President Obama, his immediate aides and his cabinet secretaries have used taxpayer dollars to woo young voters at more than 130 universities and schools between March 2011 and March 2012, according to a survey of news reports and press releases reviewed by The Daily Caller.

Obama won 66 percent of the youth vote in 2008, while Republican Sen. John McCain got only 32 percent. Since then, youth enthusiasm for Obama has declined, partly because of high unemployment: More than 50 percent of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed.

Less than 35 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old cohort say they’re likely to vote in 2012, according to an April 26 report by Gallup, which also showed Obama leading Romney in that age group by a 64-29 margin.

Roughly one-third of the visits were to swing states, including Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado and Florida.

The number of swing-state visits was matched by visits to universities and schools in blue states, including California, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts. Still, many students in blue-state universities can vote in other states.

Obama personally visited 27 colleges and high schools while trying to boost support and enthusiasm among younger voters. He used Air Force One to visit three more universities this week, spurring charges that he’s using taxpayer-funded flights to subsidize his 2012 campaign.

The first lady, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill visited another 26 education centers during the year. Top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett visited seven centers, and his cabinet secretaries flew or drove to 73 more.

CONTINUED at The Daily Caller.

Here’s what we do know about student loan debt: it’s roughly $1 trillion in size, greater than either auto or credit-card debt and second only to mortgage debt in the U.S.

Borrowers in their 30s today owe $28,500, on average. The debt burden has soared just as — and partly because — the recession hit, so younger graduates carrying the highest balances are hit with the double whammy of aweak job market (that still isn’t showing any sign of rapid improvement).

And this all comes as globalization and technological change have upended once-reliable career paths, wiped out many mid-level professional jobs and leave low-paying fields in health, food and beverage services, and retail as among the fastest growing job markets over the next decade.

Oh, and consider that student loan debt remains one of the most difficult types to forgive or discharge in bankruptcy, in part because the federal government (i.e. taxpayers) made or guaranteed 80 percent of all outstanding student loan debt as of last year. And finally, that once loans in deferral or forbearance are excluded, the delinquency rate on student loan debt was an estimated 27 percent as of the third quarter of 2011, according to a study by the New York Fed.

Worried? Americans should be.

Still, acknowledging the problem is perhaps the easiest step. Much more difficult is the question of what to do about it. Not surprisingly, young, heavily indebted grads are calling for forgiveness in full or in part of their student loan burdens. Petitions on advocacy website Change.org include calls for federal student loan interest rates to be capped at 3 percent or eliminated altogether. (Indeed, President Obama is currently among those urging Congress not to allow the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford loans, which are aimed at low — and middle-class borrowers, to double to 6.8 percent on July 1, matching the rate for unsubsidized loans.)

And yet the trouble with those initiatives, or with forgiving student loan debt in whole or part, is threefold. For starters, the straight mathematics: the losses from any such debt reduction scheme will have to be borne by someone, most likely taxpayers, at a time when government finances are already stretched.

Second is the issue of “moral hazard,” that is, rewarding and implicitly encouraging imprudent behavior rather than punishing it. (Of course, it is easier for the public at large to demand that over-leveraged banks be punished for imprudence than 24-year-olds trying to further their education.)

And third is the question of how to keep future graduates from accumulating a mountain of student loan debt just as large, if not larger, than the one just leveled.

It is this third issue which perhaps is most pressing — and most vexing —and which also offers the most opportunity for innovation. Levying an “education tax,” making college free and assigning students to institutions based on a lottery system? Abolishing “college” altogether for more specialized trade institutions instead, while at the same time requiring a “gap year” of liberal arts prior to entry? Offering high-school grads the choice between student loans or business loans to fund new ventures? These all seem ridiculous, but then so too is our current state of affairs.

