Understanding $16,000,000,000,000 in Debt

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/understanding_16000000000000_in_debt.html

http://visiontoamerica.com/13238/
December 10, 2012

G. Donald Allen

I don't understand how much $16 trillion ($16T) of debt is.  So, to help myself, I break it down to terms I can understand.

• There are about 254,000,000 registered vehicles in this country (2009 data).  Big number this is.  But dividing the number into $16T would give a valuation of about $69,000 for each of them.  This is somewhat higher than the average cost of automobiles on the road.  Another way to put it is to say the U.S. national debt could replace the entire U.S. fleet of automobiles with, for example, brand-new, fully equipped Lexus ES460s.  Nice cars. 

• The total of state budgets in 2010 was about $666B.  Dividing into $16T gives about 24.  This means the $16T national debt could completely cover all state budgets for about 24 years.

• The total annual foreign aid budget of the U.S. is reckoned to be about $54B.  Dividing this into $16T gives about 296, meaning that the national debt of the U.S. could cover all foreign aid for almost three centuries.

• The population of the United States is currently estimated at 312,780,968.  Dividing this into $16T gives the current encumbrance to each citizen of about $51,000.

• In 2008, 64.3 billion gallons of gasoline were consumed in this country.  It is surely higher now.  At $3.50 per gallon, this implies a total cost to the U.S. consumer of about $225B.  Dividing into the $16T yields about 71, implying that the U.S. national debt could pay for all gasoline consumed in the USA for the next 71 years -- assuming, of course, that annual consumption remains constant.

• In the month of October 2012, the monthly cost of home food for a family of four (liberal plan from the USDA) was about $1,100, making the annual cost about $13,200.  Multiplying this by the possible numbers of families of four (total population divided by four), the total annual home food costs to all citizens are roughly $1T.  Dividing this into $16T implies, in round terms, that the U.S. national debt could pay all home food costs for the next 15-plus years.  If we all ate with the USDA thrifty plan, the $16T U.S. national debt could pay all home food costs in the United States for the next 29 years.

That was fun.  So $16T is a really huge amount.  I still don't understand it much beyond that. 

There is a foundational lesson in all this.  The number 16T in dollars or any other measure is fundamentally beyond the comprehension of most of us.  And I work with big numbers all the time.  What is not taught in the schools these days, what is not anywhere the formal curriculum, and what is fully unknown to almost everyone is just what these big numbers mean, and how huge they really are.  Sure, it is easy to say that the speed of light (180K mps) translates into 180(mps) x 60(s/m) x (60[m/h] x 24[h/d] x 365[h/y] = 5,865,696,000,000 miles per year (~6 trillion miles).  But who really knows what this means -- in a visceral sense? 

Getting back to the $16T above, we caution two principal groups: Republicans and Democrats.  Neither side really understands anything about the true magnitude of $16T.

1. The Republicans: The public does not understand how much money this is.  Do you?  Don't compare with the GDP.  This is making a comparison of a quantity people don't understand with a quantity people don't understand.  It you wish to make a point, explain to folks how much money this is.  Do it in terms they understand.  My goodness, don't explain in analogy to Greece.  Most people don't know where Greece is, much less care about the Greeks' circumstances.

2. The Democrats: Be cautious about borrowing more money.  Understand the magnitude of what is already encumbered.  Think about this amount in terms you understand.  Understand the profound and massive effort required for the pay-back.

3. To both parties: Even if the economy came roaring back with whatever policy for job growth is promoted and enacted, the $16T debt is virtually beyond the capacity for repayment.  This country seems to be faced with default, or ultra-severe tax penalties on the next couple of generations.  For those aged over 50, the consequence is not that great.  The younger groups will be hit especially hard.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/understanding_16000000000000_in_debt.html#ixzz2EknOttXj

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/12/fox-news-puts-karl-rove-on-the-bench.html
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/fox-news-is-keeping-karl-rove-dick-morris-off-the-air-following-poor-election-predictions-report-claims/

Fox News Puts Karl Rove on the Bench

• By Gabriel Sherman

   

