The Final Five: July 12, 2012

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Tonight's Crazy Story:
Strange Addiction: Woman Drinks 6 Gallons of Water a Day
A 26-year-old mother is speaking out about her strange addiction...to drinking water.

Topic One: Welcome to California
California ranks worst in business climate: "Indeed, with its malfunctioning economy, California is fast becoming an American version of Greece. It has an unemployment rate of 10.9 percent, the highest of all states save Rhode Island and Nevada. (April figures, the most recent available at press time.) Because of its generous benefit structures for the poor, California has a third of all welfare recipients in the country, even though it’s home to less than an eighth of the U.S. population. The Golden State’s environmental extremism results in electricity rates 50 percent higher than the national average. Then there are taxes. Even middle-class families earning $48,000 a year pay a state tax rate of 9.3 percent, a higher rate than millionaires pay in 47 other states. A ballot measure backed by liberal legislators will ask state voters this fall if they want to raise the top rate on high earners to a staggering 13.3 percent."

San Bernardino files for bankruptcy: "The report said the city had exhausted its reserves and projected that spending would exceed revenue by $45 million in the current fiscal year which started on July 1. According to media reports, the city attorney general James Penman said San Bernardino's city officials had been submitting false accounting documents for 13 of the last 16 years in an effort to hide the real financial situation of the city. Chapter 9 bankruptcy would give San Bernardino an opportunity to restructure its battered finances, city staff said during a webcast of the city council meeting."

Police and fire pensions sunk Stockton: "In Stockton, California, public safety workers earn on average 126 percent of the maximum salary and at least 200 percent of the minimum wage for their respective wage categories. The California State Controller’s Office has all the data, and it’s not pretty. Stockton’s median household income was $50,011 in 2010. In contrast, the average total wage paid to a city police worker was $93,111. For employees of the fire department, it was $110,303. Admittedly, these are dangerous professions, but surely they are not so dangerous as to require pay of double the median household income of the entire community."

LA teachers contributed nothing toward insurance: "In the latest in a series of reports issued by EAGnews.org focused on labor spending in metropolitan school districts across the country, it’s revealed that members of United Teachers Los Angeles (the local teachers union) didn’t pay one thin dime toward health insurance premiums in 2010-11. That cost fell to taxpayers, who parted with a whopping $416 million. How could this be? The school district’s budget deficit entering the 2010-11 fiscal year was $640 million. Employees were laid off by the thousands and five instructional days were cancelled, yet union employees were allowed to maintain their free and very costly health coverage."

Time for a Laugh:
"The White House is now urging Americans not to "read too much" into last week’s jobs report. In fact, they said it would be best if you didn’t read it at all."
-Jay Leno

Topic Two: The Welfare Nation
The new civil war - takers vs. makers: "Call it America’s coming civil war between the Makers and the Takers. On one side are those who create wealth, America’s private sector–the very ones targeted by President Obama’s tax hikes announced Monday. On the other are the public employee unions; left-leaning intelligentsia who see the growth of government as index of progress; and the millions of Americans now dependent on government through a growing network of government transfer payments, from Medicaid and Social Security to college loans and corporate bailouts and handouts (think GM and Solyndra)."

Paul Ryan says Obama's policies are creating a dependent nation: "Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, the Wisconsin Republican said he sees two "tipping points" that could lead to disaster without a course correction. The first he described as a "European-like" economic situation "where we have a managed decline" and "a stagnant, lost decade" of growing debt burden that the nation’s lawmakers refuse to address. The second, he said, is "a crisis of more and more people seeing the government as a provider of their livelihood instead of themselves."

AEI has a story with six graphs explaining why our nation is in trouble. Rick Moran at American Thinker, commenting on these graphs, says: "The longer we delay in addressing these problems, the harder they will be to fix. Every year the Democrats tell us that there's nothing to worry about regarding Medicare or Medicaid and use that as an excuse for inaction (while accusing the GOP of wanting to "destroy" health care for seniors and the poor), the more difficult it is going to be to summon the political will to make hard choices. That's the reality of it. And judgment day is coming sooner than any of us would like to think."

