Say Anything Blog

Article on SS Payments:

WASHINGTON - Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise.

The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won’t be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn’t happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.

By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premiums, which often are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to go up slightly.

“I will promise you, they count on that COLA,” said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who now heads the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “To some people, it might not be a big deal. But to seniors, especially with their health care costs, it is a big deal.”

Cost of living adjustments are pegged to inflation, which has been negative this year, largely because energy prices are below 2008 levels.

So you receive SS benefits and also pay for Medicare Part D.  Because you get no COLA and because Part D premiums are increasing, somehow this equates to a benefit cut.  Don’t factor in that just about everything is going down in price due to a recession, except healthcare coverage.

Last I remember, Part D was a brand new and certainly optional entitlement program as of about seven years ago.  So you create this optional entitlement program that people have to pay a negligible amount to enroll in, and when premiums go up but your SS benefits don’t, folks bitch about it.

It gets worse when you hear the Democrat plan to deal with it:

Kennelly’s group wants Congress to increase Social Security benefits next year, even though the formula doesn’t call for it. She would like to see either a 1 percent increase in monthly payments or a one-time payment of $150.

The cost of a one-time payment, a little less than $8 billion, could be covered by increasing the amount of income subjected to Social Security taxes, Kennelly said. Workers only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,800 of income, a limit that rises each year with the average national wage.

But the limit only increases if monthly benefits increase.

A $2T deficit this year projected.  The middle of a recession where almost 10% of Americans are out of work.  And this Democrat is bitching because a government entitlement program doesn’t increase payouts because there is no overall inflation due to falling energy prices and another government entitlement program raises premiums because healthcare costs are rising.  Oh, yeah, and the answer is to raise SS taxes, that are also how Obama is going to solve the Healthcare and SS crisis as it is.

For once, I am fully with Democrats on their usual stance of “Blame Bush”.  See, it was Bush that created the brand new entitlement program that now less than a decade later is causing these sorts of problems.  This is what happens when you expand government and it is made all the worse when Republicans lose their focus and grow government because if Republicans are willing to grow government, Democrats will want to grow government more than the Republicans.  Now you see that Part D was not enough for Dems.  And Bush is behind this problem, fair and square.

And not very fairly either.  Of the 15 photos in their slideshow, two were of opponents to Obama’s healthcare bill.  And the text posted:

About 5,000 people were expected to demonstrate in favor of President Obama’s health care proposals. Nearly 1,500 showed up to demonstrate against the President.

1,500 actually showed up to protest against healthcare plans.  But 5,000 were expected to demonstrate in favor of it.

Look at this douche protesting:

Even with their estimates, roughly 20-25% of the protesters will be against Obama’s bill, yet they show 2 out of their 15 photographs or 12% of the total.  It is intended to diminish the number of opponents to Obama’s brand of healthcare reform.

I guess it is easier to find 5,000 Democrat/Union/ACORN activists that don’t have to work on a Monday morning.

I think that the purpose of the recent town halls is probably part of the problem with the protesters shouting and showing outrage.

I thought town halls were genuinely about listening to constituents, but these town halls run by the Democrats are not about making the legislation better or listening to voters, but rather about trying to convince voters of a plan that already seems solidified despite its flaws.

Take for instance the legitimate outrage expressed at the end of life provisions.  The outrage was real and the legislation was poorly worded.  So instead of listening and fixing it, the Dems waited for several weeks claiming that Republicans and Palin were distorting the truth before finally capitulating and changing their bill.

The second major stumbling block that constituents are justifiably pissed about is abortion being a covered service in the new healthcare bill.

If Dems were listening to Moderates and Conservatives, they would realize how controversial these provisions are and if they were interested in bipartisanship, they would have left these controversial provisions out of the legislation.  How do you as a Conservative or even Moderate that is pro-Life support a bill that is going to fund end of life care in the way it was worded and how do you support tax payer funded abortion?

And these are just medical ethics questions that were unnecessary to include.  That is before the cost of the program or fiscal responsibility or taxes come into play. 

