Barack Obama echoes anti-Americanism of Europe in calling voters stupid
Obama and his fellow Democrats are mocking Republicans and the Tea Party as stupid. But they could be the ones who look foolish on election day
So what is the closing argument of Barack Obama's Democrats before next Tuesday's midterm elections? The President is no longer the self-proclaimed "hope-monger" of 2008, who vaingloriously declared that his vanquishing Hillary Clinton marked "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal".
He has stopped patting voters on the back for choosing, by voting for him, to listen not to their doubts or fears but to their "greatest hopes and highest aspirations". Instead, he is berating Americans (most of whom now do not believe he deserves a second term) for not being able to "think clearly" because they're "scared".
Having failed to change Washington or, as he promised that night in St Paul, Minnesota in June 2008, to provide "good jobs to the jobless" (unemployment was 7.7 per cent when he took office and is 9.6 per cent now), Obama is changing tack. Boiled down, the new Obama message to Americans is: you're too stupid to overcome your fears.
To be fair, it's not entirely new. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was caught on tape at a San Francisco fund-raiser saying it was not surprising that voters facing economic hardship "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them".
At a fund-raiser in Massachusetts this month, Obama spoke of Democrats having "facts and science and argument" on their side. As opposed, presumably, to the lies, superstition and prejudice that Republicans rely on.
This year, Democrats have embraced with gusto the notion that Republicans, and by extension anyone thinking of voting for them, are dimwits. Their mirth over the likes of Tea Party figures like Christine O'Donnell, the former anti-masturbation activist who once she had "dabbled" in witchcraft and is now a no-hoper Senate candidate in Delaware, seems to know no bounds.
The most chortling of all about the populist Tea Party and its anti-tax, anti-government uprising against the Republican establishment can be found on the shows of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the edgy liberal satirists on Comedy Central. Mocking Republican candidates last week, Stewart declared the midterm elections as "the best chance ever for a bowl of fresh fruit" to be elected.
Three days before the elections, Stewart will hold a "Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington on the same day as Colbert, who adopts the character of a Right-wing talk show host, leads a "March to Keep Fear Alive". The thinly-disguised message: Republicans are crazies who trade on fear.
In choosing California and Massachusetts, two of the most liberal states in the union, to demean ordinary Americans during election campaigns, Obama did not display a whole lot of his much-vaunted intelligence. But Obama's decision to plug Stewart's rally approvingly and appear on his show three days beforehand is even more foolish.
In the 1990s, Democrats managed to get away from their image as "eggheads" in the 1950s or "pointy-headed liberals" in the 1970s. Bill Clinton spoke like a Good Ol' Boy from the Deep South, ate junk food and enjoyed trashy women. He was clever, but he did not look down on people.
Obama, by contrast, has become a parody of the Ivy League liberal smugly content with his own intellectual superiority and pitying the poor idiots who disagree with him. It is an approach that shares much with the default anti-Americanism of British and European elites, who love to mock the United States as a country full of gun-toting, bible-clutching morons.
David Cameron [Centrist British PM] has made nods to this sniffy condescension, speaking of the Sarah Palin phenomenon as being "hard for us to understand" (how about giving it a go, Dave?) and describing American conservatism, inaccurately, as moving in a "very culture war direction". This might be part of the reason why he seems to have hit it off with Obama.
The problem for Obama and the Democrats is that belittling the Tea Party movement, which is taking hold of much of Middle America, merely fuels the popular sense that the party in power is out of touch. It also highlights the reluctance of Obama and the Democrats to discuss the Wall Street bail-out, economic stimulus and health care bills because they know they are not vote winners.
Joining the Europeans in mocking ordinary Americans for their supposed idiocy may play well at big-dollar fund-raisers. In adopting this as a political strategy, however, the Democrats could be the ones who end up looking stupid.
SOURCE
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A problem with socialism
by Roderick T. Beaman
Like many others, I flirted for a while with socialism when I was in high school. I think many have. It seemed sensible on paper but then I saw how the world really worked.
William Buckley once responded to a high school student who had written that he thought Buckley was horribly wrong and that John Kenneth Galbraith was correct about economics. Buckley responded that the high school student was at the perfect age to appreciate John Kenneth Galbraith; another perfect putdown by the Enfant Terrible.
During the 1960s, there were many variants of this saying; if you’re not part of the solution, at least don’t be part of the problem. As I grew up, I saw more and more that government was the problem.
The 1964 election had promised to be one of the most interesting in history until the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Barry Goldwater was considered the favorite of rank and file Republicans to be nominated to face Kennedy in his reelection bid.
Kennedy’s assassination elevated the loathsome Lyndon B. Johnson to the presidency and he immediately embarked upon the imposition of his Great Society that was so broad and so deep that we are still absorbing its effects, 41 years after he left office. The election instead became a referendum on the sentiments for a dead man’s agenda. Johnson swamped Goldwater, taking 44 states with Goldwater winning six.
Enter the Monday morning quarterbacking. The New York Times, which had been endorsing Democrats for years, began telling Republicans what they did wrong. It anointed Cong. John V. Lindsay for Mayor the following year. He was the Moses who would lead the GOP out of the Goldwater wilderness.
Lindsay was Yale educated, handsome and from New York City’s fabled Silk Stocking District of Manhattan’s East Side. He was also as reliably liberal as any liberal Democrat, voting for just about every New Frontier and Great Society program. Lindsay had never seen a taxpayer’s dollar that he didn’t want to spend.
Lindsay was elected beating Buckley, the Conservative Party nominee, the only time he ever ran for office, and Democrat Abraham Beame. The spending began.
Lindsay was greeted in 1966 with a 12-day subway strike under the Transit Worker’s Union leader Mike Quill, who’d had a deep and long association with the Communist Party of the USA. (In an interesting sidelight, Quill’s communist roots were never mentioned by the various media during the strike. I never knew about it until years after. Why am I not surprised by that?) He’d broken with them in 1948 but there could be no doubt that his orientation was socialist. He extracted a generous contract from the Lindsay Administration and died three days later. The contract, and concessions to others, left the city teetering.
Lindsay responded with (drum roll, please), you guessed it, a tax increase in the form of the City’s first income tax. It went into effect in September 1966.
At that time, I was working as an electrician’s helper in Local Union #3 in the city. We were contracted to a 6-hour workday but almost everyone was working seven hours a day. For paid holidays, we received the contract pay for just six hours, not the usual seven we worked.
One day we were asked to work overtime one hour and most of us jumped at the opportunity for some extra pay. That pay week though, encompassed the Labor Day weekend and the one hour of overtime just balanced the 6-hour holiday pay and brought us up to our usual 35 hours pay week. That week, the city’s income tax also went into effect so we netted less than what we had been.
One fellow worker said that if he had known that, he wouldn’t have grabbed the extra hour of overtime and just accepted the smaller paycheck. The take home lesson is that this is an example of how people react within a system. It is all so very predictable and our governmentalist politicians, (fascist, progressive, liberal and socialist) rarely take into account how people will react within a system.
Rhode Island has, as many states have had, a long tradition of vanity license plates. The car owner pays some extra fees and has some special combination of letters to spell something or his initials, etc. It raises some extra revenue for the state treasury and is a harmless venture for the driver.
When Bruce Sundlun, a Democrat, became governor in 1991, the state was facing a revenue shortfall. Together with the solidly Democratic legislature (in Rhode Island, that’s redundant), they decided to double the fees for vanity plates. They assumed that the revenue would increase markedly, possibly double. Instead, people who had held particular plates for years, even decades, simply decided they weren’t worth it and turned them in for regular plates. My wife and I did it for each of our plates and four or five other people and couples we knew did the same. While I don’t know the exact figures, I am sure that the actual revenue realized was far less than what had been predicted just from the experience and I am sure the many people at the State House never even considered the possibility that a lot of people would simply turn in their plates.
I am also befuddled by politicians, of all stripes, who rail against ‘price gouging’ during emergencies. Of course, any serious student of economics knows that there is no such thing as price gouging. Either the marketplace sustains a price or it doesn’t. As many far wiser minds than mine have noted, the price mechanism represents an opportunity for signals of needs or excesses to be passed through the market to others for problems to be corrected.
During the recent spate of hurricanes to hit Florida, Attorney General Bill McCollum has been out there in front of the cameras (for any politician that’s almost redundant) was out there, thundering, about various businesses price gouging. It certainly appeals to voters (is anything a politician does, not geared to voters?) but it doesn’t stand up to examination.
In storms, floods and other natural disasters, one of the first things to be needed is water. Oh yes, it may impress as unseemly for a merchant to jack up his price for water after a storm but it does provide an important signal for the need for more. If someone has a truck with few other resources to otherwise drive to, say Tennessee, to bring back a truckload, would not the possibility of earning some money to do it, afford him the wherewithal? I think this is an intelligent question but few politicians can answer intelligent questions.
The merchant or businessman has several choices in such a matter. He can simply close his shop or refuse to sell the item in question or he can sell them at the regular price and soon be exhausted of them. In any case, he is left with no resources to correct it and in the first two cases, no need whatsoever is met.
The ultimate example of governmental stupidity (I apologize here for any redundancy) is the rent control situation in New York City. It was first enacted nationally in 1943 by (are you really surprised by this?) Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was considered an emergency at the time (what government action isn’t?) and has been in effect ever since.
The force of logic shows that price controls on anything leads to shortages or distortions in the market. Rent control has been shown to lead to a two-tiered system of rents. The simplest thing would be to terminate the program but political pressures from people who have stayed in their sub-market priced residences for decades will lead a march on City Hall to protest any such attempts. The controls are part of many systemic reasons why there is a huge dearth of medium priced apartments The Big Apple. There is a great need but socialism or governmentalism gets in the way of a solution.
So there we see government getting in the way or its ventures not living up to expectations. It’s the limit of politics and government as Buckley said in his campaign. People will react in ways that are simply not anticipated but nevertheless are very predictable. They will always move in the direction of their own perceived self-interest. The problem is they may not move in what the state’s perceived self-interest. They may decide not to work or to turn in their license plates rather than pay the extra price, they may simply withdraw from participation.
And what is the state’s ultimate weapon against the people when they act in their own self-interest rather than the state’s? Why penalties. Imprisonment. And ultimately, execution.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
The mystery of FDR unraveled: "For seventy-plus years, the case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt has vexed people of a libertarian bent. His policies, extending war socialism based on Mussolini’s economic structure, expanded the American State to an unthinkable extent, and prolonged the Great Depression through the horrific World War II. Normalcy did not return until after his wartime controls were repealed and the budget was cut. Lasting economic recovery began in 1948. And the guy that made all that happen is a hero? His picture is on the (depreciated) dime.”
The real reason for FDR’s popularity: "All presidents worry about their popularity. They try to bolster it through impassioned rhetoric, free stuff for influential voting blocs, new programs that cost billions, dramatic photo ops, and of course wars to unite the country behind their valiant leadership. In most all cases, they choose means of gaining popularity that come at the expense of liberty.”
ME: City considers letting non-citizens vote: "Like his neighbors, Claude Rwaganje pays taxes on his income and taxes on his cars. His children have gone to Portland’s public schools. He’s interested in the workings of Maine’s largest city, which he has called home for 13 years. There’s one vital difference, though: Rwaganje isn’t a U.S. citizen and isn’t allowed to vote on those taxes or on school issues. That may soon change. Portland, Maine, residents will vote Nov. 2 on a proposal to give legal residents who are not U.S. citizens the right to vote in local elections, joining places like San Francisco and Chicago that have already loosened the rules or are considering it. Non-citizens hold down jobs, pay taxes, own businesses, volunteer in the community and serve in the military, and it’s only fair they be allowed to vote, Rwaganje said.”
Mountain roads, take me home: "A natural camaraderie exists among people who work for a living and don’t have much. I didn’t exactly work, but I had grown up around people who did, and knew how to fit in. It wasn’t surprising that they offered to share their vodka with a stranger. Talk to anyone who has hitchhiked extensively. He will tell you that the likelihood that a car will stop is inversely proportional to the price of the car. People who have needed help are inclined to provide help.”
A better way than the VA?: "If you listen to Democratic campaign ads in Colorado, Nevada, or Delaware, among other places, you will discover yet another perfidious plot by evil Republicans — they want to ‘privatize the VA.’ Which makes one respond, ‘This is a horrible thing because … why?’”
How much air superiority does a man need?: "The chatter is skittering on the sheen of the Obama and Israel-approved Saudi purchase of 84 old and technically degraded F-15s. As this sale promotes the MIC and is agreeable to AIPAC, Congressional approval of this proposed sale is moot. In terms of military capability shifts, as Jeff Huber at Antiwar.com explains, is it much ado about not much. The sale simply enhances Saudi Arabia’s capability to do what we ourselves do with our F-15s, primarily argue amongst ourselves about which old man is going to take a joy ride. Expensive fun counts for plenty, if you are a servant of the state.”
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Mao's Great Famine
An email from a Western correspondent living in China who was once himself a Maoist
Well I've been reading again -- this time going over old familiar territory using new, unbelievable sources: Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe as reported in national, provincial and city archives in China.
Can it be possible? - Author Frank Dikotter, China historian in HK, claims a new law allows such access and basically confirms the details of what we knew generally back in the 70's. Whereas we used transcripts of mainland radio broadcasts and reports of mainland newspapers and magazines, refugee accounts and documents smuggled out, he got access to official documents which, while they have shortcomings, add a degree of authenticity and first person, including the words of major players as reported in provincial reports of meetings in Beijing. No-one comes out well, even those who were persecuted for their honesty, as they were usually enthusiastic supporters before they saw for themselves the degree of horror in the countryside.
Their disillusionment was they thought officials at the lower levels, people were better than they! -- e.g unrealistic grain seizure quotas were increased at every level before they got to central level. They were often met by starving villagers to death -- i.e. The Chairman's delusional and venal behaviour was reflected at all levels of the party with any villager questioning the quotas being branded a bourgois conservative, anti-party element and often beaten to death.
I guess this marks the beginning of a whole new genre of revisionist scholarship bound to embarrass Professor Barme and the New Sinologists who appear to insist we should draw a line under 1978 and ignore anything before it!
As for me it only underscores the inadequacy of my mea culpa. And what of those who still cry Shihuizhuyi hao! (Socialism is great!)? Are present-day officials any better? Only a matter of degree perhaps.
One typical line from the good Chairman. "It is necessary for half of the people to die so the other half can eat their fill!" The legendary Zhou making endless calls to local cadres in 1959 demanding they fulfil their quotas despite knowledge of the famine.
The official policy of exporting grain to one and all, often free, to demonstrate the superiority of Chinese Communism. Liu Shaoqi giving the GLF his enthusiastic support. The enormous loss of state stored grain due to neglect, insects, rot, theft and corrpuption extending up to 80% in some places. Deng Xiaoping insisting quotas be collected ruthlessly "As in war". Its all very depressing reading.
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Obamacare Reality Bites: And HHS waivers
The Obama-inspired overhaul of medical insurance has just started to kick in, and already reality, in the form of economic law, is biting back. Companies are canceling or threatening to cancel coverage because the new terms of doing business make business as usual uneconomical. For example, some insurance companies announced they would no long write child-only policies. The new rules say that beginning now, no insurer can refuse coverage to an already-ill child and that the premiums can’t be higher than those charged for well children. (In a few years the “antidiscrimination” rule will apply to adults.)
Anyone with a smidgen of economic knowledge – heck, how about just some common sense? – would know that this cannot work. How can you run an insurance company when parents can wait until their children are seriously ill to buy coverage — and then the insurer can’t set the premium according to the expected medical services. That’s not insurance. It’s welfare filtered through business.
Well, now, when the companies announced they would stop writing those policies, the Department of Health and Human Services relented and waived the rule (at least for a while).
