1. Unemployment continues to get worse and worse each month. In July the United States lost more than 131,000 jobs. The debt that the government keeps accumulating while trying to inject a stimulus into our economy does little to nothing when it comes to fixing our long term problems. Any expert will tell you that the driving force behind our economy is consumer spending. In our case, the consumers no longer have good employment so how can we expect them to spend any money which will in-turn truly stimulate the economy. The sad fact is that America has lost nearly 10.5 million jobs since 2007, and most of these losses occurred between 2008 and 2010.
2. Not only are Americans out of work but they are now finding it harder to re-enter the work force. It now takes the average American over 35 weeks to find employment in today‘s job market. If this sounds abnormally high don’t worry because you’re not crazy. This is a record high for our job market.
3. The US trade deficit in June reached its widest point in the past 20 months on the rising imports and weakening exports – an indication of a slow economic recovery. Don’t worry though, our President has put raising the US exports as a high priority on his agenda. His administration plans on doubling exports within the next 5 years to about USD $3.1 trillion. However, it is anyone’s guess as to how they plan on doing this seeing as how our manufacturing sector, which in the past has been our strongest export base, has been gutted over the last 30 years thanks to globalization.
4. This year will mark for the first time in over 20 years that Social Security will pay out more this year than it receives in payroll taxes. This hasn’t happened since 1983 when the Reagan administration overhauled the program in response to the social security crisis. When the Social Security program started there were over 10 workers for every retiree. Now with the baby-boomer generation reaching the age of retirement and unemployment and underemployment as high as it currently is, there are only 3.2 workers for every retiree. Experts estimate by 2017 there will only be 2 workers for every retiree.
5. Home foreclosures have continued to rise in 2010. However, there has been a shift. Back in 2007 and 2008, experts told us that most foreclosures were due to toxic mortgages. People were being suckered into mortgages that they couldn’t afford with “teaser rates” or with payments that would dramatically escalate after a few years, and when those mortgages reset, the people who had agreed to them no longer could make the payments. Now the trends in foreclosures seem to be tied more to unemployment than unethical bank practices. According to RealtyTrac spokesman Rick Sharga, unemployment has replaced bad loans as the number one cause of foreclosures there…
   

   Las Vegas has seamlessly shifted from having a high level of foreclosures due to bad loans to defaults caused by a high level of unemployment.

   This is not just a trend in urban areas like Las Vegas or Chicago, this is a national crisis that effects all middleclass home owners from coast to coast. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, over 10% of homeowners have missed at least one mortgage payment during the January to March period. This figure is an all-time record high and ever supersedes the figure of 9.1% a year ago.

6. Now more than ever it seems to be a terrible time to be a college graduate. Not only is the job outlook bleak, but now more than ever college students are relying on loans to finance their education. Obviously this leaves students with a burden of debt to pay off after their graduation, but this burden can translate into other problems for grads with a good deal of debt. According to a survey done by Alliance Bernstein, College grads with over $20,000 or more of debt are more likely to experience a variety of problems than those grads who have no debt. Grads with debt are twice as likely to live paycheck to paycheck, sell personal possessions to “make ends meet”, delay life milestones like buying a house or having a child, and are more likely to experience psychological problems like depression and anxiety. This cycle of debt has not stopped more students from taking out loans though, as more students than ever before are entering college thanks to high-interest loans.
7. Last May the number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to the all-time high of 40.8 million people. This rise continued from last year where 19% less Americans were receiving aid at the time. In fact, over the last 18 months we have seen consecutive record setting numbers of Americans receiving food aid from the government. Even worse news is the outlook for the future of food stamps. According to U.S government estimates, the number of Americans that receive food stamps could be as high as 43.3 million by 2011.
8. It has been very hard to ignore the increase in American debt over the last decade. According to Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Obama’s national debt commission, the national debt could be as high as $13.6 trillion by the end of 2010. This would mean that the government would have to spend at least $700 billion on interest on that debt alone. If we go by government estimates, the national debt could be as high as $19.6 trillion by 2015. But at least the executives at AIG, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase still get their multi-billion dollar bonus right?
9. America still seems to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world right? Too bad that wealth has been increasingly concentrated at the top of our population over the last 30 years. Not since 1929 has the gap between rich and poor been so apparent. Back in 1929, two hundred of the biggest corporations controlled 50% of the nation’s corporate wealth. In 1928, the top 1% of the population had incomes 650% greater that the bottom 10% of Americans. During the early part of the 1900’s, relaxed regulation allowed corporations and investment houses to expand and consolidate into “too-big-to fail” mega-corporations . Sound familiar? What we are seeing now is a wealth transfer on an epic proportion and this is not the first time we have seen this happen. The first great wealth transfer happened sometime between 1900 and 1928 right before the first Great Depression. The corporate class took advantage of relaxed corporate regulation and labor regulation that in the past kept them from exploiting the rest of the population. Look at the chart below and you will notice that the Great Depression subsided sometime around the introduction of revolutionary banking regulations and progressive tax rates that occurred in the 1930’s. Fast forward to the 1980’s and the Reagan Administration introduced the same policies of deregulation that started the second great wealth transfer. And just like the past, when you have an increased wealth gap and unregulated mega-corporations, depression will soon follow.



