Another amazing example of the power of genetics
IDENTICAL twins Craig and Brenton Gurney, 38, were inseparable as children, shared a bedroom until they were 22, and have played in the same soccer team since they were five. They even ended up marrying women named Nicole. "We've always been really, really close," Brenton says.
If extrasensory perception exists between twins it was Craig who was the intuitive one. From 2700 kilometres away he once divined when his brother had a life-threatening mystery rash, and when he had dislocated a shoulder.
So the story of the Gurney twins is even more remarkable because it was Brenton who started getting the persistent headaches. It was Brenton who persuaded hale and hearty Craig to join a study of twins (looking into mental health and resilience) because it included an MRI scan.
The MRI test picked up no abnormalities in Brenton's brain. But Craig, who never suffers headaches, got the shock news: a massive and rare tumour in the base of his skull.
"I was hoping they had mixed up the MRI results and got the wrong twin," Brenton says.
When Craig underwent a complex 10½ hour operation to remove a 4.2-centimetre tumour, his wife and family in the waiting room cast meaningful looks at Brenton as if he were a barometer on his brother's progress.
"It was unspoken but everyone was looking at me," says Brenton, who had no sixth sense about the events transpiring on the operating table.
A year since the operation at Westmead Private Hospital, and following two months of intensive radiation therapy, Craig says: "Ultimately Brenton saved my life."
The twins - Brenton from West Pennant Hills, Craig from nearby Mount Colah - have participated in twin studies since their mother registered them with the Australian Twin Registry soon after birth.
SOURCE
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America really is polarizing politically
The article below is from a Leftist source but its statement of the facts seems accurate. The writer sees gridlock as the likely outcome but that could be no bad thing. Better no new legislation than bad legislation
The working assumption of many political commentators in Washington is that politics is more polarized than it has been in decades and that it’s the Republican Party’s rightward drift that’s to blame. The evidence bears this out—in part. But it also suggests a more complex story.
First, the electorate has polarized. Over the past two decades, the public’s ideological self-description has changed significantly. In 1992, when Bill Clinton campaigned for president as a reform-minded New Democrat, fully 43 percent of adults thought of themselves as moderate, compared to 36 percent conservative and 17 percent liberal. As the 2012 election got underway, the picture looked quite different. Moderates had declined by 8 points, to 35 percent, while conservatives and liberals had each gained 4 points, to 40 and 21 percent respectively.
As Alan Abramowitz has recently shown, a similar shift occurred among voters in presidential elections. In 1972, fully 71 percent placed themselves at or near the ideological midpoint, compared to 29 percent at or near the extremes. By 2008, the share of the electorate at or near the mid-point had fallen by 17 points—to 54 percent—while the share at the extremes rose to 46 percent.
Second, the parties have sorted themselves out along ideological lines. Since 2000, the share of Republicans calling themselves moderate or liberal has fallen from 37 to 27 percent, while the conservative share of Democrats has fallen from 25 to 20 percent. Republicans are more conservative than they used to be, and Democrats are more liberal. Conservatives have increased their share of the Republican Party by 9 points; liberals have increased their Democratic share by 10 points.
Over a longer period, Republicans have changed somewhat more than Democrats. Between 1972 and 2008, Abramowitz finds, Republican voters shifted rightward by 0.7 points on a seven-point scale, from 4.7 to 5.4. (On this scale, 1 means extremely liberal, while 7 means extremely conservative.) Meanwhile, Democratic voters shifted to the left by 0.5 points, from 3.7 to 3.2. Among Republican voters, the percentage of conservatives rose from 55 to 78 percent, while liberal voters among Democrats rose from 38 to 55 percent. Among party activists—the kinds of people who dominate grassroots organizations and presidential primaries and caucuses, the gulf between the parties has become even more pronounced.
The gap between voters and all adults—the former being more conservative—reflects age differentials in ideological commitment. Today, there a direct correlation: the older the person, on average the more conservative. And because older adults vote at much higher rates than young adults, the electorate is even more conservative than the population as a whole.
The story thus far is one of moderate asymmetry: both parties have shifted away from the center, Republicans somewhat more so than Democrats. But a simple fact has accentuated the difference: Because there are twice as many self-styled conservatives as liberals, ideological sorting is bound to produce a more predominantly conservative than liberal party—even if the percentage-point shifts are comparable. As recently as 2000, moderates outnumbered liberals within the Democratic Party by 44 to 29 percent. Today, even after a sharp rise in the liberal share, liberals and moderates are essentially tied, 39 to 38. In 2000, conservatives already outnumbered moderates and liberals by 2 to 1 within the Republican Party, and now it’s 3 to 1. So while there is a liberal Pelosi wing and a moderate Hoyer wing in the House Democratic caucus, among House Republicans we find only shades of conservatism. (That is not to say that differences among Republicans don’t matter; just ask John Boehner.)
So far I’ve left out Independents, whose share of the electorate is large and rising. But bringing them in doesn’t change the story very much. To be sure, Independents are the only major classification still dominated by moderates (41 percent of the total). But just since Obama carried the independent vote in 2008, conservatives have increased their share by 5 points while moderates have fallen by the same amount. Independents are moving with the tide, not against it.
These numbers don’t tell the whole story, however. There’s another key development: above and beyond their ideological disagreements, conservatives and liberals have come to understand the practice of politics differently. In a survey taken right after the Republican sweep in the 2010 midterm elections, 47 percent of American said that it was more important to compromise in order to get things done, versus 27 percent who thought it was more important for leaders to stick to their beliefs even if little got done. Liberal Democrats weighed in on the side of compromise, 58 to 16, moderate Democrats by 64 to 17. But conservative Republicans (the overwhelming majority of their party) favored sticking to their beliefs by 45 to 26. Ten months later, after the debt ceiling fiasco, an outright majority of adults favored compromise, including 62 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of liberals. But pluralities of Republicans and conservatives continued to favor leaders who stuck to their beliefs.
Unlike most other Americans, conservatives seem to believe that compromise represents defeat. It would take a subtle historian to explain why. Perhaps they think that because so many forces are pushing in the direction of bigger and more intrusive government, compromise will alter the pace of change but not the direction. If so, a politics of intransigence represents their only hope; never mind the risks.
There is nothing wrong with a frank and honest debate between two visions of our country’s future. But for the foreseeable future, neither party can definitively defeat the other. The only alternative to reasonable compromise—the sooner the better—is a level of gridlock that would paralyze our economy and eviscerate what is left of our reputation. All of those contributing to our current era of polarization would be wise to take heed.
SOURCE
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Two parties forever in the USA
by Jeff Jacoby
NEWS FLASH: The next president of the United States, like the last 29, will be a Republican or a Democrat.
That's not news, you say? But surely it must be. Haven't we been hearing for months from accomplished and influential people — people like former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, private-equity investor Peter Ackerman, and former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman — that the post-partisan hour was finally at hand? Weren't legions of Americans said to be ready to turn their backs on the old two-party system, with all its divisiveness and ideological rigidity? Haven't tens of millions of dollars been donated to Americans Elect, the widely praised anti-special-interest reform group intent on anointing a genuinely bipartisan ticket — a presidential candidate from one party and a vice-presidential running mate from the other — and setting up a three-way race for the White House in November?
All quite true. And all quite irrelevant. Americans Elect has plenty of money, an elegant web presence, and such organizational savvy that as of last week it had qualified for the November ballot in 29 states, including California, Michigan, and Ohio. But it is not going to break, or even shake, the Republican-Democratic lock on the White House.
Dismay over the American two-party system is nothing new. It's so old, in fact, that it predates the federal constitution. "There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other," wrote John Adams in 1780. His great rival Thomas Jefferson agreed: "If I could not go to heaven but with a political party, I would not go there at all." Yet all their anti-partisan pieties didn't keep Adams and Jefferson from competing vigorously against each other as nominees of the first two American political parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.
More than 225 years later, Americans by the millions follow the Adams/Jefferson pattern, lamenting partisanship in the abstract while sustaining it in practice.
In recent Gallup polls, more than half of respondents say the Republican and Democratic parties do such a poor job that the nation needs a third party. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll last November, voters by a 2-1 ratio responded favorably to the idea of an independent running for president against the major-party nominees. More than a few high-minded elites were certain the moment was ripe for a powerful centrist challenge to the long supremacy of Rs and Ds. "What Amazon.com did to books, what the blogosphere did to newspapers, [and] what the iPod did to music," gushed The New York Times's Thomas Friedman, "Americans Elect plans to do to the two-party duopoly that has dominated American political life — remove the barriers to real competition, flatten the incumbents, and let the people in."
But Americans Elect crashed and burned last week. Its much-hyped online primary process, touted as a way for any registered voter to take part in choosing a presidential ticket, achieved nothing. To survive the primary's first round, a candidate needed at least 10,000 clicks of support — hardly an insuperable bar in an organization that claims to have signed up more than 400,000 members. Yet no declared candidate came close. Former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer, the Americans Elect frontrunner, managed to attract just 6,281 supporters. (Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff finished fourth, with 2,023.)
Chalk up another win for that "two-party duopoly."
Americans may claim they long for an alternative. Pundits tell them that the parties have never been more polarized, that gridlock has reached crisis levels, and that the nation desperately requires politicians more interested in solving problems than in winning elections.
Yet the two-party system remains deeply rooted in our political life, and for good reason. The broad struggle between Republicans and Democrats reflects, however messily, the ancient tension between America's two profoundest political goals -- liberty and equality. Ideological purists can lament that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, and for those who feel that way, there are always alternatives. Segregationist George Wallace, deficit hawk Ross Perot, Socialist Norman Thomas, Libertarian Ron Paul, consumerist scourge Ralph Nader -- all ran for president on third-party lines, and all attracted some passionate supporters (and in Wallace's case, even some electoral-college votes) along the way.
None, however, made any lasting change in America's political landscape. For the vast majority of voters, political competition still comes down to Republicans vs. Democrats. Just as well: For a nation so profoundly divided, two parties are enough.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
AZ: Bennett seeks verification of Obama’s birthplace: "Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett says he's not a 'birther.' In fact, he says, he believes President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Yet the state's No.2 elected official has waded into the highly charged controversy, asking the island state to verify the president's birthplace to ensure Obama can appear on Arizona's Nov.6 ballot. In doing so, Bennett, who is co-chairman for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Arizona campaign, has reignited the birther debate coast to coast."
Is the TSA good for anything?: "Most head-shaking coverage of the TSA focuses on headline-worthy feel-ups of children and senior citizens, humiliating treatment of travelers, theft of or damage to valuables by federal agents, and the like. ... the inevitable comeback from the Feinsteins of the world is that these are relatively minor and unavoidable tradeoffs for saved lives and property. When you dig a little deeper, though, it's clear that year after year, the Transportation Security Administration not only engaged in these abuses, it has proven itself to be spectacularly bad at implementing programs it rarely makes any effort to demonstrate actually accomplish a damned thing."
VA lawmaker: “Sodomy not a civil right”: "A Virginia lawmaker who recently led the fight to block an openly gay man from becoming a judge General District Court judge in Richmond insisted on Thursday that the move had nothing to do with the nominee’s sexual orientation, but he was concerned about 'bias' in cases between 'a homosexual and a heterosexual.'"
Serbia: Nationalist Nikolic wins presidential vote: "Serbian political parties are expected to start negotiations on the formation of a new government Monday after the surprise win of nationalist Tomislav Nikolic in presidential polls. Nikolic upset the odds to defeat incumbent Boris Tadic on Sunday but vowed to pursue his predecessor's drive for the Balkans nation to join the European Union."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Monday, May 21, 2012
Sunday, May 20, 2012
A Racial Revolution?
Thomas Sowell
Now that census data show -- for the first time in American history -- the number of white babies born exceeded by the number of babies born to non-white minorities the question is: What does this mean for the future of American society?
Politically, it means that minorities who traditionally vote overwhelmingly for Democrats can ensure that the country veers ever further to the left over the years, making America more like the welfare states of Europe, whose unsustainable spending led ultimately to financial crises and widespread riots.
But this is not strictly a matter of whites versus non-whites. Jews vote consistently, and almost as overwhelmingly, for Democrats as blacks do. Moreover, Asian Americans are by no means as likely as other non-whites to vote for the class warfare, tax and spend agenda of the Democrats.
Yet when all is said and done, the future political direction of the country seems painfully clear from these demographic trends, unless something happens to change the current correlation between race and political party affiliation. Moreover, even that may not be enough.
Even if Republicans can siphon off enough votes from groups that normally vote for Democrats to keep the two-party system alive, the preservation of the Republican Party is a trivial issue compared to the preservation of American society.
If Republican politicians save themselves by becoming Democrats under a different label -- and appeal to minorities as minorities, rather than as Americans -- the same policies and attitudes will have the same destructive effect on the American economy and society.
Refusing to cut back on entitlement spending, for example, means that the current generation can continue to enjoy government-subsidized amenities, at the expense of future generations, who can be left to struggle to get necessities, after the money runs out and government's promises can no longer be kept.
The growth of ever bigger and even more intrusive government means that the freedom, for which generations of Americans have fought and died on battlefields, around the world can be slowly but steadily lost within our own country.
Painful as such outcomes can be the dangers do not end there. A continuation of the current political tendency to take away the money required for national defense, and spend it instead on handouts that will win votes, means that our enemies around the world will have golden opportunities at our expense.
Again, the dangers may not be immediate. But they can be catastrophic when they catch up with us -- and catch us unprepared. We recovered from Pearl Harbor at enormous cost, including the needless deaths of American soldiers, fighting for their lives with obsolete military equipment against enemies with state of the art weapons.
But even such sacrifices, which brought us time to catch up during the Second World War, may not even be enough in a nuclear age.
What can be done now, to head off the many dangers in our current political policies and attitudes? There is not much we can do about demographic trends. But the changing composition of the American population is not, in itself, the fundamental danger. After all, vast millions of immigrants crossed the Atlantic for generations on end, and began the process of becoming Americans. Millions of black people likewise began that process after being set free.
Demography is not destiny. But the history of Balkanized and polarized societies in the 20th century is a history of horrors that we dare not ignore.
We are not at that terrible point yet. But that is the direction in which we are headed, under the spell of magic words like "multiculturalism" and "diversity," which have become substitutes for thoughts, even among those who pride themselves on being "thinking people."
Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is permeated with ideologies of group grievances and resentments, painting each group into the corner of its own separate subculture, instead of drawing them into the mainstream of the American culture that made this the greatest nation on earth.
Unless this fashionable Balkanization is stopped, demography can become destiny -- and a tragedy for all.
SOURCE
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Hating the Rich
My late father was a man of strong opinion. He despised phonies, cowards and liars. He named names -- sometimes in very close proximity to those being singled out. A veteran of World War II, he recognized a weasel when he saw one. But my dad never denigrated rich people in general.
We lived in Levittown, N.Y., where everybody had pretty much the same -- that is, not much. We ate tuna casserole, hot dogs and Hamburger Helper. My parents never owned a new car.
Ten miles away, my dentist, a college classmate of my father's, lived in Garden City. Lovely place, filled with rich people. My father often drove us through there and never said a disparaging word about the fine lawns and shiny foreign cars. America was the land of opportunity, and Garden City proved it.
But that was then. Today, many Democrats believe the wealthy are bad to the bone. A new Gallup poll asks: "Do you think the U.S. benefits from having a class of rich people or not?" An amazing 46 percent of self-described Democrats answered "or not."
When I asked two left-leaning pundits about this, they said it is all about "income inequality." They asked me whether my father would approve of that. I said he most likely would reject the entire concept of "income inequality" by giving the pundits the same advice he gave me: "If you don't like what they're paying you, work someplace else."
And I followed that advice, moving 10 times in 15 years on my way up the television news ladder. It wasn't easy, but if I thought my employer was hosing me, I began looking around.
That's how capitalism is supposed to work. America is mandated to provide "equal opportunity," not equal outcomes. The boss man can pay what he wants. It's our choice whether to take it or leave it.
President Obama doesn't seem to get that. He often puts forth that wealthy Americans are not paying their "fair share," that somehow the fix is in, and the rich folk are gaming the system at the expense of working people. But for two years, Obama had an adoring Democratic Congress that did absolutely nothing to further the concept of "income equality." The reason? It's unconstitutional. The feds cannot dictate salaries and benefits in the private marketplace. Obamacare is an attempt to breach that constitutional wall. We'll soon see what the Supreme Court says.
Capitalism is no beach day. The strong and sometimes ruthless prosper. The poorly educated and unfocused often fail. For many Americans, failure is unfair and unacceptable in a "just" society. But my dad knew and accepted the truth of capitalism: Some will win big, some will lose big, but most will live comfortable lives in the middle. Just as he did.
SOURCE
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Generation Pap
Jonah Goldberg
This is the season of generational twaddle. At graduation ceremonies across the country, politicians, authors, actors and businessmen take to the stage to tell young people they are fantastic simply because they are young. This year, the ritual is more pathetic than usual because there's a presidential election in the offing. And because the current occupant of the White House won in 2008 in no small part due to his success with the "youth vote," he is desperate for them to repeat their blunder.
At the all-women's school Barnard College, President Obama spoke to the audience as if they were an undifferentiated mob of "Julias." I'm referring to the banally creepy imaginary everywoman the Obama campaign has conjured on its website to show that Uncle Sam is now both sugar daddy and husband to the women of America. "Now more than ever -- now more than ever," the president repeated, "America needs what you, the Class of 2012, has to offer." By which he meant their votes for him, of course. But he couched it in all sorts of familiar platitudes.
But in terms of naked pandering, few can match Vice President Joe Biden. Last week, he told a group of college students visiting the White House: "You're an incredible generation. And that's not hyperbole either. Your generation and the 9/11 generation before you are the most incredible group of Americans we have ever, ever, ever produced."
Here's a tip: When you hear Biden say, "And that's not hyperbole," you can be sure it's hyperbole. Actually, here's an even better tip: If Biden's lips are moving, assume it's hyperbole.
The conventional response to this sort of thing is to claim that Biden is giving short shrift to some previous generation. What about the "Greatest Generation" of the World War II era? What about the self-proclaimed baby boomer secular saints of the '60s?
But such arguments are part of the problem. Sure, we can talk about age cohorts and make generalizations about them. But in a very important sense, there really is no such thing as "great generations."
I was born the same year as Brett Favre, one of the most successful quarterbacks in football history. I take no more pride in his record than I feel shame for being born the same year as Divine Brown, the porn star and former prostitute who was arrested for her work with Hugh Grant. Cult murderer psychopath Charles Manson, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, "Brady Bunch" mom Florence Henderson and that guy from NPR, Carl Kassel, were all born the same year (1934). What does one person's birth tell us about the life of another? Absolutely nothing.
Seriously, if your self-esteem is remotely dependent on the year you were born, or on the accomplishments of people who happen to be the same age as you, then you don't have a lot going for you. If you spend your days on your parents' couch, working through cases of Cheetos like they were so many equine feedbags, if bong maintenance marks the outer boundary of your personal responsibilities, then I'm sorry to say your inadequacies aren't mitigated one bit by the fact you were born the same year, never mind decade, as Mark Zuckerberg.
And yet that's the point behind so much generational piffle. Youth politics are the cheapest form of identity politics. At least black people are black their whole lives (Michael Jackson being the exception that proves the rule). Barring surgery, women stay women. But young people don't stay young. Moreover, we treat them as if they're geniuses precisely because they don't know much and have little life experience. Of course there are incredibly bright and knowledgeable young people. But as a rule we're all born stupid and ignorant, and that condition improves only as we become less young.
That politicians pander to anything that moves is hardly a shocking revelation. Nor is it stunning to see the White House treat young people as a homogenized blob they hope to flatter and bribe to the polls come November. To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, if there were a huge bloc of cannibals in this country, the Democrats would promise them tasty missionaries fattened at the taxpayers' expense.
What's dismaying is how much this sort of thing seems to work. Part of what's exciting about being young is the discovery that you are your own person, the captain of yourself. Cheering at the idea that you are a drone, expected to simply "act your age" is a sad declaration of your own self-worth.
SOURCE
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Out of Ideas
John C. Goodman
"Out of ideas; out of excuses." That’s Mitt Romney’s critique of Barack Obama. I’d like to second that indictment.
It’s not just the president who is out of ideas. It’s the entire political left. And that’s not a new development. I can’t think of an interesting, left-of-center public policy idea that has gained currency in decades.
How to get the economy moving and create jobs? The liberal answer is more government spending. Yet the "stimulus" package was basically wasted on pork barrel projects of little lasting economic value. One of every two people hired with stimulus money actually had another job before being hired! And the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the long term impact of the stimulus bill will be lower — not higher — national output.
Ditto for the Obama administration’s new budget. Granted, not a single Democrat in Congress supports it. The vote in the House of Representatives was 414 to zero! But suppose the Obama administration budget had become law? After all, the president is implicitly defending his budget ideas when he is out on the campaign trail. The CBO has projected that the latest Obama budget proposal would make our GDP lower, not higher, over the next five years.
Meanwhile, the economic uncertainty the administration is creating is undoubtedly making things worse. Business managers considering hiring new employees are surely burdened by the fact that they do not know what ObamaCare is going to do to their cost of health insurance, what Obama labor regulations are going to do to their other costs of labor, what Dodd/Frank financial regulation is going to do to their ability to borrow or what other regulatory agencies are going to do to their other costs of doing business.
As for entitlement reform, there really is no liberal solution to the financial problems of Social Security, Medicare, disability Insurance or any other entitlement. More than 30 countries have fully or partially privatized their social security systems by creating individual private accounts, by which each new generation of workers can save for their own retirement. But in the United States, a growing number of members of Congress have signed a pledge not to support any Social Security reform that involves the creation of private accounts.
As for health care entitlements, the Obama administration is quietly making war on the only workable solution on the horizon: private health insurance. About two-thirds of all Medicaid enrollees are now in private plans, as are one of every four seniors on Medicare. Nonetheless, there are few things the political left hates more than private enterprise in health care.
The Obama administration has refused to renew a waiver allowing Indiana to continue with its highly successful Health Saving Account plan for Hoosier Medicaid. And as part of Obama Care, several hundred billion dollars is going to be taken away from Medicare Advantage plans that provide seniors with private insurance, similar to the kind of insurance most non-seniors have.
The antipathy toward Medicare Advantage plans is especially hard to understand. President Obama has repeatedly said he wants to encourage electronic medical records, medical homes, integrated care, coordinated care and payment for quality not quantity. Yet the only place in the Medicare system where you can find the president’s ideas actually working are in the Medicare Advantage plans! Unwilling to accept private sector innovation, the administration has its own pilot programs and demonstration projects underway. In the president’s own words, "Let’s find out what works and then go do it." Unfortunately, government-sponsored pilot programs are no substitute for private entrepreneurship. The CBO has analyzed these programs in three separate reports here, here, and here and in each case found them to be not working at all or, at best, producing mediocre results.
As for the most important cause of inequality — our failing public schools — there is no liberal answer to that problem either. Virtually every innovative reform idea — from school vouchers to charter schools to merit pay for teachers — is being resisted by the teachers unions. But when is the last time you saw a liberal politician criticize the National Education Association? How about a liberal columnist? How about the pundits who complain most loudly about the unequal distribution of income?
It’s as though leftwing intellectuals have a tacit agreement not to criticize any group that provides electoral support for the Democratic Party.
So when Mitt Romney says the president is "out of ideas and out of excuses," I say Amen.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Thomas Sowell
Now that census data show -- for the first time in American history -- the number of white babies born exceeded by the number of babies born to non-white minorities the question is: What does this mean for the future of American society?
Politically, it means that minorities who traditionally vote overwhelmingly for Democrats can ensure that the country veers ever further to the left over the years, making America more like the welfare states of Europe, whose unsustainable spending led ultimately to financial crises and widespread riots.
But this is not strictly a matter of whites versus non-whites. Jews vote consistently, and almost as overwhelmingly, for Democrats as blacks do. Moreover, Asian Americans are by no means as likely as other non-whites to vote for the class warfare, tax and spend agenda of the Democrats.
Yet when all is said and done, the future political direction of the country seems painfully clear from these demographic trends, unless something happens to change the current correlation between race and political party affiliation. Moreover, even that may not be enough.
Even if Republicans can siphon off enough votes from groups that normally vote for Democrats to keep the two-party system alive, the preservation of the Republican Party is a trivial issue compared to the preservation of American society.
If Republican politicians save themselves by becoming Democrats under a different label -- and appeal to minorities as minorities, rather than as Americans -- the same policies and attitudes will have the same destructive effect on the American economy and society.
Refusing to cut back on entitlement spending, for example, means that the current generation can continue to enjoy government-subsidized amenities, at the expense of future generations, who can be left to struggle to get necessities, after the money runs out and government's promises can no longer be kept.
The growth of ever bigger and even more intrusive government means that the freedom, for which generations of Americans have fought and died on battlefields, around the world can be slowly but steadily lost within our own country.
Painful as such outcomes can be the dangers do not end there. A continuation of the current political tendency to take away the money required for national defense, and spend it instead on handouts that will win votes, means that our enemies around the world will have golden opportunities at our expense.
Again, the dangers may not be immediate. But they can be catastrophic when they catch up with us -- and catch us unprepared. We recovered from Pearl Harbor at enormous cost, including the needless deaths of American soldiers, fighting for their lives with obsolete military equipment against enemies with state of the art weapons.
But even such sacrifices, which brought us time to catch up during the Second World War, may not even be enough in a nuclear age.
What can be done now, to head off the many dangers in our current political policies and attitudes? There is not much we can do about demographic trends. But the changing composition of the American population is not, in itself, the fundamental danger. After all, vast millions of immigrants crossed the Atlantic for generations on end, and began the process of becoming Americans. Millions of black people likewise began that process after being set free.
Demography is not destiny. But the history of Balkanized and polarized societies in the 20th century is a history of horrors that we dare not ignore.
We are not at that terrible point yet. But that is the direction in which we are headed, under the spell of magic words like "multiculturalism" and "diversity," which have become substitutes for thoughts, even among those who pride themselves on being "thinking people."
Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is permeated with ideologies of group grievances and resentments, painting each group into the corner of its own separate subculture, instead of drawing them into the mainstream of the American culture that made this the greatest nation on earth.
Unless this fashionable Balkanization is stopped, demography can become destiny -- and a tragedy for all.
SOURCE
*****************************
Hating the Rich
My late father was a man of strong opinion. He despised phonies, cowards and liars. He named names -- sometimes in very close proximity to those being singled out. A veteran of World War II, he recognized a weasel when he saw one. But my dad never denigrated rich people in general.
We lived in Levittown, N.Y., where everybody had pretty much the same -- that is, not much. We ate tuna casserole, hot dogs and Hamburger Helper. My parents never owned a new car.
Ten miles away, my dentist, a college classmate of my father's, lived in Garden City. Lovely place, filled with rich people. My father often drove us through there and never said a disparaging word about the fine lawns and shiny foreign cars. America was the land of opportunity, and Garden City proved it.
But that was then. Today, many Democrats believe the wealthy are bad to the bone. A new Gallup poll asks: "Do you think the U.S. benefits from having a class of rich people or not?" An amazing 46 percent of self-described Democrats answered "or not."
When I asked two left-leaning pundits about this, they said it is all about "income inequality." They asked me whether my father would approve of that. I said he most likely would reject the entire concept of "income inequality" by giving the pundits the same advice he gave me: "If you don't like what they're paying you, work someplace else."
And I followed that advice, moving 10 times in 15 years on my way up the television news ladder. It wasn't easy, but if I thought my employer was hosing me, I began looking around.
That's how capitalism is supposed to work. America is mandated to provide "equal opportunity," not equal outcomes. The boss man can pay what he wants. It's our choice whether to take it or leave it.
President Obama doesn't seem to get that. He often puts forth that wealthy Americans are not paying their "fair share," that somehow the fix is in, and the rich folk are gaming the system at the expense of working people. But for two years, Obama had an adoring Democratic Congress that did absolutely nothing to further the concept of "income equality." The reason? It's unconstitutional. The feds cannot dictate salaries and benefits in the private marketplace. Obamacare is an attempt to breach that constitutional wall. We'll soon see what the Supreme Court says.
