Charles Sykes is a longtime Milwaukee talk-radio host and the prolific author of a number of books that helped to shape my personal political worldview, including 1988’s eye-opening “Profscam,” and 1993’s “A Nation of Victims,’ two works as timely today as they were decades ago.

“A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing” (St. Martin’s Press) was just released, and the fact that I’m writing this at the very moment President Barack Obama is announcing yet another government plan (his fourth, I think) to “bail out” those “victims” who bought homes they couldn’t afford, makes this informative and engaging page-turner feel about as urgent and timely as any author could hope for.

What you need to know up front is that “Moochers” isn’t an attack on the poor or needy or, for that matter, a specific political party. In fact, from beginning to end, Sykes makes clear that as a country we have an obligation to feed the hungry and offer shelter to the homeless. Moreover, he isn’t even targeting a particular group, which would be impossible without a sawed-off shotgun anyway, because America’s moochers come from every level of our society.

What Sykes is targeting is a mentality, a dangerous and un-American mentality that infects almost every aspect of our culture, and one that is currently being bred into our children by those on both the left and right who are empowered by fomenting and excusing the dependence, greed, and selfishness of others. From corporate welfare to school lunches for the well-to-do to Wall Street bailouts to paying millionaires not to grow crops to tax breaks for Hollywood gajillionires to unending unemployment benefits to disaster relief for those who haven’t suffered disasters to TARP, and finally, to the shameless who walk away from mortgages they can afford to pay — what Sykes is exposing is that we are on the march to becoming Greece. Not just a European welfare state, but the kind of welfare state where the populace has been engineered by a nanny state to riot at the very thought of not being able to mooch the life to which they have become accustomed.

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CHESTER, Pa. – Three thousand students at Pennsylvania’s largest charter school face the imminent risk of having their school year cancelled in the coming days or weeks, and seeing their school “stop operations” entirely due to a lack of funds.

That grim reality is a direct result of decisions by officials in the nearby Chester Upland School District to keep state funds legally owed to the Chester Community Charter School, and to use them instead to bail the district out of its “self-inflicted budgetary crisis.”

That’s according to a legal brief filed by attorneys representing the Chester Community Charter School in response to last month’s judicial ruling that gave the Chester Upland School District a $3.2 million state bailout, and left the charter school holding almost $7 million in I.O.U. notes.

Attorneys for the Chester Community Charter School (CCCS) say the school faces a very real risk of shutting down because it cannot pay its bills.

As a result, it is “extremely likely that Chester Community Charter will have to stop operations, turning in excess of 3,000 students, nearly 700 with disabilities, out on the streets in the middle of the school year.”

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Bob Lutz is a good man.  A Swiss-born immigrant American success story.

He’s held big gigs at BMW and Ford.  He also worked way up the food chain at (now $85 billion bailed-out) Chrysler and General Motors (GM) – retiring as GM’s Vice Chairman in 2010.

And he has recently written a piece:

Chevy Volt And The Wrong-Headed Right

…in vociferous defense of the Chevy Volt.

You know, the more-than-$200,000 in government-subsidies-per-unit-sold Volt.

The overproduced, unprofitable, unpopular, combustible Volt.  (And January 2011’s sales were no less disappointing.)

That Chevy Volt.

Are we on the Right wrong-headed?  Let’s take Mr. Lutz’s piece piecemeal and see.

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I attended Wednesday’s 8:00am (8am?!?) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled:

Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know And When Did They Know It?

The witnesses were killer:

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Barack Obama-appointee Administrator David Strickland.

And General Motors (GM), Barack Obama-appointee CEO Dan Akerson.

The scope of the hearing was a bit too narrow – leaving out some fairly important attending facts.  Like, say, the (at least) five other Chevy Volt fires that have occurred besides the one being discussed.

This hearing was all about a single June Volt blaze.  The battery burst into flames about three weeks after a test crash at and by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).

