The Other National Debt No One Talks About

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As we look at the state of the economy some people may be wondering,"Why, if jobs are increasing, are we not seeing other signs of improvement?" Though unemployment was down to 5.3% in July, wages only rose a few cents, and overall they have barely kept up with inflation since the beginning of the recovery.

Part of the problem may be people transitioning into new fields out of manufacturing into retail, healthcare or IT jobs; another is that people have less money after taking care of their bills to spend on the economy. One of the biggest obstacles to our economy is the massive debt burden that most Americans are carrying.

Current as of August 2015

U.S. household consumer debt profile:

• Average credit card debt: $15,706
• Average mortgage debt: $156,333
• Average student loan debt: $32,953

In total, American consumers owe:

• $11.85 trillion in debt
• An increase of 1.7% from last year
• $890.9 billion in credit card debt
• $8.17 trillion in mortgages
• $1.19 trillion in student loans
• An increase of 7.1% from last year

With student loans alone, over 11.5 percent of the $1.19 trillion owed is in default. That number is up slightly compared to the 10.9 percent default rate we saw last year around the same time.

Why is debt such a major obstacle to our economy? When people are paying hundreds of dollars in credit card and student loan payments they don't have the money to buy a new car, put a down-payment on a house or start a business.

While we currently have a national debt of $18.3 trillion which our federal government owes, the $11.85 trillion which we as Americans owe is more concerning. 60% of college seniors have credit cards leaving college, with most of them carrying a balance. This may require them to take jobs that offer a guaranteed paycheck such as in retail versus interning or doing volunteer work out of college.

Student loan debt has been increasing drastically over the last decade as the cost of attendance increases. The worse news is that it can have even longer lasting effects. A recent by Gallup showed that:

"College graduates who carry a high amount of student debt appear to face long-term challenges that stretch beyond just their finances. A new analysis of Americans who graduated college between 1990 and 2014 shows that graduates who took on the highest amounts of student debt, $50,000 or more, are less likely than their fellow graduates who did not borrow for college to be thriving in four of five elements of well-being: purpose, financial, community, and physical."

It is no wonder that individuals offering debt advice like Dave Ramsey are becoming so popular. With so many Americans carrying such a large load in debt, the burden is becoming too great. While many point to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, if we were to have a major crisis right now with mass layoffs it could cripple our economy for years to come. With the current amount of consumer debt there would be a major unavailability of consumer spending to pull us out of a crisis. With 70 percent of our economy reliant on consumer purchases that could be devastating. 

Fact Check: 'Illegal Alien Facts'

I've run across this picture posted on Facebook a half dozen times now, and I wanted to do a little research to fact check it's claims. Many Americans have the impression that most illegal immigrants are here just to live off our welfare system. So I wanted to check, are these "facts" true?

The first fact claims that more than 43% of all food stamps are given to illegals. According to estimates by Pew Research Center, there are currently 11.3 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., which has stabilized after decades of massive growth. According to the Department of Agriculture, 46.5 million Americans are on food stamps. Right there we can easily see that the first claim cannot possibly be true. Mathematically there aren't enough illegal immigrants in the U.S. to equal 43% of food stamp users.

On the claim that 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angelos are for illegal immigrants, several groups have fact checked this claim and found it to be only half true. Illegal immigrants are more likely to flee jurisdiction before being arrested, so warrants would remain open indefinitely but we don't have accurate statistics on what the most recent data is.

The next claim is that less than 2 percent of illegals are picking crops, but 41 percent are on welfare. Politifact found this claim to be mostly false. While only 2 percent of illegals are involved in picking crops according to a 2007 report, it is far from reasonable to even consider that as many as 41% are on welfare. Politifact continues:

"According to a 2007 report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors stricter immigration laws, 40 percent of illegal immigrant-headed households used any "major welfare" program in the previous calendar year.
   
But it’s important to keep two bits of context in mind:
   
• This statistic addresses households headed by an illegal immigrant. However, many of these households include American citizens within the family, often children who were born in the United States and who received citizenship at birth. Indeed, given the web of restrictions on the granting of government benefits to illegal immigrants, most of the "welfare" benefits being counted in the CIS table are going to citizen children, not to adult illegal immigrants.
   
• We suspect that when many people hear the term "welfare," they think of cash benefits. However, very little cash assistance is going to illegal immigrants. According to CIS, less than 1 percent of illegal-immigrant-headed households included anyone receiving direct government cash assistance, such as Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or state-run cash aid. This is not surprising: Illegal immigrants are generally barred from receiving such payments.
   