Capitalism is no beach day. The strong and sometimes ruthless prosper. The poorly educated and unfocused often fail. For many Americans, failure is unfair and unacceptable in a "just" society. But my dad knew and accepted the truth of capitalism: Some will win big, some will lose big, but most will live comfortable lives in the middle. Just as he did.
SOURCE
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Generation Pap
Jonah Goldberg
This is the season of generational twaddle. At graduation ceremonies across the country, politicians, authors, actors and businessmen take to the stage to tell young people they are fantastic simply because they are young. This year, the ritual is more pathetic than usual because there's a presidential election in the offing. And because the current occupant of the White House won in 2008 in no small part due to his success with the "youth vote," he is desperate for them to repeat their blunder.
At the all-women's school Barnard College, President Obama spoke to the audience as if they were an undifferentiated mob of "Julias." I'm referring to the banally creepy imaginary everywoman the Obama campaign has conjured on its website to show that Uncle Sam is now both sugar daddy and husband to the women of America. "Now more than ever -- now more than ever," the president repeated, "America needs what you, the Class of 2012, has to offer." By which he meant their votes for him, of course. But he couched it in all sorts of familiar platitudes.
But in terms of naked pandering, few can match Vice President Joe Biden. Last week, he told a group of college students visiting the White House: "You're an incredible generation. And that's not hyperbole either. Your generation and the 9/11 generation before you are the most incredible group of Americans we have ever, ever, ever produced."
Here's a tip: When you hear Biden say, "And that's not hyperbole," you can be sure it's hyperbole. Actually, here's an even better tip: If Biden's lips are moving, assume it's hyperbole.
The conventional response to this sort of thing is to claim that Biden is giving short shrift to some previous generation. What about the "Greatest Generation" of the World War II era? What about the self-proclaimed baby boomer secular saints of the '60s?
But such arguments are part of the problem. Sure, we can talk about age cohorts and make generalizations about them. But in a very important sense, there really is no such thing as "great generations."
I was born the same year as Brett Favre, one of the most successful quarterbacks in football history. I take no more pride in his record than I feel shame for being born the same year as Divine Brown, the porn star and former prostitute who was arrested for her work with Hugh Grant. Cult murderer psychopath Charles Manson, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, "Brady Bunch" mom Florence Henderson and that guy from NPR, Carl Kassel, were all born the same year (1934). What does one person's birth tell us about the life of another? Absolutely nothing.
Seriously, if your self-esteem is remotely dependent on the year you were born, or on the accomplishments of people who happen to be the same age as you, then you don't have a lot going for you. If you spend your days on your parents' couch, working through cases of Cheetos like they were so many equine feedbags, if bong maintenance marks the outer boundary of your personal responsibilities, then I'm sorry to say your inadequacies aren't mitigated one bit by the fact you were born the same year, never mind decade, as Mark Zuckerberg.
And yet that's the point behind so much generational piffle. Youth politics are the cheapest form of identity politics. At least black people are black their whole lives (Michael Jackson being the exception that proves the rule). Barring surgery, women stay women. But young people don't stay young. Moreover, we treat them as if they're geniuses precisely because they don't know much and have little life experience. Of course there are incredibly bright and knowledgeable young people. But as a rule we're all born stupid and ignorant, and that condition improves only as we become less young.
That politicians pander to anything that moves is hardly a shocking revelation. Nor is it stunning to see the White House treat young people as a homogenized blob they hope to flatter and bribe to the polls come November. To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, if there were a huge bloc of cannibals in this country, the Democrats would promise them tasty missionaries fattened at the taxpayers' expense.
What's dismaying is how much this sort of thing seems to work. Part of what's exciting about being young is the discovery that you are your own person, the captain of yourself. Cheering at the idea that you are a drone, expected to simply "act your age" is a sad declaration of your own self-worth.
SOURCE
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Out of Ideas
John C. Goodman
"Out of ideas; out of excuses." That’s Mitt Romney’s critique of Barack Obama. I’d like to second that indictment.
It’s not just the president who is out of ideas. It’s the entire political left. And that’s not a new development. I can’t think of an interesting, left-of-center public policy idea that has gained currency in decades.
How to get the economy moving and create jobs? The liberal answer is more government spending. Yet the "stimulus" package was basically wasted on pork barrel projects of little lasting economic value. One of every two people hired with stimulus money actually had another job before being hired! And the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the long term impact of the stimulus bill will be lower — not higher — national output.
Ditto for the Obama administration’s new budget. Granted, not a single Democrat in Congress supports it. The vote in the House of Representatives was 414 to zero! But suppose the Obama administration budget had become law? After all, the president is implicitly defending his budget ideas when he is out on the campaign trail. The CBO has projected that the latest Obama budget proposal would make our GDP lower, not higher, over the next five years.
Meanwhile, the economic uncertainty the administration is creating is undoubtedly making things worse. Business managers considering hiring new employees are surely burdened by the fact that they do not know what ObamaCare is going to do to their cost of health insurance, what Obama labor regulations are going to do to their other costs of labor, what Dodd/Frank financial regulation is going to do to their ability to borrow or what other regulatory agencies are going to do to their other costs of doing business.
As for entitlement reform, there really is no liberal solution to the financial problems of Social Security, Medicare, disability Insurance or any other entitlement. More than 30 countries have fully or partially privatized their social security systems by creating individual private accounts, by which each new generation of workers can save for their own retirement. But in the United States, a growing number of members of Congress have signed a pledge not to support any Social Security reform that involves the creation of private accounts.
As for health care entitlements, the Obama administration is quietly making war on the only workable solution on the horizon: private health insurance. About two-thirds of all Medicaid enrollees are now in private plans, as are one of every four seniors on Medicare. Nonetheless, there are few things the political left hates more than private enterprise in health care.
The Obama administration has refused to renew a waiver allowing Indiana to continue with its highly successful Health Saving Account plan for Hoosier Medicaid. And as part of Obama Care, several hundred billion dollars is going to be taken away from Medicare Advantage plans that provide seniors with private insurance, similar to the kind of insurance most non-seniors have.
The antipathy toward Medicare Advantage plans is especially hard to understand. President Obama has repeatedly said he wants to encourage electronic medical records, medical homes, integrated care, coordinated care and payment for quality not quantity. Yet the only place in the Medicare system where you can find the president’s ideas actually working are in the Medicare Advantage plans! Unwilling to accept private sector innovation, the administration has its own pilot programs and demonstration projects underway. In the president’s own words, "Let’s find out what works and then go do it." Unfortunately, government-sponsored pilot programs are no substitute for private entrepreneurship. The CBO has analyzed these programs in three separate reports here, here, and here and in each case found them to be not working at all or, at best, producing mediocre results.
As for the most important cause of inequality — our failing public schools — there is no liberal answer to that problem either. Virtually every innovative reform idea — from school vouchers to charter schools to merit pay for teachers — is being resisted by the teachers unions. But when is the last time you saw a liberal politician criticize the National Education Association? How about a liberal columnist? How about the pundits who complain most loudly about the unequal distribution of income?
It’s as though leftwing intellectuals have a tacit agreement not to criticize any group that provides electoral support for the Democratic Party.
So when Mitt Romney says the president is "out of ideas and out of excuses," I say Amen.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Saturday, May 19, 2012
Obama Mandate Forces First Catholic College to Drop Insurance
Franciscan University appears to be the first casualty of the new Obama HHS mandate that requires Catholic colleges, groups and businesses to pay for drugs that may cause abortions and birth control for their employees.
Although President Barack Obama declared “If you like your health care coverage you can keep it,” when it came to passing Obamacare, a Catholic college in Ohio has determined it will no longer offer a student health insurance plan.
“The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover “women’s health services” including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),” the university says in a new post on its website. “Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.”
“Additionally, the PPACA increased the mandated maximum coverage amount for student policies to $100,000 for the 2012-13 school year, which would effectively double your premium cost for the policy in fall 2012, with the expectation of further increases in the future,” FUS continues.
“Due to these changes in regulation by the federal government, beginning with the 2012-13 school year, the University 1) will no longer require that all full-time undergraduate students carry health insurance, 2) will no longer offer a student health insurance plan, and 3) will no longer bill those not covered under a parent/guardian plan or personal plan for student health insurance,” the college said.
Franciscan University says the current student health insurance plan will expire on August 15.
More HERE
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Will Homosexual Marriage Force Black Churches to Reconsider Democratic Party?
President Obama's affirmation of gay marriage threatens to undermine the near-monolithic black support Obama enjoyed in 2008. Several members of the black clergy now say they intend to sit out the presidential election. One poll from last November found black opposition to gay marriage at 58 percent, higher than the rest of the country, which is about evenly split.
The real question is this: What took black church leaders so long to reconsider their near blind support for the Democratic Party?
The historical strength of black churches has been that of a moral and spiritual refuge in a once-hostile country of legalized slavery and Jim Crow. This explains why so many civil rights leaders came out of the church. The moral cause was just and clear: Equal rights mean equal rights -- for everyone.
But equal rights and equal results are two very different things. The modern civil rights movement lost its way by failing to appreciate the difference. To achieve "equal results," the Democratic Party, among other things, demands redistribution of wealth, a government response to the "gap" between the rich and poor, higher minimum wages and higher taxes on the so-called rich.
The Democratic Party opposes education vouchers, despite polls showing that black and Hispanic inner-city parents want them. The Democratic Party is the party of race-based preferences and also opposes privatization of Social Security.
The Democratic Party is the party of the welfare state -- a neutron bomb dropped on the intact nuclear family. Author/editor/professor Marvin Olasky, in his book "The Tragedy of American Compassion," traces the growth of welfare. During a mere three-year period in the 1960s, welfare rolls increased nearly 110 percent. President Johnson established "neighborhood centers" whose workers went door-to-door, apprising people of their welfare "rights and benefits."
Until the so-called "War on Poverty," the poverty rate declined steadily. At the turn of the century, nearly 70 percent of Americans were poor. But by the time of the "War on Poverty," the rate stood at approximately 13 or 14 percent. What happened? Welfare created dependency and decreased the incentive of the welfare recipient.
The Heritage Foundation compared families on welfare versus families eligible for welfare but that, for one reason or another, refused to take it. The results were startling. Heritage reported: "Young women raised in families dependent on welfare are two to three times more likely to drop out and fail to graduate from high school than are young women of similar race and socioeconomic background not raised on welfare. Similarly, single mothers raised as children in families receiving welfare remain on AFDC longer as adult parents than do single mothers not raised in welfare families, even when all other social and economic variables are held constant."
The Democratic Party is the party of Roe v. Wade, even though blacks are more pro-life than whites. Former President Jimmy Carter, a religious man who called himself "twice born," thought the Democratic Party made a tactical and moral error by embracing abortion-on-demand as a federal right guaranteed by the Constitution: "I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions, and that was one of the problems I had when I was president, having to uphold Roe v. Wade. ... But except for the times when a mother's life is in danger or when a pregnancy is caused by rape or incest, I would certainly not and never have approved any abortions. ... My position on abortion ... is to minimize the need or requirement for abortion and limit it only to women whose (lives) are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest. I think if the Democratic Party would adopt that policy, that would be acceptable to a lot of people who are now estranged from our party because of the abortion issue."
The Democratic Party is the party of tax-the-rich. Never mind that Democratic Party icon President John Kennedy sounded downright trickle-downish when he said: "It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low -- and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now. The experience of a number of European countries has borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reductions in 1954 has borne this out, and the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget -- and tax reduction can pave the way to full employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budgetary deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous expanding economy which will bring a budgetary surplus."
The Democratic Party is the party of minimum wage. Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman said, "We regard the minimum wage as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books."
For all these reasons, having nothing to do with gay marriage, black churches should have broken with the Democratic Party long ago. Better late than never
SOURCE
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The War Against Doctors
Imagine completing college, then 4 years of graduate school and finally working as a trainee for three to ten years while earning 3-4 times the Federal Poverty level. Then you are permitted to work on your own and go into business, but are unable to set the rates that you will charge your customers. You are required by the federal and state government to pay for the privilege of working, and have to comply with intrusive regulations making it more costly to conduct business with no ability to pass these costs along to your customers. You have almost a 100% chance of being sued during your career and in many cases cannot get insurance to protect you. Your job requires 60-80 hours per week and weekends and nights no longer belong to you. Your business is being threatened by individuals who have not gone down your path and want to get into your business “through the back door”, because they believe that they can do an equivalent job without all of the sacrifice that you have made. And they are getting this opportunity.
This is the reality for US physicians.
SD is a plastic surgeon who needed to leave her state and move across the country because it became impossible to meet overhead and to earn a salary. MB is a urologist in the southeast who could not afford her overhead because insurance companies slashed her reimbursements, so she had to move into an 1100 square foot office. RA is a surgeon in the north who faces the possibility of losing his entire referral base which the local hospital now controls, unless he cooperates with them. JS, an ophthalmologist and her husband, a surgeon, could not make ends meet in California because insurance reimbursement is so low and had to leave to provide for their family of 4.
At a time when it is trendy to invoke the term “war” against various groups, such as the contrived, GOP “war against women” or “war against seniors”, it may appear trite to say that there is a war against doctors; but there is. This has been going on for decades and cannot be blamed on President Obama or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but sadly, both have facilitated an escalation of this war.
One might ask- is there a war against doctors? The simple answer is yes and it is all about money and control. There is no healthcare without doctors, who happen to be at the center of the myriad of healthcare events under their daily control. Healthcare is a $2.3 Trillion annual economy accounting for approximately 16% of our gross domestic product. There is tremendous incentive to control doctors and hence, the flow of huge dollars. Entities have unsuccessfully tried to do so in the past. Insurance companies in the 1980s tried doing so using capitated HMOs. Publicly traded Wall St. firms in the 1990s made a futile attempt to buy medical practices to squeeze out profits by controlling physician behavior.
The lessons of the past were not lost on the architects of the ACA, but it required a group assault on physicians, coming at them from different directions. The cabal of the hospital and the insurance industries, along with the federal government posed an almost insurmountable challenge. In exchange for the support of the American Hospital Association, the federal government gave hospitals a tremendous advantage, by outlawing physicians from opening their own hospitals, which would naturally compete against existing hospitals. Furthermore, the ACA promotes Accountable Care Organizations as a preferred reimbursement model for healthcare. This arrangement is like capitated HMOs, but on steroids. The third party payer issues a single payment for a hospitalization and leaves it to the ACO to divide the payment fairly (not likely). In anticipation of this change in reimbursement, hospitals are purchasing physician practices in an attempt to control healthcare market share. The likely outcome will be fewer doctors who are self-employed, as reported in the Wall St. Journal, and ultimately, the demise of the private practice of medicine.
