Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

The federal income tax filing deadline looms Monday, prompting a look at just how the government is spending all of our tax dollars.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of the Fiscal Service, for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2023, is both informative and scary.

According to the fiscal services people, the leading claim on tax dollars is Social Security, at .22 of every dollar.

Medicare, also largely an expense for the aging, is in a tie for second place at .14 of each tax dollar. The other category coming in at 14 cents per dollar is a catch-all labeled health. Mostly, that is federal money funneled to states to support Medicaid, which is medical care for low income people – increasingly illegal immigrants!

So, between Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, we’re up to about half of every tax dollar being spent.

Much-maligned national defense comes in at 13 percent, along with another vague category entitled “income security.” And that “income security” would include, according to the story, such things as unemployment compensation, nutrition assistance and housing assistance.

By now, if you’ve been paying attention you probably have some questions, just as I do.

Workers have Social Security tax collected from their paychecks and their employers pay a matching amount. Supposedly, the money is invested in special treasury bonds, which pay interest. In effect this is the government lending out retirement funds to itself.

Is that 22 cents of annual cost out of each tax dollar to fund Social Security above and beyond all the revenue collected?

This is a significant point because as recently as March of this year the government issued a financial report putting unfunded future obligations to pay Social Security and Medicare at $73.2 trillion. That’s money that must be borrowed and you wonder why the programs have been allowed to fall so far into arrears.

Similarly contradictory is the income security category. Employees and employers pay into unemployment funds. If those contributions are even close to paying the bills, apparently they are overwhelmed by handouts such as Section 8 housing vouchers and SNAP food programs. Flooding the country with illegal immigrants only worsens this problem, too.

Denver just reported it won’t be filling job vacancies and otherwise failing to deliver accustomed services in order to have money to divert to funding illegal immigrants.

There was a boob who once wrote a vanity column for the local paper. Call her Sister Moonbeam. She cobbled up a figure of illegal immigrants paying billions of dollars in taxes and so deserving benefits.

Like most of her ilk, she was short on details, such as how exactly she documented that figure since illegals, by definition, are operating under the radar and won’t have things such as Social Security cards, won’t be on the record of employers’ books, and won’t file tax returns.

Illegals are a large, and growing, expense for a nation already living too far beyond its means. If this country were an individual it already would be in bankruptcy proceedings.

The report of how tax dollars are spent measures interest expense at .11 of each tax dollar, but doesn’t note that we are borrowing an ever increasing amount of money to fund federal spending and that figure only stands to increase.

The Bipartisan Policy Center reports the federal deficit for the month of March was $236 billion. So far in the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2023, our cumulative federal budget deficit is $1.1 trillion.

We’re in a financial hole as a nation that we never can escape, short of hyperinflating the money so the debts can be repaid in virtually worthless dollars. And every day, we dig the hole that much deeper.

Pay your taxes with a smile. Remember, Uncle Sam desperately needs the money and there are millions of illegal immigrants depending on you.

Back in my days as a sportswriter covering the Pittsburgh Steelers, aspiring players in training camp who eventually got cut often were told the decision was a “numbers game.”

The implied message was that while they were skilled and competent, they played a position at which the team was overstocked and hence fell victim because one roster only can include so many defensive tackles, or running backs, or cornerbacks, or whatever.

The actual message was that in the meritocracy of professional football, if this player had been good enough, someone else would have been sent packing with the numbers game explanation. But the numbers game story helped take the sting out of being cut.

These days, the numbers game has become a favorite tool of the current Biden regime to manipulate, obfuscate and otherwise render virtually useless the periodic data dumps, particularly economic-related items.

Let’s look at some recent numbers.

3.2– The February 12-month total consumer price index inflation rate as a percentage increase.

3.5– The March CPI 12-month total rate announced Wednesday as a percentage, an unhappy increase in inflation rate.

422 – The number of points the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked Wednesday in the wake of the CPI release.

2.1 — The Thursday Producer Price Index rate increase for the past 12 months as a percentage.

2.2 — The anticipated 12-month PPI increase.