A pattern emerges. Companies claim they can’t live with a particular Obamacare mandate, and HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius issues a waiver. When McDonald’s and other companies said that their limited mini-med policies would become prohibitively expensive if the government enforced its no-benefit-cap rule, Sebelius granted a waiver. She is now considering a request for a waiver of the rule mandating no less than an 80-85 percent medical loss ratio on mini-med polices. That’s the percentage of revenues paid in benefits rather than administrative costs. Companies with a high workforce turnover say insurance administrative costs are naturally higher than with a stable workforce and thus the mandated medical loss ratio is impractical. (It’s been pointed out that the medical loss ratio was not intended as a measure of efficiency.)
At issue here is not the details of the more than two thousand pages of law. It’s the discretionary power the government has acquired because of it. A one-size-fits-all law was written by Congress. During the debate over the legislation many of us warned that such an approach would defy the laws of economics and would therefore have undesirable unintended consequences. We said, for example, that price caps which ignore real market conditions would cause producers to exit the market, leaving people without services they want.
So Secretary Sebelius is busy granting waivers. On one level this is good: The direct consequences of Obamacare will be less severe than they would have been. But at another level this is not good at all. Obamacare has increased the amount of discretionary power bureaucrats have over our lives. Whatever standard HHS uses in judging waiver requests will be arbitrary. How big does a hardship have to be before a request gets a favorable ruling? Will a company’s CEO have to be careful about criticizing the Obama administration – even on nonmedical issues – for fear that a future waiver request might be turned down? Bureaucrats are human too. (Sebelius has warned insurers not to publicly blame premium increases on Obamacare mandates.)...
Finally, we readily describe the negative effects of this law as “unintended consequences.” I’d like to suggest that they may not be so unintended. It is hard to believe that some of the higher-ups did not realize that price controls and similar restrictions would push insurers out of the market. I would not be surprised to learn that this was widely anticipated and that the ruling elite intended to exploit problem to amass even more power over medical insurance. One need not be a conspiracy aficionado to think this. One need only understand purposive human action.
More HERE
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The Lies of ObamaCare
Yet more evidence is emerging that Obamacare is a lie, a complete fraud perpetrated on the American people. Prior to congressional enactment of the legislation, Barack Obama promised in his State of the Union Address that it would “reduce costs and premiums for millions of families and businesses.”
Now we know that’s a lie. Not only are insurance companies already warning of higher premiums because of Obamacare, now the Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to sue Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan because, get this, premiums are too low.
Specifically, because the insurer negotiates with hospitals and other health care providers for the lowest possible rates for its customers, Obama’s DOJ is arguing that that is increasing the costs for everyone else. Never mind that Blue Cross covers 2.4 million people in Michigan, or about 27.7 percent of those with insurance in the state.
Those 2.4 million people just are not paying enough, according to Obama.
So, they will wind up paying more for their health care if the Administration’s lawsuit succeeds. Why? Because if Blue Cross’ contracts with hospitals and other health care providers are deemed invalid, it will not result in others getting the same rates as Blue Cross had. It will mean that Blue Cross customers will pay as much as everyone else.
Further, it will set a precedent that no company can negotiate for a lower rate. This puts the lie to Obamacare. The intention never was to lower rates for the insured. It was to drive up the costs to force individuals off of private health insurance — and into government’s waiting arms.
Obamacare always was a road to government control. That’s why it includes an individual mandate to purchase insurance starting in 2014, and that’s why its own regulators admit the bill will force up to 69 percent of enrollees off of their employer-provided plans. How else to get folks to incrementally be forced into a single-payer system?
The whole purpose Obamacare, therefore, is to drive up costs, creating a health care affordability crisis in the nation. In the mean time, the Administration accuses companies of “price-gouging”.
It’s already started. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has warned insurers not to inform enrollees that premium hikes are a direct result of Obamacare: “[S]everal health insurer carriers are sending letters to their enrollees falsely blaming premium increases for 2011 on the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act… [T]here will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” Sebelius wrote in a letter to America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Sebelius has the answer. She writes, “Later this fall, we will issue a regulation that will require state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases filed by health insurers, with the justification for increases posted publicly for consumers and employers.” Never mind that insurance carriers are already required to notify enrollees of hikes in premiums, how dare insurers tell their customers the real reason for the hikes?
Sebelius promises to “keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014.” The implication? If you are an insurer, and you speak out against Obamacare, they will shut you down...
The Obama Administration is taking great pains to force health care costs up to compel the American people onto government-run health care. Meanwhile, they are regulating blame for those premium hikes to private insurers.
All of this is proof that Obamacare was a lie from the very beginning. The Administration does not care about lower costs, because they don’t even care about the costs. What they want is control.
More HERE
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Close to a trillion down the drain
What if I told you that the Chairman and CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano, approached President Obama and members of his administration before the healthcare bill debates with a plan that would reduce healthcare expenditures by $900 billion? Given the Obama Administration’s adamancy that the United States of America simply had to make healthcare (read: health insurance) affordable for even the most dedicated welfare recipient, one would think he would have leaned forward in his chair, cupped his ear and said, “Tell me more!”
And what if I told you that the cost to the federal government for this program was nothing, zip, nada, zilch?
And, what if I told you that, in the end and after two meetings, President Obama and his team, instead of embracing a program that was proven to save money and one that was projected to save almost one trillion dollars – a private sector program costing the taxpayers nothing, zip, nada, zilch – said, “Thanks but no thanks” and then embarked on passing one of the most despised pieces of legislation in US history?
Well, it’s all true. Samuel J. Palmisano, the Chairman of the Board and CEO for IBM, said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that he offered to provide the Obama Administration with a program that would curb healthcare claims fraud and abuse by almost one trillion dollars but the Obama White House turned the offer down.
Mr. Palmisano is quoted as saying during a taping of The Wall Street Journal's Viewpoints program on September 14, 2010: "We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion...I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down."
A second meeting between Mr. Palmisano and the Obama Administration took place two weeks later, with no change in the Obama Administration's stance. A call placed to IBM on October 8, 2010, by FOX News confirmed, via a spokesperson, that Mr. Palmisano stands by his statement.
Speaking with FOX News' Stuart Varney, Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Report, said: "It's a little bit puzzling because I think there is a huge amount of both fraud and inefficiency that American business is a lot more comfortable with and more effective in trying to reduce. And this is certainly true because the IBM people have studied this very carefully. And when Palmisano went to the White House and made that proposal, it was based upon a lot of work and it was not accepted. And it's really puzzling...These are very, very responsible people. They don't have a political ax to grind. They are very familiar with the subject; they understand exactly what the issues are."
Given the fact that Mr. Obama’s own Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services actuary debunked the claim that health insurance costs would diminish over the next decade and given that the budget deficits for 2010 and 2011 are in the $1.2 trillion–$1.4 trillion ballpark, the question begs to be asked: Why would Mr. Obama balk at a sure-thing savings of almost $1 trillion?
CMS actuaries also say that Medicare cuts mandated by the law are unrealistic and unsustainable. An April 22, 2010, CMS report about the financial and coverage effects of selected provisions of the new law estimates that about 15 percent of hospitals and other healthcare providers could lose money treating Medicare beneficiaries as a result of the proposed cuts.
And the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, will total $1.29 trillion. The Obama administration has projected that the deficit for the 2011 budget year, which began on Oct. 1, will climb to $1.4 trillion and that over the next decade, it will total $8.47 trillion.
So, again, I ask you, with the main issue being the economy, including the audacious spending habits of elected officials in Washington DC, why would Mr. Obama and his team balk at facilitating not only the saving of almost $1 trillion in healthcare expenditures, but the opportunity to affect an issue victory in the 2010 midterm election cycle?
Mr. Zuckerman concluded: "When you are in a situation where this country is facing a huge deficit and where anybody who knows anything at all about the healthcare system knows how much waste, fraud and abuse is involved in that system...not to take this offer up, frankly, does not make sense."
Mr. Zuckerman is correct, but only to a point. It doesn’t make sense if Mr. Obama is trying to reduce waste and fraud, and make health insurance affordable for all Americans. It does make sense if those were never the goals in the first place.
As I wrote in an article titled, Cloward, Piven & Obamacare: “...the goal of the Progressives is to crash the system; to overwhelm the system to such an extent that it fails. It is at this moment of failure that Progressives believe they can enter the situation as the “knight in shining armor.” It is at this particular moment of vulnerability that Progressives believe the American public will acquiesce to the false choice of “something is better than nothing”; to a government-run universal healthcare plan to rescue the devastated American healthcare system, a system Progressives themselves threw into chaos, courtesy of their ridiculous health insurance reform law."
It is one thing to be – as a good many elected officials in Washington DC are – arrogant, self-absorbed spendthrifts, so detached from the actualities of what Americans require and want from their government. It is quite another to willfully abuse the system – and the American people – in an attempt to bring about an ideological “change” – a “fundamental transformation” – of the very system of government that has made the United States the most prosperous nation in the history of the Western Civilization and the last best hope for freedom and liberty for all in the world.
More HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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An email from a Western correspondent living in China who was once himself a Maoist
Well I've been reading again -- this time going over old familiar territory using new, unbelievable sources: Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe as reported in national, provincial and city archives in China.
Can it be possible? - Author Frank Dikotter, China historian in HK, claims a new law allows such access and basically confirms the details of what we knew generally back in the 70's. Whereas we used transcripts of mainland radio broadcasts and reports of mainland newspapers and magazines, refugee accounts and documents smuggled out, he got access to official documents which, while they have shortcomings, add a degree of authenticity and first person, including the words of major players as reported in provincial reports of meetings in Beijing. No-one comes out well, even those who were persecuted for their honesty, as they were usually enthusiastic supporters before they saw for themselves the degree of horror in the countryside.
Their disillusionment was they thought officials at the lower levels, people were better than they! -- e.g unrealistic grain seizure quotas were increased at every level before they got to central level. They were often met by starving villagers to death -- i.e. The Chairman's delusional and venal behaviour was reflected at all levels of the party with any villager questioning the quotas being branded a bourgois conservative, anti-party element and often beaten to death.
I guess this marks the beginning of a whole new genre of revisionist scholarship bound to embarrass Professor Barme and the New Sinologists who appear to insist we should draw a line under 1978 and ignore anything before it!
As for me it only underscores the inadequacy of my mea culpa. And what of those who still cry Shihuizhuyi hao! (Socialism is great!)? Are present-day officials any better? Only a matter of degree perhaps.
One typical line from the good Chairman. "It is necessary for half of the people to die so the other half can eat their fill!" The legendary Zhou making endless calls to local cadres in 1959 demanding they fulfil their quotas despite knowledge of the famine.
The official policy of exporting grain to one and all, often free, to demonstrate the superiority of Chinese Communism. Liu Shaoqi giving the GLF his enthusiastic support. The enormous loss of state stored grain due to neglect, insects, rot, theft and corrpuption extending up to 80% in some places. Deng Xiaoping insisting quotas be collected ruthlessly "As in war". Its all very depressing reading.
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Obamacare Reality Bites: And HHS waivers
The Obama-inspired overhaul of medical insurance has just started to kick in, and already reality, in the form of economic law, is biting back. Companies are canceling or threatening to cancel coverage because the new terms of doing business make business as usual uneconomical. For example, some insurance companies announced they would no long write child-only policies. The new rules say that beginning now, no insurer can refuse coverage to an already-ill child and that the premiums can’t be higher than those charged for well children. (In a few years the “antidiscrimination” rule will apply to adults.)
Anyone with a smidgen of economic knowledge – heck, how about just some common sense? – would know that this cannot work. How can you run an insurance company when parents can wait until their children are seriously ill to buy coverage — and then the insurer can’t set the premium according to the expected medical services. That’s not insurance. It’s welfare filtered through business.
Well, now, when the companies announced they would stop writing those policies, the Department of Health and Human Services relented and waived the rule (at least for a while).
A pattern emerges. Companies claim they can’t live with a particular Obamacare mandate, and HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius issues a waiver. When McDonald’s and other companies said that their limited mini-med policies would become prohibitively expensive if the government enforced its no-benefit-cap rule, Sebelius granted a waiver. She is now considering a request for a waiver of the rule mandating no less than an 80-85 percent medical loss ratio on mini-med polices. That’s the percentage of revenues paid in benefits rather than administrative costs. Companies with a high workforce turnover say insurance administrative costs are naturally higher than with a stable workforce and thus the mandated medical loss ratio is impractical. (It’s been pointed out that the medical loss ratio was not intended as a measure of efficiency.)
At issue here is not the details of the more than two thousand pages of law. It’s the discretionary power the government has acquired because of it. A one-size-fits-all law was written by Congress. During the debate over the legislation many of us warned that such an approach would defy the laws of economics and would therefore have undesirable unintended consequences. We said, for example, that price caps which ignore real market conditions would cause producers to exit the market, leaving people without services they want.
So Secretary Sebelius is busy granting waivers. On one level this is good: The direct consequences of Obamacare will be less severe than they would have been. But at another level this is not good at all. Obamacare has increased the amount of discretionary power bureaucrats have over our lives. Whatever standard HHS uses in judging waiver requests will be arbitrary. How big does a hardship have to be before a request gets a favorable ruling? Will a company’s CEO have to be careful about criticizing the Obama administration – even on nonmedical issues – for fear that a future waiver request might be turned down? Bureaucrats are human too. (Sebelius has warned insurers not to publicly blame premium increases on Obamacare mandates.)...
Finally, we readily describe the negative effects of this law as “unintended consequences.” I’d like to suggest that they may not be so unintended. It is hard to believe that some of the higher-ups did not realize that price controls and similar restrictions would push insurers out of the market. I would not be surprised to learn that this was widely anticipated and that the ruling elite intended to exploit problem to amass even more power over medical insurance. One need not be a conspiracy aficionado to think this. One need only understand purposive human action.
More HERE
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The Lies of ObamaCare
Yet more evidence is emerging that Obamacare is a lie, a complete fraud perpetrated on the American people. Prior to congressional enactment of the legislation, Barack Obama promised in his State of the Union Address that it would “reduce costs and premiums for millions of families and businesses.”
Now we know that’s a lie. Not only are insurance companies already warning of higher premiums because of Obamacare, now the Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to sue Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan because, get this, premiums are too low.
Specifically, because the insurer negotiates with hospitals and other health care providers for the lowest possible rates for its customers, Obama’s DOJ is arguing that that is increasing the costs for everyone else. Never mind that Blue Cross covers 2.4 million people in Michigan, or about 27.7 percent of those with insurance in the state.
Those 2.4 million people just are not paying enough, according to Obama.
So, they will wind up paying more for their health care if the Administration’s lawsuit succeeds. Why? Because if Blue Cross’ contracts with hospitals and other health care providers are deemed invalid, it will not result in others getting the same rates as Blue Cross had. It will mean that Blue Cross customers will pay as much as everyone else.
Further, it will set a precedent that no company can negotiate for a lower rate. This puts the lie to Obamacare. The intention never was to lower rates for the insured. It was to drive up the costs to force individuals off of private health insurance — and into government’s waiting arms.
Obamacare always was a road to government control. That’s why it includes an individual mandate to purchase insurance starting in 2014, and that’s why its own regulators admit the bill will force up to 69 percent of enrollees off of their employer-provided plans. How else to get folks to incrementally be forced into a single-payer system?
The whole purpose Obamacare, therefore, is to drive up costs, creating a health care affordability crisis in the nation. In the mean time, the Administration accuses companies of “price-gouging”.
It’s already started. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has warned insurers not to inform enrollees that premium hikes are a direct result of Obamacare: “[S]everal health insurer carriers are sending letters to their enrollees falsely blaming premium increases for 2011 on the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act… [T]here will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” Sebelius wrote in a letter to America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Sebelius has the answer. She writes, “Later this fall, we will issue a regulation that will require state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases filed by health insurers, with the justification for increases posted publicly for consumers and employers.” Never mind that insurance carriers are already required to notify enrollees of hikes in premiums, how dare insurers tell their customers the real reason for the hikes?
Sebelius promises to “keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014.” The implication? If you are an insurer, and you speak out against Obamacare, they will shut you down...
The Obama Administration is taking great pains to force health care costs up to compel the American people onto government-run health care. Meanwhile, they are regulating blame for those premium hikes to private insurers.