The war against physicians is being waged on many fronts. Trial attorneys are fighting to preserve the status quo of the medical malpractice system, where they are the primary beneficiaries. It is coming from non-physician healthcare providers such as nurse practitioners or optometrists. They hire aggressive political lobbyists and spread around hundreds of millions of dollars to influence politicians who then create laws that confer physician status upon these allied healthcare professionals.
Public awareness of this war on their doctors is essential in order to understand the antipathy of doctors for Obamacare, and the concern that they have regarding the future of medicine in the US. It warrants a strong public outcry because when the doctors no longer work for their patients, but instead for some other entity, then heaven help our patients.
SOURCE
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New York Times Jumps the Shark With Anti-Capitalist Propaganda
We’ve come to a fork in the road: either we return to capitalism (i.e., voluntary exchanges based on mutual best interest) or we plunge the rest of the way into socialism (an economy based entirely on bureaucratic coercion, i.e., slavery). History has shown repeatedly that the former leads to wealth and dignity, the latter to poverty and tyranny. Here’s where the New York Times — official mouthpiece of the liberal ruling class — comes down on the issue:
Demagoguery demonizing economic freedom couldn’t have gone any further over the top in the darkest days of Stalinist Russia. At least the mask is off, so that we know what we are up against. Liberal = communist.
SOURCE
************************
ELSEWHERE
Obama’s campaign slop to women: "Barack Obama is buying votes. The Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) is a blatant sop thrown to a voting block on which his next presidency may depend: women, specifically, liberal women. Obama also hopes it will weaken Mitt Romney, who is trying to woo women himself and, yet, cannot endorse the PFA without alienating conservatives."
Uncle Sam or Uncle Sugar? "It seems that no matter which party is in power, the government always grows. Why is this? The answer is relatively straightforward. Politicians get attention -- and applause -- for doing things. When things are going poorly, people never call their congressman and scream, 'Don't just do something, sit there!'"
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Franciscan University appears to be the first casualty of the new Obama HHS mandate that requires Catholic colleges, groups and businesses to pay for drugs that may cause abortions and birth control for their employees.
Although President Barack Obama declared “If you like your health care coverage you can keep it,” when it came to passing Obamacare, a Catholic college in Ohio has determined it will no longer offer a student health insurance plan.
“The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover “women’s health services” including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),” the university says in a new post on its website. “Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.”
“Additionally, the PPACA increased the mandated maximum coverage amount for student policies to $100,000 for the 2012-13 school year, which would effectively double your premium cost for the policy in fall 2012, with the expectation of further increases in the future,” FUS continues.
“Due to these changes in regulation by the federal government, beginning with the 2012-13 school year, the University 1) will no longer require that all full-time undergraduate students carry health insurance, 2) will no longer offer a student health insurance plan, and 3) will no longer bill those not covered under a parent/guardian plan or personal plan for student health insurance,” the college said.
Franciscan University says the current student health insurance plan will expire on August 15.
More HERE
**************************
Will Homosexual Marriage Force Black Churches to Reconsider Democratic Party?
President Obama's affirmation of gay marriage threatens to undermine the near-monolithic black support Obama enjoyed in 2008. Several members of the black clergy now say they intend to sit out the presidential election. One poll from last November found black opposition to gay marriage at 58 percent, higher than the rest of the country, which is about evenly split.
The real question is this: What took black church leaders so long to reconsider their near blind support for the Democratic Party?
The historical strength of black churches has been that of a moral and spiritual refuge in a once-hostile country of legalized slavery and Jim Crow. This explains why so many civil rights leaders came out of the church. The moral cause was just and clear: Equal rights mean equal rights -- for everyone.
But equal rights and equal results are two very different things. The modern civil rights movement lost its way by failing to appreciate the difference. To achieve "equal results," the Democratic Party, among other things, demands redistribution of wealth, a government response to the "gap" between the rich and poor, higher minimum wages and higher taxes on the so-called rich.
The Democratic Party opposes education vouchers, despite polls showing that black and Hispanic inner-city parents want them. The Democratic Party is the party of race-based preferences and also opposes privatization of Social Security.
The Democratic Party is the party of the welfare state -- a neutron bomb dropped on the intact nuclear family. Author/editor/professor Marvin Olasky, in his book "The Tragedy of American Compassion," traces the growth of welfare. During a mere three-year period in the 1960s, welfare rolls increased nearly 110 percent. President Johnson established "neighborhood centers" whose workers went door-to-door, apprising people of their welfare "rights and benefits."
Until the so-called "War on Poverty," the poverty rate declined steadily. At the turn of the century, nearly 70 percent of Americans were poor. But by the time of the "War on Poverty," the rate stood at approximately 13 or 14 percent. What happened? Welfare created dependency and decreased the incentive of the welfare recipient.
The Heritage Foundation compared families on welfare versus families eligible for welfare but that, for one reason or another, refused to take it. The results were startling. Heritage reported: "Young women raised in families dependent on welfare are two to three times more likely to drop out and fail to graduate from high school than are young women of similar race and socioeconomic background not raised on welfare. Similarly, single mothers raised as children in families receiving welfare remain on AFDC longer as adult parents than do single mothers not raised in welfare families, even when all other social and economic variables are held constant."
The Democratic Party is the party of Roe v. Wade, even though blacks are more pro-life than whites. Former President Jimmy Carter, a religious man who called himself "twice born," thought the Democratic Party made a tactical and moral error by embracing abortion-on-demand as a federal right guaranteed by the Constitution: "I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions, and that was one of the problems I had when I was president, having to uphold Roe v. Wade. ... But except for the times when a mother's life is in danger or when a pregnancy is caused by rape or incest, I would certainly not and never have approved any abortions. ... My position on abortion ... is to minimize the need or requirement for abortion and limit it only to women whose (lives) are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest. I think if the Democratic Party would adopt that policy, that would be acceptable to a lot of people who are now estranged from our party because of the abortion issue."
The Democratic Party is the party of tax-the-rich. Never mind that Democratic Party icon President John Kennedy sounded downright trickle-downish when he said: "It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low -- and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now. The experience of a number of European countries has borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reductions in 1954 has borne this out, and the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget -- and tax reduction can pave the way to full employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budgetary deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous expanding economy which will bring a budgetary surplus."
The Democratic Party is the party of minimum wage. Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman said, "We regard the minimum wage as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books."
For all these reasons, having nothing to do with gay marriage, black churches should have broken with the Democratic Party long ago. Better late than never
SOURCE
**************************
The War Against Doctors
Imagine completing college, then 4 years of graduate school and finally working as a trainee for three to ten years while earning 3-4 times the Federal Poverty level. Then you are permitted to work on your own and go into business, but are unable to set the rates that you will charge your customers. You are required by the federal and state government to pay for the privilege of working, and have to comply with intrusive regulations making it more costly to conduct business with no ability to pass these costs along to your customers. You have almost a 100% chance of being sued during your career and in many cases cannot get insurance to protect you. Your job requires 60-80 hours per week and weekends and nights no longer belong to you. Your business is being threatened by individuals who have not gone down your path and want to get into your business “through the back door”, because they believe that they can do an equivalent job without all of the sacrifice that you have made. And they are getting this opportunity.
This is the reality for US physicians.
SD is a plastic surgeon who needed to leave her state and move across the country because it became impossible to meet overhead and to earn a salary. MB is a urologist in the southeast who could not afford her overhead because insurance companies slashed her reimbursements, so she had to move into an 1100 square foot office. RA is a surgeon in the north who faces the possibility of losing his entire referral base which the local hospital now controls, unless he cooperates with them. JS, an ophthalmologist and her husband, a surgeon, could not make ends meet in California because insurance reimbursement is so low and had to leave to provide for their family of 4.
At a time when it is trendy to invoke the term “war” against various groups, such as the contrived, GOP “war against women” or “war against seniors”, it may appear trite to say that there is a war against doctors; but there is. This has been going on for decades and cannot be blamed on President Obama or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but sadly, both have facilitated an escalation of this war.
One might ask- is there a war against doctors? The simple answer is yes and it is all about money and control. There is no healthcare without doctors, who happen to be at the center of the myriad of healthcare events under their daily control. Healthcare is a $2.3 Trillion annual economy accounting for approximately 16% of our gross domestic product. There is tremendous incentive to control doctors and hence, the flow of huge dollars. Entities have unsuccessfully tried to do so in the past. Insurance companies in the 1980s tried doing so using capitated HMOs. Publicly traded Wall St. firms in the 1990s made a futile attempt to buy medical practices to squeeze out profits by controlling physician behavior.
The lessons of the past were not lost on the architects of the ACA, but it required a group assault on physicians, coming at them from different directions. The cabal of the hospital and the insurance industries, along with the federal government posed an almost insurmountable challenge. In exchange for the support of the American Hospital Association, the federal government gave hospitals a tremendous advantage, by outlawing physicians from opening their own hospitals, which would naturally compete against existing hospitals. Furthermore, the ACA promotes Accountable Care Organizations as a preferred reimbursement model for healthcare. This arrangement is like capitated HMOs, but on steroids. The third party payer issues a single payment for a hospitalization and leaves it to the ACO to divide the payment fairly (not likely). In anticipation of this change in reimbursement, hospitals are purchasing physician practices in an attempt to control healthcare market share. The likely outcome will be fewer doctors who are self-employed, as reported in the Wall St. Journal, and ultimately, the demise of the private practice of medicine.
The war against physicians is being waged on many fronts. Trial attorneys are fighting to preserve the status quo of the medical malpractice system, where they are the primary beneficiaries. It is coming from non-physician healthcare providers such as nurse practitioners or optometrists. They hire aggressive political lobbyists and spread around hundreds of millions of dollars to influence politicians who then create laws that confer physician status upon these allied healthcare professionals.
Public awareness of this war on their doctors is essential in order to understand the antipathy of doctors for Obamacare, and the concern that they have regarding the future of medicine in the US. It warrants a strong public outcry because when the doctors no longer work for their patients, but instead for some other entity, then heaven help our patients.
SOURCE
***************************
New York Times Jumps the Shark With Anti-Capitalist Propaganda
We’ve come to a fork in the road: either we return to capitalism (i.e., voluntary exchanges based on mutual best interest) or we plunge the rest of the way into socialism (an economy based entirely on bureaucratic coercion, i.e., slavery). History has shown repeatedly that the former leads to wealth and dignity, the latter to poverty and tyranny. Here’s where the New York Times — official mouthpiece of the liberal ruling class — comes down on the issue:
A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.
The only thing that puzzles me about these claims is that anyone would find them surprising. Wall Street is capitalism in its purest form, and capitalism is predicated on bad behavior. …
I always found the notion of a business school amusing. What kinds of courses do they offer? Robbing Widows and Orphans? Grinding the Faces of the Poor? Having It Both Ways? Feeding at the Public Trough? There was a documentary several years ago called “The Corporation” that accepted the premise that corporations are persons and then asked what kind of people they are. The answer was, precisely, psychopaths: indifferent to others, incapable of guilt, exclusively devoted to their own interests.
Demagoguery demonizing economic freedom couldn’t have gone any further over the top in the darkest days of Stalinist Russia. At least the mask is off, so that we know what we are up against. Liberal = communist.
SOURCE
************************
ELSEWHERE
Obama’s campaign slop to women: "Barack Obama is buying votes. The Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) is a blatant sop thrown to a voting block on which his next presidency may depend: women, specifically, liberal women. Obama also hopes it will weaken Mitt Romney, who is trying to woo women himself and, yet, cannot endorse the PFA without alienating conservatives."
Uncle Sam or Uncle Sugar? "It seems that no matter which party is in power, the government always grows. Why is this? The answer is relatively straightforward. Politicians get attention -- and applause -- for doing things. When things are going poorly, people never call their congressman and scream, 'Don't just do something, sit there!'"
******************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
Friday, May 18, 2012
Ideology and "what works"
Like The "Progressives" of the early 20th century, President Obama and many of his fellow Leftists these days are quite fond of making the claim that they are simply motivated by "what works" and are not driven by ideology the way conservatives are. The philosophical emptiness of such claims is thoroughly amusing and I have always seen it as just too shallow to be worth a reply. Just how empty the claim is can be shown by a simple question: "How do you define "what works"?" -- or -- "When do you know that something has "worked"?"
The inevitable answer to that has to be in terms of ideology: "Whether something leads to greater economic equality", would certainly be a common Leftist answer to my question. But that simply shows that the Leftist subscribes to an ideology that economic equality is desirable.
In his latest book, however, Jonah Goldberg is marginally more respectful of the claim. He first documents the claim at some length but instead of wiping it off with a simple question, he devotes a whole chapter to refuting it. And his conclusion is that both Left and Right have ideologies -- but ideologies that are different.
Jonah does note however that in the past it was in fact conservatives who abjured ideology and customarily pointed to Leftists as ideologues. And I think that view is essential to understanding conservatism. In his book Inside Right, Ian Gilmour, once Lord Privy Seal of England under Margaret Thatcher, offers an historical study of conservatism and concludes that conservatives are "trimmers": People with ideas that change with circumstances without much in the way of pre-established doctrines or policy consistency.
In my own historical study of conservative thought I noted many instances of such claims from conservative thinkers and concluded that conservatism can only be understood as a psychological disposition -- a tendency towards cautiousness -- and that different policy responses may be generated by that underlying psychological conservatism from time to time -- though a desire for individual liberty is a common outcome of that psychological disposition.
So I side with the earlier conservative thinkers and say that it is conservatives who are the non-ideological ones. The Leftist claim on that distinction becomes mere trickery. They think that by claiming to be something that is really true of conservatives, they can gain some added respectibility for their policies and deflect attention from whom the real practical people are. It is a sort of reverse-projection: Instead of seeing their own faults in others, they see the strengths of others in themselves.
So I see Jonah as too kind to the Left. They are just crooks who will say anything if it will get them power. Conservatives should not let the Left get away with stealing our clothes. And the best way to do that is to keep asking them my questions above.
