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News/Politics 9-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Again, not a revenue problem, but a spending problem.

From CNSNews  “Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $2,663,426,000,000 for the first 11 months of the fiscal year this August, but the federal government still ran a $589,185,000,000 deficit during that time, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement.

Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous receipts.”

The largest share of the tax revenue so far this year has come from individual income taxes, which totaled $1,233,274,000,000 in the first 11 months of fiscal 2014.

The rest of the receipts came from corporation income taxes totaling $247,200,000,000, employment and general retirement (off-budget) totaling $674,338,000,000, employment and general retirement (on-budget) totaling $209,281,000,000, unemployment insurance totaling $54,591,000,000, other retirement receipts totaling $3,155,000,000, excise taxes totaling $73,051,000,000, estate and gift taxes totaling $17,702,000,000, customs duties totaling $30,902,000,000 and miscellaneous receipts totaling $119,933,000,000.”

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2. Of course they did.

From TheDailySignal  “As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.”

“According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.

At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.

“I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon,” Maxwell says.

He didn’t know it then, but Maxwell would ultimately become one of four State Department officials singled out for discipline—he says scapegoated—then later cleared for devastating security lapses leading up to the attacks. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were murdered during the Benghazi attacks.”

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3. And it begins…..

From MSNNews  “U.S. officials said Monday the United States has taken the first step in its planned expanded fight against Islamic State militants, going to the aid of Iraqi security forces near Baghdad who were being attacked by enemy fighters.

The U.S. Central Command said it conducted a strike Monday in support of the Iraqi forces southwest of Baghdad. There was also an airstrike Sunday near Sinjar in northern Iraq.

The strike southwest of Baghdad represents the newly broadened mission authorized by President Barack Obama to go on the offensive against the Islamic State group wherever it is. Previous U.S. airstrikes in Iraq were conducted to protect U.S. interests and personnel, assist Iraqi refugees and secure critical infrastructure. Monday’s strike was in direct support of Iraqi forces fighting the militants, hitting fighters who were firing on them.”

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4. There’s no shortage and yet they use the lie to push for amnesty.

From USNews  “All credible research finds the same evidence about the STEM workforce: ample supply, stagnant wages and, by industry accounts, thousands of applicants for any advertised job. The real concern should be about the dim employment prospects for our best STEM graduates: The National Institutes of Health, for example, has developed a program to help new biomedical Ph.D.s find alternative careers in the face of “unattractive” job prospects in the field. Opportunities for engineers vary by the field and economic cycle – as oil exploration has increased, so has demand (and salaries) for petroleum engineers, resulting in a near tripling of petroleum engineering graduates. In contrast, average wages in the IT industry are the same as those that prevailed when Bill Clinton was president despite industry cries of a “shortage.” Overall, U.S. colleges produce twice the number of STEM graduates annually as find jobs in those fields.

In the face of these stark facts, we now see several studies that seem to be desperate Hail Mary passes, using rather unconventional means to find “shortages.” Some analysts do this by expanding the definition of STEM jobs – traditionally those involved in innovation, discovery and development – to include air conditioning technicians and even some retail jobs to make the case that this workforce is large and growing. Without any coherent meaning, such analyses now serve only rhetorical purposes to advance particular legislation.

Cries that “the STEM sky is falling” are just the latest in a cyclical pattern of shortage predictions over the past half-century, none of which were even remotely accurate. In a desert of evidence, the growth of STEM shortage claims is driven by heavy industry funding for lobbyists and think tanks. Their goal is government intervention in the market under the guise of solving national economic problems. The highly profitable IT industry, for example, is devoting millions to convince Congress and the White House to provide its employers with more low-cost, foreign guestworkers instead of trying to attract and retain employees from an ample domestic labor pool of native and immigrant citizens and permanent residents. Guestworkers currently make up two-thirds of all new IT hires, but employers are demanding further increases. If such lobbying efforts succeed, firms will have enough guestworkers for at least 100 percent of their new hiring and can continue to legally substitute these younger workers for current employees, holding down wages for both them and new hires.

 Claiming there is a skills shortage by denying the strength of the U.S. STEM workforce and student supply is possible only by ignoring the most obvious and direct evidence and obscuring the issue with statistical smokescreens – especially when the Census Bureau reports that only about one in four STEM bachelor’s degree holders has a STEM job, and Microsoft plans to downsize by 18,000 workers over the next year.”

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5. That’s what us global warming deniers have been saying for years. It’s not science driven, it’s agenda driven.

From TheDailyCaller  “Emails between top Environmental Protection Agency officials reveal they saw their fight against global warming as putting them at “forefront of progressive national policy.”

“You are at the forefront of progressive national policy on one of the critical issues of our time. Do you realize that?” former EPA chief Lisa Jackson asked former EPA policy office head Lisa Heinzerling in a Feb. 27, 2009 email.

“You’re a good boss. I do realize that. I pinch myself all the time,” Heinzerling replied that same day to Jackson, who was using an alias email account under the fake name “Richard Windsor.”

These emails, which were part of a batch obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, show what top EPA officials were thinking as the agency prepared to release its greenhouse gas endangerment finding. which would give the agency the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes and, eventually, from power plants.

“This is not about climate,” CEI senior fellow Chris Horner told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is the progressive agenda.””

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8 thoughts on “News/Politics 9-16-14”

  2. Gas is $3.65 a gallon in my neighborhood–the lowest I’ve seen in ages and a 50 cent drop (I think) from when I last bought gas two weeks ago.

    An energy expert recently explained to me the US is now the biggest oil producing nation in the world. With Iran and Libya in the hands of extremists, we’re producing more. It comes from fracking, which is far more efficient than old oil rigs.

    In addition, the reason Putin is making his big push right now in Crimea is because of the natural gas reserves. He’s trying to get a handle on it before Israel’s natural gas terminals are built and they can take over the European market. (Did you know Israel sits on an enormous natural gas bed? The only country in the mideast that does so).

    Right now, most of Europe buys their natural gas out of Russia. The country is so financially strapped, they cannot afford to lose the market. So, they’re taking steps to knock others out.

    And did you know the anti-fracking bills in California were paid for by Saudi Arabia?

    Interesting times.

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  3. Tychicus,

    And does anyone have any idea how many soldiers have died in Obama’s term?
    No, because they stopped the daily counts on that too now that the left controls the White House.

    The press is a joke.

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  5. On the fracking question – it is important to examine all things [N.B. I have no fixed opinion one way or another]: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/09/10/fracking-process-is-triggering-earthquakes/ “Oklahoma, a place known for its devastating tornados, is now registering more earthquakes than states famous for them. The US Geological Survey has identified part of the fracking process as the likely reason for the earthquakes.”

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  7. 4. If employers want more STEM workers then pay more. That’s how the market, supply and demand work.

    Michelle
    The US is the largest producer of natural gas with Russia and Canada close behind. However, Russia leads in oil (gasoline) production then Saudi Arabia followed by the US. The latter affects the price of gas at the pumps. The former partially explains Ukraine.

    Russia’s pipelines go through the Ukraine and when the Ukraine and Russia have had disputes in the past Ukraine has resorted to siphoning off gas meant for western Europe. Putin wants the pipeline in safe hands. Secondly its thought that a large shale gas field sits under Poland and Ukraine, so far they haven’t found much and the poles have turned against fracking but Putin appears to prefer a weak chaotic Ukraine to avoid the competition.

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