All of this is proof that Obamacare was a lie from the very beginning. The Administration does not care about lower costs, because they don’t even care about the costs. What they want is control.
More HERE
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Close to a trillion down the drain
What if I told you that the Chairman and CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano, approached President Obama and members of his administration before the healthcare bill debates with a plan that would reduce healthcare expenditures by $900 billion? Given the Obama Administration’s adamancy that the United States of America simply had to make healthcare (read: health insurance) affordable for even the most dedicated welfare recipient, one would think he would have leaned forward in his chair, cupped his ear and said, “Tell me more!”
And what if I told you that the cost to the federal government for this program was nothing, zip, nada, zilch?
And, what if I told you that, in the end and after two meetings, President Obama and his team, instead of embracing a program that was proven to save money and one that was projected to save almost one trillion dollars – a private sector program costing the taxpayers nothing, zip, nada, zilch – said, “Thanks but no thanks” and then embarked on passing one of the most despised pieces of legislation in US history?
Well, it’s all true. Samuel J. Palmisano, the Chairman of the Board and CEO for IBM, said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that he offered to provide the Obama Administration with a program that would curb healthcare claims fraud and abuse by almost one trillion dollars but the Obama White House turned the offer down.
Mr. Palmisano is quoted as saying during a taping of The Wall Street Journal's Viewpoints program on September 14, 2010: "We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion...I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down."
A second meeting between Mr. Palmisano and the Obama Administration took place two weeks later, with no change in the Obama Administration's stance. A call placed to IBM on October 8, 2010, by FOX News confirmed, via a spokesperson, that Mr. Palmisano stands by his statement.
Speaking with FOX News' Stuart Varney, Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Report, said: "It's a little bit puzzling because I think there is a huge amount of both fraud and inefficiency that American business is a lot more comfortable with and more effective in trying to reduce. And this is certainly true because the IBM people have studied this very carefully. And when Palmisano went to the White House and made that proposal, it was based upon a lot of work and it was not accepted. And it's really puzzling...These are very, very responsible people. They don't have a political ax to grind. They are very familiar with the subject; they understand exactly what the issues are."
Given the fact that Mr. Obama’s own Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services actuary debunked the claim that health insurance costs would diminish over the next decade and given that the budget deficits for 2010 and 2011 are in the $1.2 trillion–$1.4 trillion ballpark, the question begs to be asked: Why would Mr. Obama balk at a sure-thing savings of almost $1 trillion?
CMS actuaries also say that Medicare cuts mandated by the law are unrealistic and unsustainable. An April 22, 2010, CMS report about the financial and coverage effects of selected provisions of the new law estimates that about 15 percent of hospitals and other healthcare providers could lose money treating Medicare beneficiaries as a result of the proposed cuts.
And the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, will total $1.29 trillion. The Obama administration has projected that the deficit for the 2011 budget year, which began on Oct. 1, will climb to $1.4 trillion and that over the next decade, it will total $8.47 trillion.
So, again, I ask you, with the main issue being the economy, including the audacious spending habits of elected officials in Washington DC, why would Mr. Obama and his team balk at facilitating not only the saving of almost $1 trillion in healthcare expenditures, but the opportunity to affect an issue victory in the 2010 midterm election cycle?
Mr. Zuckerman concluded: "When you are in a situation where this country is facing a huge deficit and where anybody who knows anything at all about the healthcare system knows how much waste, fraud and abuse is involved in that system...not to take this offer up, frankly, does not make sense."
Mr. Zuckerman is correct, but only to a point. It doesn’t make sense if Mr. Obama is trying to reduce waste and fraud, and make health insurance affordable for all Americans. It does make sense if those were never the goals in the first place.
As I wrote in an article titled, Cloward, Piven & Obamacare: “...the goal of the Progressives is to crash the system; to overwhelm the system to such an extent that it fails. It is at this moment of failure that Progressives believe they can enter the situation as the “knight in shining armor.” It is at this particular moment of vulnerability that Progressives believe the American public will acquiesce to the false choice of “something is better than nothing”; to a government-run universal healthcare plan to rescue the devastated American healthcare system, a system Progressives themselves threw into chaos, courtesy of their ridiculous health insurance reform law."
It is one thing to be – as a good many elected officials in Washington DC are – arrogant, self-absorbed spendthrifts, so detached from the actualities of what Americans require and want from their government. It is quite another to willfully abuse the system – and the American people – in an attempt to bring about an ideological “change” – a “fundamental transformation” – of the very system of government that has made the United States the most prosperous nation in the history of the Western Civilization and the last best hope for freedom and liberty for all in the world.
More HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Saturday, October 23, 2010
Why Obama Doesn’t Seem to Relate emotionally
Unlike most people, he exhibits little or no moral sense
Tibor R. Machan
Most of the time when I hear about how President Obama lacks the emotional disposition that most Americans would like to see him demonstrate, I am disinclined to make much of the point. What I want from someone in the role of the presidency is good thinking and not sensitivity.
Nonetheless I have been paying a bit more attention to this criticism of the President because as I have been following his efforts to bolster the chances of Democrats to remain in power in Washington, DC, I have noticed that there is something amiss with how he comes over emotionally.
As a start, Mr. Obama is always glib, as if nothing on earth could phase him, as if it is all old hat to him, he is way ahead of everyone. This comes through, for instance, in his repeated dismissal of anything that members of the Tea Party complain about.
And that’s just the beginning. One related steady emotional theme in the president’s talks is the effort to be accommodating toward critics and enemies of America. Indeed, the very idea that Mr. Obama would identify anyone as an enemy of the United States of America seems off base. This is because it looks like he is mostly interested in building bridges between us and them, however barbaric they may be.
Mr. Obama is one of those American intellectuals who appears to be stopped from criticizing anyone abroad because, well, this country has had slavery and segregation and poverty so how could it justify being critical of anyone? It shows a spirit of perpetual self-criticism and mea culpa, attitudes that appear to dominate the president’s conscience (and we are here talking about appearances).
There is no black and white for the man –no one, not even a vicious terrorist and a leader of a country in which women are systematically and barbarically oppressed, justifies for him any sort of firm moral condemnation. Like those ever-permissive parents who always have an excuse for what their offspring are doing, no matter how mischievous or outright evil it manages to be, for Mr. Obama those who attack America, actually attack innocents everywhere, just could not be all bad, unworthy of understanding.
This mentality of turning the other cheek, no matter what, appears to underlie the widespread distrust people have of Mr. Obama’s emotional makeup. Emotions, although they are ultimately unreliable guidelines to action, are pretty good clues to what system of values someone has internalized. If one has to force oneself disapprove of or condemn vicious conduct and people and it doesn’t arise naturally, people who do have a sense of just how bad some others can be will become suspicious.
President Obama and his cheerleaders must realize that eloquence is no substitute for emotional balance, for being in tune emotionally with what those deserve who comport themselves villainously. Being well spoken is not enough. One must also have a sense of what needs to be said, have substance to communicate, a sense of justice, if you will.
Or perhaps Mr. Obama just despises being disliked by people, even by vicious rulers abroad. But that, too, reveals his emotional priorities. Mr. Obama needs to open himself up to the possibility that some people should really be hated, that they are evil and not merely misguided, sick, or deranged.
Human life is distinctive in the world precisely because human beings have a moral nature and they can act irresponsibly, morally deplorably, contemptibly, as well as admirably, demonstrating moral excellence.
And while that idea has always had its detractors, the moral skeptics, they simply cannot sustain their denial that people are moral agents and capable of doing vile things for which they ought to be condemned. They do not deserve sympathy but contempt.
And this is evident from the fact that the one exception to the skeptics’ ambivalence about morality is their own utter contempt for those who do take morality seriously. They tend to be dismissed, even derided, as fundamentalists or moralizers, which is clearly and paradoxically something (morally?) contemptible to the skeptics!
Moral skeptics usually are hoisted on their own petard. Their amoral stance isn’t philosophically sustainable because human beings are indeed moral beings, unlike the rest the members of the living world. And one result of having a moral nature and admitting to it is that one will openly cope with moral evil as well as moral excellence. If one denies this, as it seems President Obama does when it comes to America’s enemies, it will eventually stand in the way of reaching out to ordinary people.
SOURCE
NOTE: In extreme forms, lack of a moral sense is psychopathy. Obama's glacial calm is also normal in psychopaths. See here and here -- JR
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Assault on Palin, DeMint and Other Conservatives Often Rooted In Lies or Distortions
The long knives have been out for Sarah Palin since her emergence on the national stage just over two years ago. Katie Couric infamously mocked Sarah Palin and her family on tape even while the Republican Convention was still going on… long before her “objective” interview with her. But that was just the beginning.
Recently there was this silly effort by leftists to make fun of Palin for admonishing activists not to “party like it’s 1773″ yet. Not just random bloggers, mind you, but that paragon of fairness and balance from PBS, Gwen Ifill, lept at the opportunity to make fun of Palin for getting a date wrong. The problem, of course, was that Palin was correctly referring to the year of the Boston Tea Party. Ooops.
But then today, we see that Jonathan Martin with Politico has put out a piece trying to make the case that Palin is a “Diva.” In the article, he writes “[a]ccording to a source familiar with the situation, she backed out of planned interviews with conservative talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin the morning she was scheduled to talk to them.” Again, there’s at least one problem… that is, Mark Levin says that this is an outright lie. On Facebook, Mark says, “Sarah Palin never backed out of any interview with me. Period. And John Martin, the reporter, never contacted me to ask me directly. I insist on a retraction. ” Sarah Palin has her faults, but it sure makes one wonder how accurate this piece is when at least part of it is a flat out lie.
But that’s not the only example today. Jim DeMint was on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News last night. During the interview, the Senator made some comments about the state of the Republican Party - pointing out, essentially, that he “doesn’t want to watch the Republican Party betray the trust of the American people again.” Amen. But, what does RealClearPolitics put up as the headline?
They wrote, “DeMint threatens to leave GOP if agenda is not limited government.” Jim DeMint did not “threaten” to leave the GOP. He said he doesn’t want to be a part of a Republican Party that is like that - and that this is not what Republicans are about across America.
This is only the beginning, of course. Senator DeMint will find himself as the ever-increasing focal point of criticism, by the press and, perhaps more, by Washington establishment insiders who feel threatened by anyone willing to stand up to their big-spending, back-scratching, Senate “club” ways. Senator DeMint dares to suggest that the old guard needs to change or go home. He dares to criticize pork-barrel spending and the corrupt appropriators who continue to do it. And most of all, he dares to fight against an establishment built around perpetuating itself rather than liberty, by backing candidates who are willing to challenge that establishment.
SOURCE
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While the media continues to attack Christine O’Donnell, liberal buffoons are given a pass
Let's look at a quality Democrat candidate: Alvin Greene
Jim DeMint started the recession. Perhaps I should repeat. Jim DeMint started the recession. Didn't hear me? Jim DeMint started the recession. Are you ready for me to say something else... ANYTHING else? I'm sure that's how MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell felt as he was interviewing Democrat Senate candidate Al Green. While the media continue to attack Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, Green is coasting under the radar. Let's take a look at the man who is running against South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. Oh, and remember... Jim DeMint started the recession...
The media are having a field day with Christine O'Donnell. They somehow feel it's relevant to focus on comments O'Donnell made when she was in high school. But take a look at Al Green. This man won 59& of the vote in South Carolina without running any campaign ads. One has to wonder what South Carolina Democrats were thinking...
Ok... let's think about this. This man is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Does that give anyone pause? Wait there's more. In Connecticut, Democrat Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal has been hammered, because he couldn't answer the question, "How do you create a job?" Guess what? Al Green knows how to create jobs... the Al Green action figure:
Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here, but I just don't even know where to begin. The media are pulling no punches regarding O'Donnell, but they ignore Green. Typical, but their outright support for Democrat candidates is getting more blatant by the day. Another point... the electorate gets what it deserves. More people voted for Green, and he won. Ok, one final note... Jim DeMint started the recession.
SOURCE
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ObamaCare looks like being a bonanza for employers but a huge slug on the taxpayer
By way of example, the Tennessee State government could reduce costs by over $146 million using the legislated mechanics of health reform to transfer coverage to the federal government -- So says Phil Bredesen, Democrat governor of Tennessee, below
One of the principles of game theory is that you should view the game through your opponent's eyes, not just your own.
This past spring, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (President Obama's health reform) created a system of extensive federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance through new organizations called "exchanges." The details of these subsidies were painstakingly worked out by members of my own political party to reflect their values: They decided who was to benefit from the subsidies and what was to be purchased with them. They paid a lot of attention to their own strategies, but what I believe they failed to consider properly were the possible strategies of others.
Our federal deficit is already at unsustainable levels, and most Americans understand that we can ill afford another entitlement program that adds substantially to it. But our recent health reform has created a situation where there are strong economic incentives for employers to drop health coverage altogether. The consequence will be to drive many more people than projected—and with them, much greater cost—into the reform's federally subsidized system. This will happen because the subsidies that become available to people purchasing insurance through exchanges are extraordinarily attractive.
In 2014, when these exchanges come into operation, a typical family of four with an annual income of $90,000 and a 45-year-old policy holder qualifies for a federal subsidy of 40% of their health-insurance cost. For that same family with an income of $50,000 (close to the median family income in America), the subsidy is 76% of the cost.
One implication of the magnitude of these subsidies seems clear: For a person starting a business in 2014, it will be logical and responsible simply to plan from the outset never to offer health benefits. Employees, thanks to the exchanges, can easily purchase excellent, fairly priced insurance, without pre-existing condition limitations, through the exchanges. As it grows, the business can avoid a great deal of cost because the federal government will now pay much of what the business would have incurred for its share of health insurance. The small business tax credits included in health reform are limited and short-term, and the eventual penalty for not providing coverage, of $2,000 per employee, is still far less than the cost of insurance it replaces.
For an entrepreneur wanting a lean, employee-oriented company, it's a natural position to take: "We don't provide company housing, we don't provide company cars, we don't provide company insurance. Our approach is to put your compensation in your paycheck and let you decide how to spend it."
But while health reform may alter the landscape for small business in unexpected ways, it also opens the door to what is a potentially far larger effect on the Treasury.
The authors of health reform primarily targeted the uninsured and those now buying expensive individual policies. But there's a very large third group that can also enter and that may have been grossly underestimated: the 170 million Americans who currently have employer-sponsored group insurance. Because of the magnitude of the new subsidies created by Congress, the economics become compelling for many employers to simply drop coverage and help their employees obtain replacement coverage through an exchange.
Let's do a thought experiment. We'll use my own state of Tennessee and our state employees for our data. The year is 2014 and the Affordable Care Act is now in full operation. We're a large employer, with about 40,000 direct employees who participate in our health plan. In our thought experiment, let's exit the health-benefits business this year and help our employees use an exchange to purchase their own.
First of all, we need to keep our employees financially whole. With our current plan, they contribute 20% of the total cost of their health insurance, and that contribution in 2014 will total about $86 million. If all these employees now buy their insurance through an exchange, that personal share will increase by another $38 million. We'll adjust our employees' compensation in some rough fashion so that no employee is paying more for insurance as a result of our action. Taking into account the new taxes that would be incurred, the change in employee eligibility for subsidies, and allowing for inefficiency in how we distribute this new compensation, we'll triple our budget for this to $114 million.
Now that we've protected our employees, we'll also have to pay a federal penalty of $2,000 for each employee because we no longer offer health insurance; that's another $86 million. The total state cost is now about $200 million.
But if we keep our existing insurance plan, our cost will be $346 million. We can reduce our annual costs by over $146 million using the legislated mechanics of health reform to transfer them to the federal government.
That's just for our core employees. We also have 30,000 retirees under the age of 65, 128,000 employees in our local school systems, and 110,000 employees in local government, all of which presents strategies even more economically attractive than the thought experiment we just performed. Local governments will find eliminating all coverage particularly attractive, as many of them are small and will thus incur minor or no penalties; many have health plans that will not meet the minimum benefit threshold, and so they'll see a substantial and unavoidable increase in cost if they continue providing benefits under the new federal rules.