Conservatives don't have to make broad claims about standing for "what works". Rather we just deal with individual issues as they arise and point out what the consequences of a Leftist response to those issues is likely to be. The track record of socialism is so dismal that that is not hard to do. If anything engenders caution, it is socialism
************************
'Obama was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii': President's OWN literary agency promotional booklet from 1991 claims he WAS born in Africa
The simmering political row over President Obama’s heritage was dramatically reignited today as a 1991 booklet boldly announced that the Democrat was ‘born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’
In the cover for a 1991 promotional booklet by Mr Obama’s then-publisher Acton & Dystel, he is as ‘the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, (who) was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’
The information, which could be used as more ammunition against the incumbent, comes months before what will likely be a close campaign between Mr Obama and likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
The 36-page promotional booklet was exclusively obtained by Breitbart, and was sent out to colleagues within the publishing industry in the early 1990s.
A later biography, which can still be found on Acton & Dystel’s archives, reads: ‘Barack Obama is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. ‘He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.
The blue, teal, and silver booklet was printed in part to celebrate Acton & Dystel’s 15th anniversary, and also to display the breadth and depth of authors the imprint published.
Other authors featured include Ralph Nader, former Speaker of the House Thomas P. O’Neill, and pop group New Kids on the Block.
Miriam Goderich, who now works at partner company Dystel & Goderich, is listed as the pamphlet’s editor. An assistant for Ms Goderich told MailOnline that she was not commenting on the story at this time.
New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait writes that the ‘controversy’ was little more than the result of a ‘lazy literary agent.’
More HERE
******************
Number of babies born to ethnic minorities surpasses whites in U.S. for first time
America has reached a landmark point as, for the first time in its modern history, most of the babies being born there are non-white. White children aged under one are outnumbered by those from ethnic minorities including blacks, Hispanics, Asians and mixed race, US Census Bureau figures show.
Of the four million children born in the US in the 12 months to July 2011, 50.4 per cent were from ethnic minorities. That compares with 37 per cent in 1990.
The figures also reveal the prolonged impact of a weak economy, which is resulting in fewer Hispanics entering the U.S.
Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University, said: 'This is an important landmark. This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders.'
In recent years, births have been declining for both whites and minorities as many women held off having children due to the economic slump, although the drop has been larger for whites.
Minorities increased 1.9 per cent to 114.1 million, or 36.6 per cent of the total U.S. population, lifted by prior waves of immigration that brought in young families and boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years.
But a recent slowdown in the growth of the Hispanic and Asian populations is shifting notions on when the tipping point in U.S. diversity will come - the time when non-Hispanic whites become a minority.
After 2010 census results suggested a crossover as early as 2040, demographers now believe the pivotal moment may be pushed back several years when new projections are released in December.
The annual growth rates for Hispanics and Asians fell sharply last year to just over two per cent, roughly half the rates in 2000 and the lowest in more than a decade. The black growth rate stayed flat at 1 per cent.
More HERE
******************
Health care: No, the state doesn't know best
by Jeff Jacoby
PRICES WERE OUT OF CONTROL at the end of 3rd-century Rome, and the Emperor Diocletian was determined to rein them in. In AD 301 he issued his famous Edict on Prices, a complex piece of legislation that banned speculation and established price ceilings for a wide range of goods and services. But the ambitious law failed. Though violators could be punished with death, inflation and speculation persisted. Goods were hoarded, or sold on the black market. The economic crisis worsened. Eventually the law was abandoned. Like countless rulers before and since, Diocletian discovered the hard way that price controls don't work. They worsen the problem they are intended to solve, leading to shortages, rationing, and even higher prices.
Yet the belief that government can control inflation by fiat never seems to lose its allure.
Which brings us to the "Health Care Quality Improvement and Cost Reduction Act of 2012," a 178-page bill introduced in the Massachusetts House this month amid jaunty predictions of cheaper insurance premiums for Bay State families and tens of billions of dollars in medical savings over the next 15 years. An even longer bill -- 235 pages -- has been introduced in the state Senate.
These bills aren't written in Latin and they don't impose the death penalty, but their core principle is not much different from Diocletian's: The state knows best. What fraction of the local economy should health care consume? How fast should medical spending rise? On what business model should provider networks be organized? How should hospital and doctors fees be calculated? Where should consumers get information on quality and cost of care? When are a provider's high rates justified? What penalty should it bear when they aren't? In the world these plans envision, decision after decision comes not through the voluntary interplay of doctors, patients, hospitals, and insurers, but from government agents who impose them from above.
Adding up the "dizzying and expansive" array of decrees in the House legislation, health-care analyst Joshua Archambault of the Pioneer Institute finds 941 instances in which the bill mandates that something "shall" be done. Among these are more than 25 kinds of penalties, fines, and surcharges, for price control and punishment always go hand in hand. Looming over all would be a new Division of Health Care Cost and Quality, a command-and-control behemoth that would dominate the state's medical and health-insurance landscapes, with the power to affect billions of dollars and millions of lives.
And would any checks and balances restrain this behemoth? In the language of the House bill, it "shall be an independent public entity not subject to the supervision and control of any other executive office, department, commission, board, bureau, agency or political subdivision." Throw in a toga, and Diocletian would feel right at home.
This is "Health Reform 2.0," as some on Beacon Hill are calling it -- the logical follow-on to Mitt Romney's 2006 overhaul. In practice, the RomneyCare model has meant less freedom, more tax-funded subsidies, surging growth in insurance premiums, longer wait times to see a new doctor, and undiminished reliance on emergency rooms. For those who deem such outcomes a success, more top-down interference with health care may seem like a splendid idea.
But those who regret having believed the exaggerated hype about "Health Reform 1.0" -- particularly Romney's 2006 assurance that everyone in Massachusetts "will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced" -- may want to take the latest rosy predictions with more than a grain of salt.
State Representative Steven Walsh, the Lynn Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature's Health Care Financing Committee, swears that this time "reform" will accomplish everything its advocates dream of. "Bring on the skeptics," he crows. "We're going to be a healthier community because of this in five years and we're going to save an awful lot of money doing it."
If only. Bureaucrats, no matter how well intentioned, cannot know how much medical services should cost or how insurance premiums should grow. Ham-fisted state intervention is responsible for much of what ails the Bay State's markets in health care and medical coverage. More ham-fisted intervention isn't the cure.
Many things have changed over time, but the laws of supply and demand aren't among them. Price controls invariably make economic problems worse. It was true in Diocletian's Rome. It's no less true in Deval Patrick's Massachusetts.
SOURCE
******************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
Like The "Progressives" of the early 20th century, President Obama and many of his fellow Leftists these days are quite fond of making the claim that they are simply motivated by "what works" and are not driven by ideology the way conservatives are. The philosophical emptiness of such claims is thoroughly amusing and I have always seen it as just too shallow to be worth a reply. Just how empty the claim is can be shown by a simple question: "How do you define "what works"?" -- or -- "When do you know that something has "worked"?"
The inevitable answer to that has to be in terms of ideology: "Whether something leads to greater economic equality", would certainly be a common Leftist answer to my question. But that simply shows that the Leftist subscribes to an ideology that economic equality is desirable.
In his latest book, however, Jonah Goldberg is marginally more respectful of the claim. He first documents the claim at some length but instead of wiping it off with a simple question, he devotes a whole chapter to refuting it. And his conclusion is that both Left and Right have ideologies -- but ideologies that are different.
Jonah does note however that in the past it was in fact conservatives who abjured ideology and customarily pointed to Leftists as ideologues. And I think that view is essential to understanding conservatism. In his book Inside Right, Ian Gilmour, once Lord Privy Seal of England under Margaret Thatcher, offers an historical study of conservatism and concludes that conservatives are "trimmers": People with ideas that change with circumstances without much in the way of pre-established doctrines or policy consistency.
In my own historical study of conservative thought I noted many instances of such claims from conservative thinkers and concluded that conservatism can only be understood as a psychological disposition -- a tendency towards cautiousness -- and that different policy responses may be generated by that underlying psychological conservatism from time to time -- though a desire for individual liberty is a common outcome of that psychological disposition.
So I side with the earlier conservative thinkers and say that it is conservatives who are the non-ideological ones. The Leftist claim on that distinction becomes mere trickery. They think that by claiming to be something that is really true of conservatives, they can gain some added respectibility for their policies and deflect attention from whom the real practical people are. It is a sort of reverse-projection: Instead of seeing their own faults in others, they see the strengths of others in themselves.
So I see Jonah as too kind to the Left. They are just crooks who will say anything if it will get them power. Conservatives should not let the Left get away with stealing our clothes. And the best way to do that is to keep asking them my questions above.
Conservatives don't have to make broad claims about standing for "what works". Rather we just deal with individual issues as they arise and point out what the consequences of a Leftist response to those issues is likely to be. The track record of socialism is so dismal that that is not hard to do. If anything engenders caution, it is socialism
************************
'Obama was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii': President's OWN literary agency promotional booklet from 1991 claims he WAS born in Africa
The simmering political row over President Obama’s heritage was dramatically reignited today as a 1991 booklet boldly announced that the Democrat was ‘born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’
In the cover for a 1991 promotional booklet by Mr Obama’s then-publisher Acton & Dystel, he is as ‘the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, (who) was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’
The information, which could be used as more ammunition against the incumbent, comes months before what will likely be a close campaign between Mr Obama and likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
The 36-page promotional booklet was exclusively obtained by Breitbart, and was sent out to colleagues within the publishing industry in the early 1990s.
A later biography, which can still be found on Acton & Dystel’s archives, reads: ‘Barack Obama is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. ‘He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.
The blue, teal, and silver booklet was printed in part to celebrate Acton & Dystel’s 15th anniversary, and also to display the breadth and depth of authors the imprint published.
Other authors featured include Ralph Nader, former Speaker of the House Thomas P. O’Neill, and pop group New Kids on the Block.
Miriam Goderich, who now works at partner company Dystel & Goderich, is listed as the pamphlet’s editor. An assistant for Ms Goderich told MailOnline that she was not commenting on the story at this time.
New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait writes that the ‘controversy’ was little more than the result of a ‘lazy literary agent.’
More HERE
******************
Number of babies born to ethnic minorities surpasses whites in U.S. for first time
America has reached a landmark point as, for the first time in its modern history, most of the babies being born there are non-white. White children aged under one are outnumbered by those from ethnic minorities including blacks, Hispanics, Asians and mixed race, US Census Bureau figures show.
Of the four million children born in the US in the 12 months to July 2011, 50.4 per cent were from ethnic minorities. That compares with 37 per cent in 1990.
The figures also reveal the prolonged impact of a weak economy, which is resulting in fewer Hispanics entering the U.S.
Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University, said: 'This is an important landmark. This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders.'
In recent years, births have been declining for both whites and minorities as many women held off having children due to the economic slump, although the drop has been larger for whites.
Minorities increased 1.9 per cent to 114.1 million, or 36.6 per cent of the total U.S. population, lifted by prior waves of immigration that brought in young families and boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years.
But a recent slowdown in the growth of the Hispanic and Asian populations is shifting notions on when the tipping point in U.S. diversity will come - the time when non-Hispanic whites become a minority.
After 2010 census results suggested a crossover as early as 2040, demographers now believe the pivotal moment may be pushed back several years when new projections are released in December.
The annual growth rates for Hispanics and Asians fell sharply last year to just over two per cent, roughly half the rates in 2000 and the lowest in more than a decade. The black growth rate stayed flat at 1 per cent.
More HERE
******************
Health care: No, the state doesn't know best
by Jeff Jacoby
PRICES WERE OUT OF CONTROL at the end of 3rd-century Rome, and the Emperor Diocletian was determined to rein them in. In AD 301 he issued his famous Edict on Prices, a complex piece of legislation that banned speculation and established price ceilings for a wide range of goods and services. But the ambitious law failed. Though violators could be punished with death, inflation and speculation persisted. Goods were hoarded, or sold on the black market. The economic crisis worsened. Eventually the law was abandoned. Like countless rulers before and since, Diocletian discovered the hard way that price controls don't work. They worsen the problem they are intended to solve, leading to shortages, rationing, and even higher prices.
Yet the belief that government can control inflation by fiat never seems to lose its allure.
Which brings us to the "Health Care Quality Improvement and Cost Reduction Act of 2012," a 178-page bill introduced in the Massachusetts House this month amid jaunty predictions of cheaper insurance premiums for Bay State families and tens of billions of dollars in medical savings over the next 15 years. An even longer bill -- 235 pages -- has been introduced in the state Senate.
These bills aren't written in Latin and they don't impose the death penalty, but their core principle is not much different from Diocletian's: The state knows best. What fraction of the local economy should health care consume? How fast should medical spending rise? On what business model should provider networks be organized? How should hospital and doctors fees be calculated? Where should consumers get information on quality and cost of care? When are a provider's high rates justified? What penalty should it bear when they aren't? In the world these plans envision, decision after decision comes not through the voluntary interplay of doctors, patients, hospitals, and insurers, but from government agents who impose them from above.
Adding up the "dizzying and expansive" array of decrees in the House legislation, health-care analyst Joshua Archambault of the Pioneer Institute finds 941 instances in which the bill mandates that something "shall" be done. Among these are more than 25 kinds of penalties, fines, and surcharges, for price control and punishment always go hand in hand. Looming over all would be a new Division of Health Care Cost and Quality, a command-and-control behemoth that would dominate the state's medical and health-insurance landscapes, with the power to affect billions of dollars and millions of lives.
And would any checks and balances restrain this behemoth? In the language of the House bill, it "shall be an independent public entity not subject to the supervision and control of any other executive office, department, commission, board, bureau, agency or political subdivision." Throw in a toga, and Diocletian would feel right at home.
This is "Health Reform 2.0," as some on Beacon Hill are calling it -- the logical follow-on to Mitt Romney's 2006 overhaul. In practice, the RomneyCare model has meant less freedom, more tax-funded subsidies, surging growth in insurance premiums, longer wait times to see a new doctor, and undiminished reliance on emergency rooms. For those who deem such outcomes a success, more top-down interference with health care may seem like a splendid idea.
But those who regret having believed the exaggerated hype about "Health Reform 1.0" -- particularly Romney's 2006 assurance that everyone in Massachusetts "will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced" -- may want to take the latest rosy predictions with more than a grain of salt.