10. The U.S. dollar continues to rapidly decline in value. This is a natural consequence when a fiat currency that is backed by nothing is introduced into an economy  An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $112.35 today.  An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $440.33 today.

I could go on and on but I feel like I’m getting too depressed already. The economy is not “recovering” and our politicians in Washington have done absolutely nothing to aid in any type of recovery. Our economy is not getting better. Our economy is dying, and no matter what temporary stimulus this government introduces they will never be able to prevent the inevitable complete collapse of the U.S economy.

Fuck. That. Noise.

To only cause further uproar over the idea, Lieberman tries to back himself with the wrong argument.

“Right now, China can disconnect parts of its Internet in times of war.
We need to be able to do that too.” — U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman

Sorry Joe, but citing China being able to do that is a reason we shouldn’t implement something like that.

The uproar has caused many people to strongly voice their opinion on the PCNAA.

Cumulonimbus Frisbee Hot Like Sauce’s Contributor

“Joseph Lieberman can have my interweb when he pries it from my cold dead hands.”

Arnold Vinick U.S. Senator

“We have put into motion efforts to pass another ‘Kill Switch’ bill that would allow the smarter politicians to not kill but incapacitate stupid ones like Lieberman. In times of crisis or important votes, we could then essentially remove all the morons like Lieberman, hopefully we can even wrap Ann Coulter into it somehow.”

Kyle Dillinger Student

“Dude, can’t we have some kind of kill switch on Lieberman…No I do mean kill him. The guys old right? He’s probably got some kinda pacemaker you could disable with frequencies and circuits like on 24…No, I don’t know exactly how to, but Jack Bauer does.”

Dillinger submitted this rough draft for his “Lieberman Kill Switch”.

“I felt like my vote was the vote that put [Obama] into office. It was down to one vote, and that was going to be my vote. And that may not be true, but that’s how much power it felt like I had.”

- Sean “P. Diddy” Combs

“I have opinions of my own—strong opinions—but I don’t always agree with them.”

- George H. W. Bush

Starts off pretty cliche, thanks his wife, thanks his two daughters, everything is real smooth. Scott Brown is thinking, “I’m the fucking man, I got this,” as his ego swells larger than Kanye’s. And then… Boom goes the dynamite. He offers up — to the entire nation — his two daughters. For a moment he attempts to recover ensuring he was only kidding, only to have his now Bono-sized ego regain control as he explains only the older one is available. Way to recover Senator. Nice save.

Maybe you should stick to Cosmo centerfolds. NOT.

]]> http://www.hotlikesauce.com/2010/01/24/what-they-should-have-said-scott-brown/feed/ 0 http://www.hotlikesauce.com/2010/01/24/obama-town-hall-lccc/ http://www.hotlikesauce.com/2010/01/24/obama-town-hall-lccc/#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:30:22 +0000 Nobleman Skrew-Jack http://www.hotlikesauce.com/?p=6675 Lorain County Community College hosted President Barack Obama last Friday Jan. 22. It just so happens that the Nobleman has some media affiliations and picked up press credentials for the event.

Security was more than tight for the event, but when POTUS is involved, secret service doesn’t fuck around. The usual procedure for these types of events was in order. Dogs trained to sniff out explosives sniffed all media equipment while the rest of us were scanned through metal detectors and examined.

Once in the event, I set up shop interviewing several media outlets. First I spoke with Audrey, a German news producer who was here to examine just how Obama is accepted by an area struck hard by the economy.

The producer had covered Obama from the beginning of his run as candidate to his inauguration and here now as a president whose numbers are slipping. She explained to me that Europeans are still intrigued by Obama and support him, but it really doesn’t what the Europeans think.

Next I spoke to the host of a CBS radio news show who expressed great interest in the event. Mark was there obviously to cover the event but was hopeful to hear what Obama would do next after losing the 60^th Democrat mark in the Senate. Since the loss of the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, a seat that has been held by the Dems for the past 50 years will now be handed to the Republicans as the state elected Scott Brown to represent them.