A fire about which Obama’s NHTSA did tell the Obama White House.

But a fire about which neither Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration nor Obama’s GM told the American people for nearly six months – and then did so only when forced by a looming Bloomberg news story.

But:

The White House had no role in the decision to delay disclosure of a fire that broke out in a crash-tested Chevrolet Volt, the Obama administration told Congress on Friday.

Of COURSE not.

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I’ve already bragged that the Cato Institute is America’s best think tank, highlighting the fact that we took the lead in battling against Obama’s faux stimulus at a time when many were dispirited and reluctant to fight big government.

I’m biased, of course, so I’ll understand if you discount what I say. But I hope you’ll agree that my colleagues have put together an excellent video response to the President’s state-of-the-union speech.

As part of my contribution to the video, beginning around 6:35, I debunk the President’s class-warfare tax agenda by citing IRS data from the 1980s to explain that higher tax rates don’t necessarily mean higher tax revenue.

After a night’s sleep, here are a few additional observations on the President’s remarks.

• I was disappointed, but not surprised, that he repeated the economically foolish assertion that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.
• I also was not surprised that he didn’t say much about jobs and the economy. These four charts show he doesn’t have much to brag about.
• It was also noteworthy that he didn’t spend much time talking about Obamacare, which suggests that White House pollsters understand that government-run healthcare isn’t very popular.
• It was equally revealing that he didn’t spend much time on the so-called income inequality issue. Redistribution was implicit in what he said, to be sure, but the Occupy-Wall-Street crowd is probably disappointed that he didn’t explicitly embrace their agenda. More evidence that the pollsters played a big role in this speech.
• I’m definitely not surprised that he talked about eliminating Osama bin Laden. Kudos to the Commander-in-Chief.
• I was amazed that he had the gall to say “no bailouts,” particularly given his support for TARP, the Dodd-Frank bailout bill, and the giveaway to GM and the auto unions. And if the GM bailout is supposed to be a success, I’d hate to see his definition of failure.
• And I was stunned that he could talk about the housing meltdown and mortgage crisis without mentioning the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac. Sort of like analyzing World War II and pretending Germany and Japan didn’t exist.

Since most of the previous observation are critical, I want to stress that I’m not being partisan. I also was disappointed in the Republican response. Was the GOP smart to showcase a governor who was part of the big-spending Bush Administration? Especially one who has said nice things about the value-added tax?

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These days a lot of school budgets are being held together by the accounting equivalents of bailing wire and duct tape. But one Pennsylvania school district is so broke that it needs the state to provide the wire and the tape.

The Chester Upland School District began this week with only $100,000 in its savings account, and had no way of meeting its $1 million payroll – that is, until a judge ordered the state to give the district a  $3.2 million advance in its allowance, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The money will allow the teachers to be paid and the lights to remain on, at least for a few more weeks. The district is on track to be $20 million in debt by the end of the school year.

“Anxious parents are looking at other options for their children, such as sending them to private schools or having them live with relatives and go to other public schools,” the Daily Journal reported two days before the bailout was announced.

What’s causing Chester Upland’s financial meltdown?

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President Barack Obama is in full 2012 reelection mode.  Part of that process is preparing to possibly take on Mitt Romney – whom (it appears) he thinks has the strongest chance to be his Republican opponent.  Which he and many Democrats think is very good news.

Romney fits right into the Left’s absurd anti-capitalism, “robber baron,” Occupy Wall Street anti-1%-er, scorched earth storyline.

Romney is very wealthy, which for Obama and his Democrats is the height of eee-vill (except – these Donkeys are mostly rich…).  Never mind that Romney’s wealth is right in line with many past Presidents and candidates – including 2004 Democrat nominee John Kerry.  (The difference?  Romney earned it, Kerry married it.)

