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About Me
Blog Archive
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2010
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December
(326)
- Sweet Innocence
- Setting the trend
- Discussing divorce and break ups
- Desperate times call for desperate measures
- Three Delights
- The St. Lucia Civil Service Association to Observe...
- The Monrose Group re-launches Hyundai and launches...
- New Bank of Saint Lucia ATM at Super J Cul-de-Sac
- Errol “E. K.” Miller to Assume New Role at LIME
- SLISBA - On the Business Trade Mission to Martiniq...
- Positive thinking can make a difference in 2011!!!
- First Citizens Market Watch
- Christmas Story
- Chamber on crime
- Theophane: “British Champ Lenny Daws Is a Step Bac...
- St.Lucia’s 11 - 12 Swimmers Ready to Splash at OECS
- Desruisseaux leads from in front
- 1ST TAEKWONDO CHAMPIONSHIP A SUCCESS
- Water to the rescue
- Walking out of Paradise by Judith Verity
- Thanks to our sponsors
- SLISBA’S concerns about the rising violent crime
- NCPADD welcomes breath-a-lyzer testing law
- Legal Resolutions for the New Year
- Happy New Year From SLASPA
- Ethanol Presents “Extraordinary Opportunity” To Ch...
- ECFH Honours Staff Loyalty and Dedication
- Donations of school supplies by the French Embassy...
- Vanishing Small-Island-Nations!
- Keynesians “fine tuning” versus the Austrian theories
- Heading for the Half-century?
- The New German Ambassador presents his credentials
- HOT OPENING FOR ASSOU SQUARE
- Homicide #48 and counting
- Death rings in the season of peace
- You could be the next Digicel Christmas winner
- RBTT Customer Appreciation Day
- DFCH Shares Some Christmas Good Cheer
- Another Happy SNL Lottery Player wins $5,000.00 in...
- Universal Peace
- “Faith is the evidence of things not seen” Hebrews...
- “Can We Reach The Almighty Without Religion?”
- Village opens at Christmas
- Oh God of Music!
- LUCELEC’s power of caring spreads far & wide
- Emrand Henry Getting Ready To Hit Costa Rica
- EMILE FORD – a St. Lucian Music Pioneer
- Early Childhood Care and Development Centre Christ...
- Dreams
- CCSS students thank LUCELEC
- 4th World releases Now She is Gone
- Participating in DEBCO
- Money Gods: Paul Tudor Jones
- Keeping The Faith!
- Home Theater/Stereo Review
- First Citizen’s Market Watch
- Daily Markets Wrap Up
- CariCRIS reaffirms “adequate creditworthiness” rat...
- ‘Tis the spirit for Christmas’
- Ready for Christmas
- Possessive Behavior
- Holiday Cheer
- A plea for help
- Poor Santa
- St.Lucia Swimmers Continue to Do Well ahead of OEC...
- Gardens Sports Complex Flooded again
- CLEARING THE AIR
- Champions versus Rest of X1
- UWI Open Campus Counts Its Blessings
- Top tips for a lease agreement
- Swish to Saint Lucia by The Saint Lucia Toronto Di...
- SLHTA unveils the Eileen Paul Boardroom
- Kiwanis Club of Amazona Brings Cheer
- Jet Blue Airways and SLTB talk it out
- Investments in Agriculture must grow - Rise in foo...
- Holiday Greetings from SLASPA
- Anthony Bowen joins Elite Island Resorts
- A Bedtime Story
- Waiting to hear from Trinidad PM on Air Jamaica
- On Location Of National Cultural Centre
- Now or Never!
- Mexican Christmas Novena at Rodney Bay
- LPM Statement
- Is Allen really Kenny’s Bet-noir?
- Honouring Insurance Claims In Saint Lucia – A Misn...
- Have Gonsalves’ problems started?
- Abuse comes in many forms
- A wrenching Xmas tragedy
- And So, This is Christmas …
- SPECIAL CHRISTMAS PARTY
- Red Cross hosts its annual party
- Raising the bar for Christmas
- Daily Markets Wrap Up
- Records and Medals for St. Lucia Swimmers
- CHARLES AND SAMMY TOO MUCH FOR CHOISEUL
- 25th ARC Awards Night a success
- UWI Team Assists Recovery Effort
- Solidarity among Veterans
- Caraellie Switching on of Lights
- Agronomic Practices in Pineapple Production
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December
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11 comments:
Liberals never tire of discussing their own generosity, particularly when demanding that the government take your money by force to fund shiftless government employees overseeing counterproductive government programs.
They seem to have replaced "God" with "Government" in scriptural phrases such as "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:37)
This week, we'll take a peek at the charitable giving of these champions of the poor.
In 2009, the Obamas gave 5.9 percent of their income to charity, about the same as they gave in 2006 and 2007. In the eight years before he became president, Obama gave an average of 3.5 percent of his income to charity, upping that to 6.5 percent in 2008.
The Obamas' charitable giving is equally divided between "hope" and "change."