This, in fact, is why it may be far less costly for taxpayers in the long run to forgive as much of the current student-loan burden as possible. Before doing anything like that, however, there must be systematic reform to ensure debt loads simply won’t start to pile up again. (Not to mention the need for repercussions for those borrowers who most benefit from any such initiative, for the sake of fairness.) That is why the need for innovation or overhaul is so pressing.Our current system, in fact, has so failed that it may now be exacerbating income inequality (by saddling low-income students with high loan balances and shaky job prospects), economic malaise (by keeping would-be homebuyers stuck in costly rentals because of already high debt loans and/or poor credit histories, thereby damaging both the housing market and potential consumer spending), and long-term economic vitality (by hampering household and family unit formations with a higher share of 20- and 30-somethings currently stuck at home with mom and dad).

One thing is certain: if we do nothing to alter the status quo, we will have no one to blame but ourselves for the bleak outcome.

Source: CNBC.

The environmental agenda has been infected by extremism—it’s become an economic suicide pact. And we’re here to challenge it. On Earth Day, visit http://freemarketamerica.org/

If I Wanted America to Fail.

FEE’s Founder, Leonard E. Read, circa 1978, on How to Advance Liberty.

Learn more about the Foundation for Economic Education athttp://www.fee.org

Everyday the SBA’s Office of Advocacy receives hundreds and hundreds of emails and phone calls by individuals who want to start their own small business.

The Office of Advocacy defines a small business for research purposes as an independent business having fewer than 500 employees. Firms wishing to be designated small businesses for government programs such as contracting must meet size standards specified by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Size Standards. These standards vary by industry–seewww.sba.gov/size.

Here are some of the most common questions the Office receives everyday along with their responses.

How important are small businesses to the U.S. economy?

Small firms:

• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms. Yes, it is a fact.

• Employ just over half of all private sector employees.

• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll. Small biz is a machine.

• Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years. o  Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).

• Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).

• Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.

• Made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 30.2 percent of the known export value in FY 2007.

• Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census and International Trade Admin.; Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe, 2007 (www. sba.gov/advo/research/rs299tot.pdf) and CHI Research, 2003 (www.sba. gov/advo/research/rs225tot.pdf); U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

CONTINUED at Small Business Opportunities.

Are you a liberal? If so, Dr. Stephen Davies provides a few compelling reasons to consider libertarianism. For instance, both liberals and libertarians want to eliminate poverty and offer more opportunities to the population at large. Liberals and libertarians also emphasize the importance of freedom and human well-being. From a libertarian perspective, government is not the answer to these problems. In fact, libertarians view concentrated political power as the single largest threat to individual liberty. They also see wealth as a liberating force, creating more choices and opportunities for all people.

Want to advance liberty?: http://lrnlbty.co/ABw93P

In his lecture at George Washington University on March 20, 2012, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that under a gold standard the authorities’ ability to address economic conditions is significantly curtailed. The Fed chairman holds that the gold standard prevents the central bank from engaging in policies aimed at stabilizing the economy after sudden shocks. This in turn, holds the Fed chairman, could lead to severe economic upheavals. According to Bernanke,

Since the gold standard determines the money supply, there’s not much scope for the central bank to use monetary policy to stabilize the economy.… Because you had a gold standard which tied the money supply to gold, there was no flexibility for the central bank to lower interest rates in recession or raise interest rates in an inflation.

This is precisely why the gold standard is so good: it prevents the authorities from engaging in reckless money pumping of the sort Bernanke has been engaging in since the end of 2007 by pushing over $2 trillion in new money into the banking system.

The Federal Reserve balance sheet jumped from $0.889 trillion in December 2007 to $2.247 trillion in December 2008. The yearly rate of growth of the balance sheet climbed from 2.6 percent in December 2007 to 152.8 percent by December 2008. Additionally the Fed has aggressively lowered the federal-funds rate target from 5.25 percent in August 2007 to almost nil by December 2008.

Consequently the yearly rate of growth of the AMS measure[3] of the US money supply climbed from 1.5 percent in April 2008 to 14.3 percent by August 2009.

