Green Vehicles is no more. The world will somehow have to get by without the lovely vehicle pictured after the jump populating our streets and highways.

Given that its owner put an “I’ve giving it up” blog post last Tuesday, and even though Drudge just caught it a few hours ago, it’s pretty safe to assume that the Green Vehicles debacle won’t be a national establishment press story.

It is, however, a fairly hot story in Salinas, California, a city of about 150,000 fifty or so miles south of San Jose.
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As noted in a post last week, the growth in federal collections, which given the pathetic lows established during 2009 has been decent but not exceptional during the past year or so, slowed down in June. In fact, June’s total collections of $249.7 billion trailed June 2010 by about $1.4 billion (before adjustments explained in the next paragraph). By contrast, April 2011 came in 18% ahead of April 2010.

To fairly evaluate the strength of the economy, it has become important to separate what the government is taking in as a result of economic activity from what it is taking in because Fed Chair Ben Bernanke has ramped up his electronic money-printing operation. After subtracting “Deposits of Earnings by Federal Reserve Banks” from both June 2011 and June 2010 ($8.3 billion and $6.8 billion, respectively), we’re left with receipts from economic activity of $241.4 billion and $244.2 billion. (Context: During the Bush 43 years, when interest rates were somewhat higher, related Fed receipts were about $3 billion per month. During the current fiscal year, they’re on track to hit $90 billion by year’s end, or about $7.5 billion per month.)

The first chart shows 12-month trailing receipts going all the way back to September 2007 (figures incorporating months during 2008 and early 2009 treat the Bush 43 IRS stimulus payments as outlays instead of as negative receipts, as the government incorrectly did):

June 2011 marks a significant level-off — actually, make that a drop-off. It is much more significant than the one seen in March 2011, as will be explained in the next paragraph.

To tune out some of the noise, the second chart, which compares receipts from economic activity to the same month of the previous year, looks only at receipts during five calendar months: January, April, June, September, and December. That’s because these are by far the heaviest months for federal collections, and are the best indicators of where collections are really headed. The first four identified months represent when federal quarterly estimated tax payments are due from individuals and regular corporations. December is important because many taxpayers need to get their payments in before the end of the calendar year to avoid penalties. Especially in the flat employment market we’ve endured during the past two years, the collections bumps or declines which occur in these months are there largely because of changes in federal tax payments made by the nation’s individual and corporate wealth and job creators.

So here is the second graph:

Yikes. Year-over-year collections during these five key months made a comeback to a decent rate by the middle of last year and remained decent after that (only decent because the bounceback after such steep declines should have been much greater, and would have been with the right fiscal policies), with April’s aforementioned 18% increase representing a high-water mark. June 2010 brought an abrupt end to that.

Translation, when combined with (to name just a few) disturbing employment news, dropping consumer confidence (at the lowest level since March 2009), and sharply reduced GDP forecasts: The economy is seriously slowing down. Unless the goal is to keep it slowed down, the last thing that needs to come out of the current debt-ceiling negotiations would be tax increases, especially on wealth and job creators who are already starting to bail and who instead need to be given a reason to stay in the game.

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UPDATE: “Totally unrelated” news which couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the overall state of the economy (company press release here) –

Cisco to reduce work force by 9 percent in cost-cutting effort, will take $1.3B charge

Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. is cutting 6,500 employees — about 9 percent of its work force — as it follows up on a plan announced in May to eliminate thousands of jobs to reduce costs and raise profits.

Cisco, which has about 73,400 employees worldwide, said Monday that it was laying off 4,400 layoffs people. Another 2,100 employees chose to leave as part of an early-retirement program. The company said the cuts include the elimination of 15 percent of its employees at and above the level of vice president.

Cisco said the cuts will cost it $1.3 billion in severance and termination benefits. The company plans to take the charge over several quarters. It will take $750 million of that, including $500 million for the early-retirement program, during the current quarter.

Cisco will inform employees who have been cut in the U.S., Canada and some other countries during the first week of August.

