Deflating the Deflation Myth

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Deflating the Deflation Myth

If Voter Fraud Is A Myth, Why Does It Keep Occurring?

U.S. News & World Report, on April 24, 2012, published an article entitled “The ‘Myth’ of Voter Fraud.” The article references Tova Wang, who says instances of polling place fraud are extremely rare. The article says that Wang is a fellow at progressive think tanks ‘Demos’ and the ‘Century Foundation’.

In response to the question, “What about widely publicized stories of registration fraud?”, Ms Wang responded:

… there’s absolutely zero evidence that anyone who has put any false information on a voter registration form has actually voted using that information.   [emphasis mine]

Really? Ms Wang said that almost two years ago, so an update is in order. Perhaps she will find this article by Brian Preston to be interesting. In it, Preston says:

The North Carolina State Board of Elections has found thousands of instances of voter fraud in the state, thanks to a 28-state crosscheck of voter rolls.

765 voters with an exact match of first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN were registered in N.C. and another state and voted in N.C. and the other state in the 2012 general election.

35,750 voters with the same first and last name and DOB were registered in N.C. and another state and voted in both states in the 2012 general election.

155,692 voters with the same first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN were registered in N.C. and another state – and the latest date of registration or voter activity did not take place within N.C.

And the voter fraud facts just keeps coming. The crosscheck found that more than 13,000 deceased voters remain on North Carolina’s rolls, and that 81 of them showed voter activity in their records after death.

Preston didn’t just make these numbers up. They come from a report published by “Interstate Crosscheck”, a Kansas company that checks 101 million voter records in 28 states. CA, FL, NY, and TX do not have their voting records checked. NC State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Westbrook Strach delivered the report findings.

A NC congressman (Rep. Tim Moore, R-Cleveland) said, “This is proof positive that voter fraud has in fact occurred. For years, all of us have known anecdotally of different types of voter fraud.”

Voting rights advocate Bob Phillips with Common Cause NC, tried to minimize the study findings by saying: “I think a lot of [lawmakers] are saying, ‘Aha, this proves what we did.’ [voting multiple times] But if I have an ID, how is that going to stop me from voting in North Carolina if I’ve already voted in Florida?” Phillips said it still doesn’t justify House Bill 589, the 2013 law that included voter ID.

When words are carefully parsed, like Bill Clinton did, Wang is correct. She said “… put any false information on a voter registration form …” Numerous time voters did not put false information on registration forms. But they committed voter fraud none the less. They were too stupid to cover their tracks, to offer false information. So the question becomes, “How many voters DID offer false information?” The voter fraud issue doesn’t simply go away if Wang is correct. The voter fraud problem may be larger than evidence suggests. Just because none have been successfully prosecuted doesn’t mean voter fraud doesn’t exist.

The remainder of the U.S. News & World Report article illustrates just how “out of touch” Wang is with reality. It’s not long, so read it if you want a good laugh.

But that’s just my opinion.

Cross-posted at The Pot Stirrer, my very conservative web site.

I can be reached at “wbracing43@aol.com”. I would like to read what you think. And, yes, I’m a big Richard Petty fan!

Conservative Daily News

If Voter Fraud Is A Myth, Why Does It Keep Occurring?

Bitcoin Debacle Shatters the Myth of Virtual Money

Bitcoin believers were shaken to their digital souls when Mt. Gox, the world’s largest exchange, defaulted on $ 470 billion worth of deposits and closed.

The virtual currency was supposed to provide a safer, more private and less costly alternative to money issued by governments, but lacking the imprimatur of a sovereign is failing.

Fundamentally, money provides a secure place to keep your wealth—you can store your savings for later use at a government guaranteed bank. And it eliminates the inconvenience of barter—a necessity for even the most rudimentary market economy.

Money permits a nightclub singer to buy bread from a baker who gets his music from iTunes. All accept dollars, because the U.S. government declares those to be “legal tender for all debts public and private.”

You can do business through barter or some alternative currency. However, workers, suppliers and landlords expect to be paid in dollars, and the IRS will require dollars at tax time for income earned through barter.