State Representative Steven Walsh, the Lynn Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature's Health Care Financing Committee, swears that this time "reform" will accomplish everything its advocates dream of. "Bring on the skeptics," he crows. "We're going to be a healthier community because of this in five years and we're going to save an awful lot of money doing it."
If only. Bureaucrats, no matter how well intentioned, cannot know how much medical services should cost or how insurance premiums should grow. Ham-fisted state intervention is responsible for much of what ails the Bay State's markets in health care and medical coverage. More ham-fisted intervention isn't the cure.
Many things have changed over time, but the laws of supply and demand aren't among them. Price controls invariably make economic problems worse. It was true in Diocletian's Rome. It's no less true in Deval Patrick's Massachusetts.
SOURCE
******************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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, May 17, 2012
Too Big to Manage
Yesterday I asked: If JPMorgan Chase’s loss of $2 billion shows the need for more bank regulation, what should the federal government’s $1.3 trillion deficit tell us? And Michael Cannon pointed out that in the private sector, people who make big mistakes tend to lose their jobs, unlike the public sector.
Today another theme is being heard, at the Wall Street Journal, on NPR, and many more places including even here at Cato@Liberty: banks like JPMorgan, which has annual revenue of $100 billion, are just “too big to manage.”
And again I have to wonder: if large banks are too big to manage, what should we think about the federal government? The federal government is the largest landowner, the largest insurer, the largest employer, the largest banker in the country. It operates everything from a judiciary to the most complex armed force in history to numerous health insurance programs to a retirement system to a highway system to a peanut subsidy program.
If JPMorgan is too big to manage, can we possibly expect competent management of such a massive operation that doesn’t even face the feedback of profit and loss?
SOURCE
*************************
Review of The Death of Liberalism, by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Review by HERBERT LONDON
The redoubtable R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. has done it again; he has written yet another penetrating analysis of the liberal establishment in his latest book, The Death of Liberalism, (Thomas Nelson, 2012)
Although this is a polemic with the biting attributes of Tyrrell's acid-like analysis, the points are critical, or as he puts it, fatal. For example, as he notes, the increase in the national debt is crushing and no amount of expropriation in the form of new and higher taxes can retire it.
At bottom Tyrrell, relying on a transparent admission by Herbert Croly in the Promise of American Life, maintains that liberalism is an expression of the belief "that the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat." Hence, the need for government social engineers who arrogantly do the necessary bidding for reform.
The new progressives invariably invoke the goals of justice and fairness, but their policy applications are anti-democratic and illiberal. They claim, as an example, that universal health care will engender low cost and high quality care, but overlook the fact that it entails stripping many Americans of cherished liberties.
Clearly statism of the kind promoted by the new progressives argues for aggressive legislation to right the wrongs of the past, from the unequal distribution of wealth to urban woe. In the process, liberty is compromised and the promised goals of this intellectual exercise prove elusive. As Tyrrell contends, liberalism is exhausted, a victim of failed policies going back to the New Deal.
He notes accurately, I believe, that the white working class believes in the nation, its history, Constitution, and customs. It is suspicious of elites and believes that the progressives have deserted them, despite rhetorical gestures made in their direction. The liberal schemes for the future are a composite of socialism, fascism, and American bred big government melded together in a brew that is designed to engender citizen dependency and infantilism.
When the Obama led government took over AIG, Chrysler, General Motors, and the banks that were deemed "too big to fail," the sign of progressive overreach was readily visible. This spectacular expansion of federal authority placed one-sixth of the economy under government control. What Tyrrell describes as socialism with "a friendly face."
As I see it, Tyrrell has effectively captured the liberal impulse for government's insinuation into every aspect of economic life. Where I hesitantly challenge Mr. Tyrrell is whether the evidence he has compiled leads inexorably to the death of liberalism. After all, communism died, but leviathan prevails. It might well be asked if the number of Americans seduced by government activity is not larger than those who do not feed from the public trough.
Consider for the sake of argument the fact that 45 million Americans are on food stamps (1.8 million in New York with a total population of 8 million); 50.5 million receive Medicaid; 46.5 million are on Medicare; 52 million receive Social Security benefits; 26 million are receiving earned income credit. These payments account for well over 70 percent of the federal budget and limits are not on the horizon.
Consider as well benefits to home owners, crony capitalism activity and the role interest groups play in deriving special treatment from government. It is one thing to say, as erstwhile President Clinton did, that the age of big government is over, and quite another matter to see it put into effect. Big government is not deleveraging because too many people have a stake in its retention.
Perhaps claims of The Death of Liberalism are exaggerated. But on the essential issue Tyrrell is correct-liberalism is draining energy from the body politic, forcing the United States into a crisis of unparalleled proportions. Of course, this may be a crisis that isn't wasted and restores the traditions that gave this nation vitality. As I see it, hope is the harbinger of appropriate change and Tyrrell may be on to something.
SOURCE
******************************
Obama’s Jobless Rate Reality
For the third straight spring, the American economy is experiencing a “failure to launch.” Our nation’s unemployment rate continues to inch lower — from 8.2 percent in March to 8.1 percent last month – but it’s dropping for all the wrong reasons (i.e. people leaving the labor force). And despite the Federal Reserve’s optimistic projections of sustained job growth over the coming months, the fundamentals of the U.S. labor market remain weak.
Record numbers of workers are exiting the job market — 340,000 of them last month alone — and the ranks of the long-term unemployed continue to hover at elevated levels.
Since Barack Obama took office, America’s civilian non-institutionalized population has expanded by more than 8 million people — however there are 319,000 fewer Americans working today than in January 2009. As a result of this failure to create jobs, America’s labor participation rate is at a 30-year low of 63.6 percent — and still falling.
This largely unreported statistic translates into less productivity and a bigger burden for taxpayers, but it also means America has a much higher unemployment rate than the one Obama’s administration has been touting. In fact had America’s labor participation rate remained constant over the duration of Obama’s term, the current unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent.
More HERE
***********************
Europe's high-taxing Right is headed for a fall
Nobody should be surprised if voters also give Angela Merkel and David Cameron the boot at the next ballot
Readers presumably understand that Europe's economic crisis is also the crisis of social democracy—of the idea that markets must be made to co-exist with high levels of taxation, regulation, unionization, welfare spending and subsidized health care and education. Eutopia may be nice in theory; it may even work for a while. But eventually social-democratic policies will lead to economic stagnation, policy paralysis and national bankruptcy on the continental scale we are witnessing today.
So, naturally, Germany's Social Democrats romped to a 13-point victory in Sunday's elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, the country's largest state.
"All politics is local," goes the cliché, and it would be tempting to read the German result that way, too. The state had long been a Social Democratic stronghold before tipping into the hands of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats in 2005. Mrs. Merkel remains broadly liked as chancellor and doesn't face an election until next year. And the German economy is the envy of Europe.
And yet Mrs. Merkel's party keeps losing state elections: In its old stronghold of Baden-Würrttemberg last year; in her home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Are Germans doing so well that they've decided to become politically flippant about their prosperity? Would Christian Democrats be doing a bit better politically if the economy were doing a bit worse?
The resurgence of the Social Democrats in Germany is of a piece with the strong showing of Labour last month in Britain's local council elections. It's of a piece with the pathetic showing this month of Greece's center-right New Democracy, and of the resurgence there of the hard left. It's especially of a piece with Francois Hollande's improbable rise to the French presidency, on the strength of economic ideas whose intellectual sell-by date was sometime in the mid-1970s.
Have the gods gone crazy? No. But maybe there's a message here for Europe's joy-fearing conservatives, who seem to have convinced themselves that managing an economy should be like running a 19th-century nunnery—an exercise in the stern suppression of animal spirits.
Take euro-conservative tax policy. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy responded to the euro-zone crisis by increasing some VAT rates to 21.2% from 19.6%, introducing a 3% surcharge on high incomes, and raising the effective capital-gains tax to 32.5% from 31.3%. In Britain, David Cameron raised VAT to 20% from 17.5% and kept the top marginal rate at 50% (now coming down to a still-exorbitant 45%).
Germany? Tax cuts Mrs. Merkel promised when she was re-elected never materialized, though corporate rates have come down. The new conservative Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy is raising the top marginal rate of income tax to 52% from 45%. In Holland, the right-of-center government increased the top VAT rate two percentage points to 21% and doubled the country's bank tax prior to its sudden collapse last month. Italy's technocratic administration of Mario Monti has imposed new levies on property, luxury goods and repatriated wealth.
No wonder the natives are stirring. Europe's right-of-center leaders came to office on the perception that they are better economic managers than their left-of-center counterparts. What they've mainly shown is that they are just as incompetent—only a lot more severe.
Raising consumption taxes in an otherwise flat-lining economy is especially galling if it's joined to the perception (accurate or not) that the government plans to lay off government workers. Why should Europeans be made to sacrifice on an altar of austerity whose benefits have so far failed to materialize, except perhaps as a slightly more palatable debt-to-GDP score? Just who is this thing called "the economy" meant to serve?
The astonishing political result is that it is now the left that has captured the language of growth. Never mind the precise formulas: blowout deficit spending, loose monetary policy, millionaire surcharges, a Tobin tax, euro bonds financed by anybody who can turn water into wine, a "mild" dose of inflation. At least the left is talking growth, not redistribution. That's a mark of political progress.
Here's something else the European left seems to be recapturing: the language of sovereignty and democracy.
For years, it was the right that had a corner on that particular market, with its suspicion of all things Brussels. But Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy undercut that reputation with their serially ill-fated efforts to broker grand bargains for "saving" the euro zone. Their prescriptions were rubbish—Does Greece look like it's been rescued? Has Mrs. Merkel's fiscal pact held up?—but their arrogance was worse. Nobody wants their economic future dictated to them by leaders they didn't elect, in languages they probably don't understand. Yet that's exactly what "Merkozy" sought to impose.
Now it's gone, and good riddance too. The French will probably soon come to regret Mr. Hollande, but it's unlikely Mr. Sarkozy will be missed. Nobody should be surprised if voters also give Mrs. Merkel, Mr. Rajoy and Mr. Cameron the boot at the next ballot. At its best, the right should stand for the idea that the purpose of government is to allow people to flourish, mainly by getting out of their way. Today's European right stands instead for imposing penalties on people in order to atone for the sins of government. That's a right that deserves to lose, and will, until it learns that voters want freedom, not chastity.
SOURCE
*******************
The Demise of Employer-Based Health Insurance
There is no question that the President wants a “single payer,” where hospitals and physicians are all paid from a single source, a single government-run program funded by general taxation. The fact that this leads to shortages, waiting lines, and rationing does not seem to concern those who have this single-minded goal.
Before he became President, Senator Barack Obama addressed members of the AFL-CIO. He stated:
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. Everybody in, nobody out-- a single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."
The messy business of passing health care reform began in earnest as soon as President Obama took office. His party did have control of the House and Senate, but loud opposition began and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was passed by the slimmest of margins in early 2010. In order to keep the semblance of continuity, the new law was built on the current system of employer-based health insurance. Americans have an independent streak and would not accept a government single-payer system in one fell swoop.
Employer-based health insurance has proven inadequate. It developed in a time when people were less mobile and the norm was to find a job and stay with it until it was time for the retirement dinner and gold watch. Now that people tend to regularly change jobs, getting into and out of health insurance policies leads to disruption of care as different doctors are in different plans.
Despite its drawbacks, 170 million Americans depend on employer-based coverage. What will happen if they lose it in the next two years, thanks to PPACA? The law was actually designed to discourage employers from covering their workers, as the penalty for not meeting the employer mandate is quite small, while the “minimum essential coverage” will be very expensive. The House Ways and Means Committee found that 71 of the Fortune 100 companies could save $422 billion from 2014-2023 by dropping insurance and paying the fine.
In addition, price limits on premiums with increasing mandated benefits will serve to drive the insurance companies out of business.
If PPACA is not overturned or repealed, President Obama will probably get his wish.
And would Americans get “fair” and “equal” care? On George Orwell’s Animal Farm “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Under socialism, the ruling elite never seem to have to abide by the rules that they so methodically craft for the rest of us. President Obama knows that his wife and daughters will be immune to the downside of single payer, while the rank and file will suffer greatly. The people will beg for relief from excessive taxation and access to better medical care, but will they be able to find it?
Rather than moving toward single payer, it would be better to eliminate any middleman in most encounters between patient and physician. Allow the patients to pay for routine care and purchase their own health insurance plans with the least government meddling. Big government stifles initiative and punishes achievement.
Our Constitution envisioned citizen legislators who would create laws that are so fair they are happy to live by them. It is what Americans really need. Let’s hope the Supreme Court completely voids PPACA and we can have a system based on liberty, personal initiative, and freedom to access the best care at the lowest cost. Only when the government gets out of medicine will we ever achieve that goal.
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
***************************
Yesterday I asked: If JPMorgan Chase’s loss of $2 billion shows the need for more bank regulation, what should the federal government’s $1.3 trillion deficit tell us? And Michael Cannon pointed out that in the private sector, people who make big mistakes tend to lose their jobs, unlike the public sector.
Today another theme is being heard, at the Wall Street Journal, on NPR, and many more places including even here at Cato@Liberty: banks like JPMorgan, which has annual revenue of $100 billion, are just “too big to manage.”
And again I have to wonder: if large banks are too big to manage, what should we think about the federal government? The federal government is the largest landowner, the largest insurer, the largest employer, the largest banker in the country. It operates everything from a judiciary to the most complex armed force in history to numerous health insurance programs to a retirement system to a highway system to a peanut subsidy program.
If JPMorgan is too big to manage, can we possibly expect competent management of such a massive operation that doesn’t even face the feedback of profit and loss?
SOURCE
*************************
Review of The Death of Liberalism, by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Review by HERBERT LONDON
The redoubtable R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. has done it again; he has written yet another penetrating analysis of the liberal establishment in his latest book, The Death of Liberalism, (Thomas Nelson, 2012)
Although this is a polemic with the biting attributes of Tyrrell's acid-like analysis, the points are critical, or as he puts it, fatal. For example, as he notes, the increase in the national debt is crushing and no amount of expropriation in the form of new and higher taxes can retire it.