Our thought experiment shows how the economics of dropping existing coverage is about to become very attractive to many employers, both public and private. By 2014, there will be a mini-industry of consultants knocking on employers' doors to explain the new opportunity. And in the years after 2014, the economics just keep getting better.
The consequence of these generous subsidies will be that America's health reform may well drive many more people than projected out of employer-sponsored insurance and into the heavily subsidized federal system. Perhaps this is a miscalculation by the Congress, perhaps not. One principle of game theory is to think like your opponent; another is that there's always a larger game.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Unlike most people, he exhibits little or no moral sense
Tibor R. Machan
Most of the time when I hear about how President Obama lacks the emotional disposition that most Americans would like to see him demonstrate, I am disinclined to make much of the point. What I want from someone in the role of the presidency is good thinking and not sensitivity.
Nonetheless I have been paying a bit more attention to this criticism of the President because as I have been following his efforts to bolster the chances of Democrats to remain in power in Washington, DC, I have noticed that there is something amiss with how he comes over emotionally.
As a start, Mr. Obama is always glib, as if nothing on earth could phase him, as if it is all old hat to him, he is way ahead of everyone. This comes through, for instance, in his repeated dismissal of anything that members of the Tea Party complain about.
And that’s just the beginning. One related steady emotional theme in the president’s talks is the effort to be accommodating toward critics and enemies of America. Indeed, the very idea that Mr. Obama would identify anyone as an enemy of the United States of America seems off base. This is because it looks like he is mostly interested in building bridges between us and them, however barbaric they may be.
Mr. Obama is one of those American intellectuals who appears to be stopped from criticizing anyone abroad because, well, this country has had slavery and segregation and poverty so how could it justify being critical of anyone? It shows a spirit of perpetual self-criticism and mea culpa, attitudes that appear to dominate the president’s conscience (and we are here talking about appearances).
There is no black and white for the man –no one, not even a vicious terrorist and a leader of a country in which women are systematically and barbarically oppressed, justifies for him any sort of firm moral condemnation. Like those ever-permissive parents who always have an excuse for what their offspring are doing, no matter how mischievous or outright evil it manages to be, for Mr. Obama those who attack America, actually attack innocents everywhere, just could not be all bad, unworthy of understanding.
This mentality of turning the other cheek, no matter what, appears to underlie the widespread distrust people have of Mr. Obama’s emotional makeup. Emotions, although they are ultimately unreliable guidelines to action, are pretty good clues to what system of values someone has internalized. If one has to force oneself disapprove of or condemn vicious conduct and people and it doesn’t arise naturally, people who do have a sense of just how bad some others can be will become suspicious.
President Obama and his cheerleaders must realize that eloquence is no substitute for emotional balance, for being in tune emotionally with what those deserve who comport themselves villainously. Being well spoken is not enough. One must also have a sense of what needs to be said, have substance to communicate, a sense of justice, if you will.
Or perhaps Mr. Obama just despises being disliked by people, even by vicious rulers abroad. But that, too, reveals his emotional priorities. Mr. Obama needs to open himself up to the possibility that some people should really be hated, that they are evil and not merely misguided, sick, or deranged.
Human life is distinctive in the world precisely because human beings have a moral nature and they can act irresponsibly, morally deplorably, contemptibly, as well as admirably, demonstrating moral excellence.
And while that idea has always had its detractors, the moral skeptics, they simply cannot sustain their denial that people are moral agents and capable of doing vile things for which they ought to be condemned. They do not deserve sympathy but contempt.
And this is evident from the fact that the one exception to the skeptics’ ambivalence about morality is their own utter contempt for those who do take morality seriously. They tend to be dismissed, even derided, as fundamentalists or moralizers, which is clearly and paradoxically something (morally?) contemptible to the skeptics!
Moral skeptics usually are hoisted on their own petard. Their amoral stance isn’t philosophically sustainable because human beings are indeed moral beings, unlike the rest the members of the living world. And one result of having a moral nature and admitting to it is that one will openly cope with moral evil as well as moral excellence. If one denies this, as it seems President Obama does when it comes to America’s enemies, it will eventually stand in the way of reaching out to ordinary people.
SOURCE
NOTE: In extreme forms, lack of a moral sense is psychopathy. Obama's glacial calm is also normal in psychopaths. See here and here -- JR
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Assault on Palin, DeMint and Other Conservatives Often Rooted In Lies or Distortions
The long knives have been out for Sarah Palin since her emergence on the national stage just over two years ago. Katie Couric infamously mocked Sarah Palin and her family on tape even while the Republican Convention was still going on… long before her “objective” interview with her. But that was just the beginning.
Recently there was this silly effort by leftists to make fun of Palin for admonishing activists not to “party like it’s 1773″ yet. Not just random bloggers, mind you, but that paragon of fairness and balance from PBS, Gwen Ifill, lept at the opportunity to make fun of Palin for getting a date wrong. The problem, of course, was that Palin was correctly referring to the year of the Boston Tea Party. Ooops.
But then today, we see that Jonathan Martin with Politico has put out a piece trying to make the case that Palin is a “Diva.” In the article, he writes “[a]ccording to a source familiar with the situation, she backed out of planned interviews with conservative talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin the morning she was scheduled to talk to them.” Again, there’s at least one problem… that is, Mark Levin says that this is an outright lie. On Facebook, Mark says, “Sarah Palin never backed out of any interview with me. Period. And John Martin, the reporter, never contacted me to ask me directly. I insist on a retraction. ” Sarah Palin has her faults, but it sure makes one wonder how accurate this piece is when at least part of it is a flat out lie.
But that’s not the only example today. Jim DeMint was on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News last night. During the interview, the Senator made some comments about the state of the Republican Party - pointing out, essentially, that he “doesn’t want to watch the Republican Party betray the trust of the American people again.” Amen. But, what does RealClearPolitics put up as the headline?
They wrote, “DeMint threatens to leave GOP if agenda is not limited government.” Jim DeMint did not “threaten” to leave the GOP. He said he doesn’t want to be a part of a Republican Party that is like that - and that this is not what Republicans are about across America.
This is only the beginning, of course. Senator DeMint will find himself as the ever-increasing focal point of criticism, by the press and, perhaps more, by Washington establishment insiders who feel threatened by anyone willing to stand up to their big-spending, back-scratching, Senate “club” ways. Senator DeMint dares to suggest that the old guard needs to change or go home. He dares to criticize pork-barrel spending and the corrupt appropriators who continue to do it. And most of all, he dares to fight against an establishment built around perpetuating itself rather than liberty, by backing candidates who are willing to challenge that establishment.
SOURCE
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While the media continues to attack Christine O’Donnell, liberal buffoons are given a pass
Let's look at a quality Democrat candidate: Alvin Greene
Jim DeMint started the recession. Perhaps I should repeat. Jim DeMint started the recession. Didn't hear me? Jim DeMint started the recession. Are you ready for me to say something else... ANYTHING else? I'm sure that's how MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell felt as he was interviewing Democrat Senate candidate Al Green. While the media continue to attack Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, Green is coasting under the radar. Let's take a look at the man who is running against South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. Oh, and remember... Jim DeMint started the recession...
The media are having a field day with Christine O'Donnell. They somehow feel it's relevant to focus on comments O'Donnell made when she was in high school. But take a look at Al Green. This man won 59& of the vote in South Carolina without running any campaign ads. One has to wonder what South Carolina Democrats were thinking...
Ok... let's think about this. This man is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Does that give anyone pause? Wait there's more. In Connecticut, Democrat Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal has been hammered, because he couldn't answer the question, "How do you create a job?" Guess what? Al Green knows how to create jobs... the Al Green action figure:
Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here, but I just don't even know where to begin. The media are pulling no punches regarding O'Donnell, but they ignore Green. Typical, but their outright support for Democrat candidates is getting more blatant by the day. Another point... the electorate gets what it deserves. More people voted for Green, and he won. Ok, one final note... Jim DeMint started the recession.
SOURCE
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ObamaCare looks like being a bonanza for employers but a huge slug on the taxpayer
By way of example, the Tennessee State government could reduce costs by over $146 million using the legislated mechanics of health reform to transfer coverage to the federal government -- So says Phil Bredesen, Democrat governor of Tennessee, below
One of the principles of game theory is that you should view the game through your opponent's eyes, not just your own.
This past spring, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (President Obama's health reform) created a system of extensive federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance through new organizations called "exchanges." The details of these subsidies were painstakingly worked out by members of my own political party to reflect their values: They decided who was to benefit from the subsidies and what was to be purchased with them. They paid a lot of attention to their own strategies, but what I believe they failed to consider properly were the possible strategies of others.
Our federal deficit is already at unsustainable levels, and most Americans understand that we can ill afford another entitlement program that adds substantially to it. But our recent health reform has created a situation where there are strong economic incentives for employers to drop health coverage altogether. The consequence will be to drive many more people than projected—and with them, much greater cost—into the reform's federally subsidized system. This will happen because the subsidies that become available to people purchasing insurance through exchanges are extraordinarily attractive.
In 2014, when these exchanges come into operation, a typical family of four with an annual income of $90,000 and a 45-year-old policy holder qualifies for a federal subsidy of 40% of their health-insurance cost. For that same family with an income of $50,000 (close to the median family income in America), the subsidy is 76% of the cost.
One implication of the magnitude of these subsidies seems clear: For a person starting a business in 2014, it will be logical and responsible simply to plan from the outset never to offer health benefits. Employees, thanks to the exchanges, can easily purchase excellent, fairly priced insurance, without pre-existing condition limitations, through the exchanges. As it grows, the business can avoid a great deal of cost because the federal government will now pay much of what the business would have incurred for its share of health insurance. The small business tax credits included in health reform are limited and short-term, and the eventual penalty for not providing coverage, of $2,000 per employee, is still far less than the cost of insurance it replaces.
For an entrepreneur wanting a lean, employee-oriented company, it's a natural position to take: "We don't provide company housing, we don't provide company cars, we don't provide company insurance. Our approach is to put your compensation in your paycheck and let you decide how to spend it."
But while health reform may alter the landscape for small business in unexpected ways, it also opens the door to what is a potentially far larger effect on the Treasury.
The authors of health reform primarily targeted the uninsured and those now buying expensive individual policies. But there's a very large third group that can also enter and that may have been grossly underestimated: the 170 million Americans who currently have employer-sponsored group insurance. Because of the magnitude of the new subsidies created by Congress, the economics become compelling for many employers to simply drop coverage and help their employees obtain replacement coverage through an exchange.
Let's do a thought experiment. We'll use my own state of Tennessee and our state employees for our data. The year is 2014 and the Affordable Care Act is now in full operation. We're a large employer, with about 40,000 direct employees who participate in our health plan. In our thought experiment, let's exit the health-benefits business this year and help our employees use an exchange to purchase their own.
First of all, we need to keep our employees financially whole. With our current plan, they contribute 20% of the total cost of their health insurance, and that contribution in 2014 will total about $86 million. If all these employees now buy their insurance through an exchange, that personal share will increase by another $38 million. We'll adjust our employees' compensation in some rough fashion so that no employee is paying more for insurance as a result of our action. Taking into account the new taxes that would be incurred, the change in employee eligibility for subsidies, and allowing for inefficiency in how we distribute this new compensation, we'll triple our budget for this to $114 million.
Now that we've protected our employees, we'll also have to pay a federal penalty of $2,000 for each employee because we no longer offer health insurance; that's another $86 million. The total state cost is now about $200 million.
But if we keep our existing insurance plan, our cost will be $346 million. We can reduce our annual costs by over $146 million using the legislated mechanics of health reform to transfer them to the federal government.
That's just for our core employees. We also have 30,000 retirees under the age of 65, 128,000 employees in our local school systems, and 110,000 employees in local government, all of which presents strategies even more economically attractive than the thought experiment we just performed. Local governments will find eliminating all coverage particularly attractive, as many of them are small and will thus incur minor or no penalties; many have health plans that will not meet the minimum benefit threshold, and so they'll see a substantial and unavoidable increase in cost if they continue providing benefits under the new federal rules.
Our thought experiment shows how the economics of dropping existing coverage is about to become very attractive to many employers, both public and private. By 2014, there will be a mini-industry of consultants knocking on employers' doors to explain the new opportunity. And in the years after 2014, the economics just keep getting better.
The consequence of these generous subsidies will be that America's health reform may well drive many more people than projected out of employer-sponsored insurance and into the heavily subsidized federal system. Perhaps this is a miscalculation by the Congress, perhaps not. One principle of game theory is to think like your opponent; another is that there's always a larger game.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Fools Rush in Where Europe Rushes Out
Jonah Goldberg
As of this writing, France is paralyzed. By the time you read this, it might be in flames. In Britain, where politics is more polite but the problems are perhaps just as dire, the government is proposing budget cuts on a scale not seen for nearly a century. In Greece, well, the less said about Greece the better.
All of these countries -- and many more -- are going through painful retrenchments because they spent too much money, made too many promises and expected too little from their own citizens. The era of European austerity is upon us, because the Europeans -- or at least those in charge -- understand the mess they've made of their economies.
This should present a real problem for Barack Obama and the vast (though shrinking) chorus of experts, editorialists and activists who support his agenda. In broad terms, all of the policies Obama and the Democrats have pushed are the sorts of policies the British, the French and other Europeans had for years, even decades.
As far as I am aware, no one has asked President Obama a simple question: If your philosophy is so great, how come the countries that have embraced it for generations are so much poorer than us?
Nor have they asked: If guaranteed health care for everyone will make us so much more "competitive," how come we've been doing so much better than our "competitors" who already have socialized medicine, high tax rates and lavish pensions?
Nor has the president been queried about the incongruity of saying his policies have laid a "new foundation" for economic growth and job creation when the countries he's trying to emulate are trying to dismantle the very same foundations in order to survive.
If you want evidence for all this, you don't need to look to Europe. You need only look to America. We've had the weakest recovery from a recession in memory. In Gerald Ford's first year as president, the country rebounded at a rate of 6.2 percent. Under Reagan it was 7.7 percent. Even Clinton's recovery rate was over 4 percent from 1993 to 1994 (and grew from there). Obama's recovery has not only been anemic and sputtering at around 3 percent, it hasn't made a dent in the unemployment rate because employers have no confidence that we'll have reliable growth or that Obama isn't waiting to bring the hammer down with more Euro-style policies and taxes.
Obama supporters will respond that he has, in fact, "created" jobs, but just not enough to climb out of the massive hole created by the financial crisis and former President Bush's evil policies. The White House insists that it's not remotely responsible for the 3.2 millions jobs (2.9 million in the private sector) that have disappeared on Obama's watch, but is completely responsible for every single new job that has been created or "saved" since then.
But consider this about the relatively few new net jobs the economy has created under Obama. As my National Review colleague Rich Lowry recently noted, half of all the new net jobs created in the United States (from August 2009 to August 2010) were created in Texas. According to White House logic, Obama must simply love Texas, since he's the one creating all of those jobs. You have to wonder what he has against New York or California -- you know, the states that actually share Obama's economic vision and are descending into an economic abyss as we speak. Why reward low-tax, pro-growth Texas with all of these jobs?
SOURCE
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Democrats call Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell and others stupid
As usual, it shows that abuse and arrogance is all that they've got
The 2010 election has devolved in its closing days into a battle – familiar in American history and high school alike – over who’s stupid, and who’s a snob.
Palin “has made ignorance fashionable,” the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd wrote Wednesday, comparing the Alaska Governor’s intellect – unfavorably – to Marilyn Monroe’s.
Rachel Maddow occupied her MSNBC show Tuesday night mocking a series of Republican figures, laughing through a clip of O’Donnell’s attempt to explain that the phrase “separation of church and state” doesn’t appear in the Constitution, a point that drew nothing but ridicule on the left and in the British press. “The crowd is laughing at you,” she said as O’Donnell appeared on-screen.
Republicans say this strategy will work about as well this year as it did when used against Ronald Reagan.
But the Democrats are just getting started. Their laughter will be noisiest in a rally on the Mall on the eve of the midterm election, led by two comedians who have reveled in mocking the resurgent conservative grassroots. Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart have tapped into the Democratic Party’s ironic, scornful mood.