And as Romney recently told us, he these days pays the 15% capital gains tax rate – rather than the (absurdly) higher income tax rates those of us receiving salaries do.  Never mind that this is perfectly legal (and good fiscal policy, and “fair”) – it is culled right from the Leftist, Warren Buffett “I pay less in taxes than my secretary” fraudulent script.

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How did Romney make his coin?  Via the epitome of eeeee-villll free market entities – the venture capital firm.  His was, of course, Bain Capital.

Yes, Bain sometimes invests in failing companies.  Some of which they determine to be not worth saving, so down they go.  Welcome to Reality, Boys and Girls.

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What’s an absurd Leftist policy without an agitprop song to accompany the inanity?

The attempted spoonful-of-sugar to help force down the bad Progressive medicine they are pushing.

Which brings us to General Motors (GM) and one of the Leftist ideological windmills at which they tilt – the Chevy Volt.

We the Taxpayers have spent billions subsidizing the Volt.  And continue subsidizing it still.

We bailed out GM ($50 billion) and Chrysler to the tune of $83 billion.  On which the Obama Administration now admits we’ll lose (at least) $23.6 billion.  (President Obama once upon a time promised us we’d actually make money on the deal.)

We the Taxpayers are still stuck holding 500 million shares of GM stock – on which we are poised to lose tens of billions of dollars more.

But you know what makes all of this terrible-ness so much less worse?  GM spent some of our money on – the Chevy Volt official song and music video:

Don’t you feel better?

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The United States is at a fork in the road regarding which way we will go as a people. The 2012 election could be the most important in our lifetime, and conservative leaders have reached a consensus on how to channel the energy and concerns of the American people to realize historic change this year.

The status quo will not survive the year. Our debt and spending have reached catastrophic proportions in the context of global financial difficulties and political upheaval. Consequently, by the end of 2012, America will either have taken a decisive step toward socialistic collectivism in the name of “equality” and “social justice,” where businesses and owners are punitively taxed to “pay their fair share,” or America will take a major step in the direction of returning to our Founders’ constitutional government, restoring the rule of law, federalism, free enterprise, and individual initiative and responsibility.

The American people will decide which path to take in the 2012 elections, not only in the general election on November 6 but also in the nominating process in primaries over the next several months for all major offices, including the presidency. Conservatives must act in a concerted and informed fashion in all of these contests to shape the public dialogue and thoroughly vet the candidates.

To achieve these ends, top conservative leaders acting under the umbrella of the Conservative Action Project have released “A Conservative Consensus for 2012” announcing agreement on major policies. These issues span all three wings of the conservative movement: economic, social, and national security.

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In the year since the Tea Party arrived in Congress, the movement has managed to change the debate on Capitol Hill, but not the way Washington works.

The Tea Party has stopped President Barack Obama and the Democrats from bailing out profligate state governments, from passing new so-called “stimulus” spending, and from raising tax rates. It has even begun to win bipartisan support for major entitlement reform.

However, the Tea Party has failed thus far to stop the overall growth in the size and cost of government. It passed over a dozen bills that would accelerate economic growth and create new jobs, only to see those bills languish in Harry Reid’s Senate.

In both the debt ceiling and the payroll tax debates, the Tea Party saw its sensible bills rejected in favor of absurd compromises–then found itself being blamed for congressional gridlock.

The key to the Tea Party’s fortunes has been its relationship with the very establishment it dislikes. Where it has found common ground–for example, with House budget chair Paul Ryan–it has been able to promote its agenda of limited government. But when the Tea Party has clashed with Republican leaders–starting with key Senate races in 2010–Democrats have won by dividing conservatives from moderates, House from Senate. (more…)

What’s a Barack Obama Administration multi-billion dollar boondoggle without a Czar to oversee it?

For the automobile industry bailout, the Lord Overseer was Car Czar Steven Rattner.