Given that Cisco was considered THE bellwether stock of the late 1990s, this is at the very least a devastating symbolic development.

President Obama has officially moved into Mark Dayton territory. Just as the Minnesota Governor vetoed legislation which would have kept the Gopher State running because it didn’t contain tax increases he wanted, President Barack Obama is moving the federal government closer to busting the debt ceiling and creating the economic calamity his own Treasury Secretary has threatened by promising to veto legislation which would reduce spending if it has no tax increases.

Here’s John Boehner’s statement, received a short time ago (direct link):

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement today after the Administration announced that the President would veto H.R. 2560, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011. The House is expected to vote on this legislation tomorrow.

“It’s disappointing the White House would reject this common-sense plan to rein in the debt and deficits that are hurting job creation in America. While American families have to set priorities and balance their books, this White House obviously isn’t serious about making the same tough choices. While the House is once again acting responsibly, the Administration still won’t say what cuts it’s willing to make to end Washington’s spending binge and the economic uncertainty it’s creating. This unfortunate veto threat should make clear that the issue is not congressional inaction, but rather the President’s unwillingness to cut spending and restrain the future growth of our government. If we are going to raise the debt limit and avoid default, the White House must be willing to demonstrate more courage than we have seen to date. The House will proceed as planned with its vote on the Cut, Cap and Balance Act.”

Exit question: Why did Obama threaten a veto when Harry Reid could have just said whatever the House passes is dead on arrival?

It seems doubtful, but just about the only way Obama’s vocalizing would make sense is if Democratic Senators are feeling the heat from the home front, and thinking about voting for spending cuts to keep constituents off their backs — secure in the knowledge that they’ll be taken off the hook with a presidential veto anyway. Is this Obama’s way of telling wavering Democrats “you’d better stay with me on this”?

Via Erin Brown at NewsBusters: “Numbers Don’t Lie: ‘Daily Show’s’ Stewart Hammers Right Nearly Four Times More than Left.” But Jon Stewart does when he claims that “there is not a designed, ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change, because that’s the soup you swim in.”

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A gentleman named Dan Bloom has brought his relatively lonely campaign to make “Internet” a lowercase word in everyday usage to my attention. It got a little less lonely when the Christian Science Monitor published his column (“Four reasons why American media should lowercase ‘Internet’”), giving each of his four reasons a separate web page.

I have mixed feelings about it, but lean towards lowercase. Is it a place (the big web in the sky)? Not really. Is it a specific entity? Again not really. When we refer to the “Internet,” we’re rarely thinking of ICANN. It is also true that the BBC and other foreign news organizations have moved to lowercasing “internet.”

In an email, Dan noted that last year I criticized the New York Times and the Associated Press for NOT capitalizing “Ground Zero” or “Ground Zero Mosque,” even though these ARE specific places. He further informed me that the NYT’s Phil Corbett told him that the Old Gray Lady will lowercase “Internet” when it seems to go that way in common usage. This is quite hypocritical, because the NYT (and AP) have clearly attempted (and mostly failed) to lead the way in lowercasing Ground Zero, failing to convince the general populace and at least one grammarian.

That linked grammarian happens to be holding out for capitalizing “Internet,” because “the Internet is one big specific network that people visit.” Not really; when we visit, many if not most of us become participants. In that sense it’s like going with others to an open field owned by no one to play baseball or soccer.

To wrap up what may be the fluffiest kerfuffle ever: I think the American press is holding out against lowercasing the Internet because they don’t want to be seen as downgrading Al Gore’s invention.

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Janny Scott, the author who busted President Obama’s claim about his mother quarreling with health insurance companies during her life-ending bout with cancer, (covered here last week by yours truly), isn’t talking.

Scott went on leave from her employment at the New York Times to write her book (“A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother”) about Ann Dunham, Obama’s mom. I wonder if a buttoned lip has been communicated as a condition of reemployment at the Times?

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Unemployment is still Galluping along (HT Hot Air via Instapundit).