Instead, 27 percent of such households received coverage from Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, while 33 percent received food assistance, such as free or reduced-price school lunches, food stamps, or benefits from the Women-Infants-Children program (WIC). As noted earlier, many of the recipients of these programs were actually citizen children of illegal immigrants."

The next claim is that 2/3 of all births in California are to illegals on Medi-Cal. This was found to be a false skewing of data which focused just on Los Angelos and included all births to hispanics.

Number five says that nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties in U.S. are illegals. Politifact found that "The closest but unverified estimate we could find for illegal occupants in HUD housing is less than 1 percent nationwide. The claim of 60 percent is ridiculously false."

Next we look at whether more than 39% of California students grades 1-12 are illegals. A Center for Immigration Studies report (2011) gives the percentage of school age “illegal and U.S. born children of illegals” in California as 14%. The math on this one just does not add up, and is rated false.

The post claims 75% of LA’s Most Wanted are illegals. According to the LA Times (to which many of these facts were first falsely attributed), the LAPD, states this is simply not true.

More than half of all gang members are illegals. This one seems to come from a 2008 study funded by the Justice Department. The Center for Immigration Studies found that 25 to 50 percent of gang members arrested in northern and western Virginia were removable, and usually illegal aliens. We simply do not have the data available to determine the validity of this claim. However since there are around 1.4 million gang members in the U.S, it seems unlikely that the claim would hold up nationwide.

US companies using illegals in 2005 profited over 2.36 trillion dollars. The total U.S. economic output in 2014 was just over 17 trillion dollars. While illegals do make up 5.1% of the U.S. labor force, it seems unlikely that they would drive that much economic growth. Legally however, companies are required to check to see if their workers are here legally.

US Taxpayers are footing the bill for ALL illegals. Currently 43% of all Americans aren't paying federal taxes, but all of us (illegals included) are paying taxes. We all pay sales tax, and if we own property we pay property tax, (even if we're renting, our landlords pay property tax). I'm sure many illegal immigrants would love to be here legally and wouldn't mind paying back taxes just to have that right.

Overall this internet meme is rated false. Some of the claims have half truths. Others were flat-out lies. If you see your friends post this meme, please refer them to this article.

Are We Headed for Another Recession?

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average(DOW) plummeted more than 1,000 points Monday morning. This fall in the stock market affected millions of Americans’ retirement plans, and many had fears of a recession returning. While stocks regained some of their lost ground by Monday afternoon, continued uncertainty over the global economy could have further impact.

The DOW is an indicator of U.S. industrial strength. It is one of the most watched stock indexes in the world, containing many massive companies like General Electric, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Exxon.

This all started with concerns over slowing growth in China's economy. China is the world's second-biggest economy. For two decades the country has seen explosive growth which has been the engine for the global economy. Their government is deep in debt from massive infrastructure growth. The country’s national debt rose from $7 trillion in 2007 to $28 trillion by mid-2014.

As their economy slows, their need for materials from other countries slows, and the effects can be felt world wide. There are many concerns that this could lead to a recession. A recession is considered two quarters of negative economic growth in a row. Historically we have seen a recession about once every five years since World War II. This window of time has lengthened, though, in the past couple of decades as times of growth have lasted longer due to the strengthened ability for the global economy to take a hit.

So are we now headed into the next recession? Well that depends on who you listen to. Most analysts are referring to the recent dip in the stock market as a market correction. Many people believe that the stock market's prices were inflated, meaning they cost more than they were actually worth, and that a correction like we saw yesterday was very necessary for the long term stability and strength of the stock market.

Some however look at the news coming from China as another signal of a stagnating economy that may fall back into a recession. In the U.S. wages have stagnated for years, and there are concerns over the direction of the future of the economy.

The reason most analysts aren't concerned over a major economic downturn is that the U.S. Economy has been gaining strength, especially in the energy sector where the U.S. has recently become the top oil and natural gas producer in the world.

Others point to new innovation with companies like Apple and Tesla to fuel new economic growth in the U.S. The bottom line is, though the market dipped, the economy is most likely not heading for a recession this year.

Hillary Clinton Email Scandal: What Is it and Why Does it Matter?

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In March of this year Hillary’s use of a nongovernmental email setup was revealed to the public by the New York Times in a report that has prompted a major controversy that still hangs over her presidential campaign, and will for the foreseeable future. Some are calling for a full scale investigation and charges to be brought, while others think it's no big deal.

