Using the state Comptroller’s financial report for fiscal year 2009, the institute determined in its Financial State of the State for Texas that state accountants keep $51.5 billion in retirement liabilities off the books. In all, the study says the state actually has on hand $54.5 billion in assets with which to pay bills totaling $115 billion, leaving the $60.8 billion burden. Divided among taxpayers, each of us would need to contribute $8,900 to truly balance the state’s books. 

From Texas Watchdog, Nov 17.  Read entire article HERE.

There is the $4.4 million job through the block grant at the Texas Department of Rural Affairs. Or the $2.2 million job for the upkeep of National Guard property. The Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force has a half-dozen $1.4 million jobs. And then there are the $23.1 million grants at the Texas Departments of Agriculture and Aging and Disability Services that produced no jobs at all.

These jobs or lack of them were the result of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed by Congress with two goals in mind, to jolt the economy to life with rapid taxpayer spending and to create or preserve jobs.

On the second count at least, the stimulus appears to have fallen pitifully short of its goals at a substantial expense, the data compiled and kept by the state comptroller suggest. Agencies and institutions of higher education in Texas have reported spending a little less than $5 billion of stimulus money and have created 38,160 jobs, or about $130,000 a job.

UT Arlington economist Roger Meiners, who has tracked stimulus spending closely, says there is no way that jobs being added to or hired by existing agencies should cost so much to create. Unaware that large stimulus sums were spent without creating any jobs until shown the figures, Meiners says that job creation was clearly secondary to spending a lot of money.

“I had a vague suspicion that was the case, but now that I look at it, the spending is completely preposterous,” Meiners says. “These aren’t jobs being created from scratch, they are jobs added on the margins. What the heck are they doing with all the spending? I have no idea.”

At the time the stimulus bill passed in February 2009, unemployment was 8.1 percent, the highest rate in 25 years. After peaking at about 10 percent before the end of 2009, the rate has stayed at about the current 9.6 percent for the entire year, in spite of the stimulus spending.

A closer look at spending by each agency shows wild differences in the amount of money spent and the number of jobs created. At least eight agencies have reported spending $500,000 or more for every job claimed. In the case of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, its $883,993 per job is an estimate because more than a year after it was awarded nearly $8 million for a statewide library broadband upgrade project, nothing has been spent and none of its projected nine employees have been hired.

Perhaps most significant as the legislature convenes in January to deal with an estimated $25 billion budget shortfall, at least three-fourths of the jobs and most likely many more created by the stimulus are in the public sector, including more than 27,000 jobs in public education that must disappear when stimulus funding runs out or be subsidized by new infusions of federal or state taxpayer funds.

. . .

Nor can anyone explain what is to be done at the Texas Education Agency, where grants totaling $5.5 billion, $2.5 billion of it spent, are so far responsible for the employment of 27,161 teachers, counselors, librarians, tutors and support staff across the state. Suzanne Marchman, a spokeswoman for the agency, says there have been no contingency plans for the new hires.

“As for what will happen to the employees when the funds go away, there’s just really no way to know at this point,” Marchman says. “For the (full-time employees), it may depend on what comes out of this upcoming legislative session on funding issues.”

Texas Watchdog tried to pose that question to Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, chairman of the House Public Education Committee, and Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, chairman of the education subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Eissler did not return the message left at his office. Hochberg sent a message by Blackberry saying he was unavailable.

From Texas Watchdog, Nov 16.  Read entire article HERE.

Federal spending is on an unsustainable path that risks disaster for America. Runaway spending has increased annual federal budget deficits to unprecedented levels, adding $2.7 trillion to the national debt in the past two years alone. Each year’s huge federal deficit increases the mountain of national debt borrowed from future generations of Americans. Congress needs to cut federal spending sharply and quickly. This paper sets forth $343 billion in available spending cuts.

Read the report HERE.

Perhaps it would help to highlight a few of the CISD Board positions up for election this year and let you make the call.  It is worth noting that only Position #2 (Eugene Hathaway, Ray Sanders, Al Schlieske, and Lee Derby) and Position #3 (John Masterson, Patrick Klem and C.J. Haynes) are up for election and/or have opposition.

These positions are non-party affiliated, so we must do our research and not be worried about being swayed by an “R” or “D” after a name.

Perhaps it would be beneficial, given our debt and given our inordinate ratio of administrators to teachers, to look into these two positions and see if maybe it is time for some focus on a position that sometimes doesn’t get any.  Perhaps the fact it is where our children are going to be educated should give us reason to see if the promises we are given in order to convince the tax payer to vote a certain way are really being lived up to in reality.