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In addition to linking reader to Bob Owens’s latest on the Gunwalker scandal, I’m also linking to his author page at Pajamas Media containing related items going back at least two months. This makes Iran-Contra look like the traditional definition of a tea party.

Since there were lefty clowns at the time who believed (and some still do) that Ronald Reagan should have been impeached over Iran-Contra, I’m waiting for them to say that, if demonstrated, an Americans president’s knowledge and at least tacit approval of an operation which deliberately failed to track guns which knowingly went into foreign criminals’ hands — guns which ended up being used in killing and injuring members of American law enforcement as well as American citizens — is grounds for impeachment.

Think I’ll be waiting long? (/sarc)

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Herman Cain: Communities have right to ban mosques — Herman Cain is right, if the mosques involved have as a goal imposing sharia law on their members as a “law” which supersedes local, state, and federal law. It would be no different than a community rejecting the building of a Mormon church if its pastor and congregation insisted that polygamy is okey-dokey, that it would fail to report related lawbreaking, and that it would prevent the state from investigating and prosecuting congregation members who have chosen to be in “marriages” with multiple partners. True believers in sharia law as commonly practiced throughout the Muslim world would not report what U.S. law would consider to be clear cases of domestic violence and other mistreatment of women.

Placed in the correct context above, Cain’s is clearly a noncontroversial statement.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Wednesday (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

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UPDATE: In the column, I refer to Benny Peiser’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). On a daily basis, it delivers the latest developments in globaloney debunking and the latest attempts by statists to ruin living standards with their energy-control regimes.

In today’s email alone (I’ve been receiving the emails for years; I wish I could give a link on how to subscribe now, but I couldn’t find one), there are the following stories, most of which will never see the light of day in the U.S. establishment press:

1) Green Policy: David Cameron’s Big Mistake – Tim Montgomerie, The Sunday Telegraph, 17 July 2011 — actually, the underlying article identifies three big mistakes. Number 2 is “Supporting climate change policies that will increase energy bills 40 per cent.”

2) Britain’s Green Suicide: Jobs Gone With The Wind – The Sunday Telegraph, 17 July 2011 — “Crippling new taxes proposed by (UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change) Chris Huhne to subsidise green energy could force key employers out of business.”

3) Matt Ridley: Thank Green Energy For That Enormous Bill – The Times, 11 July 2011 — “The future belongs to countries that can get their electricity, heat and fuel supplied as cheaply and reliably as possible. That is the priority, not the carbon fetish.”

4) CERN Chief Forbids “Interpretation” Of CLOUD Results – Calder’s Updates, 17 July 2011 — The results of an important climate-related experiment appear on the way to getting a politically-corrent filter.

5) Paleoclimate In Doubt – Science A GoGo, 18 July 2011 — “Paleoclimate studies, where scientists look into the past to try and understand changes in Earth’s climate, may be a waste of time if astronomers are correct in their theory that relatively minor bodies like the asteroid Vesta can cause chaotic fluctuations in Earth’s orbit.” So it could be yet another example of how matters totally out of human control have infinitely more influence on climate than human-driven actions.

6) IPCC Struggling To Pinpoint Sea Level Rise – Axel Bojanowski, Spiegel Online 15 July 2011 — Later in the item is a squib about how one of the most out-of-control alarmists may have plunged off the deep end: “NASA climate researcher James Hansen, for example, warns in a paper published this month that sea levels could rise by five meters in the next 90 years — nine times higher than the maximum cited in the last IPCC report. He insists that he has found indications that sea levels in the future could rise by as much as five centimeters per year. … Three years ago, researchers found that a rise of over two meters per century is impossible because so much ice simply can’t melt in such a short time.”

7) Pat Michaels: Why Hasn’t The Earth Warmed In Nearly 15 Years? – Forbes, 15 July 2011 — “There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia.”

8) Ben Pile: Gaia’s Witnesses? – Climate Resistance, 16 July 2011 — “I was surprised to see that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ recruitment campaign is founded on such ecological precepts as ‘environmental destruction.’” That is an odd turn for the group to take, but not totally surprising.