6.3 — The actual increase in gasoline prices as a percentage.

Minus-3.6 – The “seasonally adjusted” decline in gasoline prices that helped produce the 2.1 reported figure, just under 2.2 expectations.

271.84 – The point increase in the NASDAQ Thursday, to an all-time high of 16,442.20, based on optimism over positive (if only due to statistical chicanery) inflation news.

13 – The percentage-point jump in electricity bills in January from California’s Pacific Gas And Electric.

12,000-plus – The value in dollars of pork stolen earlier this week from a truck parked at a suburban Philadelphia truck stop while the driver slept.

10,771 – Futures prices per ton for cocoa, a record high, recorded Thursday morning for the vital chocolate ingredient.

0 – The amount of faith you should put in government economic statistics.

A young lady stopped by the house Wednesday stumping for Frank Burns and caught up with me sitting on the front porch.

I was taking a break from digging a grave for a neighbor’s dog and was in the mood to vent about the sad state of affairs locally. She listened and it turns out that despite an obvious monstrous gap in age, we tended to agree.

Such revelations are heartening, because too often I find that interactions with members of younger generations leave me wondering what planet they might call home.

Bottom line, I’m a registered Republican, but have voted for the Democrat Burns in the past for state representative and will continue to do so. I assured her as much.

I liken Burns to Donald Trump in that both his party and the opposing party seem aligned to defeat him for having had the temerity to challenge special interests. The biggest sin on Burns’ record is going against those vested interests to expose the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Myopia 2025 people to bring Afghan refugees to the area.

The fact that Myopia 2025 thought this sort of thing had to be done in secret reminded me of a favored maxim of my late mother, that being if you are afraid to do something openly, probably you shouldn’t be doing it.

Myopia 2025 is an arm of the elite swamp that runs our area, a band whose power base is the countless charities, foundations, non-profits, not-for-profits and general beggars that dominate the area scene. They seek donations, private or public, and redistribute them to maximum political benefit.

Extremely high salaries are paid to the lords of these organizations, rates of pay not in keeping with the charitable theme.

These well-heeled types subsidizing their lifestyles by shaking the begging bowl rubs me the wrong way.

Operating in secret, based on the belief that area common folk are just too stupid to know what’s good for them, similarly bothers me.

So does having the local news media running interference for it all. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the former publisher of the Johnstown newspaper left to work for Myopia 2025.

The Republican opposition for Burns is a former media member.

Hmmmmm.

Bless Burns for doing something about the attempted Afghan invasion. He’s done more, according to the handout door-hanger card the young lady left with me, and I know he has from the public record.

Yet I am bombarded with messages in the mail from Republican-supporting organizations painting Burns as a do-nothing layabout who doesn’t show up for work and gets nothing done. The ridiculous hyperbole is entertaining in a sad way.

Projection, perhaps?

While many Woke acquaintances of mine indulge in orgies of self-congratulation over studying elections and voting for the best candidate, I’ve yet to have one give me a concrete example of voting for a Republican for significant office.

On the other hand, I have voted for the late John Murtha multiple times for the U.S. House, for former Pa. Governor Ed Rendell on his first run, for Cambria County Commissioner Tom Chernisky, for Burns, etc., etc., etc.

I will not be voting for Burns’ Republican opponent based on blind party faith, nor should you.

The Republican Party organization, locally and nationally, has been a raging disappointment.

I’m hoping (praying) Ronna McDaniel being out as chairman of the Republican National Committee and Lara Trump in as a co-chair will be positive move.

There are enough Democrats worthy of demonization for the Republican operation to target. Wasting time trying to punish Burns for going against the elites is a bad look — for Republicans and Democrats alike.

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament concludes tonight or, as one coach christened it, the UConn Invitational.

And the UConn Huskies are seven-point favorites to win it all for the second consecutive season, with a significantly fresh cast of characters.

Standing in the way is Purdue, a serial tournament disappointer in the recent past that finally made it to the title game.

I’m thinking the seven points is not nearly enough to tempt me to back Purdue in this game.