In doing so, they’ve also brought to light some of the party’s most self-destructive tendencies, the elitism and condescension that Bill Clinton sought to purge in the 1990s, when he matched a progressive agenda with the persona of a likeable “Bubba” to win two terms. Not many Democrats could pull it off. Charges of elitism dogged John Kerry in 2004 and resurfaced against Barack Obama at his lowest points in Pennsylvania in the spring of 2008, when he was recorded saying that small town people “cling” to their faith and their guns.
And President Obama himself has given his blessing to the election-eve irony-fest on the Mall, planning to appear on Stewart’s show in advance of the rally and plugging it in a recent appearance in Ohio, suggesting that Stewart’s point was to rally a silent, “sane” majority.
“There is a tendency now in the Democratic Party not only to disagree with, but to belittle political opponents,” said former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen, who accused Obama of “blaming the voters.” He called the posture “counterproductive,” and indeed, the Democrats have provoked the almost automatic backlash.
“These are some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president,” former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote of a recent Obama comment about how voters were responding to Republicans out of fear. Gerson interpreted it as saying that Republicans had lapsed into reliance on their “lizard brains” while Democrats used their higher faculties.
More HERE
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The New Republican Right
By Dick Morris
A fundamental change is gripping the Republican grass roots as they animate the GOP surge to a major victory in the 2010 elections. No longer do evangelical or social issues dominate the Republican ground troops. Now economic and fiscal issues prevail. The Tea Party has made the Republican Party safe for libertarians.
There is still a litmus test for admission to the Republican Party. But no longer is it dominated by abortion, guns and gays. Now, keeping the economy free of government regulation, reducing taxation and curbing spending are the chemicals that turn the paper pink.
It is one of the fundamental planks in the Tea Party platform that the movement does not concern itself with social issues. At the Tea Parties, evangelical pro-lifers rub shoulders happily with gay libertarians. They are united by their anger at Obama's economic policies, fear of his deficits and horror at his looming tax increases. Obama's agenda has effectively removed the blocks that stopped tens of millions of social moderates from joining the GOP.
As a byproduct of this sea change in the Republican Party, GOP grassroots activists are no longer just concentrated in the South. They are spread all throughout the nation, as prominent in Ohio as in Alabama, in New York as in Georgia, in California as in Nevada.
The Tea Party's focus on fiscal and economic issues finds deep resonance among voters of all stripes, united as they are in economic hardship and disappointed as they all are by Obama's economic program. This antipathy to federal policies is paving the way for vast Republican inroads in normally solid Democratic turf like New York state, Massachusetts, California and Washington state.
This preference for economic and fiscal questions over social issues is not a top-down decision of the Tea Party leadership. There really is no Tea Party leadership. Those who conduct its affairs are mere coordinators of local groups where the real power lies. The entire affair is a grass roots-dominated movement.
The determination to focus on fiscal and economic issues, to the exclusion of social questions, wells up from below as individual members vent their concerns over ObamaCare, stimulus spending and cap-and-trade legislation. It is around opposition to Obama's agenda, not Roe v. Wade, that the movement is organized. It is a new day on the Republican right.
SOURCE
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Congress has destroyed free check accounts
“Free checking as we know it is ending,” says the lead paragraph of a widely-read and tweeted story this week from the Associated Press. Noting Bank of America’s announced monthly charge of $8.50 for most checking accounts, the article reports that “almost all of the largest U.S. banks are either already making free checking much more difficult to get or expected to do so soon, with fees on even basic banking services.”
And other reports have noted the possible demise of free checking at many regional banks as well. Daniel Indiviglio blogs for The Atlantic that “free checking will soon be something only economic historians talk about.”
But the tide of economic history doesn’t necessarily have to turn this way. As noted in both The Atlantic and AP, the primary reason for free checking going by the wayside is not market forces, but new regulations from Washington.
The main culprits in free checking’s demise are the Federal Reserve’s rules that severely restrict banks from charging overdraft fees when customers make debit card purchases that exceed the balance of their checking accounts and the amendment from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) putting price controls on the interchange fees merchants pay to banks and credit unions to process debit cards. On Tuesday, as noted in the AP story, Bank of America took a $10.4 billion charge against earnings from projected loss of revenue due to the Durbin amendment.
The rules were sold as “protecting” the majority of consumers, but in reality they shifted costs to responsible middle-class consumers from irresponsible consumers who didn’t keep track of their checking accounts. Some of the nation’s biggest retailers also used bank-bashing rhetoric to get their share of corporate welfare at consumers’ expense. As The Atlantic’s Indiviglio writes, “At this point, banks are forbidden from squeezing as many fees out of bad customers and have less freedom to charge merchants. So their only alternative is to demand more money from their good customers.”
I propose that, as one of its first orders of business when it convenes next January, Congress enact “The Free Checking Restoration Act of 2011″ that would remove these cumbersome rules and will almost certainly result in competitive banks and credit unions offering traditional free checking to once again attract customers. The bill would get rid of the Fed’s overdraft rule and the Durbin amendment that puts price controls on merchant interchange fees....
At CEI, our mission is to make good policy good politics, and under current circumstances, promising voters the return of free checking accounts suddenly fits this bill. Since the promise some 80 years ago of ”a chicken in every pot,” political “freebies” have been a mainstay of modern campaigns.
Fiscal conservatives and libertarians usually look askance at these promises since most of the time they involve either spending a sum of money to bring the ”free” good to certain member of the population or mandating that businesses spend to provide this good, and the cost will have to be made up somewhere. But in this instance, Congress would not have to spend or mandate to provide this free good.
Rather, all it would have to do is remove misguided rules that were pushed through thoughtlessly in the Obama administration’s rush to regulate.
More HERE
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ELSEWHERE
The US economy needs to rob people of their savings? (That's what inflation is): "John Maynard Keynes claimed that people will develop an irrational ‘liquidity preference,’ hoarding money while waiting for interest rates to rise. The modern apostle of the liquidity trap is Paul Krugman, who says the only way out is for the government to spend and inflate, which then will dislodge the hoarded cash, as people spend in anticipation of rising prices. One would hope that the supposed ‘great minds’ at the Fed and in academic economics would better understand inflation and its destructiveness, but that is not to be.”
Fannie, Freddie could hook US taxpayers with $363 billion tab: "U.S. taxpayers could be stuck with a tab more than double its current size for subsidized mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a government regulator said Thursday. If housing prices drop through 2013, the bailed-out lenders will need another $215 billion to stay afloat, for a total bill of $363 billion. Some $148 billion has been spent so far to keep them in the black during the worst recession since the Great Depression.”
France: Riot police sent in to break oil blockade: "Teams of riot police carried out dawn raids to free France’s oil depots Wednesday as industry said the strikes against pension reforms were costing businesses up to $160 million per day. Under orders from President Nicolas Sarkozy, riot police in black body armour broke blockades around three depots in western France overnight, as fuel shortages left a third of France’s filling stations without gasoline. … All 12 of France’s oil refineries are still blocked but police have cleared access to 21 oil depots since Friday, and the government has insisted that fuel shortages will end within five days.”
Two US air marshals flee Brazil after being charged with assault: "Two U.S. air marshals who arrested the wife of a Brazilian judge on a flight to Rio de Janeiro — and were themselves arrested and had their passports confiscated by Brazilian authorities — fled the country using alternate travel documents rather than face what they believed to be trumped-up charges, sources said. The incident has impacted air marshal operations on flights to Brazil, officials said, and air marshals contacted by CNN said the case raises questions about Brazil’s willingness to support future law enforcement actions by U.S. officials on international flights.”
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Jonah Goldberg
As of this writing, France is paralyzed. By the time you read this, it might be in flames. In Britain, where politics is more polite but the problems are perhaps just as dire, the government is proposing budget cuts on a scale not seen for nearly a century. In Greece, well, the less said about Greece the better.
All of these countries -- and many more -- are going through painful retrenchments because they spent too much money, made too many promises and expected too little from their own citizens. The era of European austerity is upon us, because the Europeans -- or at least those in charge -- understand the mess they've made of their economies.
This should present a real problem for Barack Obama and the vast (though shrinking) chorus of experts, editorialists and activists who support his agenda. In broad terms, all of the policies Obama and the Democrats have pushed are the sorts of policies the British, the French and other Europeans had for years, even decades.
As far as I am aware, no one has asked President Obama a simple question: If your philosophy is so great, how come the countries that have embraced it for generations are so much poorer than us?
Nor have they asked: If guaranteed health care for everyone will make us so much more "competitive," how come we've been doing so much better than our "competitors" who already have socialized medicine, high tax rates and lavish pensions?
Nor has the president been queried about the incongruity of saying his policies have laid a "new foundation" for economic growth and job creation when the countries he's trying to emulate are trying to dismantle the very same foundations in order to survive.
If you want evidence for all this, you don't need to look to Europe. You need only look to America. We've had the weakest recovery from a recession in memory. In Gerald Ford's first year as president, the country rebounded at a rate of 6.2 percent. Under Reagan it was 7.7 percent. Even Clinton's recovery rate was over 4 percent from 1993 to 1994 (and grew from there). Obama's recovery has not only been anemic and sputtering at around 3 percent, it hasn't made a dent in the unemployment rate because employers have no confidence that we'll have reliable growth or that Obama isn't waiting to bring the hammer down with more Euro-style policies and taxes.
Obama supporters will respond that he has, in fact, "created" jobs, but just not enough to climb out of the massive hole created by the financial crisis and former President Bush's evil policies. The White House insists that it's not remotely responsible for the 3.2 millions jobs (2.9 million in the private sector) that have disappeared on Obama's watch, but is completely responsible for every single new job that has been created or "saved" since then.
But consider this about the relatively few new net jobs the economy has created under Obama. As my National Review colleague Rich Lowry recently noted, half of all the new net jobs created in the United States (from August 2009 to August 2010) were created in Texas. According to White House logic, Obama must simply love Texas, since he's the one creating all of those jobs. You have to wonder what he has against New York or California -- you know, the states that actually share Obama's economic vision and are descending into an economic abyss as we speak. Why reward low-tax, pro-growth Texas with all of these jobs?
SOURCE
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Democrats call Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell and others stupid
As usual, it shows that abuse and arrogance is all that they've got
The 2010 election has devolved in its closing days into a battle – familiar in American history and high school alike – over who’s stupid, and who’s a snob.
Palin “has made ignorance fashionable,” the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd wrote Wednesday, comparing the Alaska Governor’s intellect – unfavorably – to Marilyn Monroe’s.
Rachel Maddow occupied her MSNBC show Tuesday night mocking a series of Republican figures, laughing through a clip of O’Donnell’s attempt to explain that the phrase “separation of church and state” doesn’t appear in the Constitution, a point that drew nothing but ridicule on the left and in the British press. “The crowd is laughing at you,” she said as O’Donnell appeared on-screen.
Republicans say this strategy will work about as well this year as it did when used against Ronald Reagan.
But the Democrats are just getting started. Their laughter will be noisiest in a rally on the Mall on the eve of the midterm election, led by two comedians who have reveled in mocking the resurgent conservative grassroots. Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart have tapped into the Democratic Party’s ironic, scornful mood.
In doing so, they’ve also brought to light some of the party’s most self-destructive tendencies, the elitism and condescension that Bill Clinton sought to purge in the 1990s, when he matched a progressive agenda with the persona of a likeable “Bubba” to win two terms. Not many Democrats could pull it off. Charges of elitism dogged John Kerry in 2004 and resurfaced against Barack Obama at his lowest points in Pennsylvania in the spring of 2008, when he was recorded saying that small town people “cling” to their faith and their guns.
And President Obama himself has given his blessing to the election-eve irony-fest on the Mall, planning to appear on Stewart’s show in advance of the rally and plugging it in a recent appearance in Ohio, suggesting that Stewart’s point was to rally a silent, “sane” majority.
“There is a tendency now in the Democratic Party not only to disagree with, but to belittle political opponents,” said former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen, who accused Obama of “blaming the voters.” He called the posture “counterproductive,” and indeed, the Democrats have provoked the almost automatic backlash.
“These are some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president,” former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote of a recent Obama comment about how voters were responding to Republicans out of fear. Gerson interpreted it as saying that Republicans had lapsed into reliance on their “lizard brains” while Democrats used their higher faculties.
More HERE
*************************
The New Republican Right
By Dick Morris
A fundamental change is gripping the Republican grass roots as they animate the GOP surge to a major victory in the 2010 elections. No longer do evangelical or social issues dominate the Republican ground troops. Now economic and fiscal issues prevail. The Tea Party has made the Republican Party safe for libertarians.
There is still a litmus test for admission to the Republican Party. But no longer is it dominated by abortion, guns and gays. Now, keeping the economy free of government regulation, reducing taxation and curbing spending are the chemicals that turn the paper pink.
It is one of the fundamental planks in the Tea Party platform that the movement does not concern itself with social issues. At the Tea Parties, evangelical pro-lifers rub shoulders happily with gay libertarians. They are united by their anger at Obama's economic policies, fear of his deficits and horror at his looming tax increases. Obama's agenda has effectively removed the blocks that stopped tens of millions of social moderates from joining the GOP.
As a byproduct of this sea change in the Republican Party, GOP grassroots activists are no longer just concentrated in the South. They are spread all throughout the nation, as prominent in Ohio as in Alabama, in New York as in Georgia, in California as in Nevada.
The Tea Party's focus on fiscal and economic issues finds deep resonance among voters of all stripes, united as they are in economic hardship and disappointed as they all are by Obama's economic program. This antipathy to federal policies is paving the way for vast Republican inroads in normally solid Democratic turf like New York state, Massachusetts, California and Washington state.
This preference for economic and fiscal questions over social issues is not a top-down decision of the Tea Party leadership. There really is no Tea Party leadership. Those who conduct its affairs are mere coordinators of local groups where the real power lies. The entire affair is a grass roots-dominated movement.
The determination to focus on fiscal and economic issues, to the exclusion of social questions, wells up from below as individual members vent their concerns over ObamaCare, stimulus spending and cap-and-trade legislation. It is around opposition to Obama's agenda, not Roe v. Wade, that the movement is organized. It is a new day on the Republican right.
SOURCE
***********************
Congress has destroyed free check accounts
“Free checking as we know it is ending,” says the lead paragraph of a widely-read and tweeted story this week from the Associated Press. Noting Bank of America’s announced monthly charge of $8.50 for most checking accounts, the article reports that “almost all of the largest U.S. banks are either already making free checking much more difficult to get or expected to do so soon, with fees on even basic banking services.”
And other reports have noted the possible demise of free checking at many regional banks as well. Daniel Indiviglio blogs for The Atlantic that “free checking will soon be something only economic historians talk about.”
But the tide of economic history doesn’t necessarily have to turn this way. As noted in both The Atlantic and AP, the primary reason for free checking going by the wayside is not market forces, but new regulations from Washington.
The main culprits in free checking’s demise are the Federal Reserve’s rules that severely restrict banks from charging overdraft fees when customers make debit card purchases that exceed the balance of their checking accounts and the amendment from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) putting price controls on the interchange fees merchants pay to banks and credit unions to process debit cards. On Tuesday, as noted in the AP story, Bank of America took a $10.4 billion charge against earnings from projected loss of revenue due to the Durbin amendment.
The rules were sold as “protecting” the majority of consumers, but in reality they shifted costs to responsible middle-class consumers from irresponsible consumers who didn’t keep track of their checking accounts. Some of the nation’s biggest retailers also used bank-bashing rhetoric to get their share of corporate welfare at consumers’ expense. As The Atlantic’s Indiviglio writes, “At this point, banks are forbidden from squeezing as many fees out of bad customers and have less freedom to charge merchants. So their only alternative is to demand more money from their good customers.”
I propose that, as one of its first orders of business when it convenes next January, Congress enact “The Free Checking Restoration Act of 2011″ that would remove these cumbersome rules and will almost certainly result in competitive banks and credit unions offering traditional free checking to once again attract customers. The bill would get rid of the Fed’s overdraft rule and the Durbin amendment that puts price controls on merchant interchange fees....