9) Delingpole Takes On The Watermelons – –Charlie Cooke, National Review Online, 15 July 2011 — “When it comes to global warming, the issue is not about science, but about control.” Underlying items: Charlie Cooke at National Review, and UK writer James Delingpole’s latest book, “Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors.” Those colors are green on the outside, and Communist/statist red on the inside.

GWPF is an incredibly rich resource, and definitely worth periodic visits.

On Saturday, I noted that Standard & Poors upgraded Ohio’s debt rating on Friday:

… the rating was revised from “negative” to “stable” after Gov. John Kasich signed a new budget the ratings agency says will essentially balance the state’s finances for the next two years. S&P also said Ohio is experiencing a modest economic recovery which has stabilized revenue.

In making the upgrade, the agency also assigned a “AA+” long-term rating to Ohio’s $416.75 million general obligation bonds.

That’s great to know, but as I teased on Saturday, there’s an even better part to all of this.

That’s because a related story reports an event which happened back in January which apparently didn’t get a lot of attention (or it got past me, which has been known to happen). This event, and the July news above which has followed it six month later, blows away every last conceivable shred of a claim by Ohio’s left and Democrats that Ted Strickland was really, really making things better in the final year of his term.

To hear them tell it, Ohio’s improving economy is merely a continuation of all the grrrrrrreat work T-Shirt and Turnaround Ted did in 2010. Why, one deluded BizzyBlog lefty commenter informed me that Ohio’s recovery last year was the best since 1983. Then Uncle Sam’s GDP growth by state report came out. “Never mind.”

Anyway, the super-fun, deal-sealing nugget is contained in the final paragraph of last week’s Wall Street Journal’s story on the S&P upgrade (bold is mine):

S&P had lowered its outlook on Ohio in January, citing the state’s depletion of its budget stabilization reserve. More recently, the state has made progress balancing its budget through the 2013 fiscal year, easing pressure on the rating.

Translation: After four years of Ted Strickland’s stewardship, on his way out the door, S&P told him, “Here’s the final bill for the damage you’ve done, Ted. You’ve left the state in a mess. Don’t let the screen door hit you.”

The cutoff couldn’t be any clearer. Before John Kasich took office, Ohio was rapidly turning into a problem child. A mere six months later (with the usual “don’t get too cocky” caution), Kasich has engineered an impressive enough turnaround to warrant an upgrade from S&P.

Seriously, folks, why would anyone want to go back to the pre-SB5, pre-New Way New Day Buckeye State of 2007-2010 (or for that matter, the essentially blue state governance of the past 15-plus years)?

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UPDATE: Addressing another promised follow-up point from Saturday, I followed up on a complaint in a comment at my Pajamas Media column a few weeks ago that the state was still increasing its annual spending under Kasich.

That is NOT true (make that “almost definitely not true” — See Update 2) on an “all-funds” basis, which as the name implies encompasses everything, including the proverbial kitchen sink, and is thus the most important measuring stick.

Let’s see what all-funds spending was expected to be for the past two fiscal years (very large PDF found here; go to page A-20):

The two-year all funds total is just shy of $120 billion. No, I don’t know that it was all actually appropriated, but I wouldn’t want to bet against it.

Though I suspect that the final number has changed, in mid-March Kasich’s all-funds number for the next two years was quite a bit lower than that (see Update 2; final all funds came in significantly higher, but it is still quite likely that final FY2012 and FY2013 spending will be lower than FY2011):

Calling it “the jobs budget,” Kasich stressed that his $112 billion, all-funds budget challenged the status quo with his privatization push for prisons, education reform wrinkles, overhaul of Ohio’s Medicaid program and erasing of walls between local governments.

So we’ve got a 7% reduction in the anticipated all-funds spending during the next two years vs. the previous two years. Although I intend to get firmer numbers (actuals for the past two and finalized for the next two) in the next few days, it looks like there’s enough of a margin, in the absence of contrary evidence, to declare that the 2012-2013 all-funds budget is lower than 2010-2011.