CONTINUED at the Ludwig vin Mises Institute. Written by Frank Shostak.

With the Senate poised to consider comprehensive “cybersecurity” legislation this month, a bevy of questions need answers. Although it is difficult to secure computers, networks, and data, are government spending and regulation the answer? Are the cybersecurity threats touted in Washington real or trumped up? Should legal protections for privacy and other values give way in the name of “information sharing” with the Department of Homeland Security?

Recorded 10 March 2012 at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. Featuring Peter Klein, Joe Salerno, David Gordon, Shawn Ritenour, Guido Hulsmann, and Jeffrey Herbener. Includes a Question and Answer period.

What do you do when an entire nation begins to lose the capacity to think rationally?  Many Americans spend a great deal of time criticizing the government, and there is certainly a lot to complain about, but it is not just the government that is the problem.  All over America, people appear to be going insane.  It is almost as if we have been cursed with stupidity.  Sadly, this applies from the very top of our society all the way down to the very bottom.  A lot of us find ourselves asking the following question much more frequently these days: “How could they be so stupid?”  Unfortunately, we are witnessing a complete collapse of common sense all over America.  Many people seem to believe that if we could just get Obama out of office or if we could just reform our economic system that our problems as a nation would be solved, but that is simply not true.  Our problems run much deeper than that.  The societal decay that is plaguing our country is very deep and it is everywhere.  We are a nation that is full of people that do not care about others and that just want to do what is right in their own eyes.  We hold ourselves out to the rest of the world as “the greatest nation on earth” and an example that everyone else should follow, and yet our own house is rotting all around us.  The words “crazy”, “insane” and “deluded” are not nearly strong enough to describe our frame of mind as a country.  America has become a sad, delusional old man that can’t even think straight anymore.  The evidence of our mental illness is everywhere.

The following are 20 signs that we are witnessing the complete collapse of common sense in America….

#1 According to Wired Magazine, FBI agents have been taught that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they pursue criminals and terrorists.  But when they break the law they become criminals themselves.

#2 A TSA manager (not just an agent) at Dulles International Airport was recently discovered to be running a prostitution ring out of a local hotel room.  TSA agents have been charged with crime after crime after crime and yet we continue to allow them to be in charge of airport security.

#3 CBS News is reporting that approximately 200 pieces of luggage a day are being stolen by employees at John F. Kennedy International Airport and authorities still have not been able to stop it.

#4 Visitors to the United States must now pay $14 to complete an online form that asks them a series of really bizarre questions.  For example, one of the questions asks visitors to the U.S. if they ever “collaborated with the Nazis”.

#5 The U.S. military is buying huge amounts of electronic parts from China (mistake number one) and a government investigation has uncovered the fact that a large percentage of these parts are counterfeit.  Yet the U.S.military continues to buy huge amounts of electronic parts from China (mistake number two).

#6 A high school senior in Indiana was recently expelled from school for cussing on Twitter.

#7 Police in Chicago apparently believe that our “First Amendment rights can be terminated” at their discretion.

#8 Americans are becoming very cruel to one another.  This is especially true when it comes to the weak and the elderly.  For example, two “caregivers” down in Georgia were recently charged with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman that had been entrusted to their care….

Police charge two caregivers at a Jonesboro facility with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman.

Clayton County police said Jermeller Steed and Cicely Reed held down Anna Foley after an argument that started over ice cream.

#9 An increasing number of American families are taking out student loansin order to pay for their children’s kindergarten tuition.

#10 One town in Massachusetts plans to distribute free condoms to children as young as 12 years of age.

#11 Children in America are exposed to enormous amounts of sexual material on television these days, but we are always so shocked when they try to act out on it.  The following is one very disturbing example that happened recently in Ohio….

Authorities in southwest Ohio have charged a 13-year-old boy with raping a 5-year-old girl at a McDonald’s play area.

