ATHENS: Faced with massive debt, Greece today initiated an emergency plan to borrow money from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to help it make interest payments and keep it from default. Their bailout request comes at a time when interest rates are at historic lows. In the US the Federal Reserve is monitoring interest rates and is signaling its intention to preserve these low rates for the near term.

If Greece is able to borrow some $40 billion (at interest rates of about 5 percent) it is likely to be able to remain solvent through the end of this year. European governments are reluctantly considering their request, afraid of the consequences of a Greek default and its rippling effects throughout the EU. Conditions are sure to be attached to the loans, requiring the Greek government to make substantial cuts in services and benefits to its citizens. Reaction to such stipulations are likely to invoke further civil unrest against the backdrop of riots that have plagued the country this year: Read more…

Beware the Ides of March

NEW YORK CITY: Beware the Ides of March, so the seer warned Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. Twenty centuries later another seer warns a modern-day Caesar that his course of reckless spending threatens the destruction of our country. Like Julius Caesar, Caesar Obama pays no attention to the soothsayer.

On March 15 Moody’s warned the US for the 3rd time that the impending downgrade of our nation’s credit rating is looming:

The gold-plated credit rating of the United States — an article of faith across America and, indeed, around the world — may be at risk in coming years as the nation copes with its growing debts…

Moody’s said the United States and other major Western nations, particularly Britain, have moved “substantially” closer to losing their gilt-edged ratings. The ratings are “stable,” but “their ‘distance-to-downgrade’ has in all cases substantially diminished,” the credit ratings agency said…

“Growth alone will not resolve an increasingly complicated debt equation,” Moody’s said. “Preserving debt affordability” — the ratio of interest payments to government revenue — “at levels consistent with Aaa ratings will invariably require fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion.” [Empahsis added] David Jolly and Catherine Rampell, New York Times

Likely scenarios if the US loses its triple-A rating: Read more…

WASHINGTON: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” so goes Santayana’s Law of Repetitive Consequences. One thing you can’t criticize President Obama for is unwillingness to follow the example of Republicans. In 1988 presidential candidate George H. W. Bush pledged, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”  After Bush was elected he backtracked on his promise, which contributed to the undoing of his presidency.

Candidate Barack H. Obama promised in 2008 that those making less than $250,000 per year would not see “one dime” in tax increases:

“I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

He repeatedly vowed “you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.” Breitbart

The NIP wonders if Obama remembers what happened to President Bush when he ignored his own promise not to increase taxes. Today Obama appears non-chalant about his promise to confine tax increases to “fat cats”: Read more…

Your Stimulus $$ at Work, Vacations for Teachers

DEKALB GA: Georgia teachers this week are staying at the posh Renaissance Hollywood Hotel and Spa for an educator’s conference. Those in attendance from the Dekalb school district include 39 principals, 32 assistant principals, 45 teachers, 50 reading and math coaches, and 20 central office staff. Remember that the Dekalb contingent is just a small part of the national conference attendees. Georgia school district tax payers don’t have to worry though– they are off the hook. This trip is being paid for by Obama stimulus funds.

Stimulus money from Washington is often discussed in terms of “shovel ready,” designated for construction projects that are supposed to create jobs for unemployed Americans.

But the DeKalb County School System has decided to use stimulus money to attend a four-day conference sponsored by America’s Choice, which a schools spokesman calls “a great thing.”…

[Schools spokesman Dale] Davis said the school system will spend $91,500 for conference registrations and another $291,400 for hotels, flights, meals and incidentals. That’s a total of $382,900 in federal tax money. In an email, Davis wrote, “I am happy that you are expressing interesting in this training opportunity for our employees. We are focused on student improvement. America’s Choice is in partnership with the district to help improve the academic success in 40 of our lowest performing schools.” Atlanta WSBRadio

So the school district couldn’t fit them into a gym for an assembly? This is the type of fraud you can expect when you give Congress a credit card with no spending limits. Oh wait… Congress does have a spending limit: $12.394 trillion. But they decided it wasn’t high enough and just gave themselves a $1.9 trillion credit line increase, bringing their limit to $14.3 trillion.

Congress needs to take your money so they can give to folks that will vote for them, and that certainly includes teachers. When they run out of your money, they’ll spend your children’s money, and then your grandchildren’s, all in order to pay back those who got them elected, and you are letting them do it. Read more…

WASHINGTON: Did you watch the swearing in ceremony yesterday of Scott Brown as newly-elected Senator? Just to make sure things haven’t changed the NIP staff watched closely as Joe Biden stumbled his way through administering the oath of office.

We here at the NIP genuinely have been wondering if the oath of office has changed, because of the cavalier way this oath has been treated by our elected representatives. You may remember Nancy Pelosi’s response when asked about the constitutionality of forcing individuals to buy health insurance. Her condescending reply: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

So we naturally are thinking that the oath must have been changed. So the NIP staff dropped everything yesterday to watch the oath of office as Joe Biden asked Brown:

Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that you take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you am about to enter?

Scott Brown answered in the affirmative. This solemn act is the first taken by any of our representatives. Regardless of what Ted Kennedy’s son Patrick thinks, Scott Brown election was not “a joke.”

The swearing in ceremony is not a trivial act, but one upon which the safety and stability of our country rests. In light of that oath we are disturbed at this administration’s apparent willingness to abandon the rule of law in order to further their political ends. Read more…

JAMES SIMPSON: Rick Sanchez made a bald-faced lie on CNN yesterday in defense of President Obama’s budget numbers. He was attempting to methodically debunk Republican claims about Obama budgets, arguing that most of the trillions in spending came on Republicans’ watch and Obama just added a little bit.

He started by claiming that Obama came into office facing a $1.2 trillion budget. Obama makes the same claim. Actually, the deficit for 2008, Bush’s last year in office, was $459 billion. Bush does share responsibility for TARP though, so you could say that Obama was only partially responsible for 2009’s deficit, even though his proposals added $787 billion in new spending through the failed “Stimulus,” which was not supported by Republicans.

I know, I know. It was all Bush’s fault, so Obama can’t be blamed even if he had to shell out $800 billion of our dollars to save his Wall Street and union friends. In fact, Bush and the Republicans do share some of the blame for the financial crisis, but it was a sin of omission, not commission. The truth is that the financial crisis was the direct result of a half-century of Democrat meddling with the housing market. Bush and the Republicans failed in that they did not push hard enough for needed reform.

But however you want to argue it for 2009, Obama owns the 2010 and 2011 budgets all alone. FY 2010 included the largest regular budgetary increase in recent history, a whopping 15 percent higher than Bush’s 2009 proposal. According to Obama’s 2011 budget, deficits for 2010 and 2011 are projected to be $1.6 trillion and $1.3 trillion respectively. And while Obama continues to call for health care reform, no spending for it is included in the 2011 budget.

The 2011 budget does, however, include an assumed $150 billion in deficit reduction from passage of healthcare reform. Who is he kidding? This is the same smoke and mirrors game the Senate played in claiming “savings” from overhauling healthcare. Don’t believe it! The true cost will be in the trillions. Read more…

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