Life in "Progress" State - California edition

Remember the good old days when Californian's made fun of Applachia (run by democrats at the time)?

Now that those hicks have seen the light and California has degraded into a Eurotopia, who's laughing now............

The Golden State has reached a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia’s and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, according to a new measure of poverty developed by the federal Census Bureau.

Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal government’s new measure of poverty, which incorporates more detailed analyses of welfare payments and the local costs of food, gasoline and housing. (View the new census data report)

The state’s costs are boosted by its environmental and workplace regulations, and by 38 million residents’ competition for housing close to the sea.

The new measure, however, also incorporates a controversial calculation of relative equality that demotes states, including California, that have wide gaps between wealthy people and people with less than one-third of state residents’ average income.


Whoa Whoa Whoa............ I thought high taxes and more social programs brought income equality.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/16/golden-state-turns-to-lead-now-leads-poverty-rankings/#ixzz2CQBA4NnJ

The Golden State has reached a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia’s and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, according to a new measure of poverty developed by the federal Census Bureau.
Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal government’s new measure of poverty, which incorporates more detailed analyses of welfare payments and the local costs of food, gasoline and housing.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/16/golden-state-turns-to-lead-now-leads-poverty-rankings/#ixzz2CQAqPYPm

The Golden State has reached a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia’s and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, according to a new measure of poverty developed by the federal Census Bureau.
Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal government’s new measure of poverty, which incorporates more detailed analyses of welfare payments and the local costs of food, gasoline and housing.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/16/golden-state-turns-to-lead-now-leads-poverty-rankings/#ixzz2CQAqPYPm

How government works

During my time in continuing education, we had a big time discussion about tax preparer compliance audits.


To catch you up to speed. In recent years, the tax preparation business has become populated with various criminals and now the IRS is trying to clamp down.You may ask yourself, why?

Like any question in life, if you answer money, you'll be right about 90% of the time.

Over the years, every time the rich got some tax break the poor had to get something as well. Never mind that they paid no income tax to begin with.

So to throw the poor a bone, Congress expanded the Earned Income Credit.

Now you have poor people getting refunds of up to $7,500 and unscrupulous preparers more than willing to help these people scam the government.

If you were a normal thinking person, you might say. Wow there's a lot of fraud in here! Maybe this program shouldn't be so lucrative as to encourage fraud. And with that kind of thinking you'd never make above a GS 14 payscale.

How you move up the government totem pole is to suggest that the government sets up a whole new bureaucracy to regulate tax preparers.Never mind the people getting the dough.

And you wonder how the feds can't seem to cut a trillion or two.

Quit making education more affordable

For the past couple of days, I've been catching up on my continuing education requirements to keep my accounting license.

As we went through some of the tax provisions related to education, I noticed this chart with the various tax credits and/or deductions that are all centered around education. 

Now outside of the the exclusionary provisions in the chart, all of these items have been implemented with the past 15 years. All in the vain of making education more affordable.

Now ask yourself this question. Is education more affordable or less affordable than it was 15 years ago?

Who gets hurt more from the escalating costs of education Warren Buffett or a middle class working stiff trying to make it work for their kid?

Life in "Progress" Country - Greece edition

Don't look now but here is our future............

Greece is fast running out of cash while it awaits the next tranche of its 130-billion euro ($165.16 billion) international bailout that is keeping it afloat, a deputy finance minister said on Friday. 

"The situation with the state's cash reserves is borderline," Deputy Finance Minister Christos Staikouras told a conference. 

"This fact creates a condition of asphyxiation in the economy." Athens is considering rolling over 5 billion euros in treasury bills when they mature next week due to a likely delay in receiving the 31.5 billion euro tranche, finance ministry officials told Reuters earlier on Friday.

Who bails out the bailoutor............

More.......

Life in Obamaworld

What do you think the vote count was for the attendees to this job fair?

Conservatism..... an attempt to save liberals from themselves

How's the job market looking right now?

Consider this............