This is the same Steven Rattner who late last year reportedly paid a $6.2 million Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fine and accepted a two-year ban from associating with broker-dealers or investment advisers.  For an alleged “pay-to-play” New York state pension fund kickbacks scheme he orchestrated after leaving Washington and his Czar-ship.

DC-Wall Street nexis, anyone?  Crony Socialism, anyone?

His current gig – besides being a (shocker) MSNBC Morning Joe “Economic Analyst”?  Managing New York Mayor – and 1%-er billionaire – Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets.

DC-Wall Street nexis, anyone?  Crony Socialism, anyone?

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Congress is finally feeling the pressure over insider trading, the practice of trading financial securities based on non-public information available to a select few in government.

After a series of investigative reports, including several here at Big Government, the American people are beginning to realize that what is wrong with this country can be diagrammed on a map, with a straight line connecting Wall Street and Washington, D.C.

Now exposed to the light of day, the political establishment is determined to show the American people it is “doing something” to clean up its act.

This week, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the matter, taking what many observers saw as great pains to minimize perceptions of a systemic and bipartisan problem. But I remain skeptical, as do many Americans, that Congress will actually pass a bill with teeth that requires them to live by the same rules as the rest of us.

The fact is, things will never change as long as the same Washington insiders remain in control. Washington is broken and needs a complete overhaul, but establishment politicians only want to tinker at the margins. This is why we can’t ask a Washington insider to fix Washington, because it takes an outsider to overhaul a corrupt culture.

My plan to overhaul Washington starts by creating a part-time Congress. We should cut their pay in half, cut their staffs in half, and cut the time they spend in Washington in half. A part-time, citizen Congress will not only get rid of the permanent political class – it will restore the vision of our founders and force members to live under the laws they pass with the people they represent.

Second, my plan makes passing the STOCK Act a priority. Any member of Congress who trades on insider information should go to jail, plain and simple.

And third, I will permanently ban all corporate bailouts. We shouldn’t be awarding taxpayer-funded bonuses to Wall Street executives who defrauded those very same taxpayers, we should be locking them up.

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“3 Reasons We Shouldn’t Bail Out Student Loan Borrowers” is written and narrated by Nick Gillespie and produced by Meredith Bragg.

About 3.33 minutes long. Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

As the cumulative total of student loan borrowing approaches $1 trillion dollars, calls to forgive some or all of that debt are mounting. Federally guaranteed student loans make up more than half that total and Barack Obama is pushing to cap the amount any borrower must pay back in a given year and forgive outstanding balances after 20 years.

Among Occupy Wall Street protesters, calls to bail out student loan holders are arguably the single-most voiced demand and sites such as Forgive Student Loan debt beat the drum for immediate and widespread relief.

But forgiving student loan debt is a very bad idea for at least three reasons.

1. These loans are voluntary. All borrowers are excrutiatingly well-informed of how much they’re borrowing and how much they’re going to have to pay back.

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I’ve written about the fiscal implosion in Europe and warned that America faces the same fate if we don’t reform poorly designed entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

But this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, narrated by an Italian student and former Cato Institute intern, may be the best explanation of what went wrong in Europe and what should happen in the United States to avoid a similar meltdown.

I particularly like the five lessons she identifies.

1. Higher taxes lead to higher spending, not lower deficits. Miss Morandotti looks at the evidence from Europe and shows that politicians almost always claim that higher taxes will be used to reduce red ink, but the inevitable result is bigger government. This is a lesson that gullible Republicans need to learn – especially since some of them want to acquiesce to a tax hike as part of the “Supercommitee” negotiations.

2. A value-added tax would be a disaster. This was music to my ears since I have repeatedly warned that the statists won’t be able to impose a European-style welfare state in the United States without first imposing this European-style money machine for big government.

3. A welfare state cripples the human spirit. This was the point eloquently made by Hadley Heath of the Independent Women’s Forum in a recent video.

4. Nations reach a point of no return when the number of people mooching off government exceeds the number of people producing. Indeed, Miss Morandotti drew these two cartoons showing how the welfare state inevitably leads to fiscal collapse.