The Boilermakers’ guard play, particularly at the point, stunk in a semifinal win over Cinderella story North Carolina State. The glass slippers finally turned to pumpkins for that No. 11 seed. It was as much a case of NC State blowing the game as Purdue winning it.

UConn was kept close by Alabama going into the second half of the other semifinal, but eventually won going away.

The Huskies’ edge in guard play vs. Purdue is immense. They have the size on the front line to match up with Purdue and 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey.

It’s possible Purdue could win, just incredibly unlikely.

I figure I will watch at the start, hoping to be proved wrong by Purdue. But, my hand will be on the remote to seek out alternative viewing if and when UConn begins to take control.

Lest you consider risking cash money on any of this thinking, understand that my best bracket in the CBS challenge ranked 308,000 and change out of I don’t know how many entries. I did somehow have Alabama and Purdue in the Final Four and had Purdue advancing to the title game, even winning there. But . . . I’d change that in a heartbeat now.

Regarding today’s epic eclipse, cue the Peggy Lee: “It that All There Is?”

Maybe throw in a little Shakespeare: “Much Ado About Nothing.”

I know, I know, this was supposed to be the highlight of our lives. The cable TV types my wife was watching early Monday afternoon spoke of chills running over their bodies and tingling legs. This was attributed to viewing the eclipse, or videos thereof.

These seasoned professionals claimed to be breathless that it got dusky during traditional daylight hours. They ran countless shots of the sun gradually disappearing into shadow. They expressed reverence and awe so much, I thought I’d bumbled onto a televised church service.

We were supposed to be just as thrilled, amazed and awed by it all as they were. For me, not so much.

Amidst the overcast conditions here, my wife was rewarded for reclining on her back and looking skyward for long periods of time with some brief glimpses of the phenomenon.

I even slipped away from the computer a time or two to go outside and observe first a crescent of sun and, later, a mere sliver. That’s before the clouds pulled down the curtain on this much-hyped show.

Since the approved viewing glasses seemed to be manufactured in China, the topic came up that if the Chi-coms really wanted to take over the U.S., they could have forgotten TikTok and instead flooded our country with ineffective protective glasses, rendering the vast majority of the eclipse-curious blind.

Oh, well, wait until next eclipse. Then again, be alert to reports of blindness leaking out in coming days, sort of like adverse reactions to COVID vaccinations. Likely the blindness news would be similarly suppressed and censored, so maybe you won’t notice it.

On the whole, I’m glad I didn’t drive or fly thousands of miles to take in this short-lived spectacle. I have seen and heard of many who did and know of a few personally. Some (most?) spent lavishly for the right to say they were there – somewhere – to witness the eclipse.

For them I cite a couple of bon mots from Ben Franklin. First, lost time is never found again. Second, a penny saved is a penny earned.

If all had gone to according to plan, I’d have been in transit during peak eclipse viewing time today, not to watch it, but to consummate the purchase, title transfer and trailering home of a modified C4 Corvette.

But the chance to look at the car in-person was moved up to Sunday at the seller’s request and, with the notary not being available Sunday, the rest of the transaction was pushed back to Tuesday.

While driving north on I-79 Sunday, we were amused to see temporary flashing signs set up alongside the road warning drivers not to park along the berm to observe the eclipse. Presumably parking there other times for random reasons was tolerable.

I also saw evidence of various eclipse functions, including one camping area that was having a “viewing party.”

Bless them all. I hope they enjoyed the eclipse viewing and had no regrets about time and money lost on the venture.

Maybe Clueless Joe can make political capital of it all, offering to reimburse eclipse viewers for their expenses. It would make as much sense as his never-ending effort to forgive student debt for those who never bothered to repay the claims.

I’m thinking the eclipse handout would make more people happy and buy more votes.

Living in Johnstown for parts of eight decades can tend to give one a sense of being a purge target of sorts.

We’re not talking the classic purges of Stalinist Russia, in which millions were killed and/or deleted from history through clever use of retouched photos and rewritten accounts.

