You all remember the Gong Show, don’t you? These hideous, untalented goofs, would perform until they were ’gonged,’ and taken off the stage. In Vaudeville days, the so-called ’stage hook’ supposedly came out from the wings and hooked the performer off the stage, if he was untalented enough, much to the mirth of the audience. In the Gong Show, the audience also laughed heartily if a boob was gonged, and their performance cut short. Isn’t it about time to gong the D.C.Gang? There are various reasons, and for that matter, the entire D.C. Gang’s performance and totally messing up everything, is ample reason enough.
Take statistics, as an example. The old GNP was replaced by the GDP, which has fewer measurements in it, so it nicely fits the requirement of under-reporting everything bad, and exaggerating everything, to make things look rosy. This includes the CPI, employment numbers, and actual inflation rate. The real CPI, is actually increasing at about 8% per year. During the Great Depression, the unemployment figures were actually of those out of work. During the Kennedy administration, a category of the unemployed was created, called the “discouraged workers,” who were not counted as unemployed even though they were. Then, during the Clinton Administration, those who had looked for work, couldn’t find any, and had given up, were removed from the list also. The actual unemployment rate, is probably about 12%.
Also during the Clinton Administration, month after month, the “jobs created” figure was exactly 250,000. The Clinton Gang did all sorts of gimmicking with the employment figures, by switching who was surveyed, which race, which age, etc. Had to keep Bill’s voters happy, you know.
After Kennedy, came LBJ, perhaps on of the most corrupt Presidents of modern times. When the GNP was given to him, if he didn’t like it, he’d send it back to the Commerce Dept, and instruct them to “make it right.” If it still wasn’t the way he wanted it, he’d send it back again and again, till they made it what he thought was appropriate. Nixon didn’t like the Dept of Labor, and rumor has it that he tried to get them to change the census figures without success. After the stock market crash in 1987, the trade data was manipulated to help strengthen the falling dollar.
The Consumer Price Index can be traced back to 1888, when an index was created to measure the effects of a tariff act. In WW I, it was used to set the wages of ship builders, but was not widely used until after WW II. During the Great Depression, people knew it was bad, and they judged how bad it was by looking at the Dow. If stocks were down, it must be bad. After the war, the CPI was used to adjust auto-worker’s contracts, and the cities surveyed were where autos were manufactured. The politicos eventually found out that if they could make the CPI look good, they could win an election. “Hey, our economy is booming, look at the CPI and employment figures.” The fact that both were frauds, made no difference.
The CPI is supposed to be the prices of a FIXED BASKET OF GOODS OVER TIME. You’d take steak, bread, milk, gasoline, home prices, etc and enter them. Next year, if the thing was to be accurate, you’d take the same items in the ’basket,’ see what their prices were, and you’d have an accurate basis for statistics. But that doesn’t get political hacks re-elected, so ’substitutions’ have been made every year. No more house prices, but rent prices. That alone causes a huge amount of bad figures. Then if prices on an item go up, one can compare other items, or items from a different source or quality, and presto! One can manipulate the CPI as it seems necessary to make it look good,, and Joe Sixpack will believe them. The CPI used to measure by adding subtracting and dividing, the way most people figure things. This was called ’arithmetic weightings.’ That wasn’t keeping the figures down enough, so the method was changed by BLS (Bureau of labor Statistics) to ’geometric weighting.’ If something goes up in price, it automatically gets a lower weight, and if it goes down in price, it automatically gets a higher price. Make sense? Not to me.
In the 1990’s, air pollution regulations were put in place, which forced adding a chemical to gasoline, which didn’t work. It added ten cents per gallon to the price of gas, but it wasn’t added to the CPI, because it was supposed to increase the ’value’ of the gas. Guess what? When the stuff was taken out of the gas, the ten-cent increase, no longer added, had no effect on the CPI.
When Dubya get elected, they came out with a C-CPI-U figure, which further makes the CPI figure absurd. The Social Security checks and payments are made on the basis of the CPI. They’ve got to keep it down, so they can screw the seniors, who worked and worked and worked to retire, and then get only a fraction of what they are supposed to get. According to one economist, if the CPI were figured as it was during the Jimmy Carter era, Social Security checks would be 70% higher! Obviously, there is no such thing as a “Social Security Trust Fund.” The dough collected, goes straight into the general fund, whatever that is, but it certainly isn’t in any “trust account.” They’ve got to keep the CPI low, so they don’t have to pay what they owe to us seniors.
Then we come to the “trade deficit,” which is grossly under-exaggerated also. In 2004, the ’official’ deficit was $412 billion. However if GAAP (generally accepted accounting procedures) were used, it was a whopping $616 billion. Is that it? Absolutely not! When we get into un-funded liabilities, we must count the Social Security and Medicaid deficits, and for that year alone, it was $11 trillion, according to the D.C. Gang. However, if GAAP is used, the total deficit is about $51 trillion. Know how much that is? I don’t, because it is inconceivable literally. $1 million is more than 98% of Americans will ever see, and a trillion is a thousand billion, which is a thousand million, which is a thousand thousand, etc. Is it ever possible to be repaid? No, unless it is printed endlessly, as was done in Germany till the Reichsmark collapsed. Actually, the U.S. debt is larger than the reparations that Germany was made to pay with tons of printed bills. Lots of Americans have a lot of debts. Hundreds of millions of dollars in debts. Mortgages have been increased, and the balances spent for stuff they didn’t need. That’s bad. But the D.C. Gang has no concept of what it is doing. They should have been gonged off the stage decades ago.
In other words, these buffoons spend, spend, spend, and then spend some more. Why not? It isn’t their money, and the more they spend, the more likely they are to get re-elected. Irresponsible? Of course! They lie through their teeth, smile to the boob tube cameras, and tell them how much legislation they passed, and how much ’bacon’ they brought home to those good folks back home. Isn’t old Senator Snort a great guy? Look what he got us yokels back home. What he ’got,’ was ever decreasing value paper dollars, which buy ever less. The D.C. Gang have robbed the Social Security set by hundreds of billions of d0ollars with their screwy statistics, bookkeeping, and pronouncements. Is there even one honest politician in D.C. Actually there is but one, and that is Ron Paul.
Will it ever come? Armageddon for the U.S. anyway? Yes, it will come. The D.C. Gang, under the direction of Bush II, has spent more than any other President in history. Even the Iraq-Afghanistan books are being cooked, so we don’t know the real cost. When Iraq was invaded, the soldiers found several 53 foot trailers chock full of hundred dollar bills. Were they counterfeit? It depends on how you look at it. Since the dollar was, for over 150 years anyway, a twentieth ounce of gold, it is obvious that no matter who printed them, they are counterfeit. Unless gold is once again $20.67 per ounce. But gold now approaches $600 per ounce, and then $1200, $1800, $1244, $3,000 etc. It’s the same gold. Only what you buy it with has been debauched, and the debauching continues. Better get out of dollars, because those idiots who are performing on the D.C. stage, will eventually gong the entire U.S. economic system, and then we will have an economic dollar Armageddon. The D.C. Gang won’t be gonged. They’ll be there when the whole shebang goes down whimpering about how good they did, and how much they tried. Get out of dollars, and protect yourself.