George W. Bush gave away more than 10 percent of his income each year he was president, as he did before becoming president.
Thus, in 2005, Obama gave about the same dollar amount to charity as President George Bush did, on an income of $1.7 million -- more than twice as much as President Bush's $735,180. Again in 2006, Bush gave more to charity than Obama on an income one-third smaller than Obama's.
In the decade before Joe Biden became vice president, the Bidens gave a total -- all 10 years combined -- of $3,690 to charity, or 0.2 percent of their income. They gave in a decade what most Americans in their tax bracket give in an average year, or about one row of hair plugs.
Of course, even in Biden's stingiest years, he gave more to charity than Sen. John Kerry did in 1995, which was a big fat goose egg. Kerry did, however, spend half a million dollars on a 17th-century Dutch seascape painting that year, as Peter Schweizer reports in his 2008 book, "Makers and Takers."
To be fair, 1995 was an off-year for Kerry's charitable giving. The year before, he gave $2,039 to charity, and the year before that a staggering $175.
He also dropped a $5 bill in the Salvation Army pail and almost didn't ask for change.
In 1998, Al Gore gave $353 to charity -- about a day's take for a lemonade stand in his neighborhood. That was 10 percent of the national average for charitable giving by people in the $100,000-$200,000 income bracket. Gore was at the very top of that bracket, with an income of $197,729.
When Sen. Ted Kennedy released his tax returns to run for president in the '70s, they showed that Kennedy gave a bare 1 percent of his income to charity -- or, as Schweizer says, "about as much as Kennedy claimed as a write-off on his 50-foot sailing sloop Curragh." (Cash tips to bartenders and cocktail waitresses are not considered charitable donations.)
The Democratic base gives to charity as their betters do. At the same income, a single mother on welfare is seven times less likely to give to charity than a working poor family that attends religious services.
In 2006 and 2007, John McCain, who files separately from his rich wife, gave 27.3 percent and 28.6 percent of his income to charity.
In 2005, Vice President Cheney gave 77 percent of his income to charity. He also shot a lawyer in the face, which I think should count for something.
In a single year, Schweizer reports, Rush Limbaugh "gave $109,716 to 'various individuals in need of assistance mainly due to family illnesses,' $52,898 to 'children's case management organizations,' including 'various programs to benefit families in need,' $35,100 for 'Alzheimer's community care -- day care for families in need,' and $40,951 for air conditioning units and heaters delivered to troops in Iraq."
(Rush also once gave $50 to Maxine Waters after mistaking her for a homeless person.)
The only way to pry a liberal from his money is to hold tickertape parades for him, allowing him to boast about his charity in magazines and on TV.
Isn't that what Jesus instructed in the Sermon on the Mount?
"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do ... But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (Matthew 6:2-4)
In my Bible, that passage is illustrated with a photo of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
At least the hypocrites in the Bible, Redmond, Wash., and Omaha, Neb., who incessantly brag about their charity actually do pony up the money.
Elected Democrats crow about how much they love the poor by demanding overburdened taxpayers fund government redistribution schemes, but can never seem to open their own wallets.
The only evidence we have that Democrats love the poor is that they consistently back policies that will create more of them as in the African American communities.
THREE commentaries above (the first two, and including even the original article itself) are very, very misleading. They confuse a great deal more than they explain!
First of all, one has to appreciate the imperative of understanding the economics in one's own backyard, and more importantly, be able to recognize what is relevant to your situation in the body of economic literature and theories around, from what is not pertinent.
That said, if one were to examine very carefully, the operationalization of the US government stimulus spending (package), it would be clear that this ongoing process does not exactly mirror the kinds of sectoral spending that Keynes advocated. (Although, not everything is absolutely rght about Keynes's General Theory.) However, a key component, the multiplier effect, turned out to be much smaller, and resultantly, could not have had a great effect, when so much of the stimulus package constituted a bailout given to the banking and the automotive industries. (The US is more strictly laissez-faire capitalist than anything else.)
The peculiar situation in the US economy was such that the monies directed at consumers were used to pay down debt caused by heavy house-hold indebtedness, resulting from the collapse of the housing industry (the housing bubble). When the incentive to trade in the clunkers (gas guzzlers) dried up, the car industry recovery initiative suffered a little. Nonetheless, it emerged stronger competitively-speaking that is. That initiative reduced or steadied the growing unemployment figures, but without creating new jobs, as is the intent of Keynesian recovery spending initiatives.
Policy-wise, Obama did not do too badly. The public sector has so far realized a decent return on investment as in the case of the sale of GM shares, held by the government.
Today, not even the infrastructural spending "to maintain capital in tact" has seriously been undertaken by Mr. Obama. What allocations that have been earmarked, have not been spent. Infrastructural spending and development is a very important element of Keynesian economic recovery strategy.
The focus has now changed to small business, the sector that has the highest employment growth potential almost everywhere in the world (something we here can learn from). And already, the positive impact is being felt in reduced unemployment claims. (Obviously, we lack the necessary mechanisms to quickly monitor the impact of policy decisions on our economy; we argue and debate irrelevance instead.)