The post-election soul searching going on inside the Republican Party is taking place inside Fox News as well. Fox News chief Roger Ailes, a canny marketer and protector of his network’s brand, has been taking steps since November to reposition Fox in the post-election media environment, freshening story lines — and in some cases, changing the characters. According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has issued a new directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking  Rove or  Morris. Both pundits made several appearances in the days after the election, but their visibility on the network has dropped markedly. Inside Fox News, Morris’s Romney boosterism and reality-denying predictions became a punch line. At a rehearsal on the Saturday before the election, according to a source, anchor Megyn Kelly chuckled when she relayed to colleagues what someone had told her: “I really like Dick Morris. He’s always wrong but he makes me feel good.”

A Fox spokesperson confirmed the new booking rules for Rove and Morris, and explained that Shine’s message was “the election’s over.” 

Multiple sources say that Ailes was angry at Rove’s election-night tantrum when he disputed the network’s call for Obama. While the moment made for riveting television — it was Ailes’s decision to have Kelly confront the statisticians on air — in the end, it provided another data point for Fox’s critics. A spokesperson for Ailes denied any rift between Ailes and Rove, and said the two plan to meet this week. 

Susan Rice in 1986 book: Make white students learn black history

8:30 AM 11/29/2012

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Charles C. Johnson

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In a 1986 book by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, the future diplomat argued for the aggressive inclusion of a black history curriculum in American schools, claiming that its omission had “crippling effects” by “providing a child with no more than … a white interpretation of reality.”

The 86-page book, “A History Deferred,” served as a guide for secondary and elementary school teachers wanting to teach “Black Studies,” and was published by the Black Student Fund, an advocacy group where Rice had an internship.

“Susan’s interest in the study of Black history evolved from her desire to learn more about the experiences and achievements of her own people,” notes the preface.

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Central to the book’s ambition was reclaiming lost black achievements and giving black children pride in their history. In that vein, Rice lists black achievements in “Literature,” “the Arts,” “the Music [sic]” and “Public Service” to present an Afrocentric view of U.S. history.

This was necessary, Rice noted in her book’s foreword, because most students were “taught American history, literature, art, drama, and music largely from a white, western European perspective. As a result, their grasp of the truth, of reality, is tainted by a myopia of sorts.”

“American history cannot be understood fully or evaluated critically without ample study of Black history,” Rice added.

Rice wrote her undergraduate senior thesis under Clayborne Carson, a Stanford history professor who teaches “Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity,” about the experiences of black southerners who worked in Oakland’s shipyards during World War II.

Like Carson, Rice saw a political component in Black Studies, writing that the “absence or cursory coverage of Black history, literature, and culture reinforces pernicious and pervasive social perceptions of Black Americans.”

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And failing to teach Black Studies in school, she argued, had negative consequences for the self-esteem of black children.

“Ultimately, what is more important than the white or majority perception of black Americans is the black man, woman, and child’s perception of themselves,” Rice wrote. “The greatest evil in omitting or misrepresenting Black history, literature, and culture in elementary or secondary education is the unmistakable message it sends to the black child. The message is ‘your history, your culture, your language and your literature are insignificant. And so are you.’”

Despite lacking an Afrocentric curriculum at the tony National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington, D.C., Rice’s options were many and impressive.

Her father was a governor of the Federal Reserve and a World Bank official, and her mother was a senior vice president of Control Data Processing. Rice won a coveted Rhodes Scholarship in December 1985. “I think it is very important for other black students to be aware of the scholarship program and see it as a good opportunity for them,” she told The Washington Post at the time.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/29/susan-rice-in-1986-book-make-white-students-learn-black-history/

MORE SCORN FOR CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS AS DETAILS OF SWITCH LEAK

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by JOEL B. POLLAK 2 Jul 2012 550POST A COMMENT

As Breitbart News suggested last week, it appears Chief Justice John Roberts did, in fact, switch his vote on the Obamacare decision under pressure from President Barack Obama, the Democrats, and the mainstream media. John Fund at National Review has more details today--including evidence about a bizarre address by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Judiciary Committee, that singled out Roberts himself:

Indeed, Senator Patrick Leahy (Vt., D.) , the chair of the Judiciary Committee, suddenly took to the floor on May 14 and directly addressed Roberts, urging him in harshly partisan tones to uphold Obamacare and maintain “the proper role of the judicial branch.”