At bottom Tyrrell, relying on a transparent admission by Herbert Croly in the Promise of American Life, maintains that liberalism is an expression of the belief "that the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat." Hence, the need for government social engineers who arrogantly do the necessary bidding for reform.
The new progressives invariably invoke the goals of justice and fairness, but their policy applications are anti-democratic and illiberal. They claim, as an example, that universal health care will engender low cost and high quality care, but overlook the fact that it entails stripping many Americans of cherished liberties.
Clearly statism of the kind promoted by the new progressives argues for aggressive legislation to right the wrongs of the past, from the unequal distribution of wealth to urban woe. In the process, liberty is compromised and the promised goals of this intellectual exercise prove elusive. As Tyrrell contends, liberalism is exhausted, a victim of failed policies going back to the New Deal.
He notes accurately, I believe, that the white working class believes in the nation, its history, Constitution, and customs. It is suspicious of elites and believes that the progressives have deserted them, despite rhetorical gestures made in their direction. The liberal schemes for the future are a composite of socialism, fascism, and American bred big government melded together in a brew that is designed to engender citizen dependency and infantilism.
When the Obama led government took over AIG, Chrysler, General Motors, and the banks that were deemed "too big to fail," the sign of progressive overreach was readily visible. This spectacular expansion of federal authority placed one-sixth of the economy under government control. What Tyrrell describes as socialism with "a friendly face."
As I see it, Tyrrell has effectively captured the liberal impulse for government's insinuation into every aspect of economic life. Where I hesitantly challenge Mr. Tyrrell is whether the evidence he has compiled leads inexorably to the death of liberalism. After all, communism died, but leviathan prevails. It might well be asked if the number of Americans seduced by government activity is not larger than those who do not feed from the public trough.
Consider for the sake of argument the fact that 45 million Americans are on food stamps (1.8 million in New York with a total population of 8 million); 50.5 million receive Medicaid; 46.5 million are on Medicare; 52 million receive Social Security benefits; 26 million are receiving earned income credit. These payments account for well over 70 percent of the federal budget and limits are not on the horizon.
Consider as well benefits to home owners, crony capitalism activity and the role interest groups play in deriving special treatment from government. It is one thing to say, as erstwhile President Clinton did, that the age of big government is over, and quite another matter to see it put into effect. Big government is not deleveraging because too many people have a stake in its retention.
Perhaps claims of The Death of Liberalism are exaggerated. But on the essential issue Tyrrell is correct-liberalism is draining energy from the body politic, forcing the United States into a crisis of unparalleled proportions. Of course, this may be a crisis that isn't wasted and restores the traditions that gave this nation vitality. As I see it, hope is the harbinger of appropriate change and Tyrrell may be on to something.
SOURCE
******************************
Obama’s Jobless Rate Reality
For the third straight spring, the American economy is experiencing a “failure to launch.” Our nation’s unemployment rate continues to inch lower — from 8.2 percent in March to 8.1 percent last month – but it’s dropping for all the wrong reasons (i.e. people leaving the labor force). And despite the Federal Reserve’s optimistic projections of sustained job growth over the coming months, the fundamentals of the U.S. labor market remain weak.
Record numbers of workers are exiting the job market — 340,000 of them last month alone — and the ranks of the long-term unemployed continue to hover at elevated levels.
Since Barack Obama took office, America’s civilian non-institutionalized population has expanded by more than 8 million people — however there are 319,000 fewer Americans working today than in January 2009. As a result of this failure to create jobs, America’s labor participation rate is at a 30-year low of 63.6 percent — and still falling.
This largely unreported statistic translates into less productivity and a bigger burden for taxpayers, but it also means America has a much higher unemployment rate than the one Obama’s administration has been touting. In fact had America’s labor participation rate remained constant over the duration of Obama’s term, the current unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent.
More HERE
***********************
Europe's high-taxing Right is headed for a fall
Nobody should be surprised if voters also give Angela Merkel and David Cameron the boot at the next ballot
Readers presumably understand that Europe's economic crisis is also the crisis of social democracy—of the idea that markets must be made to co-exist with high levels of taxation, regulation, unionization, welfare spending and subsidized health care and education. Eutopia may be nice in theory; it may even work for a while. But eventually social-democratic policies will lead to economic stagnation, policy paralysis and national bankruptcy on the continental scale we are witnessing today.
So, naturally, Germany's Social Democrats romped to a 13-point victory in Sunday's elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, the country's largest state.
"All politics is local," goes the cliché, and it would be tempting to read the German result that way, too. The state had long been a Social Democratic stronghold before tipping into the hands of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats in 2005. Mrs. Merkel remains broadly liked as chancellor and doesn't face an election until next year. And the German economy is the envy of Europe.
And yet Mrs. Merkel's party keeps losing state elections: In its old stronghold of Baden-Würrttemberg last year; in her home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Are Germans doing so well that they've decided to become politically flippant about their prosperity? Would Christian Democrats be doing a bit better politically if the economy were doing a bit worse?
The resurgence of the Social Democrats in Germany is of a piece with the strong showing of Labour last month in Britain's local council elections. It's of a piece with the pathetic showing this month of Greece's center-right New Democracy, and of the resurgence there of the hard left. It's especially of a piece with Francois Hollande's improbable rise to the French presidency, on the strength of economic ideas whose intellectual sell-by date was sometime in the mid-1970s.
Have the gods gone crazy? No. But maybe there's a message here for Europe's joy-fearing conservatives, who seem to have convinced themselves that managing an economy should be like running a 19th-century nunnery—an exercise in the stern suppression of animal spirits.
Take euro-conservative tax policy. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy responded to the euro-zone crisis by increasing some VAT rates to 21.2% from 19.6%, introducing a 3% surcharge on high incomes, and raising the effective capital-gains tax to 32.5% from 31.3%. In Britain, David Cameron raised VAT to 20% from 17.5% and kept the top marginal rate at 50% (now coming down to a still-exorbitant 45%).
Germany? Tax cuts Mrs. Merkel promised when she was re-elected never materialized, though corporate rates have come down. The new conservative Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy is raising the top marginal rate of income tax to 52% from 45%. In Holland, the right-of-center government increased the top VAT rate two percentage points to 21% and doubled the country's bank tax prior to its sudden collapse last month. Italy's technocratic administration of Mario Monti has imposed new levies on property, luxury goods and repatriated wealth.
No wonder the natives are stirring. Europe's right-of-center leaders came to office on the perception that they are better economic managers than their left-of-center counterparts. What they've mainly shown is that they are just as incompetent—only a lot more severe.
Raising consumption taxes in an otherwise flat-lining economy is especially galling if it's joined to the perception (accurate or not) that the government plans to lay off government workers. Why should Europeans be made to sacrifice on an altar of austerity whose benefits have so far failed to materialize, except perhaps as a slightly more palatable debt-to-GDP score? Just who is this thing called "the economy" meant to serve?
The astonishing political result is that it is now the left that has captured the language of growth. Never mind the precise formulas: blowout deficit spending, loose monetary policy, millionaire surcharges, a Tobin tax, euro bonds financed by anybody who can turn water into wine, a "mild" dose of inflation. At least the left is talking growth, not redistribution. That's a mark of political progress.
Here's something else the European left seems to be recapturing: the language of sovereignty and democracy.
For years, it was the right that had a corner on that particular market, with its suspicion of all things Brussels. But Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy undercut that reputation with their serially ill-fated efforts to broker grand bargains for "saving" the euro zone. Their prescriptions were rubbish—Does Greece look like it's been rescued? Has Mrs. Merkel's fiscal pact held up?—but their arrogance was worse. Nobody wants their economic future dictated to them by leaders they didn't elect, in languages they probably don't understand. Yet that's exactly what "Merkozy" sought to impose.
Now it's gone, and good riddance too. The French will probably soon come to regret Mr. Hollande, but it's unlikely Mr. Sarkozy will be missed. Nobody should be surprised if voters also give Mrs. Merkel, Mr. Rajoy and Mr. Cameron the boot at the next ballot. At its best, the right should stand for the idea that the purpose of government is to allow people to flourish, mainly by getting out of their way. Today's European right stands instead for imposing penalties on people in order to atone for the sins of government. That's a right that deserves to lose, and will, until it learns that voters want freedom, not chastity.
SOURCE
*******************
The Demise of Employer-Based Health Insurance
There is no question that the President wants a “single payer,” where hospitals and physicians are all paid from a single source, a single government-run program funded by general taxation. The fact that this leads to shortages, waiting lines, and rationing does not seem to concern those who have this single-minded goal.
Before he became President, Senator Barack Obama addressed members of the AFL-CIO. He stated:
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. Everybody in, nobody out-- a single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."
The messy business of passing health care reform began in earnest as soon as President Obama took office. His party did have control of the House and Senate, but loud opposition began and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was passed by the slimmest of margins in early 2010. In order to keep the semblance of continuity, the new law was built on the current system of employer-based health insurance. Americans have an independent streak and would not accept a government single-payer system in one fell swoop.
Employer-based health insurance has proven inadequate. It developed in a time when people were less mobile and the norm was to find a job and stay with it until it was time for the retirement dinner and gold watch. Now that people tend to regularly change jobs, getting into and out of health insurance policies leads to disruption of care as different doctors are in different plans.
Despite its drawbacks, 170 million Americans depend on employer-based coverage. What will happen if they lose it in the next two years, thanks to PPACA? The law was actually designed to discourage employers from covering their workers, as the penalty for not meeting the employer mandate is quite small, while the “minimum essential coverage” will be very expensive. The House Ways and Means Committee found that 71 of the Fortune 100 companies could save $422 billion from 2014-2023 by dropping insurance and paying the fine.
In addition, price limits on premiums with increasing mandated benefits will serve to drive the insurance companies out of business.
If PPACA is not overturned or repealed, President Obama will probably get his wish.
And would Americans get “fair” and “equal” care? On George Orwell’s Animal Farm “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Under socialism, the ruling elite never seem to have to abide by the rules that they so methodically craft for the rest of us. President Obama knows that his wife and daughters will be immune to the downside of single payer, while the rank and file will suffer greatly. The people will beg for relief from excessive taxation and access to better medical care, but will they be able to find it?
Rather than moving toward single payer, it would be better to eliminate any middleman in most encounters between patient and physician. Allow the patients to pay for routine care and purchase their own health insurance plans with the least government meddling. Big government stifles initiative and punishes achievement.
Our Constitution envisioned citizen legislators who would create laws that are so fair they are happy to live by them. It is what Americans really need. Let’s hope the Supreme Court completely voids PPACA and we can have a system based on liberty, personal initiative, and freedom to access the best care at the lowest cost. Only when the government gets out of medicine will we ever achieve that goal.
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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, May 16, 2012
Obama Is the Extremist, Not Conservative Talkers
Some conservatives believe that other conservatives, on talk radio and Fox News Channel, are damaging the cause of conservatism by dishonestly overstating their case against President Obama to increase their ratings and profits.
More reasonable Republican politicians, they argue, would like to cooperate with Obama on bipartisan solutions but don't have the power to resist these extremists with the megaphones and so have buckled in lock step to their demands and become the party of "no" and the purveyors of gridlock.
The problem is that the presuppositions underlying those allegations are wrong. There may be some exceptions, but the large majority of leading conservative voices are doing their very best to save this nation from Obama's policies, which they believe are leading to the nation's financial, cultural and national security ruin. Obama is a leftist, very extreme by historical standards. To compromise with his positions would not be in the best interest of the nation but would advance the cause of leftism, so any pressure conservatives can bring to bear on Republican politicians to strongly oppose his agenda is laudable.
I can't conceive of too many situations in which splitting the difference with Obama has advanced or would advance the cause of conservatism or constitutional liberty. We wouldn't reduce our debt, for example, by agreeing to reduce the levels of increases in spending. We couldn't improve the quality, cost and availability of health care by agreeing to more government intervention when we believe in free market solutions. We couldn't prudently agree to a half-measure stimulus package when we believe stimulus spending not only doesn't stimulate the economy but does further increase the debt. We couldn't agree to some compromise reductions in our nuclear and conventional forces if we believe that even these lesser cuts would jeopardize our national security. We couldn't agree to meet Obama halfway on energy policy by signing on to policies that punish conventional energy only half as much and waste just half as many billions on quixotic green energy debacles.
We can get mired in a semantic argument over whether Obama is a card-carrying communist, a European socialist, an admirer of Hugo Chavez's and Daniel Ortega's or, as he says, a fierce advocate of the free market, but such quibbling is more misleading than the labels themselves.
Perhaps Obama doesn't technically favor ushering in Karl Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" en route to the "withering away of the state" and the promised utopia. But the issue isn't whether Obama subscribes to this or that brand of socialism -- Marxism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Leninism, democratic socialism or whatever. The point is that he's a radical leftist who subscribes to the radical leftist worldview, and many of us believe that if left unchecked, he would go much further than he's gone to undermine our Constitution and our freedom tradition. Considering the degree to which he has thwarted and circumvented the Constitution and the rule of law -- and otherwise abused his executive authority during his first term -- despite facing re-election in 2012, there is no telling how radical he might become with four more years in lame duck status.
I do think a strong case can be made that he has Marxist leanings and thus believe the term is warranted as a general descriptor. For 20 years, he belonged to a church that emphasized race and materialism more than it did Christian theology. He appointed radical czars, some of whom self-identify as Marxists, and others support Chavez's track record in oppressing media freedom. He constantly demonizes the "wealthy," business and "excess profits." He obsesses over redistributing wealth. He seems to subscribe to the Marxist theory of surplus value, believing labor never receives its fair share and often abusing his executive authority to remedy that perceived injustice. He is in favor of ever-increasing government control of business and industry -- not just health care -- and has a manifest distrust of the market.
Call him what you want, but don't tell me he isn't an extreme leftist by American standards. He might be a moderate in Europe, but not here.
If not for strong conservative voices opposing his radical agenda, he would have gone much further: larger and more stimuli, much greater deficits and debt, even higher percentages of people on the welfare rolls and not paying income taxes, an even more lawless Justice Department, a single-payer health care system, the consummation of the war on conventional energy and further wasteful green energy experiments, a more progressive income tax code, a possible value-added tax, more liberal activist judges, greater unilateral disarmament, further relaxation of border control, more government control over business -- and more.
Thank God for conservative talkers and other voices on the right who aren't deterred from doing what is right for fear of being called extremists themselves.
