by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon

For the past several months I have been using the word "depression" to describe the current economic conditions in the United States. I am not alone in stating that the United States is now in the midst of an economic depression. Economists are now starting to come to the obvious conclusion that we are in a depression and, that from an economic standpoint, things are getting worse and not better.

In an August 24th CNBC article titled, Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession: Rosenberg; Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg was quoted as saying, "Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930s-style Depression".

This article also observed that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have slashed 2010 GDP projections to the 1.5% to 2% range.

We also know that the U.S. housing market is collapsing with home sales for July 2010 falling to their lowest level since 1995. According to the National Association of Realtors, "Sales of existing homes in July tumbled 27.2% from June levels and were off by 25.5% from July 2009".

The Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress have made a bad economic situation worse. Democrats at the Federal, State and local levels of government are destroying the United States. The sooner that all Americans recognize this fact and use the political-legal process to purge all government entities of this cancererous political party and their corrupt allies, the sooner we will be able to start healing the United States.

by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon

Bankruptcy filings in the United States have reached their highest level since 2005. This, according to an August 17, 2010 Reuters article titled, US Says Bankruptcies Reach Nearly 5-Year High. According to this article:

"For the year ended June 30, there were 1.57 million bankruptcies, up 20 percent from 1.31 million a year earlier. Consumer bankruptcies rose 21 percent to 1.51 million, and business bankruptcies rose 9 percent to 59,608. Quarterly (bankruptcy) filings surpassed 400,000 for the first time since a record 667,431 bankruptcies were begun in the fourth quarter of 2005..................."

In my August 11, 2010 Beacon article titled, THE UNITED STATES IS BANKRUPT, I observed that, "In his August 10, 2010 article, Professor Kotlikoff goes on to say, Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices".

For the 1.51 million consumers who filed for bankruptcy during the past year, there is not much to be happy or hopeful about. The type of "hope" preached by Obama is a cruel type of false hope that soothes the masses for the moment but does not feed the hungry or house the homeless. The failed economic programs of Obama and the Democrats have helped influential Democrats and the limousene liberals who prop them up. However, these programs have done little to help America's growing number of poor, hungry, and homeless citizens.  

How many more Americans have to go bankrupt, watch their hungry, sometimes homless children's dreams disappear and suffer the indignities of poverty before American voters wake up and change the course of our nation by electing new leaders who will do that which is necessary to reverse the painful mistakes inflicted on the United States by Obama and the Democrats?

by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon

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The FED buying more government debt to prop up the failed U.S. economy is like a person  running up debt on one credit card to pay down the debt on another credit card.

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On July 6, 2010, I wrote an article titled, WE ARE IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY. WHAT WILL YOU DO TODAY TO CHANGE AMERICA? In that article, I observed, "From an economic standpoint, California and the United States are doomed".

Today, I was reading an interesting article titled, U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It by Laurence Kotlikoff who is an economics professor at Boston University. In his article, Mr. Kotlikoff states:

"...........you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: 'The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.' It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.' "

In his August 10, 2010 article, Professor Kotlikoff goes on to say, "Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on.........................The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance."

Professor Kotlikoff's observation about a bankrupt U.S. economy is echoed in an August 11, 2010 article titled, "America is 'Bankrupt Mickey Mouse Economy" in which Jochen Wermuth, the Managing Partner at Wermuth Asset Management observed, "America today looks like Russia in 1998. Consumers, companies and the government are all highly indebted. America as a result is a bankrupt Mickey Mouse economy....." Wermuth made these comments after Federal Reserve Bank (FED) officials said they would buy more government debt. The FED buying more government debt to prop up the failed U.S. economy is like a person  running up debt on one credit card to pay down the debt on another credit card.

The Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress have destroyed the U.S. economy by building on the mistakes of the Bush Administration and burying the United States under a mountain of debt that will never be paid off and will only grow larger as the interest on the debt grows along with the increased government spending that is adding to the debt.

Most Americans continue to engage in the same delusional process of continuing to elect the same destructive, corrupt politicians to Federal, state and local political office thinking things will change. Things will only continue to get worse as long as we keep electing the same corrupt, morally bankrupt individuals to political office.

We have sowed the seeds of our country's economic destruction by refusing to recognize that the same morally and intellectually bankrupt people who we elect to political office, at all levels of government, will continue with their fraud, corruption and malfeasance that is destroying our nation as long as we allow them to do so.

With the proverbial walls of our nation crumbling into dust, how can Americans not recognize that the moral and economic fabric of our nation is being shredded by elected leaders, at all levels of government, who are morally unfit to serve our nation and their communities and who support economic policies that are turning America into a cesspool of poverty?

How can America's voters be so afraid to fundamentally change our Federal, state and local government's policies and direction when the status quo is destroying and bankrupting our nation?

by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon

As expected, the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD) Board of Trustees voted to put a $186,000,000 bond measure on the November 2010 Election ballot to pay for the fiscal mismanagment that plagues the SMUHSD.