At CEI, our mission is to make good policy good politics, and under current circumstances, promising voters the return of free checking accounts suddenly fits this bill. Since the promise some 80 years ago of ”a chicken in every pot,” political “freebies” have been a mainstay of modern campaigns.
Fiscal conservatives and libertarians usually look askance at these promises since most of the time they involve either spending a sum of money to bring the ”free” good to certain member of the population or mandating that businesses spend to provide this good, and the cost will have to be made up somewhere. But in this instance, Congress would not have to spend or mandate to provide this free good.
Rather, all it would have to do is remove misguided rules that were pushed through thoughtlessly in the Obama administration’s rush to regulate.
More HERE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
The US economy needs to rob people of their savings? (That's what inflation is): "John Maynard Keynes claimed that people will develop an irrational ‘liquidity preference,’ hoarding money while waiting for interest rates to rise. The modern apostle of the liquidity trap is Paul Krugman, who says the only way out is for the government to spend and inflate, which then will dislodge the hoarded cash, as people spend in anticipation of rising prices. One would hope that the supposed ‘great minds’ at the Fed and in academic economics would better understand inflation and its destructiveness, but that is not to be.”
Fannie, Freddie could hook US taxpayers with $363 billion tab: "U.S. taxpayers could be stuck with a tab more than double its current size for subsidized mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a government regulator said Thursday. If housing prices drop through 2013, the bailed-out lenders will need another $215 billion to stay afloat, for a total bill of $363 billion. Some $148 billion has been spent so far to keep them in the black during the worst recession since the Great Depression.”
France: Riot police sent in to break oil blockade: "Teams of riot police carried out dawn raids to free France’s oil depots Wednesday as industry said the strikes against pension reforms were costing businesses up to $160 million per day. Under orders from President Nicolas Sarkozy, riot police in black body armour broke blockades around three depots in western France overnight, as fuel shortages left a third of France’s filling stations without gasoline. … All 12 of France’s oil refineries are still blocked but police have cleared access to 21 oil depots since Friday, and the government has insisted that fuel shortages will end within five days.”
Two US air marshals flee Brazil after being charged with assault: "Two U.S. air marshals who arrested the wife of a Brazilian judge on a flight to Rio de Janeiro — and were themselves arrested and had their passports confiscated by Brazilian authorities — fled the country using alternate travel documents rather than face what they believed to be trumped-up charges, sources said. The incident has impacted air marshal operations on flights to Brazil, officials said, and air marshals contacted by CNN said the case raises questions about Brazil’s willingness to support future law enforcement actions by U.S. officials on international flights.”
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Covetous Democrats
"Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Goods."
The Democrats' philosophy can be summed up in this single precept -- covet what thy richer neighbors have. Democrats believe in a zero-sum game. For their entire philosophy of scarcity to function and breed class warfare, they must promote the idea that the world has a finite amount of wealth and that if John has more, it's not because he worked for it. It's because he somehow stole it from someone else. We'll call him Sam.
Government doesn't produce anything of value in the marketplace. It contracts with private concerns to build, grow, manufacture, or otherwise provide them. This includes important matters like defense. Therefore, in order to implement their plan, government's agents must first take from others.
The Democrats need many people on their side to support this, so class warfare ensues. It is easy enough to blame the "rich" for everything. They have it all. Fostering envy and coveting something that belongs to someone else is the oldest trick in the book, and it never works out well. Ask Eve.
The "rich" are a great target because they can bear greater burdens and seldom fire back until it's too late. But it's not a perfect socialist world, and even taxing the rich won't pay for everything the less fortunate want. With fewer than 2.3 million "rich" in the U.S. who qualify as millionaires, those who do not qualify can't afford to be so picky, so they must expand what being "wealthy" means.
In a Human Events article, "Obama's Biggest Lies," Donald Lambro illustrates this clearly: "According to Forbes magazine, there were only 469 billionaires in the U.S. and 2.2 million whose net worth was at least $1 million (this includes home values). But the higher taxes will fall on millions more small business employers who earn over $200,000 and who provide most of the jobs in our country."
European socialist models depend upon wealth redistribution, which follows this idea of scarcity. There is only so much wealth or property to go around, so it must be "managed" if we're to be "fair" to everyone, and of course, only the elite left is wise enough to know how to fairly manage these assets for everyone's benefit.
This certainly seems to be how it worked out in the (former) Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. It seems to be equally true in Greece and France. Great Britain and Germany have been so impressed with socialism's results that they are turning en masse from its principles.
Liberals love to ignore the obvious. If this absurd idea of wealth scarcity were true, the world would have run out of money thousands of years ago. There would be no point to creating a new product or innovation because there would be no market for it, no reward, and no profit to be made.
A fair opportunity is not the same thing as a fair outcome.
It is counterintuitive for a people whose business is business to subscribe to a philosophy that declares private salaries and profits "excessive," since it is the private investor and shareholder who took the risk in the first place and who hire the very workers who now demand a piece of the pie. Few share in the risk, yet all should share in the reward. Certainly sounds "fair" to me.
When the top 50% pay over 95% of all taxes and the bottom 50% pays less than 5%, something is very wrong. Liberals put forward a zero-sum philosophy but are burning up the money presses 24/7. What's wrong with this picture?
Jesus said the poor will be with us always.
A nirvana "Star Trek" world without money, without sickness, and without envy ignores reality. Yet not only do the Left pretend this is possible, but they sell the idea by using envy and government checks like candy from their pocket. They sell this idea to those in need, taking power in exchange for promises they cannot possibly keep. They have merely shifted the burden, first to "the rich," and then always expanding according to ever-increasing needs to the entire producing half of the country. This is not fairness. This is lust for power. This is the face of tyranny in disguise.
SOURCE
**********************
In Obamacare Wonderland: Courts reject key defense for the individual mandate
Legal arguments for Obamacare's individual mandate fail the "Alice in Wonder- land" test and the duck test. In two court challenges to the law in the past 11 days and a court hearing today on a third, the Obama administration's legal position is fading faster than the Cheshire Cat.
Democrats took some solace from the first case, a challenge in Michigan, because Judge George C. Steeh ultimately ruled in favor of Obamacare. Yet even though that Clinton-appointed judge refused to declare the mandate unconstitutional, he undercut the administration's key argument that the penalty for failing to buy insurance is a "tax," and that the mandate it enforces is allowable within the broad taxing power provided by the Constitution. "The provisions of the Health Care Reform Act at issue here, for the most part, have nothing to do with the assessment or collection of taxes," Judge Steeh ruled.
This is so important that the federal district judge in Florida, in Thursday's preliminary ruling in the second case, spent 22 pages analyzing it. If the fine is a penalty rather than a tax, Congress' power is far less extensive. Judge Roger Vinson noted Congress repeatedly called the fine a "penalty," explicitly changing its description from a "tax" that earlier versions of the bill assessed by name. Citing Alice's admonition to Humpty Dumpty that words can't "mean so many different things" as Humpty intended, Judge Vinson concluded, "Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing ... [only to] argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely."
Judge Vinson explained that no matter what Congress called it, the assessment was designed to act as a punishment, not a revenue measure. Hence, it's not a tax. His 22-page analysis is an exposition of the logic that if something is called a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck - and the same goes for a penalty.
The tax issue is vital because it's the Obama administration's fallback position if it loses on the first and biggest dispute, which is whether Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause not only to regulate commerce, but to force individuals to engage in specific commerce. "At this stage in the litigation, this is not even a close call," Judge Vinson stated. "The power [claimed by the administration] is simply without prior precedent."
Judge Henry E. Hudson in Virginia reached the same conclusion in a preliminary ruling in the third case against Obamacare. He wrote that the mandate doesn't regulate commerce, as the Constitution allows, but instead regulates "a virtual state of repose - or idleness - the converse of activity." Judge Hudson hears oral arguments in that case today. He ought to deliver another strong blow against Obamacare so that not even the king's horses can put the law together again.
SOURCE
*************************
Top 10 ways government kills jobs in America
Our politicians all seem to agree on at least one thing: There will be no recovery unless America gets back to work.
But that’s often where the agreement ends. Once you move on to discuss how to get America back to work, opinions begin to diverge.
In general, the worst thing for job creation is a poor entrepreneurial climate. Such a climate is brought on by the large fiscal debt, unpredictable health care costs, and a generally anti-business and pro-regulation approach by government.
In the run-up to the midterm elections, all of us should be thinking about “climate change”—about the best ways to create jobs in our nation. We’ll hear lots of talk about recovery and stimulus, about fairness and equity, the future and change.
As we listen to the rhetoric, remember the reality. These are the Top job killers in America.
1. Uncertainty and business: What you don’t know can (and does) hurt you. Businesses plan around rules. And they are unlikely to invest if they can’t be reasonably sure about what the rules will be. When things are uncertain, businesses hold back cash to protect themselves—and this kills jobs. My colleague Allan Meltzer has made this point in two recent WSJ op-eds: “High uncertainty is the enemy of investment and growth,” he declares in one. “The most important restriction on investment today is not tight monetary policy, but uncertainty about administration policy,” he argues in the other.
2. Uncertainty and the consumer: Uncertainty isn’t just bad for companies—it’s bad for consumers, too. If I think government policy may provoke a double dip in the economy and my job is on the line, there’s no way I’m going out to buy a new car. For that matter, even the possibility of a huge gas tax would make me less likely to make a car purchase decision. All this kills jobs.
3. High corporate taxes: Americans are shocked to learn that we have some of the highest corporate taxes in the world. In fact, Japan is the only developed country with a higher corporate tax rate than the United States. Whether we like it or not, the corporate tax is a tax on jobs. It makes it more expensive for firms to function, which costs jobs. But even worse, it drives companies to find more tax-friendly environments in other countries.
4. Unhealthy health insurance costs: The high health insurance costs associated with hiring new workers hits small businesses particularly hard, according to AEI economist Aparna Mathur. Government health mandates specify exactly what kinds of coverage have to be included in insurance policies. This makes increasing headcount a costly exercise, and so kills jobs. One major CEO told me recently that his hiring was stunted by the new mandate to cover workers’ kids up to age 26.
5. The threat of unionization: In a global economy, it’s fairly simple for a lot of firms to avoid unionization: They can move overseas and take their jobs with them. Policies that favor unions make this decision more attractive.
6. Inability to hire and fire: In Europe, government regulations and employment protection laws reduce the flexibility of firms to downsize their operations when they need to. They also discourage those same firms from upsizing their operations when they would otherwise do so, and are thus a job killer. This is why Spain has a 20% unemployment rate (and about 40% among workers under 25). Restrictions on firing are a job killer.
7. Trade restrictions: Free trade favors consumers everywhere, and benefits workers in industries where America has a comparative advantage. Tariffs and other barriers benefit industries that are already in decline. This is why economists always tell us that over the long run, trade barriers and slow modernization are a net job killer.
8. Credit: Poor credit access especially hurts new and young firms that are eager to expand their operations. The new Consumer Financial Protection Agency could make matters worse by expanding burdensome regulation of these financial markets, killing jobs in the process.
9. Increasing unemployment insurance: Everyone wants to ease the burden on the unemployed, so it is tempting to extend unemployment insurance, as our government has recently—today, to as much as 73 additional weeks. Unfortunately, this kills jobs and economic recovery. Harvard economist Robert Barro estimates that if unemployment insurance had not been expanded, the unemployment rate would now be 6.8% rather than 9.5%.
10. Encouraging frivolous lawsuits: This increases the costs of doing business in America, with one study estimating that we waste as much as $900 billion a year on excessive tort litigation—that’s 6.5 percent of GNP or $12,000 annually for a family of four. As a result, company capital that could be used for expansion and job creation goes to the trial lawyers instead. And like so many anti-business measures, such litigation drives up costs for consumers, which reduces demand and kills jobs even more.
SOURCE
***************************
Some miscellaneous notes:
Horror stories about Britain's socialized medicine system are more or less routine on my EYE ON BRITAIN blog but the story leading yesterday's posts I found particularly disturbing. It will certainly horrify anyone with libertarian views. You have no right to go to hell in your own way in Britain. On AUSTRALIAN POLITICS today there are also two stories about failures of socialized medicine in Australia.
I have recently added a few things to my sidebar here. My comments on monarchy might evoke a few responses from some American readers.
As regular readers here will be aware, in addition to my political blogs which I update daily, I have two irregularly updated blogs which I put up mainly for my own amusement -- my Personal blog and Paralipomena . I gather that some readers here do occasionally look at them so I thought I might note that I have added a bit to both in recent times.
*******************
ELSEWHERE
A brain-dead Obama appointee at work: "An HIV-positive prisoner (Anthony Pitre) is transferred to a prison where all inmates are required to do hard labor. He doesn’t like hard labor and so, in protest, he refuses to take his HIV meds. As a result, he’s less fit for hard labor. But prison officials say: “Too bad, you still have to do hard labor like everyone else.” Pitre then sues the prison for “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Constitution. The magistrate judge dismisses the claim as “patently frivolous.” The federal district court agrees. The Fifth Circuit agrees. Eight Supreme Court justices refuse to hear the case — with Justice Sotomayor dissenting. In a four-page dissent (highly unusual for a routine denial of certiorari), Sotomayor argues that Pitre had demonstrated that prison officials acted with “deliberate indifference” in violation of the Eighth Amendment" [Cruel and unusual punishment]
Federal appeals court reinstates “don’t ask, don’t tell”: "A federal appeals court Wednesday reinstated ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ the military’s policy forbidding openly gay troops from serving. A three-judge panel granted the Justice Department’s emergency request to allow the policy to remain on the books so that the appeals court could have more time to fully consider the issues presented.”
Pilot refuses full-body scan, patdown: "A pilot who refused to submit to a full-body scan or the alternative pat down going through airport security said the procedures violate his rights. … [Michael] Roberts said TSA security measures are ineffective, and cited concerns for his rights and privacy in refusing the procedures. ‘I was trying to avoid this assault on my person, and I’m not willing to have images of my nude body produced for some stranger in another room to look at either,’ Roberts told CNN. The TSA said in a statement that ’security [sic] is not optional’ and any person who refuses security screening is not allowed to fly.”
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
"Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Goods."
The Democrats' philosophy can be summed up in this single precept -- covet what thy richer neighbors have. Democrats believe in a zero-sum game. For their entire philosophy of scarcity to function and breed class warfare, they must promote the idea that the world has a finite amount of wealth and that if John has more, it's not because he worked for it. It's because he somehow stole it from someone else. We'll call him Sam.
Government doesn't produce anything of value in the marketplace. It contracts with private concerns to build, grow, manufacture, or otherwise provide them. This includes important matters like defense. Therefore, in order to implement their plan, government's agents must first take from others.
The Democrats need many people on their side to support this, so class warfare ensues. It is easy enough to blame the "rich" for everything. They have it all. Fostering envy and coveting something that belongs to someone else is the oldest trick in the book, and it never works out well. Ask Eve.
The "rich" are a great target because they can bear greater burdens and seldom fire back until it's too late. But it's not a perfect socialist world, and even taxing the rich won't pay for everything the less fortunate want. With fewer than 2.3 million "rich" in the U.S. who qualify as millionaires, those who do not qualify can't afford to be so picky, so they must expand what being "wealthy" means.
In a Human Events article, "Obama's Biggest Lies," Donald Lambro illustrates this clearly: "According to Forbes magazine, there were only 469 billionaires in the U.S. and 2.2 million whose net worth was at least $1 million (this includes home values). But the higher taxes will fall on millions more small business employers who earn over $200,000 and who provide most of the jobs in our country."
European socialist models depend upon wealth redistribution, which follows this idea of scarcity. There is only so much wealth or property to go around, so it must be "managed" if we're to be "fair" to everyone, and of course, only the elite left is wise enough to know how to fairly manage these assets for everyone's benefit.
This certainly seems to be how it worked out in the (former) Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. It seems to be equally true in Greece and France. Great Britain and Germany have been so impressed with socialism's results that they are turning en masse from its principles.