The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that the alleged assault occurred Oct. 29 at a McDonald’s in the Cincinnati suburb of Anderson Township. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Barnett says the girl’s grandmother was nearby in the restaurant at the time.

#12 The following is another example from Indiana of how our sexualized society is affecting our young children….

Fishers police said an 8-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy were caught in a sexual act on a school bus.

The girl’s parents are now trying to determine if the February incident was a rape or molestation.

In a statement, police said a bus aid caught the girl and the boy “trying to have intercourse,” and that the “bus aid immediately separated the juveniles and informed the bus driver.”

#13 According to Natural News, the Michigan state government intends to raid private farms and kill pigs that have “the wrong hair color” even though some of these farmers have been raising these pigs for decades.

#14 An executive order recently updated by the Obama administrationwould give the federal government complete control over all food, all energy, all health resources, all transportation resources and “all other materials, services, and facilities” at the discretion of Barack Obama.  The wording of the executive order has been changed so that this can now be done even in “non-emergency” situations.  Very few Americans seem concerned by this.

#15 These days many Americans are very hesitant to get involved with helping out anyone else.  For example, an 86-year-old World War II veteran living near Detroit was recently brutally carjacked in broad daylight at a gas station.  He could not walk after the attack because his leg was shattered so he began to crawl across the concrete pavement to get help.  Sadly, many people walked past and drove past as if he was not even there.

#16 At one airport in Hawaii, TSA agents recently required one new mother to go to a public restroom and fill up the empty baby bottles she was carrying with her own breast milk before they would allow her to get on to her flight.  The following is how one local news station described the incident….

She claims agents told her she couldn’t take the pump on the plane because the bottles in her carry-on were empty.

“I asked him if there was a private place I could pump and he said no, you can go in the women’s bathroom. I had to stand in front of the mirrors and the sinks and pump my breast in front of every tourist that walked into that bathroom. I was embarrassed and humiliated and then angry that I was treated this way.

When the bottles were full, she was allowed back on the plane.

#17 Massive brawls have been erupting at Chuck E. Cheese restaurants all over the nation.  Police responded to violence at one particular Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Pennsylvania 17 times in just one recent 18 month time period.

#18 Thieves in New Jersey have become so desperate for scrap metal that they have started breaking into churches and ripping the copper piping right out of the walls.

#19 Tide detergent has become an alternative form of currency on the streets of America and there has been an epidemic of Tide thefts all over the nation.  The following is from a recent article in The Daily….

Theft of Tide detergent has become so rampant that authorities from New York to Oregon are keeping tabs on the soap spree, and some cities are setting up special task forces to stop it. And retailers like CVS are taking special security precautions to lock down the liquid. 

One Tide taker in West St. Paul, Minn., made off with $25,000 in the product over 15 months before he was busted last year.

“That was unique that he stole so much soap,” said West St. Paul Police Chief Bud Shaver. “The name brand is [all] Tide. Amazing, huh?”

Tide has become a form of currency on the streets. The retail price is steadily high — roughly $10 to $20 a bottle — and it’s a staple in households across socioeconomic classes.

#20 New federal rules will severely restrict the kind of work that children can do on farms in America.  Kids will be banned from doing many of the most basic kinds of farm chores under the new regulations.  Perhaps the children can just sit inside and watch television while the adults do all the work.

As mentioned earlier, what America is experiencing is not just an economiccollapse.  The truth is that our entire society is collapsing.

For many years our great prosperity masked much of our decline, but now our great economic strength is rapidly fading and it is becoming very difficult to deny how far we have fallen as a nation.

You can find more examples of how American society is decaying right here andright here.  Anyone with half a brain can see what is happening to the United States.  It really is sad, because America was once a truly great nation.

So is there any hope of a recovery?

Not if we keep going down the same path.

In the end, the choice is up to you America.

Source: The Economic Collapse.