A Sad Day for Freedom of Speech

Andrew Bolt is an Australian columnist who wrote a few articles in 2009 and 2010 about light-skinned Australians who identify as Aborignal. He was taken to court, and he lost his case. In the interest of free speech solidarity, I am linking to one of the articles that an Australian court found to be illegal.

White Is the New Black — Herald Sun, April 15, 2009.

In case the link comes down, here is the article in screen captures.

A Useful Way to Get Your Head Around Yearly Deficits and the Debt

The United States Debt is currently over 14.7 trillion dollars, and climbing uncontrollably. There is a lot of partisan sniping over which administrations have raised our debt the most. This argument is a bit of a diversion because both parties spend recklessly. Also, when power is divided between the presidency and Congress, it’s hard to assign blame. But regardless of who was in power when each budget was passed, it is hard for the average citizen to comprehend numbers that are so large that they are beyond imagining—152 billion or 468 billion or 1.4 trillion.

The way I've recently begun to think about it is I use a formula where a trillion dollars equals one dollar. Using this method, 100 billion equals 10 cents and 10 billion equals 1 penny. Using this method, I thought I would make a list of U.S. deficits for the last 40 years in numbers that are easier to grasp.

1972 $0.12
1973 $0.07
1974 $0.03
1975 $0.21
1976 $0.27
1977 $0.19
1978 $0.19
1979 $0.12
1980 $0.19
1981 $0.18
1982 $0.28
1983 $0.44
1984 $0.38
1985 $0.42
1986 $0.43
1987 $0.28
1988 $0.28
1989 $0.26
1990 $0.36
1991 $0.42
1992 $0.44
1993 $0.37
1994 $0.29
1995 $0.23
1996 $0.15
1997 $0.03
1998 surplus of $0.09
1999 surplus of $0.16
2000 surplus of $0.29
2001 surplus of $0.15
2002 $0.19
2003 $0.43
2004 $0.46
2005 $0.35
2006 $0.26
2007 $0.17
2008 $0.46
2009 $1.40
2010 $1.35
2011 $1.50 (estimated)

If we add these all up, we can see that the total debt in the last 40 years is $12.51. Since the total U.S. debt is $14.70, we can calculate that the debt before 1972 totaled $2.19. It is also obvious that since 2009, the U.S. has turned a corner—deficits have gone beyond large to unsustainable. Something has got to change now.