Perhaps in these two open positions up for election, there may be two electable candidates that could immediately put double the pressure on the remaining 5 members to actually pay attention to the wasteful ways they have previously been engaged in or they will know they will be facing the consequences at the polls in 2 years!

It is not for the NHTPP to endorse any one candidate, but instead to let YOU do that with your own research and information.  Perhaps knowing there are some guides and information out there relating to local elections might help.

One such source is at the Conservative Coalition of Montgomery County website.  We encourage others to post similar sites if they know of any so that all sides and views may be expressed.

Socialists = Progressives = About 30% of House Democrats = ObamaCare, Cap & Trade, Amnesty, FinReg, GM Takeover, Unlimited Spending, Public/Union Jobs, Wealth Redistribution . . .

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RED AMERICA.  Do your friends look at you as if you’re an anachronistic, red-baiting fruitcake when you use the word socialist to describe recent trends in American governance? Well, let me assure you, you’re not nuts. They are.

Thanks to Ricochet member Okan Altiparmak and Gateway Pundit, here’s a list of 70 members of Congress who are fully paid-up members of the Democratic Socialists of America.  Shall we have a little look at the highlights of the platform of the DSA, folks? Just so we can all be clear what we’re talking about? The emphases are mine.

Vision of a Socialist Economy

Regulated markets can guarantee efficiency, consumer choice and labor mobility. However, democratic socialists recognize that market mechanisms do generate inequalities of wealth and income. But, the social ownership characteristic of a socialist society will greatly limit inequality. In fact, widespread worker and public ownership will greatly lessen the corrosive effect of capitalists markets on people’s lives. Social need will outrank narrow profitability as the measure of success for our economic life.

Section 4: A Strategy for the Next Left

Socialists have historically supported public ownership and control of the major economic institutions of society — the large corporations — in order to eliminate the injustice and inequality of a class-based society, and have depended on the the organization of a working class party to gain state power to achieve such ends. In the United States, socialists joined with others on the Left to build a broad-based, anti-corporate coalition, with the unions at the center, to address the needs of the majority by opposing the excesses of private enterprise. Many socialists have seen the Democratic Party, since at least the New Deal, as the key political arena in which to consolidate this coalition, because the Democratic Party held the allegiance of our natural allies. Through control of the government by the Democratic Party coalition, led by anti-corporate forces, a progressive program regulating the corporations, redistributing income, fostering economic growth and expanding social programs could be realized.

With the end of the post-World War II economic boom and the rise of global economic competitors in East Asia and Europe in the 1970s came the demise of the brief majoritarian moment of this progressive coalition that promised–but did not deliver–economic and social justice for all. A vicious corporate assault on the trade union movement and a right-wing racist, populist appeal to downwardly mobile, disgruntled white blue-collar workers contributed to the disintegration of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in the 1970s and 1980s.

Today, the mildly redistributive welfare state liberalism of the 1960s, which accepted the corporate dominance of economic decision-making, can no longer be the programmatic basis for a majoritarian progressive politics. New Deal and Great Society liberalism depended upon redistribution at the margins of an ever-expanding economic pie. But today corporations no longer aspire to expand production and consumption by raising global living standards; rather, global capital engages in a race to increase profits by “downsizing” and lowering wages.

…

If socialism cannot be achieved primarily from above, through a democratic government that owns, control and regulates the major corporations, then it must emerge from below, through a democratic transformation of the institutions of civil society, particularly those in the economic sphere — in other words, a program for economic democracy.

As inequalities of wealth and income increase and the wages and living standards of most are either stagnant or falling, social needs expand. Only a revitalized public sector can universally and democratically meet those needs.

…

Economic Democracy . Economic democracy can empower wage and income earners through building cooperative and public institutions that own and control local economic resources. Economic democracy means, in the most general terms, the direct ownership and/or control of much of the economic resources of society by the great majority of wage and income earners. Such a transformation of worklife directly embodies and presages the practices and principles of a socialist society.

…

Social Redistribution. Social redistribution–the shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of society–will require:

1. massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs,income maintenance and infrastructure rehabilitation, and
2. a massive shift of public resources from the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian uses.

…

Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end.

Are you paying attention, folks? Is that clear enough for you? I would usually use a well-known emphatic gerund before the word “clear,” but Ricochet’s code of conduct forbids it, so just use your imagination.

You may wish to read the whole thing. While you’re at it, savor the spring issue of The Red Letter. I kid you not about the name. Don’t forget to check out their perspective on foreign policy.

The DSA’s platform is not a call to expand the social-safety net so better to protect the most vulnerable and infirm members of society; it is not a call to improve access to health care; it is a call for socialism–the echt item, the discredited ideology that immiserated and enslaved and murdered hundreds of millions of human souls in the past century. The numbers of DSA members in our Congress are not trivial. Every single one of them must go in the next election.