So why are the Dems out trying to tell people that they should support taxpayer funded abortions instead of listening to the people that overwhelmingly are against it?  Is a town hall about pushing your agenda or listening to constituents?  How disconnected is Washington that these legislators that are rarely in their home states and only come back to campaign not stay in their dumpy apartments?  When you return to your home state and the state you represent, but spend so little time there that you have to stay in a hotel for your campaigning, how can you claim to be listening to your constituents?

More listening and less telling us rubes what we should think.

Some fluff in the article, but some interesting points:

Some of the dirtiest, smelliest, most dangerous jobs are suddenly looking a lot more appealing in this economy.

People who have been out of work for months are lining up for jobs at places they once considered unthinkable: slaughterhouses, sewage plants, prisons…

The desperation of the long-term jobless has rippled through the labor force. More skilled and educated workers have filled clerical or restaurant jobs. So unskilled workers such as teenagers or high school graduates who once held most of those positions have displaced those even lower on the economic ladder, such as immigrants, Freedman noted.

The intensified competition has hurt all workers - even those who are still employed - because it shrinks wages. Employers don’t have to pay more to lure workers.

“It’s easy for someone like your middle manager to take on a job at a poultry plant, because they have the skills to do many things. But for the immigrant, that might have been the only option,” said Catherine Singley of the National Council of La Raza, an immigrant advocacy group in Washington.

Not true.  It has hurt unskilled workers disproportionately because they are easily replaced.  Skilled workers are not feeling the pinch, especially in areas in high demand and that require high skills.

To make matter’s worse, let’s say that three years ago, you had three workers earning $5.15 an hour.  That is $15.45 an hour worth of labor.  Now, you are forced to have two workers do the same job for $7.25 an hour.  I know that $5.15 an hour really sucked ass and $7.25 isn’t great either, but the reality is that unemployment is that the unemployment rate for those age 18-19 is 23.2%.  The unemployment rate for those 20-24 is 15.4%.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea13.txt

You can break things down further.  The age group 16-24 that are not enrolled in school (dropouts age 16-24) do not have a high school diploma have an unemployment rate of 29.6% and those that do have a high school diploma are at 21.4%.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea16.txt

The prospects for this age group and this education group are the most dire.  They are squeezed by the minimum wage on one side and by folks with more skills, education, experience or just older people on the other.  When people that have some college or people that are older and have more experience come along, they get the jobs.  And with fewer minimum wage and entry level positions, competition is stiff.

Go one step farther and look at the unemployment rate for married folks, age 25 or older, all levels of educational attainment and you will find that the unemployment rate is you will find that the rate is 6.4% for men and 5.9% for women.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea29.txt

While the employment situation sucks in general, it sucks a lot less for married folks over age 25.  There are 2.2M unemployed, never married men age 16-24 and there are another 1.7M unemployed never married women age 16-24.  That is out of the total 15M unemployed. 

I am not going to point solely to minimum wage laws, but I will say that if the minimum wage was lower, more of these unmarried workers under age 24 would have jobs.  With all the rhetoric about single women trying to raise families on minimum wage, which is a fallacy, Dems failed to point out that it would put millions of teens and young adults with low job skills on the unemployment line.

But when you add in the folks that are older and more skilled taking their jobs on top of it, it is a recipe for all kinds of ills as our friends in France found out.

Headline:  Initial jobless claims fall more than projected:

First Paragraphs—

The number of Americans filing claims for jobless benefits fell more than economists predicted, a sign some employers have stopped paring staff as the recession eases.

Applications dropped by 38,000 to 550,000 in the week ended Aug. 1, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington, the fifth straight time claims were under 600,000 after being above that level since January. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance rose.

Great news.  So great that later on:

These numbers signal the worst is behind us, but we are not out of the woods yet, said David Semmens, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York. We are not going to see strong consumer spending with numbers that look like this.

The worst is behind us… until you see the numbers further down:

The four-week moving average, a less-volatile measure than weekly initial claims, fell to 555,250 from 560,000 the prior week.