• Energizer, which is restructuring its company, and as a result, announced it expects to lose about 1,500 jobs.
• Boeing, who expects to shrink their executive staff by roughly 30% at the Boeing Defense, Space & Security unit.
• US Cellular, who is moving manufacturing plants out of Chicago, and as a result will cut roughly 640 jobs in the area. Overall, the company estimates it will cut 980 jobs, about 12% of its workforce.
• Power tool giant Husqvarna, who is cutting around 600 jobs, a move that they expect will save them roughly $33 million per year.
• Darden Restaurants, which owns popular chains like the Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Longhorn Steakhouse. They are expected to cut back the hours their employees work to 28 hours per week. The Obamacare law defines full time employees as working 30 hours a week. The law requires full time employees to have employe-provided healthcare, or the company must pay a fine.
• Murray energy corp will layoff more than 120 employees to avoid expenses due to Obama regulations and taxes
• Welch Allen will layoff 275 employees (10% of their workforce) as a “pro-active response” to taxes in Obamacare
• Dana Holding Group – auto parts manufacturer will make numerous cuts in response to $24 million in costs due to Obamacare
• Stryker will be eliminating 5% of its workforce (1,170 jobs) due to additional taxes in Obamacare
• Boston Scientific will be dropping between 1,200 and 1,400 jobs and shifting operations to China to avoid Obamacare taxes
• Smith & Nephew will drop 770 jobs
• U.S. Cellular will eliminate 980 jobs
• UtahAmerican Energy will cut a huge number of jobs as “204 American coal-fired plants” are shut down by 2014 – basically maiming the coal-mining industry
• Lockheed Martin is expected to notify 123,000 employees of coming layoffs
• Consol Energy to layoff 145 employees
• much, much more coming…

Read the rest...........

Local Businessman Blames Obama Administration for Coal Layoffs

Life in "Progress" State - California edition

They called it Paradise.
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun
Sinking in the sea

Democrats gained a two-thirds majority in the California Senate following Tuesday’s election, bringing them close to the ability to pass tax increases without the need for Republican votes.

However, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown quickly cautioned that he already has pledged to take any further tax hikes to voters, as he did with the temporary tax increases that voters approved on Tuesday. And Democrat leaders in both the Senate and Assembly downplayed the idea that they would seek to further ratchet up tax rates.

It is the first time since 1965 that Democrats controlled a Senate supermajority, and the only time since California voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, raising the legislative vote threshold to pass tax increases to two-thirds.

Another wager? How about what the unemployment rate in California will be duiring the next presidential election.

I'll take higher.

Wager

Anyone want to make a bet on the unemployment rate the day of the presidential election.

I'm willing to bet $100 the rate will be higher than it is today.

Who wants to take the other side?

The United States of Greece

Today will be all the post mortems on how Romney lost this race.

Frankly, I don't believe that there was ever anything that Romney could have done.

If anything, when he made his 47% comment, he was wrong. We have now reached the critical mass of 50% of this country who are in the wagon while the rest pull.

Consider........

How do you persuade a perfectly healthy, educated woman who believes that it's OK for others..... no..... it's her right for others to pay for her birth control?

That there are populations of people who believe that their cell phones are simply manna from Obama without cost to anyone and "that he's going to do more".

How do you get through to a population of people when media outlets won't even cover the planned assassination of a US ambassador and subsequent cover up by the administration?

How do you convince working collar types that excessive regulation hurts middle class job opportunities?

I was kind of surprised with my own emotions when I saw Ohio go down last night. Frankly, I was indifferent. I'm 50 years old. The Gekko's have no children. We've got plenty of savings and job opportunities. I'm old enough that I'll probably be able to get a social security check or two. We're going to do fine.

When gas prices spike, we'll just fill up as we always do. Just like we'll absorb tax increases and utility cost spikes. When groceries spike, we'll just grin and bear it. The Obamunists will never hurt me.

But when we want new carpeting or funiture in our home, we'll squeeze out another year or two on what we already have. We'll hold off another car purchase until our existing cars start following apart. Our vacations will be less luxurious. And who gets hurt when all those John Galts start tigthening their belt? Hint....... it's not rich people.