So what became of the emails in question? After a request from the State Department (which came nearly two years after she had left office) Clinton turned over more than 30,000 messages to the agency that she and her team deemed to be possibly work-related that were on a private server she had used for official State Department business. Clinton and her staff also destroyed 31,830 messages that they decided were "personal." The private server was then wiped clean, and after two months of requests was finally turned over to the Justice Department for analysis.

When asked about whether she knowingly wiped the server Clinton responded by saying "“I don’t know, I have no idea,” she said. “Like with a cloth or something?"

The real controversy is whether or not her private server was used to store classified documents, which is a federal crime. This is laid out in 18 USC 1924 — that “whoever . . . becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.”

We now know that many of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails would automatically have entered the world with “classified” status. So far at least 30 email threads since 2009 immediately deserve that designation based on the context in which they were written, according to a report by Reuters.

The reason why using a private server is such a massive concern is because of the lengths that the government goes to to protect classified documents. If it was ever found that her server was compromised, then that could have meant a massive leak of classified information on diplomatic negotiations and national security issues.

The FBI began it's investigation into the matter in July, after the inspector general expressed concerns over whether information had been compromised. The probe is in the beginning stages and is focused on ensuring the proper handling of classified material.

As it concerns her candidacy for presidency, there will be questions of whether a person who already has allegedly mishandled classified information should be granted authority over the armed forces and all intelligence agencies as commander in chief.

Hilarious! Bad Lip Reading Does the Republican National Debate

If you missed the first Republican debate, bad lip reading has you covered. The national debate hosted 10 candidates including current front runner Donald Trump. Bad lip reading spoofs the debate in a fantastic way. From Trump to Huckabee to a round of songs for each candidate you don't want to miss this.

The Donald Trump Immigration Plan Would Never Work and Here's Why

Since Donald Trump's announcement that he was running for president, he has been pounding his plan to fix illegal immigration. As part of his plan, he announced that he would build a fence to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexico. (even if the vast majority of illegal immigrants are not from Mexico, and the population of illegals has stayed the same over the last five years around 11 million)

His big plan includes building a wall at the U.S. border and deport those who are here illegally. This sounds simple enough right? He claims he will force Mexico to pay for the wall. How exactly?

According to his website: "Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards – of which we issue about 1 million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico [Tariffs and foreign aid cuts are also options].  We will not be taken advantage of anymore."

Apparently Donald Trump is under the impression he can just pass whatever rules he wants and that nothing will happen. Let's play along though and say that he does get the increase in fees in order to pay for the $6 billion wall he wants to put in place. Does he imagine if we implement increases in fees that they won't increase theirs or put the costs back to us in goods that come here? Does he imagine if he were to put tariffs on Mexican goods the WTO wouldn't slap us with a massive fine of billions of dollars for doing so? He also says he wouldn't build it until after illegal immigrants were deported.

Does he not think that such actions would have massive affects that would ripple across the U.S. economy, leading possibly to another recession? But Congress as lazy as they are would never agree to this to begin with, so it is unlikely that would happen.

Next he imagines somehow that he would be able to deport millions of illegals living in the U.S, even ones who have only really ever known this country as their home and have no family or friends in other countries, and might not even speak the language. He imagines that somehow he'd be able to do this in 2 years. He seems to think he is a king and can ignore the bill of rights, the fact that he doesn't have the authority to fund any of this as president, and it would be very unlikely that Congress would pass a bill funding the mass deportation of immigrants.

Even if he got past the governors in states that are friendly to illegals, and gets permission from Congress, the cost to deport that many people has been estimated between $140 and $200 billion. We would also probably need an additional $2-3 billion a year for enforcement as well including all administrative costs, repairs, additional security measures etc.

The economic toll would be massive, leaving businesses without workers, shutting down many small businesses owned by illegals, leaving millions of property managers without tenants, we would see increased food prices with fewer workers in the fields etc. This would cost our economy billions of dollars in lost profits.

On food alone, the cost could be staggering according to The Hill: "From the perspective of National Milk Producers Federation in 2009, retail milk prices would increase by 61 percent if its immigrant labor force were to be eliminated...In terms of overall numbers, The Department of Labor reports that of the 2.5 million farm workers in the U.S., over half (53 percent) are illegal immigrants. Growers and labor unions put this figure at 70 percent. "

In 2006 over five hundred economists (including five Nobel laureates) sent a letter to then President George W. Buh which stated the following:  “While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices.”