The level of continuing claims increased by 69,000 to 6.31 million in the week ended July 25…

The Labor Department will probably report tomorrow that the economy lost 328,000 jobs in July, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg, following a decline of 467,000 in June. The jobless rate probably rose to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent, the survey showed.

I am all about optimism, but what I see here is that long term continuing recipients of unemployment rose by 69,000 in one week and the 4 week moving average feel by less than 5,000 people or under 1%.  Furthermore, the unemployment rate is going to rise tomorrow and another 350,000-400,000 jobs are going to be lost during the month of July.

Each month there are 150,000 new entrants into the job market so 150,000 jobs need to be created just to keep pace.  This means that when added to the job losses there are a net half a million more people without jobs this month.

Turning the corner is when we stop losing jobs each month, we see a real drop in the weekly unemployment numbers, and the unemployment rate stabilizes, something that was already supposed to have happened according to the graphs that the Dems showed us when they ramrodded through the stimulus.  They “misread” how bad the economy was though, and it is Bush’s fault.

What we know is that things are going to continue to get worse for a while.  What turned the corner means is that things getting worse will continue, just at a slower pace of getting shittier.  Turned the corner to me means things are starting to get better, not that things are not getting worse as quickly as they were before.

The Postal Service is bleeding red ink:

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Postal Service Wednesday posted a net loss of $2.4 billion in its third quarter and expects to lose more than $7 billion by the end of the fiscal year.

The rising tide of red ink could leave the Postal Service with a potential cash shortfall of as much as $700 million by its fiscal-year end on Sept. 30, when it must pay as much as $5.8 billion to prefund retiree health benefits. Postal Service officials hope Congress will pass legislation that would increase its ability to borrow from the U.S. Treasury Department before the bill comes due.

Continued declines in traditional mail are weighing on the Postal Service. It said mail volume fell 14.3% in the third quarter, following a 14.7% drop in the second quarter, with little improvement projected in the coming year.

“The recession has been brutal,” Postal Service Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett said at public meeting of the postal service board of governors.

The Postal Service has imposed a hiring freeze and is cutting hours and costs as revenue has declined. It is considering closing more than 600 postal facilities and is looking to switch to five-day-delivery service from six days, a move that would require congressional approval.

Here is the difference between the postal service, social security, medicare and Obama’s newest healthcare monstrosity:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;...

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

Even when exercising Constitutional authority, the government proves inept at managing a business.  And make no mistake, the Postal Service is a business.  A heavily subsidized, unionized, government run business.  All three of those phrases describe Amtrak among other government ventures.  And they will no doubt describe the new “co-ops” or even worse, the whole enchilada healthcare reform Obama wants passed.  Card Check will be used and co-op or government healthcare employees will most certainly be union and overpaid bureaucrats.

I would love if someone could explain how something as trivial as delivering mail, that UPS and FedEx do extremely well and certainly profitably, can be so mismanaged that the Postal Service is losing $7B a year and is already heavily subsidized to begin with.

In an ongoing discussion of race following the Gates incident, Beck makes an asinine statement on air:

NEW YORK—Fox News Channel commentator Glenn Beck said he believes President Barack Obama is a racist. Beck made the statement during a guest appearance Tuesday on the “Fox & Friends” morning show
. He said Obama has exposed himself as a person with “a deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture.”

His remarks came during a discussion of Obama’s reaction to the arrest of Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates is black and was arrested for disorderly conduct by a white policeman over a misunderstanding about a break-in at Gates’ home.

An Obama spokesman, William Burton, said the White House had no comment on Beck.

Beck’s statement was challenged on the air by Fox host Brian Kilmeade, who noted that most of the people who work for the nation’s first Black president are White.

“I’m not saying he doesn’t like White people,” Beck said. “He has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.”

Beck is supposed to be a mainstream guy and most certainly, any discussion of race at this point is a red herring that takes the Republicans off mission on healthcare and cap and trade.

Expect Beck’s comments to lead off the news cycle and divert attention from the real problems facing the country.  This provides political cover for Obama and his defenders.