5. Bailouts don’t work. This also was a powerful lesson. Imagine how much better things would be in Europe if Greece never received an initial bailout. Much less money would have been flushed down the toilet and this tough-love approach would have sent a very positive message to nations such as Portugal, Italy, and Spain about the danger of continued excessive spending.

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We have oft spoken of how ridiculous Government General Motors (GM) has continued to become since receiving $50 billion of our bailout money.

And of the Barack Obama Administration’s puffing up for political and campaign purposes GM’s alleged “recovery” from its bankruptcy.

(A bankruptcy, by the way, that could have just as easily transpired without our $50 billion.  But I digress….)

It’s not really much of a recovery when one considers the fact that GM’s thus far $7.4 billion in 2011 profits is greatly fostered and augmented by the Obama Administration’s years-on-end GM federal tax exemption.

A Crony Socialist boon to the tune of as much as $45.4 billion.

(How’s that for federal deficit reduction?  Is absolutely nothing at all GM’s “fair share?”)

GM’s is an even less impressive “recovery” when we remember that We the People still own just over 500 million shares of GM stock.  On which to break even we need to sell at $53 per – and it is currently trading at around $23.

Which sets up We the Taxpayers for a more than $15 billion loss.

Not quite the GM “success” President Obama is repeatedly touting on the Trail to 2012.

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Politicians in Europe have spent decades creating a fiscal crisis by violating Mitchell’s Golden Rule and letting the government grow faster than the private sector.

As a result, government is far too big today, and nations such as Greece are in the process of fiscal collapse.

But that’s the good news – at least relatively speaking. Over the next few decades, the problems will get much worse because of demographic change and unsustainable promises to spend other people’s money.

(By the way, America will suffer the same fate in the absence of reforms.)

Here’s a stark indicator (click to enlarge) of why Greece is in the toilet.

Look at the skyrocketing number of people riding in the wagon of government dependency (and look at these cartoons to understand why this is so debilitating).

By the way, Greece’s population only increased by a bit more than 16 percent during this period. Yet the number of bureaucrats jumped by far more than 100 percent.

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At the outset of the financial crisis, the Bush administration began an unprecedented government takeover of the private sector with the so-called bailouts. When Barack Obama took office, he doubled down on this gamble and kicked the door wide open, pumping massive amounts of taxpayer cash in order to further control the private sector, particularly the financial sector. This unprecedented growth in government control included creating new federal agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and and expanding existing agencies such as the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

The professed purpose of these government agencies is to “keep watch” on the business dealings of corporations in order to “protect” the consumer. But after reading some documents JW obtained recently revealing the generous salaries and bonuses being paid to government workers in these agencies, I have one question: Who is watching out for the American taxpayer?

We obtained the documents in response to Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests filed on July 12, 2011, with the CFPB and the CFTC, as well as with the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the U.S. Treasury, and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).

The FOIAs requested Standard Form 50s (SF-50s) from each of the agencies. An SF-50 is a human resources form that documents any change in a government worker’s employment situation, including pay. Check out some of the responses we received:

• The CFPB responded on August 4, 2011. The SF-50s revealed CFPB workers being hired at salaries twice the maximum ordinarily allowed under guidelines published each year by the Office of Personnel Management. A dozen new hires take home more than $225,000 a year, and a student intern is currently being paid $42,036 “through completion of education & study” as a communications trainee.

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The Barack Obama Administration has been absolutely atrocious in signing off on terrible legislation and policy prescriptions.