But as I've said repeatedly from the time I started this blog, I'm not a conservative for me. I'm a conservative for those who don't have the opportunities I have. In many respects, I'm a conservative because I'm trying to save liberals from themselves. Kind of like trying to protect your kids from their own stupid decisions.

Finally, I'm also a conservative because I don't want our country to look like Greece. We already have Greece. The world doesn't need another.

Unfortunately, our country has reached the point where too many people get too much free stuff to turn it around now. Now we can all just watch the clock for the coming implosion.

Romney...........the smart choice

Last week, I drove through my old neighborhood of Madisonville.

If you are not familiar with Cincinnati geography, Madisonville is a fairly shitty area of town. It was not unusual for me to go to my local convenient store and see a sign that would read "Closed, due to neighborhood unrest".

Needless to say, that area was peppered with Obama/Biden signs.

On my drive back to my palatial office in Loveland, I drove through Indian Hill. Now Indian Hill is probably the wealthiest area of Cincinnati. In this neighborhood, 90 percent of the signs were pro Romney.

Now it's easy to entertain the idea that rich people vote republican to protect their wealth from taxes. But consider that, because they've made the right decisions in life, they're rich and voting republican is just one of those good decisions.

Think about it.

How many rich people do you know with tattoos up their neck?
How many rich people didn't finish high school, college, etc.?
How many rich people have children out of wedlock?
How much money do rich people devote to booze, drugs, lottery tickets, cigarettes?
How many rich people, when they make a mistake, repeat that same mistake 2,3,4 or 5 times?

I went through the roster of the Gekko family. The Lovely Mrs. Gekko is one of 10 kids. I am one of five.

Along with spouses and significant others we have 25 workers.

During all this economic turn down, we have had three people hit the unemployment line. None for a prolonged period of time. Two of them were from reorganizations. One was employed during the Nevada real estate crash.

What makes this group special.

Nothing.

We all just did what we were told to do in life. We went to school. We didn't commit crime. We didn't knock up a bunch of honeys we couldn't afford. Only one has more than one tattoo (she's a democrat as well). I don't think we have a drug addict and/or alcoholic in the bunch.

In other words, we make good decisions.

And Romney will probably take this group of 25 by a 20-5 rout.

Keep in mind, that none of these people are rich. Lord knows that I'm not. We weren't born into wealth either. But what most of us realize is what works and what doesn't. And it's clear that democratic policies don't work and this group won't be supporting them.

Rarely in a group do I consider myself the smartest person in the room. But I make up for that by watching what smart people do and emulating it.

So if you want your country to look like Madisonville, feel free to vote for the candidate of dumb asses. If you want something different, you'll do what I did, move away from the dumb asses and vote for the smart choice.

west chester

Last night the Gekko's headed to the Romney rally in West Chester.

The crowd was incredible.

This was the line just to get through the security detail. Imagine a turnstyle type line the length of a football field winding back and forth at least 15 times.

You couldn't get that kind of democratic turnout without free phones at the end.

The best T-shirt witnessed last night.

If Romnesia means that I can forget the last four years.......

Please give it me

President Obama- Vote for Revenge!

Biden: "There's Never Been A Day In The Last Four Years I've Been Proud ...

remember he always means what he says

Ouch

When's the last time you read this in a newspaper endorsement

When Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney promptly criticized the security failures in Benghazi, the White House and its lapdog media jumped all over him for another "gaffe," for speaking out too promptly and too strongly. Prompt and strong action from the White House on Sept. 11 might have saved American lives, as well as America's reputation as a nation not to be messed with. Weakness and dithering and flying to Las Vegas the next day for celebrity fund-raising parties are somehow better?

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy - though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them." He added, "Under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama's future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to "figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" - $9 a gallon.

Yet the president now claims he's in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he's powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.

These behaviors go far beyond "spin." They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation's economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," would be disastrous.

 More............

Obama In WI: "Some Of The Businesses We Encourage Will Fail"

Yep

Who will you choose?

As you consider who you will vote for next Tuesday, consider for a moment the people who you will be aligning with when you vote.

Below is a breakdown between people and who they will be supporting next Tuesday. Go ahead and ask yourself which of these groups will be filling in the dots for Romney or Obama.