All of this talk focuses on Obama the man, not on Obama’s Liberal policies.  Obama the man is intensely popular AS A PERSON with all of his negatives coming from his job performance and politics.  The Republicans will lose every fight they pick where they attack the first black president and bring up race to do it.  It is a no win proposition.  It comes off mean spirited and diverts attention from where it needs to be focused.

Now Beck is playing on Obama’s turf.  Why not focus on healthcare and cap and trade.  The Gates incident is minor in comparison.

One sixth of the world’s population have spoken:

July 20 (Bloomberg)—India won’t bend to demands from the Obama administration or threats from the U.S. Congress to adopt legally binding caps on its carbon emissions, the country’s environment minister told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday.

“There is simply no case for the pressure” the U.S. is exerting, considering India produces among the lowest per capita emissions in the world, Minister Jairam Ramesh told Clinton during an unexpected discussion of climate negotiations during an event intended to showcase U.S.-Indian cooperation on clean energy at a “green” office building outside New Delhi.

“As if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours,” Ramesh said, referring to a climate-change bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June 26 that imposes tariffs on exports from countries that refuse to adopt greenhouse gas controls by 2020.

If we fail to curb the growth in emissions by China and India that make up almost half the world population and have by far the fastest growth rates, what good does destroying our economy by making energy prohibitively expensive do?

What is interesting is the other part of the conversation:

The U.S. and European countries must offer financial incentives and equitable reductions in carbon emissions to ensure any deal won’t hinder growth, food security and poverty alleviation in developing nations such as India, China and Brazil, Ramesh said.

So not only do we have to penalize our population with higher energy prices and prices on goods, plus less competitive goods abroad because we have to compete with countries that are not capped, but we also have to provide massive transfer payments to these countries to bribe them into token efforts to cut their own emissions.

This from the AZ Republic:

NEW YORK - When undercover detectives busted Jose and Maximo Colon last year for selling cocaine at a seedy club in Queens, there was a glaring problem: The brothers hadn’t done anything wrong.

But proclaiming innocence wasn’t going to be good enough. The Dominican immigrants needed proof.

“I sat in the jail and thought ... how could I prove this? What could I do?” Jose, 24, recalled in Spanish during a recent interview.

As he glanced around a holding cell, the answer came to him: Security cameras. Since then, a vindicating video from the club’s cameras has spared the brothers a possible prison term, resulted in two officers’ arrest and become the basis for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The officers, who are due back in court June 26, have pleaded not guilty, and New York Police Department officials have downplayed their case.

But the drug corruption case isn’t alone.

On May 13, another NYPD officer was arrested for plotting to invade a Manhattan apartment where he hoped to steal $900,000 in drug money. In another pending case, prosecutors in Brooklyn say officers were caught in a 2007 sting using seized drugs to reward a snitch for information. And in the Bronx, prosecutors have charged a detective with lying about a drug bust captured on a surveillance tape that contradicts her story.

Elsewhere, Philadelphia prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen drug and gun charges against a man last month when a narcotics officer was accused of making up information on search warrants.

The revelations in New York have triggered internal affairs inquiries, transfers of commanders and reviews of dozens of other arrests involving the accused officers. Many drug defendants’ cases have been tossed out. Others have won favorable plea deals.

The misconduct “strikes at the very heart of our system of justice and erodes public confidence in our courts,” said Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson.

Despite the fallout, authorities describe the corruption allegations as aberrations in a city where officers daily make hundreds of drugs arrests that routinely hold up in court. They also note none of the cases involved accusations of organized crews of officers using their badges to steal or extort drugs or money for personal gain - the story line of full-blown corruption scandals from bygone eras.

Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agrees the majority of narcotics officers probably are clean. But he also believes the city’s unending war on drugs will always invite corruption by some who don’t think twice about framing suspects they’re convinced are guilty anyway.

Read the whole story.  This illustrates the power of government to deprive a person of life, liberty, and property.  And it also illustrates that the justice system concentrates power into the hands of police that make arrests, prosecutors that almost blindly follow what police have done, and ultimately courts where criminals without means to defend themselves are locked away while the wealthy can escape justice.