The Johnstown example to which I refer also is not part of our current national and worldwide purge attempt as the Woke crowd operates in censorship of social media, Lamestream media, and government accountings to cancel opposition. We’re not yet sure how many, if any, have been killed in this left-wing push. Perhaps that is coming.

What is happening in the Johnstown area is more the tale of a once-vibrant small industrial town going the dust-to-dust, ashes-to-ashes route in its transition into a welfare community, with all the attending decline.

Beyond the obvious general examples of closed business and industry, all of the schools I attended in the Greater Johnstown School District are gone, save the example of the current high school’s auditorium being the former Cochran Junior High facility.

Even that is a shell of its former self. The last time I was there, for a dance recital, the balcony was closed. The main floor also has been modified and not for the better.

The recent hillside slide along the Easy Grade brings up another reminder of my personal purge. Many of the houses that once were home to me or members of my family, also are gone, for various reasons.

Although I never lived in it, my mother and her second husband, along with my brother, once lived along Barnett Street. It was the second house from the top on the left side if you headed toward the Easy Grade.

Even as they lived in the house, there was evidence of hillside instability and an attempt was made to address that by rebuilding the garage that sat under the house. It cost a lot and didn’t work, almost as if it had been a government project.

My family moved on from Barnett Street before the previous slide that wrecked several houses and forced the 2018 repair attempt that turned the hillside into a pile of rocks visible clear across the valley.

In an ironic bit of timing, I took granddaughter No. 2 along to pick up my brother for the family’s Easter meal and made sure to use Barnett Street both going and coming.

The first leg was designed to allow her a peek at the eagle’s nest along the Easy Grade – she insists she saw the bird.

Coming back, my brother and I pointed out where he and her great grandmother once had lived along Barnett Street. We told the child the tale of the hillside giving way and the rocks being put where houses once had stood attempting to stabilize things and prevent a repeat.

But Mother Nature cannot be fooled – heavy rains come periodically to this area. And gravity never rests, eventually winning the battle.

Both of these conspired to send more of the hillside toward Barnett Street, coming perilously close to undermining a section of the Easy Grade at mid-week.

If I lived along Barnett Street, I’d be nervous, just on general principles.

Also, if I lived in any of the remaining houses our family once called home – and there still are a few standing – I might be a tad nervous, too, lest that purge continue.

So much of what you read or hear from public figures is disingenuous pap, designed to mollify or confuse rather than accurately portray the individuals’ thoughts.

Should you doubt this, just think of all the hot mic moments throughout the years, when people thinking they were speaking privately revealed their true thoughts, in direct opposition to what they just had said for public consumption.

For example, we had Barack Obama caught talking to a Russian leader (not Putin) and pleading for more time regarding missiles because “after my election I have more flexibility.” This despite Obama talking tough publicly on the topic.

That was March 2012. A mere six months earlier, Obama again had been caught bad-mouthing the Israeli prime minister, supposedly an ally, to the French president. Clueless Joe Biden had a similar hot mic moment regarding Netanyahu following Biden’s State of the Union address.

This is a bipartisan issue. Many Republicans are just as hypocritical in the gap between their public and private thoughts.

It occurs to me that we need translators of sorts, to give us the straight story regarding events, in a what they said, what they meant format.

WHAT THEY SAID: Clueless Joe’s energy department said Wednesday it was halting attempts to refill the strategic petroleum reserve due to “keeping the taxpayers’ interest at the forefront.”

WHAT THEY MEANT: We blew it, failing to move to refill when crude oil prices were low. We drained the reserve to help Joe’s popularity and now can’t replace the oil because that would add demand to an oil market whose prices already are up substantially. Just pray we don’t really need this reserve to help us through, say, a time of war.

WHAT THEY SAID: Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, head of the so-called Open Markets Committee (Open Mouth Committee considering the penchant for attempts to jawbone markets) was pledging yet again that he and his cohorts will not be eager to cut interest rates any time soon lest they send inflation raging higher.