UPDATE 2, July 20: Based on what I’ve been able to learn, the state spent about 3% less than the amount indicated above on an all-funds basis in FY2011. The final all-funds budgets for FY2012 and FY2013 came in slightly less than the FY2011 budget listed above. If similar amounts or more go unspent in those two fiscal years — and I am told that this is what usually happens — each will come in lower than the FY2011 actual.

From Knoxville, Tennessee:

Jul 17, 2011 / 01:04 pm

Seven years after entering the Catholic Church, Father Doug Owens’s journey toward ordination was sealed with the single word present, as he responded to vocations director Father Michael Cummins’s invitation, “Let Douglas, who is to be ordained a priest, come forward.”

“That was easy enough, wasn’t it?” said Bishop Richard F. Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee before ordaining Father Owens during a May 28 Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral. “All those years you were in seminary all came down to that [word].”

“A lifetime has brought him to the moment when he said present. He presents himself to the Church, and after formation and spiritual growth and academic achievement, he stands before the people of God. He stands before Jesus and before the Father, praying that the Holy Spirit will continue to enlighten him and to be with him.”
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It’s not the result I was rooting for, and it will be of no comfort to a U.S. women’s team which is understandably devastated, but what a wonderful story for a nation which has been through so much this year.

This took too long, and has apparently been expected in some quarters for a few days.

Mr. Mecklenborg has finally done the right thing; those who pressured him to do the right thing also did the right thing.

Just received this in an e-mail from Bill Batchelder spokesman Mike Dittoe:

Rep. Robert Mecklenborg to Resign from the Ohio House of Representatives

(COLUMBUS) – Today, State Representative Robert P. Mecklenborg (R-Cincinnati) issued the following statement:

“It has been rewarding and humbling to serve the great people of western Hamilton County as their voice in state government. As a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, I believe that I have served well and faithfully my constituents of the 30th House District by focusing on the issues that matter a great deal to all Ohioans, including election reform, pro-life legislation, and a host of other priorities.

However, my recent actions have become a distraction to the additional important work that lies ahead for the members of the 129th General Assembly. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I resign from the Ohio House of Representatives effective August 2, 2011.

Most importantly, I want to sincerely apologize for any pain and embarrassment I have caused my family, my constituents, and my colleagues. I will be forever grateful to the many constituents and colleagues who have urged me to stay, but I believe it is in the best interests of my family and my constituents to step aside during this difficult time.”

In response to Rep. Mecklenborg’s resignation, Speaker William G. Batchelder (R-Medina) and Speaker Pro Tempore Lou Blessing (R-Cincinnati) offered the following statements:

“My friend and colleague Bob Mecklenborg has guided the Ohio House of Representatives with his expertise on a variety of legislative initiatives since he became a member,” Speaker Batchelder said. “As I have said before, Bob has been a dedicated public servant and his contributions to the Ohio House have been vital to the important work of this great institution. Bob has admitted his mistakes and, while difficult, I believe he has made the appropriate decision to step down as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives. I thank him for his dedicated and loyal service to the people of Ohio, particularly to the people of western Hamilton County.”

“As a friend and fellow member from Hamilton County, I believe Bob Mecklenborg has provided valuable insight on a number of legislative issues over the years,” said Rep. Lou Blessing.” His service will be missed but I am pleased that he has appropriately decided to put the interests of his family and constituents first by stepping down from the Ohio House. I echo Speaker Batchelder’s comments and wish Bob and his family all the best in the coming weeks and months ahead.”

SOB Alliance bloggers Matt and Mark at Weapons of Mass Discussion were virtually alone in leading a blogospheric charge in a no-compromise push for an outright resignation (here, here, here, and here, just as a sample; here’s the tag for all related posts), and deserve Southwest Ohio’s thanks for having done so.

Of course I wish Mr. Mecklenborg and his family well — as private citizens.

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UPDATE: Beat the Cincinnati Enquirer by 42 minutes.