This is a very crushing blow for a president who came to talk about jobs and knows what losing the filibuster blocking 60^th vote means passing the health care bill will be very difficult. But President Obama knows what he is getting into:

“I had no illusions when I took on health care. It was always going to be hard. I knew from the beginning that seven Presidents had tried it and seven Presidents had failed. But I also knew that insurance premiums had more than doubled in the past decade, that out-of-pocket expenses had skyrocketed, that millions more people had lost their insurance, and that it would only get worse.”

A direct correlation can be drawn from health care to jobs, and President Obama can talk to any area of the country that is as bad as Elyria and say the same things. A staggering 10.6 unemployment rate in the area means hard times for everyone and the President was ready to discuss.

Local T.V. stations sent their political correspondents, and Hot Like Sauce got the chance to speak with Tom who is the face of WKYC’s “Between the Lines,” A Sunday morning political talk show. Tom was most interested by the questionnaire portion of the town hall meeting.

“Well he’s speaking to people who obviously are in need of some answers and I know the president is a smart man who can answer them,” Tom said.

After hot knobbing with the media, it came time for President Obama’s grand entrance, and when the president enters the room, nobody sits.

A very warm welcome was given to him by the 1,600 on hand, as the laid back style of the town hall meeting commenced. The President, dressed in a suit without a tie, presented himself as humanly as possible, stating all the things he has done to help the country as we “stared down a second Great Depression.”

Obama stressed in a way that he is not a quick fix and he was elected to a four year term to utilize all the time he has. His dropped approval ratings are really from a problem he can’t deal with at all. The House is the biggest monkey on his back. They back him with a staggering percent and yet can’t get anything accomplished. Obama stated on the matter:

“When you deal with 535 members of Congress, it’s going to be a somewhat ugly process — not necessarily because any individual member of Congress is trying to do something wrong, it’s just they may have different ideas, they have different interests, they’ve got a particular issue of a hospital in their district that they want to see if they can kind of get dealt with and this may be the best vehicle for doing it.  They’re looking out for their constituents a lot of times.”

President Obama took questions for about 45 minutes. Questions that ranged as stupid as ‘may I have a hand shake?’ to a 52-year-old business man from Akron, Ohio, who wanted the chance to create 1,200 jobs, but needed some serious money to do it. The president pledged to put him in touch with some people that can get him the money and also deal with the international patent rights he would need to face.

By the end of the meeting, there was a sense of hope in the room that reminded me of the hope we all felt when Barack was first elected into office. People forget that one man cannot fix an entire country in one year. It takes many people a lot of time and chances to do it, but it would appear we are on a rise once again. Hope is a funny thing though; it can drive a man crazy. At every corner people seem to be against him and all that’s going to led to is failure and as Barack said at the conclusion of his speech:

“I didn’t take this on [health care] to score political points.  I know there are some folks who think if Obama loses, we win.  But you know what?  I think that I win when you win. That’s how I think about it… I want to march forward with you.  I want to work with you. I want to fight for you.  I hope you’re willing to stand by me, even during these tough times, because I believe in a brighter future for America.”

“The right of nature… is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.”

- Thomas Hobbes

The ideals of governments in the modern political world are in the saddest state the world has ever seen. Across the political realm of the world, governments are no longer a symbol of the people. Turn back the clocks 200 years and the politics of America are of complete dissent.

In 1776, fifty-six rebels of a short minded and inconsiderate mother country signed a document that declared that America would take it upon themselves to not only be free from a tyrannous alien government, but also to form a government that would tax the people of a new and free land. These men were amateurs. Amateurs at breaking away from a country that protected and supplied them while taking advantage of them. Amateurs at coming up with ideas of how a free nation should be ran.

America was an idea. A place where people could seek religious freedom or a leave a life that was no longer fit. To start such a nation, men would have to take the roll of heroes to make this country work. Men like John Adams. Adams may be best known for his lack of work as the first Vice President of the United States, but Adams did so much more as a country man beforehand. The simple lawyer represented the most politically rich area of the country when he said that we need to go to war and face an opponent that is more unified, better equipped, and better trained. Facing a giant, Adams saw the war as the greatest chance to make a country by using men fighting for a cause. Call it a bold move or a political idea, he was right. If we took men to fight for a united cause, we could in turn do something great.

Don’t Tread On Me

Spoiler alert: America wins its independence. So here we are. We’ve started to act like a real country. We have started a war, built an alliance, and accumulated debt. Now all that’s left to do is form an outline for how our government will be used to run the country. Enter: the Articles of Confederation. Probably the weakest form of government ever drawn up, but what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. It’s true the Articles didn’t cause the demise of the U.S. but how close did they come?