Some estimates of total cost to the GDP place the decrease at $1.6 trillion. Meanwhile the gang of eight bill, which Trump has criticized so heavily would have secured the border, implemented e-verify and put into place a plan for illegal immigrants to stay here and work toward a path to citizenship. The CBO estimated that this plan would cut the deficit by over $190 billion dollars, even after counting the cost of the added security along the border.

Trump also ignores that border security has already been beefed up, and the amount of illegals coming in has already significantly dropped because of the difficulty in crossing. The gang of eight bill realized that we needed more than just a fence, and implemented drones, electronic surveillance and significantly increased numbers of ground security. Building a fence or wall isn't going to guarantee no one comes, yes we need to secure the border but it needs to be done in a way that makes sense, not one that just sounds good in a soundbite.

We do need to work towards fixing our immigration issues, but we need to do this in a way that helps our economy and strengthens our nation. Diving into more massive debt and devastating our economy is not a smart method to protecting our national interests. While Trump may be a smart businessman, he obviously doesn't understand the complexity of the U.S. economy.

After Megyn Kelly Comments It's Time to Dump Trump

Many Americans are tired about not getting a straight answer out of politicians, and often this has come because of the media's willingness to twist and turn every statement. Americans want straight talk and simple answers, because often they don't want to spend the time themselves researching the entire issue. Because of this we have entered into an age of blunt celebrities who have ditched basic common decency in the name of doing away with political correctness.

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Famous celebrity turned politician Donald Trump's feud with Megyn Kelly escalated over the weekend when he said the Fox News host had "blood coming out of her wherever" at this week's Republican debate, resulting in swift condemnation from conservatives and a major political event pulling its invitation to him.


This all started during Thursday's presidential debate, Kelly asked Trump a question "Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women.
You've called women you don't like "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals."
Trump responded with " Only Rosie O'Donnell."

Kelly responded to that it was not only Rosie O'Donnell, and that his comments about women had been about several people on twitter. "Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women's looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?"

Trump's response: "I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.
I've been challenged by so many people, and I don't frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don't win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.

And frankly, what I say, and oftentimes it's fun, it's kidding. We have a good time. What I say is what I say. And honestly Megyn, if you don't like it, I'm sorry. I've been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me. But I wouldn't do that.


But you know what, we -- we need strength, we need energy, we need quickness and we need brain in this country to turn it around. That, I can tell you right now."

So after literally just saying he wouldn't do that, he spent the next few hours on twitter attacking her.
That wasn't enough though, he went on CNN the next day and said:
"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes," and continued that she had "Blood coming out of her wherever."

Trump is not backing down from his statements and is even asking for Megyn Kelly for an apology.

There is a difference between not being politically correct and not having basic decency. Calling someone a bimbo because they asked you tough questions and implying they were menstruating is shameful. I would be absolutely ashamed if he were the nominee for the Republican party. My grandfather and father knew better than to talk about a woman like that, and so will my sons someday.

Now if this were his only instance or issue where he has done something that was uncalled for, untrue or disgraceful, that might be one thing, but from the moment he decided to run for president he has made disparaging remarks about individuals within our nation. During his announcement speech he said: "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

He repeated this during the debate and the claim that the Mexican government is sending the worst ones here has been debunked multiple times.

Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln and Reagan would never have made any of these statements, and especially would never have spoken about women that way. Why should we seriously be considering a such presidential candidate to place into their ranks?

This isn't a contest to see who can be the loudest and most outrageous person. We are working to elect the leader of our nation. This man will be the leader of our armed forces. He will be our chief diplomat in foreign affairs. We need someone who has experience bringing people together rather than another leader who will drive people apart. 

Does he think Iran will go easy on him? Surely Russia and North Korea won't. If he thinks this was a tough line of questioning he will love the press corps. This is not a place for amateurs, and Donald Trump is an amateur. What experience does he have accomplishing anything without a contractual obligation or monetary incentive. We can't have a president throwing a tantrum on twitter when something doesn't go his way.


People are angry that Washington isn't working, and they keep asking why this is. Part of the answer I have for them is that Washington was never meant to work quickly. Obamacare was passed quickly, the Constitution was not. Each great legislative achievement we have seen in our country has been the result of compromise from seasoned legislators.

Trump may have struck a chord, but he is not the answer to our problems. Again I ask the question Megyn Kelly did: Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?  After his comments about Megyn Kelly, it's clear it's a time to dump Trump.