UPDATE 2: Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion has the official comment of Hamilton County Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou.

UPDATE 3: I revised WoMD’s role in the Mecklenborg story to a more accurate characterization, and intended no slight in my original description (though I can see how umbrage might have been taken).

In an unbylined update of the latest developments in the budget-tax-spending-debt ceiling discussions in Washington this morning, the Associated Press committed several blunders in attempting to explain what’s going on and how we got to where we are. First and foremost was its list identifying “contributors” to the $8.5 trillion growth in the national debt since 2001.

Here’s the AP’s you-can’t make-this-up, Comedy Central-worthy list of debt contributors:

Q: How did the debt grow from $5.8 trillion in 2001 to its current $14.3 trillion?

A: The biggest contributors to the nearly $9 trillion increase over a decade were:

- 2001 and 2003 tax cuts under President George W. Bush: $1.6 trillion.
- Additional interest costs: $1.4 trillion.
- Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: $1.3 trillion.
- Economic stimulus package under Obama: $800 billion.
- 2010 tax cuts (these weren’t cuts at all; they were really a continuation of the current income tax structure — Ed.), a compromise by Obama and Republicans that extended jobless benefits and cut payroll taxes: $400 billion.
- 2003 creation of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit: $300 billion.
- 2008 financial industry bailout: $200 billion.
- Hundreds of billions less in revenue than expected since the Great Recession began in December 2007.
- Other spending increases in domestic, farm and defense programs, adding lesser amounts.

So I guess the AP’s assertion that the Bush tax cuts were the biggest contributor to the deficit explains why the following graph shows how government collections tanked from 2003-2007:

Oops. What happened?

The graph doesn’t show collections tanking, does it? Instead, the graph shows that collections increased by 44%, or almost $800 billion in four years. Adding up the individual increments in each of the four years compared to 2003 (2004 – $98B; 2005 – $371B; 2006 – $624B; 2007 – $785B; 2008, not shown, treating IRS stimulus payments as outlays instead of negative receipts – $835B), what really happened is that in the five full fiscal years after George W. Bush got the across-the-board and investment-related tax cuts he had been pushing for since taking office in 2001, the cumulative increase in tax collections was over $2.7 trillion.

Doubtless, the static analysis crowd will claim that collections would have been even higher (I guess by a cumulative $1.6 trillion, given the AP’s Democratic Party talking point above) if the Bush cuts hadn’t been enacted. Two words, guys: Prove it. Two follow-up words: You can’t.

We can argue all day long about the how much of the increase in collections was due to the incentive effects of the tax cuts and how of the improvement might have occurred anyway, but no one can credibly act as if it’s an established fact that the Bush cuts somehow caused collections to go $1.6 trillion in the opposite direction. There is absolutely no proof for this contention, and plenty of evidence that the Bush cuts jump-started an economy and federal collections, both of which had been flat or declining during the two years leading up to mid-2003. The more reasonable conclusion to reach is that the country would already be dead in the water if the Bush tax cuts hadn’t passed in 2003. Instead, the wire service hopes that its “Bush tax cuts cost us” meme will be gullibly recited during the next few days at its subscribing newspaper, TV, and radio outlets. “Disgraceful” doesn’t even begin to describe this pathetic promotion of self-evident falsehood.

The fact is that the federal budget was one good year away from balancing after the $162 deficit reported in fiscal 2007. Unfortunately, that was the last budget passed by a Republican-controlled Congress, and it was the only year which showed a modest increase in overall spending. Beginning in 2007 with effects beginning in fiscal 2008, the House and Senate controlled by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid began increasing spending at rates far beyond what profligate Republicans spent earlier in the decade, and, unfortunately, Bush 43 made no real effort to stop them:

If we turn the tables and (in my opinion) safely assume that there was no need to increase the overall level of spending beyond what was seen in fiscal 2007 except to allow a probably overly generous $100 billion in increases each year, the fact is that by September 2011, the Pelosi-Reid Congress and the Pelosi-Reid-Obama triumvirate will have spent roughly $2.7 trillion more than they needed to, or should have.

