw your chocolate covered face. I'm leaving you a mountain of debt because I want all I can get while I can get it. I don't care about your future financial well being and I certainly don't care if America is indebted to other world powers like China, causing you to spend your entire adult life earning four dollars an hour assembling smart phones for elites. My only goal is making sure enough Democrats remain in power to provide me all the entitlements and handouts I need to live like I work hard."

The dangerously high budget deficits and national debt are ominous signs for the next generation that face threats, foreign and domestic, that can only be imagined. And despite the fact that America is at the breaking point and  todays children  will begin adulthood well behind the starting line, democrats and those supporting them still won't man up and admit the entitlement mentality has come to be our ruin if not addressed now.

 They refuse to say, "We're adults and our refusal to act responsibly is ruining the future for children across this once great country. Its one thing to claim that reaching into the pocket of a rich man is noble, but even we can't spin the inherent evilness behind stealing from children. We're one step away from literally taking candy from a baby.”

 Conservatives are of the mindset that adults should make sacrifices that will benefit the youth of America and the generations that follow. Liberals on the other hand, demand endless gut expansion, regardless of the tiny empty bellies their gluttony leaves behind.

I guess it's only "for the children" when it's convenient. 

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Picture of the Week.

The process being played out in Madison...

has done us a great public service, however unintentional; it has exposed the naked hypocrisy of the unions, and given us yet one more example of what's wrong with our so-called 'Political Leadership'.

This battle is not about economics (even if economic factors have brought the Madison Protests to the fore), or even of fundamental fairness; it's about maintaining a series of often-outrageous privileges which can no longer be justified, and about the ability of the Unions to buy the politicians who will continue the gravy train.

If anyone ever needed a list of reasons as to why the rest of the planet is kicking our ass economically, and why employers are willing to risk breaking the law and hire illegal immigrants, or flood the State Department with H1-B requests, you need only show up at any mass meeting of Unionized Workers. There you will find, in microcosm, everything that's wrong with the American labor market. 

Picture source: Moonbattery

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Broken Record Budget

From Capitalist Preservation

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So Why Not Him?

Posted by Diogenes Sarcastica
September 16, 2010

In 1930, somewhere in Hungry, George Schwartz was born — not the best time and place to be born a Jew.

George’s father Theodore tried to change the family’s fortunes by changing their name to something less Jewish-sounding. It didn’t help. And soon war came. When the Nazis took total control of Hungary in 1944, the Holocaust followed. In two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps.


To survive, George, then a teenager, collaborated with the Nazis.

First he worked for the Judenrat. That was the Jewish council set up by the Nazis to do their dirty work for them. Instead of the Nazis rounding up Jews every day for the trains, they delegated that murderous task to Jews who were willing to do it to survive another day at the expense of their neighbors. Theodore hatched a better plan for his son. He bribed a non-Jewish official at the agriculture ministry to let George live with him. George helped the official confiscate property from Jews.

By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust. He turned on other Jews to spare himself.

George moved to London after the war and then to New York, where he became a stockbroker. He’s rich now.  

He became known as "the Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. In 2002 a French court convicted George of insider trading,  a felony   as defined under French securities laws, and fined him $2.3 million, which was roughly the amount that he made using  insider information.

In the United States, he is known for donating large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, he said that removing George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it." During the 2003-2004 election cycle, he donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code.


Forbes magazine says he’s the 35th richest man in the world. 

Maybe you’ve heard of him. He goes by the name his father invented: George Soros.

During  2003-2004, Soros helped set up the leftwing advocate groups to defeat Bush  and gave  $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $5 million to MoveOn.org, and $10 million to America Coming Together. Today, members of these groups regularly appear on and work with the mainstream media to push a socialist agenda on America, while Soros stands in the background.

No one knows for sure the extent of his involvement…..the man behind the curtain?   With his power and money, some believe him a dangerous man.

 And how does Soros feel about what he did as a teenager?

Has it kept him up at night?

Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes asked him that. Was it difficult? “Not at all,” Soros answered.

“No feeling of guilt?” asked Kroft. “No,” said Soros. “There was no sense that I shouldn’t be there. If I wasn’t doing it, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not. So I had no sense of guilt.”

A Nazi would steal the Jews’ property anyways.  So why not him?