I am not going to compare us to a third world country when it comes to corruption, but will say that the war on drugs has so drastically expanded the power of the police state that it leads to these sort of situations on a fairly frequent basis.  And who to believe?  If not for the security cameras, these innocent men would be in prison and these officers would still be dealing drugs and targeting other innocent folks.

It is time to end the war on drugs.  It isn’t just a war on drugs, but rather a war on freedom.

A while ago, I posted about the Denver Rocky Mountain News Staffers giving a shot at moving the paper to an online format:

DENVER - Former Rocky Mountain News staffers plan to start an online newspaper if they can get 50,000 paying subscribers by April 23.

That date would have been the News’ 150th anniversary.

The E.W. Scripps Co. shut down the News last month, citing mounting losses.

The founders of InDenverTimes.com say the site will go live on May 4 if they meet the subscription goal.

The Web site would be free but subscribers who pay $4.99 a month would get interactive chats, columns and other extras.

The site calls the subscriptions an investment “to encourage a bold, creative effort to continue a vision based on a 150-year Denver tradition.”

InDenverTimes.com includes 30 reporters and editors who worked at the Rocky.

Apparently, there are enough websites out there that are free:

DENVER - The future of a Denver online news venture is uncertain.

It fell short of its subscriber goal, and its backers and staff parted ways.

Kevin Preblud, one of the original investors behind InDenverTimes.com, said Thursday the site attracted just 3,000 paying subscribers, well short of the goal of 50,000.

Preblud says the investors haven’t decided on their next step. But he says the original concept of using 30 staffers from the defunct Rocky Mountain News isn’t viable with that number of subscribers.

David Milstead, one of the former News staffers who planned to work for InDenverTimes.com, says some of the staffers believe they can make the original concept work and are looking for new backers.

The News folded in February. Thursday would have been its 150th anniversary.

Well color me surprised.  Do these newspaper folks get it at all?

Check this story and please tell me what party the indicted lawmaker is from:

TUCSON - A former Arizona lawmaker has been charged with identity theft, forgery and fraud in connection with signatures on his nominating petitions when he ran unsuccessfully for the state House last year.

The Pima County Attorney’s Office indicted John Kromko earlier this month on nine counts of identity theft, nine counts of forgery and one count of fraudulent scheme.

Prosecutors say Kromko forged the signatures and used the addresses and other identifying information of more than 20 people in his nominating petitions.

They say he also forged the signatures of the people who supposedly passed the petitions.

Kromko, 68, organized the unsuccessful initiative drive in 2007 to limit new water connections and use of effluent and ran unsuccessfully for state House District 27 against incumbent Democrats Phil Lopes and Olivia Cajero Bedford last year.

Kromko has been active in local politics for 40 years and served in the state Legislature from 1976-1990.

He ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Democrats, but it does not specifically mention that he IS A DEMOCRAT.

Versus the first two lines of this story last year:

TUCSON - Members of the U.S. House will be sworn in Tuesday as the 111th Congress convenes, but Rep. Rick Renzi won’t be among them.

The Arizona Republican has ended a three-term career beneath the same cloud of suspicion that surrounded him during much of his last year in office, under federal indictment and facing a criminal trial in March.

How do you like that?  Tell me that this isn’t blatant bias.

Interesting Polling Data from Rasmussen:

Support for Democratic Congressional candidates hit a new low this week, resulting in a tie between Republicans and Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 38% would vote for their district’s Democratic candidate while 38% would choose the Republican.

Support for the Democrats fell two points this week, while support for the GOP candidates fell one point. Last week, the Democrats were ahead by just a 40% to 39% margin.

A month ago, Republicans took a two-point lead over Democrats, their first in several years, but that quickly reversed the following week. For the last three weeks, the Democrats have held modest one to four-point leads over the GOP.

Democrats began the year holding a six- or seven-point lead over the GOP for the first several weeks of 2009. Over the past year, Democratic support has ranged from a low of 38% to a high of 50%.