AND NOW . . . HERE’S THE LIST, courtesy of Gateway Pundit - see any familiar names??

Co-Chairs
Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)

Vice Chairs
Hon. Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)
Hon. Diane Watson (CA-33)
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)
Hon. Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
Hon. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10)

Senate Members
Hon. Bernie Sanders (VT)

House Members
Hon. Neil Abercrombie (HI-01)
Hon. Tammy Baldwin (WI-02)
Hon. Xavier Becerra (CA-31)
Hon. Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL)
Hon. Robert Brady (PA-01)
Hon. Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Hon. Michael Capuano (MA-08)
Hon. André Carson (IN-07)
Hon. Donna Christensen (VI-AL)
Hon. Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Hon. William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01)
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)
Hon. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
Hon. John Conyers (MI-14)
Hon. Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Hon. Danny Davis (IL-07)
Hon. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
Hon. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04)
Hon. Keith Ellison (MN-05)
Hon. Sam Farr (CA-17)
Hon. Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
Hon. Bob Filner (CA-51)
Hon. Barney Frank (MA-04)
Hon. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11)
Hon. Alan Grayson (FL-08)
Hon. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)
Hon. John Hall (NY-19)
Hon. Phil Hare (IL-17)
Hon. Maurice Hinchey (NY-22)
Hon. Michael Honda (CA-15)
Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30)
Hon. Hank Johnson (GA-04)
Hon. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Hon. Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13)
Hon. Barbara Lee (CA-09)
Hon. John Lewis (GA-05)
Hon. David Loebsack (IA-02)
Hon. Ben R. Lujan (NM-3)
Hon. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Hon. Ed Markey (MA-07)
Hon. Jim McDermott (WA-07)
Hon. James McGovern (MA-03)
Hon. George Miller (CA-07)
Hon. Gwen Moore (WI-04)
Hon. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL)
Hon. John Olver (MA-01)
Hon. Ed Pastor (AZ-04)
Hon. Donald Payne (NJ-10)
Hon. Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Hon. Charles Rangel (NY-15)
Hon. Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Hon. Bobby Rush (IL-01)
Hon. Linda Sánchez (CA-47)
Hon. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)
Hon. José Serrano (NY-16)
Hon. Louise Slaughter (NY-28)
Hon. Pete Stark (CA-13)
Hon. Bennie Thompson (MS-02)
Hon. John Tierney (MA-06)
Hon. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)
Hon. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
Hon. Mel Watt (NC-12)
Hon. Henry Waxman (CA-30)
Hon. Peter Welch (VT-AL)
Hon. Robert Wexler (FL-19)

“Tax reduction thus sets off a process that can bring gains for everyone … Yet many taxpayers seemed prepared to deny the nation the fruits of tax reduction because they question the financial soundness of reducing taxes when the federal budget is already in deficit.  Let me make clear why, in today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarged the federal deficit — why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”  — President John F. Kennedy, Economic Report of the President, January 1963

If only more of today’s leaders thought like JFK. Sadly, in the debate over whether to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and if so whether the cuts should be extended to those people who are in the highest tax bracket, there is a false presumption that higher tax rates on the top 1% of income earners will raise tax revenues.

Anyone who is familiar with the historical data available from the IRS knows full well that raising income tax rates on the top 1% of income earners will most likely reduce the direct tax receipts from the now higher taxed income—even without considering the secondary tax revenue effects, all of which will be negative. And who on Earth wants higher tax rates on anyone if it means larger deficits?

Since 1978, the U.S. has cut the highest marginal earned-income tax rate to 35% from 50%, the highest capital gains tax rate to 15% from about 50%, and the highest dividend tax rate to 15% from 70%. President Clinton cut the highest marginal tax rate on long-term capital gains from the sale of owner-occupied homes to 0% for almost all home owners. We’ve also cut just about every other income tax rate as well.

During this era of ubiquitous tax cuts, income tax receipts from the top 1% of income earners rose to 3.3% of GDP in 2007 (the latest year for which we have data) from 1.5% of GDP in 1978. Income tax receipts from the bottom 95% of income earners fell to 3.2% of GDP from 5.4% of GDP over the same time period.

These results shouldn’t be surprising. The highest tax bracket income earners, when compared with those people in lower tax brackets, are far more capable of changing their taxable income by hiring lawyers, accountants, deferred income specialists and the like. They can change the location, timing, composition and volume of income to avoid taxation.

