Trickle-Up Economics

"Recovery Summer" accelerates:

U.S. bankruptcy filings have reached the highest level since 2005, government data released on Tuesday show, as the economy slows and the unemployment rate hovers just below double digits.

There were 422,061 bankruptcy filings between April and June, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, up 9% from 388,148 in the prior three-month period, and up 11% from 381,073 a year earlier. …

Quarterly filings surpassed 400,000 for the first time since a record 667,431 bankruptcies were begun in the fourth quarter of 2005, when Congress overhauled federal bankruptcy laws and made it harder for people and businesses to file.

“We know the causes of bankruptcy are principally job losses and health care, with the overlay of the foreclosure crisis,” said Deborah Thorne, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio University. “It feels very unsettled, and I’m not surprised the numbers are going up. Until we get our feet on the ground, provide decent-paying jobs, and do something with the housing crisis, bankruptcies will continue to go up.”

Well, "Professor" Thorne, whose fault is the wrecking ball headed towards U.S. health care, the crappy economy, and the "house crisis" that crapped it?  Here's a hint: the same bunch with the same mentality that believes that "decent-paying" jobs are "provided," and by the collectivist "we".  Wanna do away with that dreaded "unsettledness"?  Expunge the Obamidency from the public record.  Get rid of Obamanomics, ObamaCare, ObamaFinReg, Obama Motors, Obama-Chrysler and every damned last one of their Donk Congressional enablers.  Return to Reaganomics - low taxes, deregulation, small government - and unleash the private sector to pursue profit.  Viva la capitalism!  And watch that uncertainty vanish beneath an avalanche of jobs and wealth.

'course, The One couldn't take credit for any of that.  And that's against his TRUE religion, in which who wins, who loses, who gets rich and who's sent to the poorhouse, is all up to him.

In context of which, this story isn't at all shocking in equal proportion to how shocking it should be:

The military retirement system is unsustainable and in dire need of repair, according to an influential Pentagon advisory board.

The Defense Business Board — tasked by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to find ways to reduce the DOD budget — says annual Treasury Department payments into the system will balloon from $47.7 billion this year to $59.3 billion by 2020.

The twenty-five-member group of civilian business leaders suggests that the Defense Department look at changing the current system, even hinting at raising the number of years troops must serve before being eligible for retirement pay.

The current system “encourages our military to leave at twenty years when they are most productive and experienced, and then pays them and their families and their survivors for another forty years,” committee chairman Arnold Punaro told board members at their quarterly meeting late last month. 

Wow.  This is absolutely STUNNING.  At a time when Social Security and Medicare and federal and state civilian pension unfunded liabilities are projected into the TENS OF TRILLIONS of dollars, the Obamagon is pissing itself over a twenty percent annual increase in military pensions over a ten year period in amounts a THOUSANDTH as much for "government employees" who actually SERVE the country as opposed to leeching off of it in perpetuity.

I can't do this topic nearly the screedal justice Cassy can.  Read her cathartic tirade in full while I hit you with a swerve I'm confident you didn't see coming:

“A $26 billion federal aid package, signed by President Obama on August 10, allocates $10 billion for school districts to retain or rehire teachers, counselors, classroom aides, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and others — with the remainder of the money directed toward health care for the poor, emergency personnel and other state purposes.

The education measure requires states to distribute the money for the current school year, but allows school districts to spend it as late as September 2012. It also allows schools to roll back furlough days. The education department estimates it could salvage about 160,000 jobs.”  (emphasis mine) link

A total of 300,000 jobs were predicted to be “saved or created” by passing legislation even the president admitted was a special interest bill:

“We can’t stand by and do nothing while pink slips are given to the men and women who educate our children or keep our communities safe,” Mr. Obama told reporters in the Rose Garden on Tuesday.

“If America’s children and the safety of our communities are your special interests, then it is a special-interest bill,” Mr. Obama added. “But I think those interests are widely shared throughout this country.” link

Instead, according to the Times, the “special interest” appears to be the school districts, (looking at future shortfalls), planning on keeping the money and not re-hiring teachers already laid off:

“As schools handed out pink slips to teachers this spring, states made a beeline to Washington to plead for money for their ravaged education budgets. But now that the federal government has come through with $10 billion, some of the nation’s biggest school districts are balking at using their share of the money to hire teachers right away.

With the economic outlook weakening, they argue that big deficits are looming for the next academic year and that they need to preserve the funds to prevent future layoffs. Los Angeles, for example, is projecting a $280 million budget shortfall next year that could threaten more jobs.”  Link

Translation: Now the collectivist "we" can't even "save" jobs that never merited "saving" in the first place because of The Savior's job/economy-killing economic policies of which he refuses to let go and the ludicrous public union-pushed labor contracts that will ALWAYS have states making beelines to Washington to plead for money until somebody finally tells them, in Christiesque fashion, to piss off.  Or until even all the stolen, borrowed, AND printed money is gone, and Washington beats its states to the default window ledge.

Yes, it's come to this: perfidious intra-liberal fiscal cannibalism.  The only "unexpectedness" is that it took this long for them to start shivving each other.