In that same time period, Republicans have been preferred by 34% to 41% of voters nationwide.

From a spread of +7 to a statistical tie in less than 100 days…

And it ain’t an honorary degree:

Arizona State University is taking a different approach to honoring this year’s commencement speaker, President Barack Obama.

The university on Saturday announced in a statement it will name and expand its most important scholarship program in Obama’s honor.

The scholarship program will be called the President Barack Obama Scholars. It will provide financial assistance to thousands of students...

“When I took office I said we are not giving any honorary degrees to any donors and we’re not giving honorary degrees to sitting politicians,” he told Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini.

On Saturday, Crow said in the statement: “Naming this scholarship program after President Obama that will affect the lives of thousands of students is an honor befitting, not only the president’s exceptional achievements, but also his values as an individual.

“The President Barack Obama Scholars program will be a legacy that will endure and inspire others for generations to come,” Crow said.

I think that is a fair policy to not honor sitting politicians and major donors by throwing honorary degrees at them.  It isn’t like Obama needs an ASU honorary doctorate either considering he has a law degree from Harvard. 

Not sure what all the outrage was about.  Crow is no conservative icon by any stretch and this isn’t about playing politics.  It is about precisely the opposite—not playing politics by throwing degrees around.

Good Job ASU and Go Devils.  Coincidentally, ASU’s baseball team is right where it should be—Number One in the weekly baseball polls, not that anyone cares about ASU Baseball.  But then again, people around here care about UND Hockey, so there you go.

Pardon the pun (sorry but the link is blacklisted because it uses the word porn in it, however it is an AP wire story):

BALTIMORE - The University of Maryland, College Park, has canceled this weekend’s screening of a hard-core pornographic film after state lawmakers objected and threatened to cut funding to the flagship state university.

UM President C.D. Mote Jr. decided to cancel the screening of Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, which was to be shown at the student union and had been approved by a student programming committee.

A behind-the-scenes negotiation between state Senate officials and the university ensued after a debate broke out Thursday on the chamber’s floor over the screening.

“That’s really not what Maryland residents send their young students to college campus for—to view pornography,” said Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller.

He acknowledged the legislature shouldn’t get involved in censoring movies, but said the General Assembly is not going to support the screening of hard-core pornographic movies on a state campus paid for by taxpayer dollars…

The 138-minute film, billed as a “XXX blockbuster” by its distributor, Digital Playground of Van Nuys, Calif., was the most expensive porn movie ever made, at $10 million. It was released in September 2008.

Christopher Ruth, a spokesman for Digital Playground, said he was disappointed and upset about the cancellation. He said at least five other universities, including Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon and the University of California, Los Angeles, had screened the film and none had canceled.

“Showing a movie like this opens up a discussion, a discourse on sexuality and gender roles, and for them to stifle that discourse from happening is amazing,” said Ruth.

The film was provided to the university free, so no student fees or state money was used. But some observers still questioned whether hard-core porn has a place on a college campus…

Adam Kissel, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, based in Philadelphia, said the legislature was “far out of line” for threatening to withhold funding and said Mote’s apparent “capitulation” was “distressing.”

Obscene content is not necessarily protected under the U.S. Constitution, Kissel said, but the fact that the student union planned to have Planned Parenthood give a prescreening presentation on safe-sex practices before the film strengthens the First Amendment argument.

Planned Parenthood, which does not endorse pornography, had accepted the invitation as a way to educate students…

“We thought this would be something fun for the students to do, especially since we’re getting close to the end of the semester,” Cunningham said. “We’re a college movie theater and we thought it would bring out the students.”

WTF?

Not even close to 90% of guns used in Mexico are of US origin:

You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before—on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.

—CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.

—California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: “It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States.”

—William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that “there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.”

There’s just one problem with the 90 percent “statistic” and it’s a big one:

It’s just not true.

In fact, it’s not even close. By all accounts, it’s probably around 17 percent.

What’s true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency’s assistant director, “is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.”

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

“Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market,” Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

Explain what purpose these statistic serve if not to shut down gun shows and further limit the Second Amendment.