Then ask yourself, are these the people who I want educating children? Invite to a party? have as my neighbor? and finally...... run the country?

Let's face it. the values incorporated in each of these groups are ultimately the values incorporated in the people they support.

War Protesters v. Active Military

20 year olds v. 60 year olds

Larry Flynt v. Pat Robertson

Criminals v. Cops

Union Heads v. Corporate executives

Drug Dealers v. Convenience store owners

Alec Baldwin v. Kelsey Grammar

Welfare Queens v. Working women

Michael Stipe v. Ted Nugent

Planned Parenthood v. Right to Life

Sharon Stone v. Bo Derek

ACORN workers v. NASCAR Fans

Joy Behar v. Elisabeth Hasselbeck

Atheists v. Born again Christians

Madonna v. Martina McBride

Vegans v. Hunters

Non repentant terrorists v. FBI agents

Homeless v. Homeowners

College professors v. Small business owners

Urbanites v. Suburbanites

Any network news anchor v. John Stossel

Occupiers v. Tea Partiers

People who sign their checks on the back v People who sign their checks on the front

     

So choose your neighbor....... but choose wisely......

Polling question

To say I've been obsessed with information related to Ohio polling would be an understatement.

Mrs. Gekko is ready to have Gallup tattooed on my forehead.

None the less, I believe there may be some significant party ID issues with any Ohio poll.

Let's take the time machine back to 2008. Remember that in the primary, McCain had already won the GOP nomination which left Ohio republicans with only the democratic primary to vote in.

Many republicans changed their party affiliation to democrat to vote in the primary; some as part of Rush's Operation Chaos and some, like me, who just wanted to vote against Obama.

How many of those registered democrats changed back to republican in the past four years? After all, the GOP nomination was locked up again this year. So unless, you had some compelling reason to vote a GOP ballot in previous elections you're probably still a registered democrat.

The reason I wonder is today I got a call from Sherrod Brown's office asking me where my absentee ballot was.

They called because I've never changed my party affiliation back so they're thinking that I'm a sure democratic vote.

How many guys like me are in the voter pool? How skewed are the party ID figures if there are people who never changed their party affiliation back from 2008?

So when I read this at NRO I'm wondering what factoring has been done for this phenomenon.

As mentioned above, in current Ohio polls, Democrats have a party-ID sample advantage of 6.3 points. In 2008, Democrats had a 5-point turnout advantage in Ohio. That means that while national polls have the turnout advantage down 2.6 points, in Ohio it has actually increased 1.3 points. It is almost impossible to conclude that while the nationwide party-ID advantage of Democrats has dropped since the wave election of 2008, Ohio has actually increased over the last four years.

If that’s not enough, the Ohio polls have actually become more Democratic since the post-DNC polls that gave Obama the significant bounce that led many pundits to declare Romney’s chances in Ohio DOA. Of all Ohio polls from September 7 to September 19, Obama held an average lead of 4.2 points, with a Democratic party-ID advantage of 5.7 points. Today Obama leads by 2.1 points, with a party-ID advantage of 6.3 points. In the last month, while Romney has had surges in polls all over the country, the polling in Ohio has actually found more Democrats even while Obama’s lead was cut in half.

The biggest explanation for this discrepancy appears to be the prevalence of early voting. Many Ohio polls state that more voters claim to have voted early than the county records show; this inflates the likely-voter pools, with Obama voters pushing the Democrats’ advantage up as a result. It is a big problem for pollsters — many respondents want to say the socially popular thing, which is that they have already voted. When voters say they have voted (unlike when respondents say they plan on voting), pollsters ask no follow-up questions to determine how likely it is that they are telling the truth. Respondents who say they have voted go straight into the likely-voter pool, even though it’s clear that the number of respondents who claim to have voted is much larger than the actual early-voter turnout, based on the county records. From this, it’s reasonable to conclude that Democrats’ party advantage may prove to be lower, which would ultimately cut 
Obama’s lead in Ohio dramatically.

For the record, I told that Brown volunteer to Go Romney.

Chicago......... republicans fault?