Passed in1777, the document that would rule the land for a mere 12 years, prevented some of the most important roles in the government to have wiggle room. The government couldn’t levy taxes to support itself which is what governments need to use in order to pay for services and protection. The Second Continental Congress passed certain laws to limit the government from being too powerful, fearing a second coming of the situation that America had just left. People demanded something better to be brought upon to make an effective, yet controlled government. The Constitution would meet everyone’s needs and then some.

The Good Times Are Killing Me

By the time the Constitution was passed people demanded their rights be spelled out for everyone. The first ten amendments, better known as the Bill of Rights, did what no other form of democratic government could do. Thanks to this, we all have the rights that many countries resent us for. Freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of religion are perhaps the greatest rights that anyone has been granted by their government. This was all done by men who had no idea what they were doing, other than knowing they had to take action. Together they formed an institution for how we would live our lives today.

It couldn’t have been aneasy thing to set up. A few years after a bloody war, people wanted security and rights to know that they would be taken care of. So essentially what the Constitution did was reassure people that we are on our own and better off. The creative party that would be would give power to three branches, the legislative, judicial, and executive (headed by one man). The one man selected for the job would be none other than a war hero who had gotten the country to this point in history. The obvious leadership qualities echoed dimly as George Washington took the first Presidential Oath of Office.

From there on out strides towards history would be made. Instances like Marbury v. Madison that set up judicial review and Hamilton’s case for a national bank; ordinary people took on the rolls of extraordinary men.

Bulls On Parade

Conceptual American government went on to see its triumphs and tragedies. We have seen the likes of four term presidents to the assassination of presidents. We watched as an American stepped foot on soil of a foreign planet and saw men die trying to get there. But the likelihood of seeing what we all have seen today, is something that the forefathers of this country would weep over. President Washington in his farewell speech from office warned people of what the damage could be if political parties took over. Over 200 years ago, Washington predicted a problem of today.

The controversy of health care reform is the talk of towns everywhere. Just the idea of formulating an affordable and effective way to cover all Americans is something that many just aren’t ready for. We came out in record numbers to vote for a leader in Barack Obama to show us the way to feeling safe again. Safe that none of us have to worry; if I get sick tomorrow, can I get help getting better? Safety in once again being able to buy goods and services that come from this country. Safety in the job market, with staggering numbers of people unemployed in this country, we really haven’t had the ability to spend money on non-essential things. People, we are hurting ourselves and finally no one is left to blame but ourselves.

Perhaps the biggest problem lies within the breeding of our political system. Kids with predominately rich backgrounds are being brought up to face a world that is pre-cut for them through greed and angst. Congressmen, they are elected to serve the people. In the biggest sense of the word, they are the closest to people as you can get in Washington. They are ex-school teachers or lawyers who see a problem and think ‘Hey I can fix that!’ but in short, they can’t. Senators are the worst of them all in the house. The upper house that is, where they stay and accept their lobbyist paychecks to fund their next campaign. Nothing can be done about this because there are two types of Senators. There are the ones who do nothing and the ones who work for money to run and only worry about the next campaign. It is quite possible in my eyes, that the men elected in the senate are looking at this bill are forgetting their constituents and saying fuck you, I get health care, may you should have graduated from one of our pristine universities that will put you into debt for the rest of your life.

What I am trying to say here is that it’s no longer about the people; it’s about the money and sex scandals and the next term. What’s sickening is we are doing nothing about it. Think back to the 60’s and 70’s, the drug culture and the Vietnam War. People back then protested when they knew something this wrong was going on, but today with our involvement in a war that is questionable with our involvement, little outcry on the scale of the Vietnam War has been done.

In Mexico, new legislation has recently been passed that allows for citizens to carry a personal amount of marijuana on them with no penalty. Granted the drug corrupted system in Mexico where jails are overcrowded to drug related offenses is cause for some of this. In this 3^rd world country to our south, they have managed to get past the religious views and get a final pass on gay marriage.

This Is Your Life And It’s Ending One Minute At A Time

So where do our problems in America lie? Is it the government and the whores that make it run? Wait, no, it has to be the rest of the world, right? Wrong. The biggest problem in America—other than the men running it feel they are seasoned and know what to expect but they really are just as lost as all of us—is there is no counter culture calling the shots in the underground. Ask Tyler Durden and he’ll say:

“Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not… fuck with us.”

The counter culture makes the news, they are the ones who make the perfect world of congressmen and senators go round, yet we aren’t playing the cards we’ve been dealt. If we had half the mind of revolution in this country, do you think we’d be better off?

“Your anger is a gift.”
- Zack de la Rocha