What gives money its value are the goods and services that may be purchased and taxes paid within the sovereign jurisdiction of the issuing government.

The earliest currencies were coins, often with the face of the sovereign stamped on gold or silver to instill confidence. Yet, governments minted coins with non-precious metals, and the Chinese issued paper money more than two thousand years ago.

The creators of Bitcoin and advocates of virtual currencies are fixated by the temptation of governments to print too much and destroy its value through inflation. However, inflation is hardly a problem in the United States, Europe and Japan, and central banks in other countries hold dollars, euro and yen to back up their currencies.

Bitcoin is created by ordinary folks solving increasingly difficult mathematical problems defined by the virtual currency’s creator, and like gold, is naturally limited in supply. It is stored in virtual wallets on private computers, or deposited at exchanges like Mt. Gox. These function much like commercial banks but are not guaranteed for safety by the FDIC, Federal Reserve and similar regulatory agencies around the world.

There is no “Bitland” where a government has declared it legal tender to buy goods and services and pay taxes. Lacking such a tangible connection to the real economy, it is very hard to value day-to-day, never mind next year.

Bitcoin traded for $ 1,117 on December 4, and now commands only about half that amount.

It is no place for your children’s college fund or retirement savings.

Bitcoin is hardly secure. A hacker can steal it from your digital wallet or an exchange that holds your deposits, just as pirates stole bank debit and credit card numbers from Target. And the government does not stand ready to back up Bitcoin exchanges that lose your money or identity to thieves.

A 2013 study found some 45 percent of all Bitcoin exchanges closed, taking their depositors money with them.

Bitcoin is supposed to be more private, because unlike commercial banks, its exchanges are not monitored by regulators, and its private payments system charges lower fees than do Visa and MasterCard.

However, personal and business transactions can be spied by hackers or government security agencies through its fairly open payments system. The government can subpoena your Bitcoin records or those of your exchange when it needs.

Factoring in such risks and potential intrusions, Bitcoin is a lot less private and more expensive to use than advertised.

Detractors of paper money have always been fixated by the absence of gold to back it up, but they fail to recognize what really makes a currency accepted and secure—the government guarantee and the good sense of the sovereign not to abuse its franchise.

It’s not the gold but the face of Caesar—the promise his image carries—that makes a coin money. 

Morici is an economist and professor at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. Follow him on Twitter, @pmorici1.

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Bitcoin Debacle Shatters the Myth of Virtual Money

The "War Weary" Myth

WASHINGTON — Perhaps the most misleading phrase in the debate over Syria is “war weary.” Americans, say commentators and politicians across the political spectrum, are exhausted by a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, with sideshows in Libya and Yemen. Now Syria? Where does it stop? Americans must be weary.

Of exactly what?

The truth is that for most Americans the constant combat has imposed no burdens, required no sacrifices and involved no disruptions. True, the money spent has been substantial. From 2001 to 2012, reckons the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan along with related operations cost $ 1.4 trillion. Although that’s a lot even by Washington standards, it pales next to all federal spending and the economy’s total production. From 2001 to 2012, federal spending totaled $ 33.3 trillion; the wars were 4 percent of that. Over the same period, the American economy produced $ 163 trillion of goods and services. War spending equaled nine-tenths of 1 percent of that.

As important, no special tax was ever imposed to pay war costs. They were simply added to budget deficits, so that few, if any, Americans suffered a loss of income. It’s doubtful that much other government spending was crowded out by the wars.

The largest cost, of course, involves Americans killed and those who suffered life-altering wounds, both physical and mental. As of Sept. 3, the Pentagon counted 4,489 deaths in Iraq and 2,266 in Afghanistan, including some U.S. civilians. To these numbers must be added thousands more with serious injuries. Through September 2011, according to the CBO, 740,000 veterans from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan had received treatment from the Veterans Health Administration. In a study of veterans treated from 2004 to 2009, the CBO found that 21 percent were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, 2 percent with traumatic brain injury and another 5 percent with both.