WHAT THEY MEANT: Look, we blew it with overly loose monetary policy designed to help ease the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 or the COVID debacle of 2020. Now we’ve had to raise interest rates to try to tamp down inflation and trust me, we feel your pain. We lost a record $114.3 billion in 2023 due to those higher interest rates that we set costing us more, too, in terms of money paid to banks or losses we took on our bond portfolio. In a word, we’re stuck and don’t know how to get out of this mess we created.

WHAT THEY SAID: U.S. spokesmen announced that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his delegation had to motorcade to Brussels after their airplane had a “mechanical” issue while at an airport in Paris. This is the second time in three months a Blinken government-issued Boeing plane has failed him while on foreign soil.

WHAT THEY MEANT: Aren’t you a bit nostalgic for the time when such aircraft were designed, built and maintained by the best available people, not DEI types who fill quotas and look good in company promotional ads?

WHAT THEY SAID: Donald Trump proclaimed Nov. 5 (election day) will be Christian Visibility Day.

WHAT THEY MEANT: With Trump, you don’t need a translator. He referred to the Clueless Joe Regime cleverly proclaiming Easter Sunday this year as Transgender Day of Visibility. Trump thinks that might hurt the Clueless One, who denied having anything to do with the proclamation that was released under his name. I hope Trump is correct.

It’s 11:40 p.m. Tuesday, the rain continues to pelt down, and if electronic wizardry had worked as it should you’d be able to currently be reading a lengthy dissertation on hobbies, particular collector cars.

Alas, the efforts of an hour and 20 minutes vaporized spontaneously, leaving no previous versions, only some haunting screen shot of the first three paragraphs or so.

Rather than dropkick this worthless piece of digital hardware garbage out into the precipitation, to die a fitting death, I will note only that the blog post had been about my current, frustrating, pursuit of a C4 Corvette to purchase.

This development neatly continues that frustration.

Perhaps tomorrow, refreshed by a good night’s sleep, I will attempt to recreate the post; dare I dream even improving upon it.

Or maybe my attention will be drawn to another bright light and the topic will be put on the metaphorical shelf to collect dust.

Good night, all.

This Monday morning dawned with me informing the granddaughters, who are on a sleepover holiday weekend, that I was giving them each $1 million, promising them freedom forever from school or other unpleasant commitments, and guaranteeing them they could eat ice cream and sweets without needing first to eat their regular food.

Their eyes gleamed with joy. Then I explained to them the concept of April Fools’ Day, with all the attendant fibs, distortions and outright lies forgiven if followed by the admonition that it was just April Fools’.

I book-ended the whole experience by presenting the girls with some more Easter booty (this holiday has begun to rival Christmas in our household in terms of gift-giving). The girls were shown a three-pack of very nice kites that we will assemble and fly when weather next permits, and each child received a full-size fishing rod and reel (none of packaged kids stuff with short rods that make it much more difficult to cast or set the hook).

It occurs to me that the weird world events of our times would make for an entertaining game. I tell you about a news story (real or imagined) and you have to decide whether it’s legitimate, or just April Fools’ fare.

Ready? Let’s start.

Happy Easter. An El Paso judge on this traditional holiday ordered the release of illegal migrants who rioted and attacked members of the Texas National Guard because said illegals were unhappy at being thwarted at our southern border for processing.

Sadly, that one’s true.

Another Happy Easter. This sacred Christian holiday was chosen by decree from the Clueless Joe Regime to be, instead, Transgender Day of Visibility.

Again, sadly true.

As Major League Baseball began its Monday slate of games, the Pittsburgh Pirates at 4-0 were tied with the New York Yankees for the best record in the majors, and were ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers (4-2) and their seemingly multi-billion dollar payroll.

Amazingly, true.

Fast-food workers in California who are employed by national chains with more than 60 national locations now have a $20 minimum wage.

Incredibly, true. Almost as incredible, even before this law kicked in, the average wage for food-service workers in California was $17.89 an hour.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling could be imprisoned under a new Scottish “hate crime” law. Her offense would be her penchant for insisting men identifying as women still are men, due to obviously biological truths.

You guessed it, true.