And oh by the way, by September 2011, the collections shortfalls since the end of fiscal 2008 will total roughly $1.3 trillion, not the “hundreds of billions” the AP lazily reported.

The AP also erred, as it did back in 2009 (and probably has done at other times not detected by yours truly), by incompletely explaining how the national debt has grown. For a separate explanation of why the wire service’s assertion that “The debt is the sum of deficits past and present” is incorrect, go here. This repeated error betrays the depth of consistent and persistent ignorance which pervade the Essential Global News Network.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Several have made this point since President Obama threatened that Social Security checks might not go out in early August. Here’s Mark Steyn’s formulation:

… as he (Obama) told Scott Pelley on CBS the other night, gran’ma gets it. That monthly Social Security check? Fuhgeddabouddit. “I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on Aug. 3 if we haven’t resolved this issue,” declared the president. “Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”

But hang on. I thought the Social Security checks came out of the “Social Security trust fund,” whose “trustees” assure us there’s currently $2.6 trillion in there. Which should be enough for the Aug. 3 check run, shouldn’t it? Golly, to listen to the president, you’d almost get the impression that, by the time you saw the padlock off the old Social Security lockbox, there’s nothing in there but a (stack of) yellowing IOUs.

That’s because there’s nothing in there but a stack of yellowing IOUs from government that, including the $2.6 trillion just noted, is over $14 trillion in debt.

From California:

July 11th, 2011
10:24 AM ET

After news broke last Friday that former First Lady Betty Ford had died, one of the first statements CNN received was from Stevie Nicks. The legendary Fleetwood Mac singer sent just one succinct sentence: “As far as I’m concerned, Betty Ford saved my life.”

An hour or so later, she followed it up with a phone call – made as she was driving to a Vanessa Carlton concert from her home in Malibu. She was talking on a borrowed phone, since she doesn’t own one herself.

Here are excerpts from that 10 minute phone conversation:

“As far as I’m concerned, Betty Ford DID save my life. I went to Betty Ford [The Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California] at the end of 1985 for cocaine addiction. In those days, she would actually come to speak at Betty Ford two or three times a month, so I got to hear her tell the whole story on just the pressure of being in politics, being married to a famous politician and getting addicted to whatever it was she was addicted to.

I thought, ‘God, if Betty Ford can come through this, I can come through it, too.’ Talk about being famous and being in rehab! ‘Oh no, I can’t do that, I’m too famous’ – well, come on! She was the First Lady of the United States. So that really, really made my need to fix myself even stronger.”

“A couple of years ago, I went to Betty Ford to speak and she was there. And I actually got to kind of get down on one knee and talk to her for about five minutes, and she was very, very fragile. And I just looked up at her and I said, ‘You’ve got all these children here for you, and had it not been for you, so many of us would not have gotten well.’

Anyway, she was so lovely, and I don’t think she really realized the impact she had on so many lives. Sometimes I don’t think truly great people people realize how great they are – and I told her that night. I said, ‘If it were not for you, Betty Ford, I would be dead. Absolutely. So all the songs that I have written since I was here, I dedicate to you. All the songs, and all the poems, and the shows and all the amazing things I got to do between 1985 and now is because of you.’”

“Betty Ford was not easy. I call it Betty Ford Boot Camp. And it was not an easy four weeks to go through, and nobody gets any special treatment there. It’s hard, but it’s kind of brilliant in its hardness. It’s kind of what I image it’s like to be in the army. There’s four dorms, and there’s 20 people in each dorm, and everybody has their chores, and everybody keeps that building clean and beautiful, and does dishes, makes coffee, vacuums the carpet – and she just insisted on it. The outside, the grass, the duck pond – that’s her facility, and you’d better take care of it.

And it was tough. But two weeks in, you start to think, ‘Oh my God, I’m getting better’ – because when you first get to Betty Ford, that’s basically what they tell you, is that you’re dying. And that’s not an easy thing to hear.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.