Liberals love to ignore the obvious. If this absurd idea of wealth scarcity were true, the world would have run out of money thousands of years ago. There would be no point to creating a new product or innovation because there would be no market for it, no reward, and no profit to be made.
A fair opportunity is not the same thing as a fair outcome.
It is counterintuitive for a people whose business is business to subscribe to a philosophy that declares private salaries and profits "excessive," since it is the private investor and shareholder who took the risk in the first place and who hire the very workers who now demand a piece of the pie. Few share in the risk, yet all should share in the reward. Certainly sounds "fair" to me.
When the top 50% pay over 95% of all taxes and the bottom 50% pays less than 5%, something is very wrong. Liberals put forward a zero-sum philosophy but are burning up the money presses 24/7. What's wrong with this picture?
Jesus said the poor will be with us always.
A nirvana "Star Trek" world without money, without sickness, and without envy ignores reality. Yet not only do the Left pretend this is possible, but they sell the idea by using envy and government checks like candy from their pocket. They sell this idea to those in need, taking power in exchange for promises they cannot possibly keep. They have merely shifted the burden, first to "the rich," and then always expanding according to ever-increasing needs to the entire producing half of the country. This is not fairness. This is lust for power. This is the face of tyranny in disguise.
SOURCE
**********************
In Obamacare Wonderland: Courts reject key defense for the individual mandate
Legal arguments for Obamacare's individual mandate fail the "Alice in Wonder- land" test and the duck test. In two court challenges to the law in the past 11 days and a court hearing today on a third, the Obama administration's legal position is fading faster than the Cheshire Cat.
Democrats took some solace from the first case, a challenge in Michigan, because Judge George C. Steeh ultimately ruled in favor of Obamacare. Yet even though that Clinton-appointed judge refused to declare the mandate unconstitutional, he undercut the administration's key argument that the penalty for failing to buy insurance is a "tax," and that the mandate it enforces is allowable within the broad taxing power provided by the Constitution. "The provisions of the Health Care Reform Act at issue here, for the most part, have nothing to do with the assessment or collection of taxes," Judge Steeh ruled.
This is so important that the federal district judge in Florida, in Thursday's preliminary ruling in the second case, spent 22 pages analyzing it. If the fine is a penalty rather than a tax, Congress' power is far less extensive. Judge Roger Vinson noted Congress repeatedly called the fine a "penalty," explicitly changing its description from a "tax" that earlier versions of the bill assessed by name. Citing Alice's admonition to Humpty Dumpty that words can't "mean so many different things" as Humpty intended, Judge Vinson concluded, "Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing ... [only to] argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely."
Judge Vinson explained that no matter what Congress called it, the assessment was designed to act as a punishment, not a revenue measure. Hence, it's not a tax. His 22-page analysis is an exposition of the logic that if something is called a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck - and the same goes for a penalty.
The tax issue is vital because it's the Obama administration's fallback position if it loses on the first and biggest dispute, which is whether Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause not only to regulate commerce, but to force individuals to engage in specific commerce. "At this stage in the litigation, this is not even a close call," Judge Vinson stated. "The power [claimed by the administration] is simply without prior precedent."
Judge Henry E. Hudson in Virginia reached the same conclusion in a preliminary ruling in the third case against Obamacare. He wrote that the mandate doesn't regulate commerce, as the Constitution allows, but instead regulates "a virtual state of repose - or idleness - the converse of activity." Judge Hudson hears oral arguments in that case today. He ought to deliver another strong blow against Obamacare so that not even the king's horses can put the law together again.
SOURCE
*************************
Top 10 ways government kills jobs in America
Our politicians all seem to agree on at least one thing: There will be no recovery unless America gets back to work.
But that’s often where the agreement ends. Once you move on to discuss how to get America back to work, opinions begin to diverge.
In general, the worst thing for job creation is a poor entrepreneurial climate. Such a climate is brought on by the large fiscal debt, unpredictable health care costs, and a generally anti-business and pro-regulation approach by government.
In the run-up to the midterm elections, all of us should be thinking about “climate change”—about the best ways to create jobs in our nation. We’ll hear lots of talk about recovery and stimulus, about fairness and equity, the future and change.
As we listen to the rhetoric, remember the reality. These are the Top job killers in America.
1. Uncertainty and business: What you don’t know can (and does) hurt you. Businesses plan around rules. And they are unlikely to invest if they can’t be reasonably sure about what the rules will be. When things are uncertain, businesses hold back cash to protect themselves—and this kills jobs. My colleague Allan Meltzer has made this point in two recent WSJ op-eds: “High uncertainty is the enemy of investment and growth,” he declares in one. “The most important restriction on investment today is not tight monetary policy, but uncertainty about administration policy,” he argues in the other.
2. Uncertainty and the consumer: Uncertainty isn’t just bad for companies—it’s bad for consumers, too. If I think government policy may provoke a double dip in the economy and my job is on the line, there’s no way I’m going out to buy a new car. For that matter, even the possibility of a huge gas tax would make me less likely to make a car purchase decision. All this kills jobs.
3. High corporate taxes: Americans are shocked to learn that we have some of the highest corporate taxes in the world. In fact, Japan is the only developed country with a higher corporate tax rate than the United States. Whether we like it or not, the corporate tax is a tax on jobs. It makes it more expensive for firms to function, which costs jobs. But even worse, it drives companies to find more tax-friendly environments in other countries.
4. Unhealthy health insurance costs: The high health insurance costs associated with hiring new workers hits small businesses particularly hard, according to AEI economist Aparna Mathur. Government health mandates specify exactly what kinds of coverage have to be included in insurance policies. This makes increasing headcount a costly exercise, and so kills jobs. One major CEO told me recently that his hiring was stunted by the new mandate to cover workers’ kids up to age 26.
5. The threat of unionization: In a global economy, it’s fairly simple for a lot of firms to avoid unionization: They can move overseas and take their jobs with them. Policies that favor unions make this decision more attractive.
6. Inability to hire and fire: In Europe, government regulations and employment protection laws reduce the flexibility of firms to downsize their operations when they need to. They also discourage those same firms from upsizing their operations when they would otherwise do so, and are thus a job killer. This is why Spain has a 20% unemployment rate (and about 40% among workers under 25). Restrictions on firing are a job killer.
7. Trade restrictions: Free trade favors consumers everywhere, and benefits workers in industries where America has a comparative advantage. Tariffs and other barriers benefit industries that are already in decline. This is why economists always tell us that over the long run, trade barriers and slow modernization are a net job killer.
8. Credit: Poor credit access especially hurts new and young firms that are eager to expand their operations. The new Consumer Financial Protection Agency could make matters worse by expanding burdensome regulation of these financial markets, killing jobs in the process.
9. Increasing unemployment insurance: Everyone wants to ease the burden on the unemployed, so it is tempting to extend unemployment insurance, as our government has recently—today, to as much as 73 additional weeks. Unfortunately, this kills jobs and economic recovery. Harvard economist Robert Barro estimates that if unemployment insurance had not been expanded, the unemployment rate would now be 6.8% rather than 9.5%.
10. Encouraging frivolous lawsuits: This increases the costs of doing business in America, with one study estimating that we waste as much as $900 billion a year on excessive tort litigation—that’s 6.5 percent of GNP or $12,000 annually for a family of four. As a result, company capital that could be used for expansion and job creation goes to the trial lawyers instead. And like so many anti-business measures, such litigation drives up costs for consumers, which reduces demand and kills jobs even more.
SOURCE
***************************
Some miscellaneous notes:
Horror stories about Britain's socialized medicine system are more or less routine on my EYE ON BRITAIN blog but the story leading yesterday's posts I found particularly disturbing. It will certainly horrify anyone with libertarian views. You have no right to go to hell in your own way in Britain. On AUSTRALIAN POLITICS today there are also two stories about failures of socialized medicine in Australia.
I have recently added a few things to my sidebar here. My comments on monarchy might evoke a few responses from some American readers.
As regular readers here will be aware, in addition to my political blogs which I update daily, I have two irregularly updated blogs which I put up mainly for my own amusement -- my Personal blog and Paralipomena . I gather that some readers here do occasionally look at them so I thought I might note that I have added a bit to both in recent times.
*******************
ELSEWHERE
A brain-dead Obama appointee at work: "An HIV-positive prisoner (Anthony Pitre) is transferred to a prison where all inmates are required to do hard labor. He doesn’t like hard labor and so, in protest, he refuses to take his HIV meds. As a result, he’s less fit for hard labor. But prison officials say: “Too bad, you still have to do hard labor like everyone else.” Pitre then sues the prison for “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Constitution. The magistrate judge dismisses the claim as “patently frivolous.” The federal district court agrees. The Fifth Circuit agrees. Eight Supreme Court justices refuse to hear the case — with Justice Sotomayor dissenting. In a four-page dissent (highly unusual for a routine denial of certiorari), Sotomayor argues that Pitre had demonstrated that prison officials acted with “deliberate indifference” in violation of the Eighth Amendment" [Cruel and unusual punishment]
Federal appeals court reinstates “don’t ask, don’t tell”: "A federal appeals court Wednesday reinstated ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ the military’s policy forbidding openly gay troops from serving. A three-judge panel granted the Justice Department’s emergency request to allow the policy to remain on the books so that the appeals court could have more time to fully consider the issues presented.”
Pilot refuses full-body scan, patdown: "A pilot who refused to submit to a full-body scan or the alternative pat down going through airport security said the procedures violate his rights. … [Michael] Roberts said TSA security measures are ineffective, and cited concerns for his rights and privacy in refusing the procedures. ‘I was trying to avoid this assault on my person, and I’m not willing to have images of my nude body produced for some stranger in another room to look at either,’ Roberts told CNN. The TSA said in a statement that ’security [sic] is not optional’ and any person who refuses security screening is not allowed to fly.”
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Obama's nativist tactics may backfire, given his record of sending jobs overseas
Obama has made the baseless claim that the Chamber of Commerce is spending foreign money on political campaigns. This claim was widely disseminated to the general public through a hysterical ad campaign by the Democratic National Committee accusing the Chamber of Commerce of "stealing our democracy" and featuring an "ominous shot of Chinese currency," suggesting that Chinese people are trying to take over America. Not only was this claim false, but stoking nativism may backfire on Obama politically, since liberal interest groups that back Obama, like unions, receive large amounts of foreign money, and Obama himself has used regulations and subsidies to ship American jobs overseas.
As one writer notes in the Washington Post, "Labor unions are spending millions to tar Republican candidates -- and they take in far more foreign cash than the Chamber." "The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is spending lavishly to elect Democrats. . . takes in nearly $9.2 million per year from foreign nationals, compared to the mere "$100,000," none of it used for political campaigns, that the Chamber "receives from its affiliates abroad" -- less than 1/20th of 1 percent of the Chamber's budget. Moreover, most foreign PAC money is going to Democrats, not Republicans.
And Obama's policies have shipped American jobs overseas. 79 percent of the green-jobs funding contained in the $800 billion stimulus package went to foreign firms, aggravating the nation's trade deficit. Meanwhile, the Administration has paid $150 million a year to Brazilian cotton farmers, and supported a cap-and-trade global warming bill that would drive hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas. (Although Obama and other backers of this “cap-and-trade” concept claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them by driving industry abroad to countries with fewer environmental regulations, resulting in dirtier air, and damage to forests and water supplies). Stoking anti-foreign sentiment may further increase public outrage over administration policies that help foreigners at the expense of Americans -- like its backdoor bailouts of foreign banks, and the $6 billion Obama spent on bailing out socialist Greece.
Obama's attacks on foreign money may also remind Americans of Obama's own 2008 receipt of foreign campaign contributions, which resulted from his campaign's deliberate disabling of computer software that would have thwarted such contributions, as the Wall Street Journal's John Fund and others have pointed out: "As the Washington Post reported, the Obama campaign had turned off its Address Verification System, or AVS, at its Web site. That program should have stopped contributions coming in from citizens of foreign countries -- a violation of federal law. Clearly, the Obama campaign's decision to abandon filters had consequences -- the campaign was forced to refund $33,000 to two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip."
SOURCE (See the original for links)
************************
The Statist, Ruling Class's New Hero -- Bill Buckley?
It's always amusing when the Left try to tell conservatives how to be conservative
By Richard A. Viguerie
It's easy to use the deceased to claim support for one's positions. The dead aren't around to deny, rebut, and refute false or misleading statements.
William F. Buckley, Jr., intellectual giant and "maker" of the conservative movement, has of late become a crutch for statists and ruling-class elites to denigrate the Tea Parties and the surge of the constitutional, small-government conservative movement.
Liberals trying to smear the Tea Party cause and constitutional, small-government conservative candidates by referring to Buckley are, however, attempting to rewrite history to suit their own agendas and ideology.
For example, E.J. Dionne writes in Monday's Washington Post, "[W]hereas responsible conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr. denounced the [John] Birchers and the rest of the lunatic fringe back then, Republicans this time are riding the radical wave."
Steve Benen of the liberal Washington Monthly recently shed crocodile tears in a post entitled, "Where have you gone, William F. Buckley, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you," claiming that "the conservative movement appears to have gone berserk." Benen laid charges of "an unprecedented mainstreaming of once fringe far-right ideas."
In my appearance on CNN's Parker Spitzer show last week, co-host Kathleen Parker tried that gambit with me. Here's a part from the exchange reported by Newsbusters of the Media Research Center:
PARKER: First of all, you started in 1961, here in New York City, with William F. Buckley, and I'm wondering if you think that today's Republican Party is William F. Buckley's party?
VIGUERIE: The Republican Party is not the party that Bill Buckley would want today, but it's moving in that direction.
What was left on CNN's editing room floor was my longer explanation of how Bill Buckley spent the better part of sixty years working against the Kathleen Parkers in the Republican Party.
From his book, God and Man at Yale, through opposing Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller, reluctantly supporting Richard Nixon, and helping co-found the Conservative Party of New York because the NY GOP had been captured by liberal Republicans to running for New York City mayor against big-government Republican John Lindsay, Buckley was tirelessly consistent in his opposition to big-government Republicans.
Buckley was for freedom over statism, and he often found members of the Republican Party offering no real alternative to statism. Buckley even was a sometime critic of Ronald Reagan.
Buckley was many things, but two of his most underappreciated qualities were that he was a populist and a constitutionalist. He once famously said, "I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."
Any large movement has its share of miscreants, and Buckley did spend about one or two percent of his time ostracizing certain people on the right whose outrageous comments distracted from the mission of the conservative movement.
If the liberal intelligentsia were honest brokers, they could spend most of their time berating the extremists, kooks, and flakes on the left, beginning within the Democratic Congressional Caucus or the Obama White House and working outward to many of the left-wing coalitions, organizations, and even media members who are their support network.
Why, for example, are E.J. Dionne and other liberals silent about House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers' October 2010 appearance before a meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America, a Marxist organization, or the Communist Party's participation in and support for the October 2 One Nation rally, including this post at Barack Obama's Organizing for America website by the National Chairman of the Communist Party USA?
And where were the so-called "reasonable" liberals when other liberals protested Bill Buckley's speeches on college campuses, when liberal Gore Vidal called him a "crypto-Nazi," or when, more contemporarily, another liberal wrote, "Bill Buckley, sniveling racist, dies."
The maturing but still nascent, populist-driven Tea Party and the resurgence of the constitutional small-government conservative movement are very much consistent with Buckley's views. Marxists, Dionne, Benen, Parker, and other statist, ruling-class elites would prefer Republicans who offer little resistance to them. However, they cannot, try as they may, credibly paint the free-market, deficit-reduction, constitutional principles of the Tea Party or the everyday Americans rising in protest as radically fringe.
In my last conversation with Buckley twenty months before he died, he told me that George W. Bush was conservative, but not a conservative. Buckley would have assuredly been driven to his chastising and majestically acerbic pen by the revelation after his death that Bush himself denigrated the conservative movement while in the White House.
I wish he were around to see this movement, especially emerging out of the disastrous past decade of big-government Republicanism, and to refute the statists and ruling class members who have misused his name for their own ideological purposes.