If only these all were examples of April Fools’.

Today’s release of personal consumption expenditure (PCE) inflation numbers by our friends at the federal government was a spin on the philosophical chestnut: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?

In the case of this inflation release, stocks, bonds and precious metals markets were closed in celebration of Good Friday and Easter, so there was no way for investors to display their typical knee-jerk reaction to such government statistical updates. We must wait until Monday for that.

What is amusing about the lack of immediate (over?)reaction is that billions, even trillions of dollars of capital market valuations customarily change on these announcements, based on numbers that are little more than guesswork.

Don’t take my word for it. Just examine the track record of the people giving you those guesstimates, then revising them in succeeding months.

Today’s PCE print was “in line” with expectations, coming in at a 3-tenths of a percent increase from last month, and up 2.8 percent over the past 12 months.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who are supposed to use such numbers to set their interest rate policy, are reported to favor PCE because it is less volatile. PCE also excludes food and energy costs, so you tell me how relevant a number is that arbitrarily excludes what arguably are the two top priorities of individual spending.

And, as to the accuracy of these inflation numbers, this report was used to slip in that the January core inflation number had been revised to a 5-tenths of a percent increase. This 3-tenths current number might be 5-tenths, higher, or lower by the time the next month’s figures are divulged.

It’s not only the inflation numbers being dispensed by bureaucrats and treated as gospel by policymakers and investors that are suspect. Those glowing job reports the Biden regime is so fond of referencing don’t ring true, either.

The good folks at zerohedge.com, citing the Philadelphia Fed, headlined that payroll numbers are overstated by as much as 800,000 for 2023 and 1.1 million for 2022.

The zerohedge post goes on to delve into how one person working several jobs to make ends meet in an inflationary environment, largely is treated as multiple workers. Similarly, no distinction is made between part-time (ordinarily low paying and zero benefits jobs) and full-time work (customarily with higher pay and benefits).

You are forgiven for wondering why, in view of the blatant shortcomings of these data dumps, are they taken so seriously?

Because they are all we have to prop up the house of cards that is the U.S. stock, bond and real estate (particularly commercial) markets.

We’re creating national debt at the rate of $1 trillion every 100 days and inflating the job numbers gives the appearance of better return on that debt.

But, providing accurate inflation reports harms the case if those numbers are high, so best to tamp down those figures.

What follows are some parting thoughts for those who dismiss inflation’s negative effects by noting people make more money these days to account for it.

When I was young, say 12-years of age in 1967, a full-sized Three Musketeers bar, a Milky Way or a Snickers cost 5 cents at the corner store. Almond Joy or Mounds were the high-priced spread at 10 cents, so we only bought those occasionally.

Routinely, these candy treats now cost more than $1 each, a 20-fold or more increase for the 5-cent bars. This does not factor in their shrinking size.

I attended Cochran Junior High in those days, hard by the former Hallman Chevrolet lot. I recall new Corvettes going for the low $4,000s and confirmed that with some quick internet research. In 1967, the base MSRP for a Corvette coupe was $4,385; $4,240.75 for a convertible. Fast-forward to 2024 and the base Corvette MSRP is $69,994, an increase of roughly 16 times.

Energy, housing, health care, prescription drugs, all those costs have skyrocketed.

But I promised to reference increased pay. Social Security lists average annual wages for indexing eventual benefits to be paid out.

The 1967 average wage figure was listed as $5,213.44. For 2022, the last year available, the number was $63,795.13, an increase of about 12.2 times. If you’re buying a candy bar, a Corvette, or almost anything, your wages have not kept up with their increasing prices.

And that doesn’t factor in that the federal income tax is a progressive one – the more you earn the higher the rate you pay on marginal income. Comparing net take-home pay would show an even larger decline in purchasing power.

The average worker is much worse off now, than in 1967, due to rising costs and taxes and compensation that has not kept pace.

Now, if you’re an illegal bumbling across the border and being handed pre-loaded debit cards and other benefits such as free food, housing and health care, it’s a different story.

But we can’t all be illegals, can we?