Just look at Sen. John Kerry’s recent yacht brouhaha if you don’t believe me. He bought and housed his $7 million yacht in Rhode Island instead of Massachusetts, where he is the senior senator and champion of higher taxes on the rich, avoiding some $437,500 in state sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.

Howard Metzenbaum, the former Ohio senator and liberal supporter of the death tax, chose to change his official residence to Florida just before he died because Florida does not have an estate tax while Ohio does. Goodness knows what creative devices former House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel has used to avoid paying taxes.

In short, the highest bracket income earners—even left-wing liberals—are far more sensitive to tax rates than are other income earners.

When President Kennedy cut the highest income tax rate to 70% from 91%, revenues also rose. Income tax receipts from the top 1% of income earners rose to 1.9% of GDP in 1968 from 1.3% in 1960. Even when Presidents Harding and Coolidge cut tax rates in the 1920s, tax receipts from the rich rose. Between 1921 and 1928 the highest marginal personal income tax rate was lowered to 25% from 73% and tax receipts from the top 1% of income earners went to 1.1% of GDP from 0.6% of GDP.

Or perhaps you’d like to see how the rich paid less in taxes under the bipartisan tax rate increases of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter? Between 1968 and 1981 the top 1% of income earners reduced their total income tax payments to 1.5% of GDP from 1.9% of GDP.

And then there’s the Hoover/Roosevelt Great Depression. The Great Depression was precipitated by President Hoover in early 1930, when he signed into law the largest ever U.S. tax increase on traded products—the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. President Hoover then thought it would be clever to try to tax America into prosperity.

Using many of the same arguments that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are using today, President Hoover raised the highest personal income tax rate to 63% from 24% on Jan. 1, 1932. He raised many other taxes as well.

President Roosevelt then debauched the dollar with the 1933 Bank Holiday Act and his soak-the-rich tax increase on Jan. 1, 1936. He raised the highest personal income tax rate to 79% from 63% along with a whole host of other corporate and personal tax rates as well. The U.S. economy went into a double dip depression, with unemployment rates rising again to 20% in 1938. Over the course of the Great Depression, the government raised the top marginal personal income tax rate to 83% from 24%.

Is it any wonder that the Great Depression was as long and deep as it was? Whoever heard of a country taxing itself into prosperity? Not only did taxes as a share of GDP fall, but GDP fell as well. It was a double whammy. Tax receipts from the top 1% of income earners stayed flat as a share of GDP, going to 1% in 1940 from 1.1% in 1928, but at what cost?

We all know that there are lots of factors influencing tax revenues from the rich, but the number one factor has to be the statutory tax rates government tells the rich they have to pay. Not only do the direct income tax consequences of higher tax rates on those in the highest brackets lead to higher deficits, the indirect effects magnify the tax revenue losses many fold.

As a result of higher tax rates on those people in the highest tax brackets, there will be less employment, output, sales, profits and capital gains—all leading to lower payrolls and lower total tax receipts. There will also be higher unemployment, poverty and lower incomes, all of which require more government spending. It’s a Catch-22.

Higher tax rates on the rich create the very poverty and unemployment that is used to justify their presence. It is a vicious cycle that well-trained economists should know to avoid.

Mr. Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates and co-author of “Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status“.

Posted by Erin Anderson, from Texas Insider.

Take Action July 22–24 – The Gulf Speaks

We as Texas are proud people and rightfully so.  It is time we stop letting the Federal Government destroy our jobs, our families, our futures and everything that we have worked so hard to achieve.

This is the greatest country in the world and the greatest state in this union.  Tell the federal government, NO MORE.

July 22-24 – Use this time as thousands of citizens will be contacting their Attorney General (Greg Abbott of Texas, http://www.oag.state.tx.us/agency/contacts.shtml) of their respective states and their legislatures to complain about this negligence on the part of our Federal Government.  I would ask that we include our Governor of this great state as well and ask him where he has been on this issue!

The Gulf Speaks website has form letters and more information - go there or get in touch with us!

ALSO, contact our US Representative, Kevin Brady.  He is actually on top of this issue and is fighting for us.  Let him know you support him and let him know what else you would like to see him do.

This is the fight – Texas jobs are on the line. Get in the game friends.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDdbz1iWymA

Interested in hearing what Washington’s up to?  http://www.house.gov/brady/monday_memo.html

Check out the Brady Blog

If basketball star LeBron James earns $40 MILLION a year in salary & endorsements, how many years would he have to work to earn $1 TRILLION? 

Answer:  25,000 years!

Our national debt (not counting unfunded liabilities like Social Security & Medicare) is over $13 TRILLION!  Watch the numbers spin at www.usdebtclock.org.

Another factoid from Moore:  California’s deficit is greater than all the other states combined!