And since they are engaging in speculative talk, allow me to do the same: If Bill Buckley were alive today, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Gadsden flag flying on his yacht.
For those who want to learn more about what Bill Buckley really thought and did, read Buckley himself, such as God and Man at Yale and Up from Liberalism. Also, I highly recommend Lee Edwards' new magnificent biography of Buckley, The Maker of the Movement.
SOURCE
*************************
Troops Will Vote With Their Feet
The last word regarding the proposed repeal of the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military homosexual exclusion law won’t come from the President, Congress, or the courts. The all-volunteer military will have the last word if the homosexual law is repealed; that is, many will vote with their feet to the nation’s peril.
The confluence of efforts by the three branches of government to lift the homosexual ban is unprecedented but so is their failure to consider unfettered service member voices. Ignoring their views potentially places the nation at risk if our volunteers who are already overstretched by nine years of war decide that lifting the homosexual ban is the last straw and then leave. And lifting the ban could also keep qualified candidates with a proclivity to serve from enlisting but no one knows just how many are in either category.
What we do know is the pool of potential volunteers is shrinking with only 25% of the nation’s 17- to 24-year-olds eligible for military service and a fraction of that group demonstrate a proclivity to volunteer. That shrinking pool is drawn from a small segment of the population mostly opposed to open homosexuality in the military such as conservative and religious families with histories of military service.
This pool of eligible volunteers won’t be easily replaced by “eligible” homosexuals who as a category make up only a few percentage points of the total population and, in general, steer clear of military service. Yet gay activists and liberal apologists with no military service would have the American public believe homosexuals are anxious to fill the military’s ranks.
The President, Congress, and the courts disregard the unfettered opinions of our all-volunteer military at great risk, and if Obama and his allies succeed in lifting the ban they have no back-up pool of eligible recruits. That is why Congress had better listen to our troops and their chiefs or get ready to justify conscription for everyone’s sons and daughters.
More HERE
*************************
Public-Sector Unions Choke Taxpayers
John Stossel
"I thought unions were great -- until at Chrysler, the union steward started screaming at me. Working at an unhurried pace, I'd exceeded 'production' for that job."
That comment, left on my blog by a viewer who watched my Fox Business Network show about unions, matches my experience. No one ordered me to slow down, but union rules and union culture at ABC and CBS slowed the work. Sometimes a camera crew took five minutes just to get out of the car.
Now unions conspire with politicians to rip off taxpayers.
Steve Melanga of the Manhattan Institute complains that politicians get union political support by granting government workers generous pensions and health benefits. After those politicians leave office, taxpayers are liable for trillions in unfunded promises.
"It's squeezing out all other spending," Melanga says. "Where are we going to get this $3 trillion dollars? ... When they're (government workers) allowed to retire at 58 and the rest of us are retiring at 60 and 67 -- and by the way we're living to 80 -- it's crazy. The public sector is the version of the European welfare state which, by the way, in Europe, they're actually rolling back."
Jakob wrote: "Are you really this stupid? Do you really want to lower American workers' standards to that of Honduras and China, where democratic unions do not exist? Would you like for us to go back to a time in America before we had unions? When children worked in factories for 14-hour days and health and safety standards simply did not exist?"
These are popular views. But they are wrong. Factories are safer because of free markets. Companies want better workers and must compete to get them. Free markets create wealth that permits parents to send their kids to schools instead of factories. Unions once helped to advance working conditions, but now union work rules mostly retard growth and progress.
Many workers understand that, and that's why only 8 percent of private-sector workers still belong to unions. In the private sector, wage and pension demands are tempered by competition. If one company pays too much, a competitor takes his business.
But governments are monopolies. They face no competition and get their money by force. So they can conspire with public-sector unions to milk taxpayers. That explains the fix we're in today. Something's got to give.
More HERE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
US military starting to accept homosexuals: "Openly gay recruits can now join the military as a result of a federal court ruling striking down the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ law, but they are being warned that they can still be discharged if the ruling is overturned. Cynthia Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the suspension of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is in response to the Sept. 9 decision of a central California federal judge that ruled the law implemented under President Clinton in 1993 was unconstitutional.”
The crime of living: "The new term ‘overcriminalization’ describes the last few decades’ legislative orgy of criminalizing trivial or harmless behavior. Under ‘zero tolerance’ the legal system has shifted ever closer to a vast police state. From 2000 to 2007 Congress added 452 new federal crimes to the 4,450 already in effect and the roughly 300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally. ‘Get tough’ punishments and innovative new crimes have brought career-making headlines to politicians, who encountered little resistance.”
Would you like a union with that, comrade?: "Workers at some of America’s fast food restaurants could be in for some interesting times soon. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is attempting to unionize several Jimmy John’s sandwich stores in the Minneapolis area. The IWW’s campaign against Jimmy John’s could be the start of organizing efforts at several other restaurant chains. (Today, only 1.3 percent of workers in the food service industry are union members.) This should concern not only restaurateurs, but also consumers and young workers.”
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Obama has made the baseless claim that the Chamber of Commerce is spending foreign money on political campaigns. This claim was widely disseminated to the general public through a hysterical ad campaign by the Democratic National Committee accusing the Chamber of Commerce of "stealing our democracy" and featuring an "ominous shot of Chinese currency," suggesting that Chinese people are trying to take over America. Not only was this claim false, but stoking nativism may backfire on Obama politically, since liberal interest groups that back Obama, like unions, receive large amounts of foreign money, and Obama himself has used regulations and subsidies to ship American jobs overseas.
As one writer notes in the Washington Post, "Labor unions are spending millions to tar Republican candidates -- and they take in far more foreign cash than the Chamber." "The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is spending lavishly to elect Democrats. . . takes in nearly $9.2 million per year from foreign nationals, compared to the mere "$100,000," none of it used for political campaigns, that the Chamber "receives from its affiliates abroad" -- less than 1/20th of 1 percent of the Chamber's budget. Moreover, most foreign PAC money is going to Democrats, not Republicans.
And Obama's policies have shipped American jobs overseas. 79 percent of the green-jobs funding contained in the $800 billion stimulus package went to foreign firms, aggravating the nation's trade deficit. Meanwhile, the Administration has paid $150 million a year to Brazilian cotton farmers, and supported a cap-and-trade global warming bill that would drive hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas. (Although Obama and other backers of this “cap-and-trade” concept claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them by driving industry abroad to countries with fewer environmental regulations, resulting in dirtier air, and damage to forests and water supplies). Stoking anti-foreign sentiment may further increase public outrage over administration policies that help foreigners at the expense of Americans -- like its backdoor bailouts of foreign banks, and the $6 billion Obama spent on bailing out socialist Greece.
Obama's attacks on foreign money may also remind Americans of Obama's own 2008 receipt of foreign campaign contributions, which resulted from his campaign's deliberate disabling of computer software that would have thwarted such contributions, as the Wall Street Journal's John Fund and others have pointed out: "As the Washington Post reported, the Obama campaign had turned off its Address Verification System, or AVS, at its Web site. That program should have stopped contributions coming in from citizens of foreign countries -- a violation of federal law. Clearly, the Obama campaign's decision to abandon filters had consequences -- the campaign was forced to refund $33,000 to two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip."
SOURCE (See the original for links)
************************
The Statist, Ruling Class's New Hero -- Bill Buckley?
It's always amusing when the Left try to tell conservatives how to be conservative
By Richard A. Viguerie
It's easy to use the deceased to claim support for one's positions. The dead aren't around to deny, rebut, and refute false or misleading statements.
William F. Buckley, Jr., intellectual giant and "maker" of the conservative movement, has of late become a crutch for statists and ruling-class elites to denigrate the Tea Parties and the surge of the constitutional, small-government conservative movement.
Liberals trying to smear the Tea Party cause and constitutional, small-government conservative candidates by referring to Buckley are, however, attempting to rewrite history to suit their own agendas and ideology.
For example, E.J. Dionne writes in Monday's Washington Post, "[W]hereas responsible conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr. denounced the [John] Birchers and the rest of the lunatic fringe back then, Republicans this time are riding the radical wave."
Steve Benen of the liberal Washington Monthly recently shed crocodile tears in a post entitled, "Where have you gone, William F. Buckley, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you," claiming that "the conservative movement appears to have gone berserk." Benen laid charges of "an unprecedented mainstreaming of once fringe far-right ideas."
In my appearance on CNN's Parker Spitzer show last week, co-host Kathleen Parker tried that gambit with me. Here's a part from the exchange reported by Newsbusters of the Media Research Center:
PARKER: First of all, you started in 1961, here in New York City, with William F. Buckley, and I'm wondering if you think that today's Republican Party is William F. Buckley's party?
VIGUERIE: The Republican Party is not the party that Bill Buckley would want today, but it's moving in that direction.
What was left on CNN's editing room floor was my longer explanation of how Bill Buckley spent the better part of sixty years working against the Kathleen Parkers in the Republican Party.
From his book, God and Man at Yale, through opposing Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller, reluctantly supporting Richard Nixon, and helping co-found the Conservative Party of New York because the NY GOP had been captured by liberal Republicans to running for New York City mayor against big-government Republican John Lindsay, Buckley was tirelessly consistent in his opposition to big-government Republicans.
Buckley was for freedom over statism, and he often found members of the Republican Party offering no real alternative to statism. Buckley even was a sometime critic of Ronald Reagan.
Buckley was many things, but two of his most underappreciated qualities were that he was a populist and a constitutionalist. He once famously said, "I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."
Any large movement has its share of miscreants, and Buckley did spend about one or two percent of his time ostracizing certain people on the right whose outrageous comments distracted from the mission of the conservative movement.
If the liberal intelligentsia were honest brokers, they could spend most of their time berating the extremists, kooks, and flakes on the left, beginning within the Democratic Congressional Caucus or the Obama White House and working outward to many of the left-wing coalitions, organizations, and even media members who are their support network.
Why, for example, are E.J. Dionne and other liberals silent about House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers' October 2010 appearance before a meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America, a Marxist organization, or the Communist Party's participation in and support for the October 2 One Nation rally, including this post at Barack Obama's Organizing for America website by the National Chairman of the Communist Party USA?
And where were the so-called "reasonable" liberals when other liberals protested Bill Buckley's speeches on college campuses, when liberal Gore Vidal called him a "crypto-Nazi," or when, more contemporarily, another liberal wrote, "Bill Buckley, sniveling racist, dies."
The maturing but still nascent, populist-driven Tea Party and the resurgence of the constitutional small-government conservative movement are very much consistent with Buckley's views. Marxists, Dionne, Benen, Parker, and other statist, ruling-class elites would prefer Republicans who offer little resistance to them. However, they cannot, try as they may, credibly paint the free-market, deficit-reduction, constitutional principles of the Tea Party or the everyday Americans rising in protest as radically fringe.
In my last conversation with Buckley twenty months before he died, he told me that George W. Bush was conservative, but not a conservative. Buckley would have assuredly been driven to his chastising and majestically acerbic pen by the revelation after his death that Bush himself denigrated the conservative movement while in the White House.
I wish he were around to see this movement, especially emerging out of the disastrous past decade of big-government Republicanism, and to refute the statists and ruling class members who have misused his name for their own ideological purposes.
And since they are engaging in speculative talk, allow me to do the same: If Bill Buckley were alive today, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Gadsden flag flying on his yacht.
For those who want to learn more about what Bill Buckley really thought and did, read Buckley himself, such as God and Man at Yale and Up from Liberalism. Also, I highly recommend Lee Edwards' new magnificent biography of Buckley, The Maker of the Movement.
SOURCE
*************************
Troops Will Vote With Their Feet
The last word regarding the proposed repeal of the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military homosexual exclusion law won’t come from the President, Congress, or the courts. The all-volunteer military will have the last word if the homosexual law is repealed; that is, many will vote with their feet to the nation’s peril.
The confluence of efforts by the three branches of government to lift the homosexual ban is unprecedented but so is their failure to consider unfettered service member voices. Ignoring their views potentially places the nation at risk if our volunteers who are already overstretched by nine years of war decide that lifting the homosexual ban is the last straw and then leave. And lifting the ban could also keep qualified candidates with a proclivity to serve from enlisting but no one knows just how many are in either category.
What we do know is the pool of potential volunteers is shrinking with only 25% of the nation’s 17- to 24-year-olds eligible for military service and a fraction of that group demonstrate a proclivity to volunteer. That shrinking pool is drawn from a small segment of the population mostly opposed to open homosexuality in the military such as conservative and religious families with histories of military service.
This pool of eligible volunteers won’t be easily replaced by “eligible” homosexuals who as a category make up only a few percentage points of the total population and, in general, steer clear of military service. Yet gay activists and liberal apologists with no military service would have the American public believe homosexuals are anxious to fill the military’s ranks.
The President, Congress, and the courts disregard the unfettered opinions of our all-volunteer military at great risk, and if Obama and his allies succeed in lifting the ban they have no back-up pool of eligible recruits. That is why Congress had better listen to our troops and their chiefs or get ready to justify conscription for everyone’s sons and daughters.
More HERE
*************************
Public-Sector Unions Choke Taxpayers
John Stossel
"I thought unions were great -- until at Chrysler, the union steward started screaming at me. Working at an unhurried pace, I'd exceeded 'production' for that job."
That comment, left on my blog by a viewer who watched my Fox Business Network show about unions, matches my experience. No one ordered me to slow down, but union rules and union culture at ABC and CBS slowed the work. Sometimes a camera crew took five minutes just to get out of the car.
Now unions conspire with politicians to rip off taxpayers.
Steve Melanga of the Manhattan Institute complains that politicians get union political support by granting government workers generous pensions and health benefits. After those politicians leave office, taxpayers are liable for trillions in unfunded promises.
"It's squeezing out all other spending," Melanga says. "Where are we going to get this $3 trillion dollars? ... When they're (government workers) allowed to retire at 58 and the rest of us are retiring at 60 and 67 -- and by the way we're living to 80 -- it's crazy. The public sector is the version of the European welfare state which, by the way, in Europe, they're actually rolling back."
Jakob wrote: "Are you really this stupid? Do you really want to lower American workers' standards to that of Honduras and China, where democratic unions do not exist? Would you like for us to go back to a time in America before we had unions? When children worked in factories for 14-hour days and health and safety standards simply did not exist?"
These are popular views. But they are wrong. Factories are safer because of free markets. Companies want better workers and must compete to get them. Free markets create wealth that permits parents to send their kids to schools instead of factories. Unions once helped to advance working conditions, but now union work rules mostly retard growth and progress.
Many workers understand that, and that's why only 8 percent of private-sector workers still belong to unions. In the private sector, wage and pension demands are tempered by competition. If one company pays too much, a competitor takes his business.
But governments are monopolies. They face no competition and get their money by force. So they can conspire with public-sector unions to milk taxpayers. That explains the fix we're in today. Something's got to give.
More HERE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
US military starting to accept homosexuals: "Openly gay recruits can now join the military as a result of a federal court ruling striking down the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ law, but they are being warned that they can still be discharged if the ruling is overturned. Cynthia Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the suspension of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is in response to the Sept. 9 decision of a central California federal judge that ruled the law implemented under President Clinton in 1993 was unconstitutional.”
The crime of living: "The new term ‘overcriminalization’ describes the last few decades’ legislative orgy of criminalizing trivial or harmless behavior. Under ‘zero tolerance’ the legal system has shifted ever closer to a vast police state. From 2000 to 2007 Congress added 452 new federal crimes to the 4,450 already in effect and the roughly 300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally. ‘Get tough’ punishments and innovative new crimes have brought career-making headlines to politicians, who encountered little resistance.”
Would you like a union with that, comrade?: "Workers at some of America’s fast food restaurants could be in for some interesting times soon. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is attempting to unionize several Jimmy John’s sandwich stores in the Minneapolis area. The IWW’s campaign against Jimmy John’s could be the start of organizing efforts at several other restaurant chains. (Today, only 1.3 percent of workers in the food service industry are union members.) This should concern not only restaurateurs, but also consumers and young workers.”
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
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