If Keynesian policy were strictly and properly followed, the stimulus package, thought by many economists to have been too little, and directed to the wrong sectors, should have been directed at people who would be employed, doing work that would pump money paid in wages and salaries, back into the economy. They would be spending and plowing back almost all of that income (thereby increasing consumption).
Today, the FED (the central bank of the US), believe it or not, is acting as ... (not like) the central bank for the world.
Therefore, discussions of individual spending by politicians is a veritable red herring and is quite irrelevant!
The writers are making all Saint Lucians sound like present members of the UWP government and party.
It is time to join St. Lucians who understand our economy better than the two existing parties.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Be genuinely patriotic this new year. Give all of St. Lucia a real fighting chance once again, to grow and develop as a very peaceful and prosperous nation.
Rally behind the party with a powerful think-tank behind it. There is a party of dedicated people who know their onions and who have personal expertise and sophisticated working life histories that can harnessed to bring needed improvement in the lives of ALL Saint Lucians.
Join us today, EITHER AS A CANDIDATE OR AS AN ORDINARY MEMBER, (Fair Helen needs you!). Become part of the solution.
JOIN THE LPM!
Concerning blogs #1 and #2:
Both these article-derived entries are full of intentionally inaccurate statistics, outright lies, and blatantly racist statements coming directly out of the United States.
Concerning blog #3:
Blogs should never be used as political propaganda! This practice needs to be deemed criminal in St Lucia because it is a misuse of the fourth estate (free press), and furthermore, the people doing it know full well that it's a very harmful precedent to set.
Simply put: one man's meat is another man's poison. Now tell us, what is the use of writing if, in the end, it only serves to show-off of one's very flawed and limited knowledge or erudition? Chuuuuuupppes!!!!
Looshans take great pride in writing and talking pure and unadulterated crap!
Blogger #5 makes a serious point. If one is writing about an arcane subject such as economics but does not, or is incapable of making the link with local or domestic economic conditions, then it has is little purpose and value to the St. Lucian audience. It does not advance any useful cause. It does not help to explain what is happening to us. Nor does it point to what we should do in our own neck of the woods. Rubbish is rubbish, no matter who speaks or writes it.
The writer, if not just showing off second-hand book knowledge should tell us what he or she has written can make our economic policies better. Absent this, then what we have on display simply intellectual masturbation!
Write with greater sensitivity and more sensibly next time around.
Thaddeus: All you've done in this article is confirm that economic theory was created in order to put lipstick on a pig! It is a shame that you only want to use the education you got in the U.S. as a conduit to 'mamguying' the power-brokers in St. Lucia into giving you a cushy 'economics' job to help ease your middle-aged crisis!
Here's what really happened, and we don't need any economic theory to explain it:
The banksters' and the corporatists' greed created the housing bubble - they gave out mortgage loans on properties whose values were purposefully set to between 2 and 5 times real value; the banksters sold and resold these mortagages several times in order to generate cash and earn their profits up front; when mortgages could not be sold anymore, they treated the worthless paper they held as assets, bet short on the cotton candy they created (credit default swaps) to make more cash on these worthless instruments!
They took their 'Ponzi scheme' even further: Since they were 'too big to fail', they got the U.S. government not to bail out home-owners who were left holding the empty bag, but to give them trillions in "cash" to generate more taxpayer debt, under the guise of creating more loans, and keeping the economy afloat. What really happened? The banksters kept laying off workers, paid themselves huge bonuses for their coup, and hoarded the majority of the cash so they would be better placed to control emerging markets, or till they've broken the backs of unions in the U.S.!
What economic theory will you devise to explain the greatest transfer of wealth between the classes? How comfortable are you with this new Middle Ages and new feudal system?
An even more fundamental question here is this: What the hell does all of theory have to do with ordinary St. Lucians disconnected to the global economy who have no jobs.
Again, the test of all this empty theorizing is its relevance and value in explaining our own economic subsystem. I see not even a pretense at doing this in that article. Therefore, the writer is a capital joker.
If you cannot translate the theory to explain our situation, then you were mis-educated, untrained and quite wet behind the ears.
His understanding of the situation in the North, is very superficial. A local economic society would make you very uncomfortable, indeed.
Who decides the content on the bloggersphere, Google or Facebook?
Rip Van Winkle just woke up to discover what the rest of the world is doing and decides that it must go back to the 20th century. Woy! Mate is so full of --it.
Who needs education and learning that you cannot apply to the situation on the ground at home? Why tell us about things that irrelevant to us?
What a joker that man is!
The so-called intellectuals, from wherever they originate, know about, books, their knowledge are for the filing cabinets, but they are yet to apply any knowledge for the good of mankind. They are all in the business of stroking and fanning their egos, masturbating on their books none-stop, and ain't have a clue how to apply anything to the real world. herein lies the recent great recession from which most of us are still reeling. they can stick their crap just where the monkey had placed the nuts..
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