The pain, suffering, sorrow and anguish of these and other losses are borne by a tiny sliver of Americans: those who joined the volunteer military, plus their families and close friends. There was no draft. There was no shared sacrifice, as there was in World War II, Korea and (to a lesser extent) even Vietnam. Those who have made the sacrifices have a right to feel “weary.” For the rest of us, it’s a self-indulgence.

What many Americans seem to mean by “weary” is “frustrated.” They’re frustrated and disillusioned that so much fighting over so many years has not brought the clear-cut psychological and strategic benefits of “victory.” For others, the lesson is more stark: These foreign military forays were a waste and, in many respects, have done more harm than good. One way or another, there’s a widespread impatience with our engagements when patience is often required for success.

If it is to be useful, the debate over Syria must broach larger issues. The United States cannot be the world’s policeman. It cannot rectify every wrong or redress every atrocity. It cannot impose the “American way of life” and values on diverse peoples who have their own ways of life and values. But the United States isn’t Monaco.

Since World War II, we have assumed a sizable responsibility for the international order. We have done this not so much out of idealism as out of self-interest. The large lesson of that war was that American abstinence from the global stage ultimately contributed to a global tragedy from which we could not remain aloof.

This lesson endures. But it lacks a firm footing in public opinion. Members of the World War II generation have largely died. Their experience is now an abstraction. The new applications of an old doctrine often suffer from carelessness and expedience — sometimes too much eagerness, sometimes too little. We do have overriding interests in a stable global order. To state an obvious case: It cannot be in our interests (or the world’s) for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Whatever we do in Syria must spring from a sober calculation of national interest so that it commands broader public support. The worst outcome would be a retreat justified by nothing more than an exaggerated and artificial sense of “war weariness.” 

RealClearPolitics – Articles

The "War Weary" Myth

VIDEO: Mysterious Fire Death Labeled "Spontaneous Human Combustion"

A local sheriff in Oklahoma has attributed a strange death by fire to spontaneous human combustion. He’s just forgetting one thing…

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The $20,000 Obamacare Myth

Jed Graham takes apart the myth that a family of four will have to pay at least $ 20,000 a year for healthcare under Obamacare:

The reported $ 20,000 cost of a low-cost ObamaCare plan was a hypothetical, not an estimate or an assumption, as should have been evident from other clearly contradictory IRS examples. For example: “The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 4 (1 adult, 3 children) is $ 18,000.”

Both examples can’t be true, unless an adult’s premium is $ 2,000 and a child’s is $ 5,333.

The most current information from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation put the cost of a family policy purchased through an employer in 2016 at $ 20,000 vs. $ 15,745 last year. In 2016, average premiums for a family of four buying a silver-level plan through ObamaCare’s exchange are expected to be $ 15,400 — before subsidies. The lowest-cost bronze plan, which is far less comprehensive than typical employer policies, would cost about 85% of a silver plan, or $ 13,000.

The Daily Beast – Latest Articles

The $20,000 Obamacare Myth

The $20,000 Obamacare Myth

Jed Graham takes apart the myth that a family of four will have to pay at least $ 20,000 a year for healthcare under Obamacare:

The reported $ 20,000 cost of a low-cost ObamaCare plan was a hypothetical, not an estimate or an assumption, as should have been evident from other clearly contradictory IRS examples. For example: “The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 4 (1 adult, 3 children) is $ 18,000.”

Both examples can’t be true, unless an adult’s premium is $ 2,000 and a child’s is $ 5,333.

The most current information from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation put the cost of a family policy purchased through an employer in 2016 at $ 20,000 vs. $ 15,745 last year. In 2016, average premiums for a family of four buying a silver-level plan through ObamaCare’s exchange are expected to be $ 15,400 — before subsidies. The lowest-cost bronze plan, which is far less comprehensive than typical employer policies, would cost about 85% of a silver plan, or $ 13,000.

The Daily Beast – Latest Articles

The $20,000 Obamacare Myth