Tag Archives: USA

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Obama’s neutrality on the Falklands dispute puts special relationship at risk

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From the UK Telegraph, an outraged statement from across the pond.

Excerpt:

Barack Obama may have rolled out the red carpet for David Cameron at the White House last month, flown the Prime Minister on Air Force One to Ohio, and lavished him with a state dinner, but he still won’t back America’s closest ally over the Falklands, sticking to a policy of “neutrality”.

[…]The President and his Secretary of State refuse to back the right of self-determination of the Falkland Islanders, and have not said a word condemning the increasingly belligerent stance and actions of Buenos Aires, including its threats to blockade the Islands and isolate it economically. The State Department has given no indication whatsoever that it has moved away from its support for direct negotiations between Argentina and Great Britain over the sovereignty of the Falklands. In fact, far from being neutral, the Obama administration has been siding with Argentina’s position for the last three years.

For all its PR spin during the Cameron visit, when the prime minister was blatantly used as an election prop and a fundraising foil for Obama’s re-election campaign, the Obama administration could not care less for the Special Relationship. If Mr Obama really believed in the alliance with Britain he would be actively siding with the British people over the Falklands, instead of continuing to appease Buenos Aires and its South American cohorts, including Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

Britain is standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan and in the wider war against Islamist terrorism, and on countless fronts is an indispensable ally to Washington. Yet the current US president can’t even bring himself to support the right of 3,000 overwhelmingly British Falkland Islanders to continue to live under the protection of the Union Jack, 30 years after their liberation from Argentine occupation. A stance of “neutrality” is an act of cowardice by Barack Obama in the face of Latin American pressure, and another slap in the face for Britain.

You can read more about the special relationship between the USA and the UK here, in case you are not familiar with the term.

This administration has done everything possible to support our enemies (like Iran) while simultaneously stabbing our allies (like Israel and Georgia) in the back.

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United States receives another credit downgrade under Obama’s leadership

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From Breitbart. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Credit rating agency Egan Jones downgraded the United States Thursday on concern over the sustainability of public debt. Egan Jones is one of the most important ratings firms in the world; they lowered our credit level from AA+ to AA. The firm reduced America from AAA to AA+ in July 2011, just before Standard & Poor’s did the same.

Egan Jones warned. “Without some structural changes soon, restoring credit quality will become increasingly difficult . . . without some structural changes soon, restoring credit quality will become increasingly difficult.” They added that there was a 1.2% probability of U.S  default in the next 12 months.  The company cited the fact that the US’s total debt, which now equals its total GDP, is rising and soon will eclipse the national GDP; the company sees the debt rising to 112% of the GDP by 2014.

The debt grew 23.6% the first two years of Obama’s presidency. When the debt is more than 100% of the GDP, treasury notes fall, which is a problem because they are used for transactions between financial institutions. This, in turn, could raise rates on mortgages and other loans, which would discourage growth in the economy, as well as state and local governments feeling the pinch, which could eliminate more services.

Paul Ryan has offered a debt reduction plan which would reduce the current six federal income tax rates to just 2 — 10% and 25%. His plan would also reduce the federal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 25%, the same rate as the international average. Because of the additional revenue accrued from economic growth as a result of the tax reductions, federal revenues could double over the next 10 years; the added revenue  would be more than the entire GDP of almost every other country in the world.

Meanwhile, President Obama continues to vilify Ryan’s ideas, saying they are, “a Trojan horse, disguised as deficit-reduction plans . . . thinly veiled social Darwinism.” And White House projections show the federal debt’s ratio to gross domestic product growing to a record 124 percent in 2050 under Obama’s plan.

He just wants to keep spending and spending and spending money we don’t have. Money that he didn’t earn. Money that people not even born have not yet earned.

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Europe’s socialist debt crisis: who suffers most? Can bailouts fix it?

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This is the most popular article on Investors Business Daily right now.

Excerpt:

Rational or not, Greece’s street riots and emigration rates signify one thing: Socialism offers very little to the young. So why is the EU’s $172 billion bailout geared toward saving so much of the failed socialist system?

As Europe prepares to deliver a historic $172 billion bailout to Greece in a deal announced Monday, it’s pretty much a given that the austerity conditions required, in the absence of a true free market, will hit youth hardest. Athens will be trashed by another youth rampage, as many youths blame the pain on something other than Greece’s deeply rooted socialism.

A bigger effect will come from Greeks who do recognize reality. They won’t riot. They’ll leave, voting with their feet just as Eastern Europe’s youth once did.

The young in both cases are victims of socialism, which claims to make people equal but, in reality, penalizes the young. For Greece, a country already gutted by a below-replacement birth rate and an aging population, that’s a disaster.

It’s not just Greece, but also every EU state with institutionalized socialism — where high government spending seeks to create a warm blanket insulating everyone from risk, but instead has led to bankruptcy.

[…]One out of five jobs in Greece is held by a bureaucrat, which is why unemployment among the under-24s runs at 42%. A 2010 poll shows that seven out of 10 Greek college graduates seek to leave.

Some 9% of Greek college graduates and at least 51% of Greece’s Ph.D.s are already gone, according to University of Macedonia demographer Lois Lambrianidis.

What jobs there are come from the bottom of a two-tier labor system that shields older workers in Greece’s rigid labor market. Young Greeks earn a 500-and-change euro monthly minimum wage as older workers doing the same work make 700.

In contrast, immigrant-magnet Australia holds packed job fairs at its Athens embassy. In 2011, it took in 249,000 immigrants. In 2012, a 20% rise is expected.

[…]Meanwhile, Spain’s EFE News reports that the Spanish Embassy in Santiago, Chile, has seen a 10% rise in registered nationals to 48,000, while Chile reports a 25% rise in work permits issued to Spanish citizens.

It’s not just jobs that are penalizing Europe’s young. Housing is stacked against youth, too. Eurostat reports that in 2008, 46% of young European adults ages 18-34 lived with their parents — 51 million people.

The two-tier job market, which leans heavily toward unstable contract employment, affects housing choices for the young. Other socialist measures designed to protect current owners against the market also shut out the young.

Perhaps most hostile of all to youth are the EU’s outdated state pension systems — which force the young to pay the pensions of the old as the population shrinks.

In Italy, 14% of all economic output goes to pensions. It’s no coincidence that states attracting Europe’s young, like Chile and Australia, have privatized their social security systems that give youth a real shot at building personal wealth and a credible pension through their own efforts, instead of political favoritism.

This is the direction that the United States is also headed in. What I find mystifying is why young people in the United States are voting for these policies. Young people here have a higher rate of unemployment, and they ought to know that all of these entitlement programs won’t be there for them when they retire. What possible reason could they have for voting for more and more government control?