Debt Watch:
$15,876,457,645,132.66
( As of Wednesday, July 11, 2012 )

Change: -$9,397,110,218.81
Your share as a citizen: $50,713.78
Share per household: $138,979.47
Debt since Obama inauguration: $5,249,580,596,219.56

Topic Three: ObamaCare
How the ObamaCare case greatly increased the power of Congress: "And as of the last week in June, the government has a vast new power that was brought to us by the Supreme Court's latest attack on personal freedom. Congress can now lawfully command any behavior of individuals that it pleases—whether or not the subject of the behavior is a power granted to Congress by the Constitution—and it may punish noncompliance with that command, so long as the punishment is called a tax. Justice Antonin Scalia's whimsical query during the Supreme Court oral argument on the health care law about whether Congress could make him eat broccoli suddenly isn't as funny as it was when he asked it, because the answer is: It can fine him for not eating broccoli, so long as it calls that fine a tax."

Walker: ObamaCare not right for Wisconsin: "Even setting aside those legitimate issues, one practical concern remains. I look at the effects that full implementation would have on my state, and I can’t help but conclude that Obamacare punishes Wisconsin for budgeting responsibly and providing access to affordable and quality health care. It punishes young people, those who have responsibly purchased individual insurance, employers and employees of small businesses. In Wisconsin, the data show that Obamacare will increase the cost of health care for most residents. That is not a prescription for positive change. Other states will face similar situations. We can do better. Overall our federal government should be working to replicate the successes of states like Wisconsin — particularly focusing on those with high rates of coverage."

Tweet of the Day:
Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit): It's fair that we have one candidate never vetted for stuff he might have done, while the other is vetted for stuff he never did.

Topic Four: Taxing Politics
Michael Tanner on Obama's 'Tax the Rich' plan: "Here’s a big surprise: President Obama wants to raise taxes on “the wealthy.” By some counts, this represents the 25th time the president has rolled out this proposal — something to keep in mind the next time he warns against “refighting the battles of the past” over something like repealing Obamacare. Regardless, repetition hasn’t done anything to improve either the policy or the president’s truthfulness in describing it."

(It is worth noting that the media criticized the Republicans for their 33rd vote on repealing ObamaCare this week, but no one seems to notice this is the 25th time Obmaa has proposed his tax the rich plan.)

Meanwhile, Scary Harry is refusing to bring the proposal to a vote in the Senate: "Insisting that the American people supported higher taxes on people earning more than $250,000 a year, he challenged Republicans in the House to pass a one-year extension on the other income-tax brackets while hiking taxes on the rest. It looks now like he should have challenged his own party in the Senate, which has balked at taking a vote on Obama’s tax hike."

Food for Thought - A Quote from our Founders
"A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal."
-John Adams

Topic Five: What Are We Doing?
Sheldon Richman makes the case that our leaders have no idea what they are doing: "It should finally have dawned on the American people that the politicians who presume to guide the economy have no bloody idea what they’re doing. We’re long past the time when knowledge of economics was required to see that the government is impotent when it comes to creating economic recovery. If you want evidence of that impotence, just look around.

"Governments are very good at creating recessions and at impeding recovery. That is the limit of their powers. If you expect something constructive, you’ll be disappointed. Politicians from President Obama on down will promise the moon, but they will deliver only worthless rocks. They will blame everything and everyone for their failures, but their inability to succeed has one source only: the political process—which is founded on force, not peaceful economic cooperation—is singularly inappropriate for creating prosperity."

Tomorrow in History
July 13, 1787 - The Continental Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance, establishing the governing rules for the Northwest Territory, which encompasses Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and portions of Minnesota.

Grab Bag - Interesting and Important Stories to Conclude Your Evening:
Hidden government scanner could learn about you from 164 feet away

Bill would dock Congressional pay for missed votes

Government buys from GM to inflate its sales numbers

What your websites, social networks, search engine, and games say about your politics

Things the media won't tell you: Romney received standing ovation at the end of NAACP speech

Confessions of a former communist

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