This $186 million SMUHSD bond measure follows the $137.5 million SMUHSD Measure D bond measure that was approved in 2000. This $186 million SMUHSD bond Measure follows the $298 SMUHSD Measure M bond measure that was approved in 2006.

Property taxes for those unfortunate enough to live within the taxing jurisdiction of the failing SMUHSD will be increased to pay for this suffocating amount of bond debt. This bond tax will also result in increased rents when  landlords pass on the cost of the higher taxes resulting from this outrageous amount of bond debt to their renters.

Our economy is now in the midst of a depression. Most responsible people are trying to reduce the amount of debt they owe. However, the destructive and dangerously deluded SMUHSD Board of Trustees overseeing the unioned up SMUHSD are burying taxpayers in more debt to pay for their ongoing fiscal mismanagement of the SMUHSD and the unsupportable salaries, benefits and retirement plans of the overpaid, bloated school staffs and administrators that suck down approximately 80% of school budgets.

The SMUHSD is allegedly in the business of educating students. Yet, even with the hundreds of millions of dollars being  drained from taxpayers by the SMUHSD, the educations received by most students in the SMUHSD could be construed as being little more than preparations for failure in a competitive world where jobs are scarce. As I see it, for all but the most highly motivated and successful students at the very top of their class, a SMUHSD education has little or no practical value.

The SMUHSD proves that public education in its present form is a failed experiment that does not produce acceptable results. The failure of U.S. public elementary and high schools to turn out sufficient numbers of functional, moderately educated adults is part of the reason why the United States economy has been reduced to rubble and we must import talented engineers, scientists, doctors and other professionals from other countries with better educational system.

It is beyond ridiculous to continue pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the SMUHSD. In my opinion, the SMUHSD is little more than a job works program for overpaid SMUHSD employees and administrators who do a poor job educating most of the students who attend the SMUHSD. As I see it, the SMUHSD has also become an extension of the public welfare system paying for SMUHSD District retirees who continue to make increasing demands upon the SMUHSD for post retirement support. Do these people know what the words "get lost" mean?

It is time for taxpayers living in the SMUHSD to stop approving these outrageous SMUHSD bond measures. It is also time for California's voters to start creating elementary and high school education reform that will scale down and eventually eliminate California's overpriced, failing public education system and hand parents vouchers so they can give their children the chance they deserve to receive quality educations at private schools where the students and their educations come first.

As I see it, in private education systems teachers and administrators put their students first. In public education, it appears that teachers and administrators put their paychecks, benefit and retirement plans first.

Do public school teachers and administrators spend more time complaining, organizing demonstrations, playing politics and working on new schemes to gouge taxpayers for higher wages and benefits then teaching? Would this help explain why so many of  their students drop out before graduating from high school and can barely read, write or do basic math? Is the saddest part of this catastrophe that these public education "professionals" don't seem to really care because  for most of them the job is all about the paycheck and not their students who ultimately pay the painful price life exacts from poorly educated people?

by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon

To support the corruption, waste, mismanagement and possibly illegal activities taking place in the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD), the SMUHSD Board of Trustees is going to approve and add a punishing tax measure to the November 2010 Election Ballot.

As I see it, the longer we ignore these destructive individuals on the SMUHSD Board of Trustees, their union supporters and the mercenaries they have hired with taxpayer dollars to manipulate us into driving up our taxes the worse our lives will get. You can choose to fight this gang and their crew here and now by working to reject this destructive tax they will put on the November Election Ballot or you can sit by and let them continue destroying the economy of San Mateo County with higher taxes, more corruption, more deception and more mismanagement.

The time has come to take the necessary and legally appropriate action to put an end to the tax rape of San Mateo County taxpayers. As I see it, the SMUHSD Board of Trustees refuses to balance the SMUHSD budget by making the job, wage, benefit and retirement plan cuts necessary to balance the SMUHSD budget, waste and squander taxpayer money and see taxpayers as suckers who will support their neverending mismanagement of the SMUHSD.

The SMUHSD Board of Trustees will never stop asking for more taxes. In my opinion, The SMUHSD is a mismanaged money pit that has a proven record of wasting taxpayer money on mismanaged projects, giving greedy uinions almost everything they want and refusing to make the budget cuts necessary to live within their means.

Passing the unnecessary bond measure that the SMUHSD Board of Trustees will put on the November 2010 Election Ballot will destroy many families in San Mateo County who are already overburdened with high mortgage payments and rents. This destructive tax measure will also lead to more waste and more mismanagment as the union shills on the SMUHSD Board of Trustees pay off the union bosses who help elect them by increase union salaries, wages and benefits and creating an even higher overhead for the SMUHSD that is not sustainable.

If you do not fight this destructive  tax, and it passes, then you will only have yourself to blame when you are priced out of living in San Mateo County.