ObamaCare.  The $878 billion alleged “stimulus.” The $30 billion bump (to $50 billion) of the General Motors bailout.  Cash for Clunkers.  Cash for Caulkers.  Dodd-Frank.  Lilly Ledbetter.  And on, and on, and on…

Then there’s the stuff the Obama Administration tried–and failed–to rush through the Donkey Congress (2009-2011).  But because these things were also so heinous and because the Administration and Congressional Democrats had already reached their Heinous Maximus quotient, they were unable to pile them on We the People. There was Cap and Trade.  And Card Check.  And Net Neutrality.  And…

Being stopped in Congress didn’t stop the Administration.  It didn’t even slow them down.  As President Obama said, there’s more than one way to skin these cats. These ways aren’t Constitutional.  They are, in fact, dictatorial.  But this from all appearances doesn’t bother Obama a whit. He is using his every Department, Commission, Agency and Board to jam through these terrible ideas–and more–via executive branch regulatory fiat. All of this goes a very long way towards explaining why we remain mired in plus-9% unemployment and less-than-1% economic growth.

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One almost feels sorry for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t even qualify as a slap on the wrist).

Now he’s becoming a a bit of a joke in Europe. Earlier this month, a wide range of European policy makers basically told the Treasury Secretary to take a long walk off a short pier when he tried to offer advice on Europe’s fiscal crisis.

And the latest development is that the German Finance Minister basically said Geithner was “stupid” for a new bailout scheme. Here’s an excerpt from the UK-based Daily Telegraph.

Germany and America were on a collision course on Tuesday night over the handling of Europe’s debt crisis after Berlin savaged plans to boost the EU rescue fund as a “stupid idea” and told the White House to sort out its own mess before giving gratuitous advice to others.German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said it would be a folly to boost the EU’s bail-out machinery (EFSF) beyond its €440bn lending limit by deploying leverage to up to €2 trillion, perhaps by raising funds from the European Central Bank.”I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense,” he said.

All that’s missing in the story is Geithner channeling his inner Forrest Gump and responding that “Stupid is as stupid does.”

...at birth?

Separated...

This little spat reminds me of the old saying that there is no honor among thieves.

Geithner wants to do the wrong thing. The German government wants to do the wrong thing. And every other European government wants to do the wrong thing. They’re merely squabbling over the best way of picking German pockets to subsidize the collapsing welfare states of Southern Europe.

But that’s actually not accurate. German politicians don’t really want to give money to the Greeks and Portuguese.

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Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a country famous for its apples. In fact, it produced nothing but apples and so was called Appleonia. The people ate many apples in many different ways: raw apples, baked apples, apple pies, apple fritters, and candied apples, to name just a few. They found lots of different ways to use their apples, even as fuel.

But Appleonians didn’t consume all of their apples. They saved lots and lots of apples for their seeds so they could enlarge their orchards and grow more and more. For hundreds of years, the Appleonians consumed lots of apples and made their orchards bigger and bigger. Everyone in Appleonia worked in the apple business and prospered.

It turned out though that not every place in Appleonia was perfect for growing apples. Some areas were filled with worms that just loved apples. Little by little, the worms began to infest the orchards. No one noticed until one day a young boy opened a barrel and, taking a big bite out of an apple, bit right into a worm. Undeterred, he picked up another, with the same result, and another and another. At last he found an apple that was as good inside as it was outside.

But word spread quickly that there were worms in the apples and that the worms seemed to be spreading from orchard to orchard. People quit harvesting in the infested areas and, even worse, they could no longer guarantee the high quality of their apples as they had in the past. For the first time, they produced fewer apples, and many people were put out of work.

The Appleonian government grew very worried and, after brief consultation with academic experts, came up with an idea. To put people back to work and restore faith in the apples, the government hired lots of people to polish all the rotten apples. Of course, this didn’t really work: the polished apples may have looked better on the outside, but they were still rotten on the inside. Things didn’t get any better. People were still out of work, and the quality of the apples was still hit and miss. Government officials came up with another plan. They hired another bunch of people to spray a thin layer of wax on the rotten apples. Again, their remedy was superficial: the bad apples may have looked gorgeous, but they were still rotten on the inside, and hence worthless.

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