Stewart Baker, a partner at the Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson, writes at the Volokh Conspiracy that he found the whole campaign against Roberts weird and unusual, given that the justices’ conference vote on Obamacare had been held six weeks earlier. Why “would the chair of the Judiciary Committee risk the appearance of trying to harshly strongarm the Court when his remarks wouldn’t make the slightest difference?” he asks. “The Leahy speech reads like it was written for an audience of one. It offers flattery and it offers threats, all of them personalized to appeal to Chief Justice Roberts alone.”

Fund adds that the White House likely benefited from leaks at the Court, and almost certainly knew of Roberts's switch--just as it almost certainly knew of the initial vote to throw out the individual mandate in March:

The week before the Supreme Court announced its decision, the White House was clearly hinting to many in the media and on Capitol Hill that they expected a 5–4 opinion that would hinge on the taxing-power issue. Did someone leak? Sunday on Face the Nation, Jan Crawford of CBS News said that two reliable sources told her that Roberts originally voted, in late March, with the four conservative justices to invalidate the individual mandate. According to Crawford, Roberts suddenly changed sides some six weeks later and then resisted “a month-long desperate campaign by the conservative justices to bring him back to the fold.”

I’ve learned from my own sources that after voting to invalidate the mandate, the chief did express some skepticism about joining the four conservatives in throwing out the whole law. At the justices’ conference, there was discussion about accepting the Obama administration’s argument, which was that, if the individual mandate was removed, the provisions governing community rating and guaranteed issue of insurance would have to go too but that the rest of the law might stand. The chief justice was equivocal, though, in his views on that point.

The more the public learns about Roberts's decision, the more people are likely to hate it. Fund notes that even David Brooks of the New York Times agrees that Roberts "had to get to a certain result, and he was going to find a way by hook or by crook." It's a conclusion that aptly expresses how Obamacare was conceived, how it was passed, and now how it has been upheld by one of the worst decisions in recent years. 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/02/More-Scorn-for-Chief-Justice-Roberts-as-Details-of-Switch-Leak

http://conservativebyte.com/2012/07/more-scorn-for-chief-justice-roberts-as-details-of-switch-leak/

Civil War is Coming WASHINGTON .. Report from Reuters

by Fred Brownbill on NOVEMBER 16, 2012 in CONSTITUTION LEGAL WATCH

 

The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto. The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush’s administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.

On Wednesday Obama Took the First Major Step in a Plan to Ban All Firearms in the United States. The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress.

Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments. These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The laws are designed and intended to lead to the complete ban and confiscation of all firearms. It will never happen!

The Obama administration is attempting to use tactics and methods of gun control that will inflict major damage to our 2nd Amendment before US citizens even understand what has happened. Obama can appear before the public and tell them that he does not intend to pursue any legislation (in the United States) that will lead to new gun control laws, while cloaked in secrecy, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is committing the US to international treaties and foreign gun control laws.

Does that mean Obama is telling the truth? What it means is that there will be no publicized gun control debates in the media or votes in Congress. We will wake up one morning and find that the United States has signed a treaty that prohibits firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public. We will wake up another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that prohibits any transfer of firearm ownership. And then, we will wake up yet another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that requires US citizens to deliver any firearm they own to the local government collection and destruction center or face imprisonment.

This is not a joke nor a false warning. As sure as government health care will be forced on us by the Obama administration through whatever means necessary, so will gun control.  Please forward this message to others who may be concerned about the direction in which our country is headed. Straight into socialism if Obama has his way… We are being led like a lamb to the slaughter (Socialism/Dictatorship).

http://www.saveamericafoundation.com/2012/11/16/civil-war-is-coming-washington-report-from-reuters/

h/t MK