SOURCE
**************************
Myths About Inequality
Because they do not seem to have any real solutions to real problems, the leftwing in this country has become fixated on a non-problem: inequality. In the process, people who harp on this idea often get their facts wrong. The following is my attempt to set the record straight.
Myth: Those at the bottom are worse off because the rich are better off.
"The rich are sucking up all the income," said Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs on Morning Joe. Surveying the past two decades, Brian Wesbury gives this answer:
Yes the top 1% saw its share of that income rise from 8.5% to 16.9%. And, yes, the bottom 50% saw its share fall from 17.7% to 13.5%, but that smaller share in 2009 was $1.05 trillion, a 265% increase… In other words, it is true that incomes at the top have risen faster than average incomes, but it is not true that any group has been made worse off. Incomes and living standards for all Americans, including those in lower-income brackets, are up. At the same time, tax burdens for those in lower-income groups have fallen substantially.
Myth: The rich are not paying their fair share of taxes.
In fact, higher income taxpayers pay a considerably larger share of the tax burden than their share of personal income (see the chart here):
* The top 1% of the income distribution earns 18% of personal income, but pays 27% of total federal tax liabilities.
* The top 10% earns 31% of the income, but pays 44% of the taxes.
* By contrast, the bottom 60% of the population receives 25% of the income, but pays only 14% of the taxes.
Myth: The income of the rich has been rising relative to everyone else.
In fact, a large part of the apparent growth in income inequality is simply the result of differences in the way Americans pay taxes. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Phil Gramm and Steve McMillan explain it this way:
Because of those changes, over the past 20 years the share of income of the top 1% of taxpayers coming from S-corporations tripled. Similarly, lowering the rate on capital gains encouraged taxpayers to realize gains and pay taxes on them. The lower rates on dividend income encouraged companies to pay dividends to individuals instead of keeping the funds as corporate retained earnings. Overall:
Myth: The U.S. tax system is less progressive than the tax systems of other countries.
In fact, the United States has the most progressive tax system of all developed countries. According to the most recent report from the OECD, the United States "collects the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population." As Gramm and McMillin explain:
Myth: Income is the best measure of well-being.
Many wealthy people live modest lives. And many low-income families take advantage of anti-poverty programs that furnish them with housing, Food Stamps and medical care. Surely the best measure of well-being is not what people earn, but what they consume. As it turns out, there has been very little change in inequality of consumption over the past 25 years. As Diana Furthgott-Roth explains:
SOURCE
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Why are All the Leftist Politicians Who Hate the Rich…So Filthy Rich?
Have you ever noticed how almost all the leftist politicians who hate and want to punish the rich with draconian tax increases…are filthy rich themselves? Confusing, isn’t it?
Actually, once you know the truth it's really quite easy to understand.
Take France’s new Socialist President Francois Holland. He never stops talking about his dislike and disgust for the rich. He is almost more obsessed with hate for the rich than Obama is. Yet it turns out Holland is…drumroll please…filthy rich himself.
That’s right. Socialist Holland owns not one, not two, but three homes in Cannes on the French Riviera. Unbelievable.
In America let’s think of the biggest haters of the rich. Obama is now filthy rich. He has been since selling his autobiography after getting elected to the U.S. Senate, and buying a $2,000,000 Chicago home (with help from a convicted felon). Once Obama leaves the White House (hopefully soon), he’ll spend the rest of his life getting paid millions for books and $200,000 a pop for speeches to the business groups he hates so much.
Bill and Hillary Clinton hate the rich. They left the White House broke and owing millions in legal fees. After quickly capitalizing with books, speeches and foundations they turned zero into an $80,000,000 fortune in a few short years. I’ve never heard of a job like that. I’m not referring to being President. I’m referring to hating the rich. It seems to magically make you…filthy rich.
Al Gore is far richer than his old boss Bill Clinton. Gore the bore is worth about one billion dollars from his TV network, documentaries and stock options. All of that wealth is based on disliking the rich, and trying to tax them to death in order to save the world from global warming. But Gore uses more energy on one trip in his private jet than all of us do in a decade of driving. And Al’s 20,000 square foot mansion uses more electricity in a year than most of us pay for rent in a decade. And, don’t forget Gore started out the privileged son of a U.S. Senator.
Or take New York’s disgraced ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer. The great anti-business, anti-Wall Street crusader never bothered to disclose that his daddy owns half the buildings on Manhattan’s Fifth Ave. I’ve never owned one building in my life, yet I fight for capitalism every day. I am a capitalist evangelist. Yet someone whose daddy practically owns the world’s most exclusive avenue takes great pleasure in putting self-made rich men in prison. Do you see the irony there? Do you see the pattern?
These people are hypocrites of the highest order. They are angry and guilty for having never earned a dime of their own fortunes. By dumb luck they were dropped down the right chimney, lucky sperm club members who had everything handed to them.
So, they hate self-made rich people. Self-made men and women remind them of what they are not. They remind them of the wealth they never earned. Remind them of the deep-seated guilt they feel every day of their lives. Remind them, but for the grace of God, they could (and probably would) be riding a bus in the Bronx, headed to a blue collar job.
That’s why leftist politicians (and lawyers, media and the Hollywood elite) hate the self-made rich so much. Because they never earned their own money- and they know it.
I figured it out 30 years ago in college. I was Obama’s classmate at Columbia University, Class of ’83, a blue-collar, middle class, S.O.B. (son of a butcher) surrounded by filthy-rich, spoiled brats. Almost all my classmates were sons and daughters of privilege. They went to the fanciest prep schools, vacationed in Europe, lived in mansions on leafy streets in legendary towns from Great Neck to Sutton Place to Beverly Hills. Yet they all hated the rich. They wanted to bring down capitalism.
“Woe is me.” They were pitiful and pathetic in their white guilt. Their act to make believe they weren’t the luckiest, most spoiled, and privileged bunch in the world made me ill.
Nothing has changed in 30 years. The rich kids I met at Columbia hated the rich because they were embarrassed by the tens or hundreds of millions they had without deserving or earning it. Today they are the mainstream media, the leftist D.C politicians, and the donors that support them.
They still hate the rich. They just never disclose to anyone how rich they were on the day they were born, how every door has been opened, how everything has been handed to them their entire lives, and how every failure has been papered over with mommy and daddy’s money.
That’s the secret. Show me a self-made man or woman and I’ll show you a fiscal conservative. I'll show you someone that is proud of their success and feels they deserve to keep more of their own money.
But show me a leftist politician who hates the rich, and 95% of the time I'll show you spoiled brats who inherited their wealth, power and connections.
And the other 5% of leftists (like the Obama's and Clintons) got filthy rich by attacking the rich. That turns out to be a very lucrative business.
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Some conservatives believe that other conservatives, on talk radio and Fox News Channel, are damaging the cause of conservatism by dishonestly overstating their case against President Obama to increase their ratings and profits.
More reasonable Republican politicians, they argue, would like to cooperate with Obama on bipartisan solutions but don't have the power to resist these extremists with the megaphones and so have buckled in lock step to their demands and become the party of "no" and the purveyors of gridlock.
The problem is that the presuppositions underlying those allegations are wrong. There may be some exceptions, but the large majority of leading conservative voices are doing their very best to save this nation from Obama's policies, which they believe are leading to the nation's financial, cultural and national security ruin. Obama is a leftist, very extreme by historical standards. To compromise with his positions would not be in the best interest of the nation but would advance the cause of leftism, so any pressure conservatives can bring to bear on Republican politicians to strongly oppose his agenda is laudable.
I can't conceive of too many situations in which splitting the difference with Obama has advanced or would advance the cause of conservatism or constitutional liberty. We wouldn't reduce our debt, for example, by agreeing to reduce the levels of increases in spending. We couldn't improve the quality, cost and availability of health care by agreeing to more government intervention when we believe in free market solutions. We couldn't prudently agree to a half-measure stimulus package when we believe stimulus spending not only doesn't stimulate the economy but does further increase the debt. We couldn't agree to some compromise reductions in our nuclear and conventional forces if we believe that even these lesser cuts would jeopardize our national security. We couldn't agree to meet Obama halfway on energy policy by signing on to policies that punish conventional energy only half as much and waste just half as many billions on quixotic green energy debacles.
We can get mired in a semantic argument over whether Obama is a card-carrying communist, a European socialist, an admirer of Hugo Chavez's and Daniel Ortega's or, as he says, a fierce advocate of the free market, but such quibbling is more misleading than the labels themselves.
Perhaps Obama doesn't technically favor ushering in Karl Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" en route to the "withering away of the state" and the promised utopia. But the issue isn't whether Obama subscribes to this or that brand of socialism -- Marxism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Leninism, democratic socialism or whatever. The point is that he's a radical leftist who subscribes to the radical leftist worldview, and many of us believe that if left unchecked, he would go much further than he's gone to undermine our Constitution and our freedom tradition. Considering the degree to which he has thwarted and circumvented the Constitution and the rule of law -- and otherwise abused his executive authority during his first term -- despite facing re-election in 2012, there is no telling how radical he might become with four more years in lame duck status.
I do think a strong case can be made that he has Marxist leanings and thus believe the term is warranted as a general descriptor. For 20 years, he belonged to a church that emphasized race and materialism more than it did Christian theology. He appointed radical czars, some of whom self-identify as Marxists, and others support Chavez's track record in oppressing media freedom. He constantly demonizes the "wealthy," business and "excess profits." He obsesses over redistributing wealth. He seems to subscribe to the Marxist theory of surplus value, believing labor never receives its fair share and often abusing his executive authority to remedy that perceived injustice. He is in favor of ever-increasing government control of business and industry -- not just health care -- and has a manifest distrust of the market.
Call him what you want, but don't tell me he isn't an extreme leftist by American standards. He might be a moderate in Europe, but not here.
If not for strong conservative voices opposing his radical agenda, he would have gone much further: larger and more stimuli, much greater deficits and debt, even higher percentages of people on the welfare rolls and not paying income taxes, an even more lawless Justice Department, a single-payer health care system, the consummation of the war on conventional energy and further wasteful green energy experiments, a more progressive income tax code, a possible value-added tax, more liberal activist judges, greater unilateral disarmament, further relaxation of border control, more government control over business -- and more.
Thank God for conservative talkers and other voices on the right who aren't deterred from doing what is right for fear of being called extremists themselves.
SOURCE
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Myths About Inequality
Because they do not seem to have any real solutions to real problems, the leftwing in this country has become fixated on a non-problem: inequality. In the process, people who harp on this idea often get their facts wrong. The following is my attempt to set the record straight.
Myth: Those at the bottom are worse off because the rich are better off.
"The rich are sucking up all the income," said Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs on Morning Joe. Surveying the past two decades, Brian Wesbury gives this answer:
Yes the top 1% saw its share of that income rise from 8.5% to 16.9%. And, yes, the bottom 50% saw its share fall from 17.7% to 13.5%, but that smaller share in 2009 was $1.05 trillion, a 265% increase… In other words, it is true that incomes at the top have risen faster than average incomes, but it is not true that any group has been made worse off. Incomes and living standards for all Americans, including those in lower-income brackets, are up. At the same time, tax burdens for those in lower-income groups have fallen substantially.
Myth: The rich are not paying their fair share of taxes.
In fact, higher income taxpayers pay a considerably larger share of the tax burden than their share of personal income (see the chart here):
* The top 1% of the income distribution earns 18% of personal income, but pays 27% of total federal tax liabilities.
* The top 10% earns 31% of the income, but pays 44% of the taxes.
* By contrast, the bottom 60% of the population receives 25% of the income, but pays only 14% of the taxes.
Myth: The income of the rich has been rising relative to everyone else.
In fact, a large part of the apparent growth in income inequality is simply the result of differences in the way Americans pay taxes. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Phil Gramm and Steve McMillan explain it this way:
In 1986, before the top marginal tax rate was reduced to 28% from 50%, half of all businesses in America were organized as C-Corps and taxed as corporations. By 2007, only 21% of businesses in America were taxed as corporations and 79% were organized as pass-through entities, with four million S-Corps and three million partnerships filing taxes as individuals.
Because of those changes, over the past 20 years the share of income of the top 1% of taxpayers coming from S-corporations tripled. Similarly, lowering the rate on capital gains encouraged taxpayers to realize gains and pay taxes on them. The lower rates on dividend income encouraged companies to pay dividends to individuals instead of keeping the funds as corporate retained earnings. Overall:
If the share of income coming from businesses, capital gains and dividends had remained at the levels before the tax rate changes of 1986, 1997 and 2003 respectively, the income of top 1% filers would have been 31% lower in 2007.
Myth: The U.S. tax system is less progressive than the tax systems of other countries.
In fact, the United States has the most progressive tax system of all developed countries. According to the most recent report from the OECD, the United States "collects the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population." As Gramm and McMillin explain:
When the U.S. collects 16.1% of GDP in income taxes, the top 10% of taxpayers pay 7.3% and the other 90% pick up 8.9%.
In France, however, they collect 24.3% of GDP in income taxes with the top 10% paying 6.8% and the rest paying a whopping 17.5% of GDP. Sweden collects its 28.5% of GDP through income taxes by tapping the top 10% for 7.6%, but the other 90% get hit for a back-breaking 20.9% of GDP.
If the U.S. spent and taxed like France and Sweden, it would hardly affect the top 10%, who would pay about what they pay now, but the bottom 90% would see their taxes double.
Myth: Income is the best measure of well-being.
Many wealthy people live modest lives. And many low-income families take advantage of anti-poverty programs that furnish them with housing, Food Stamps and medical care. Surely the best measure of well-being is not what people earn, but what they consume. As it turns out, there has been very little change in inequality of consumption over the past 25 years. As Diana Furthgott-Roth explains:
Government data on individual spending patterns show that the ratio of spending between the top and bottom 20 percent of the income distribution, measured on a per person basis, was essentially unchanged between 1985 and 2010. In 1985 people in the top quintile had spending that was 2.5 times that of people in the bottom quintile. By 2010, this ratio was 2.4.
SOURCE
****************************
Why are All the Leftist Politicians Who Hate the Rich…So Filthy Rich?
Have you ever noticed how almost all the leftist politicians who hate and want to punish the rich with draconian tax increases…are filthy rich themselves? Confusing, isn’t it?
Actually, once you know the truth it's really quite easy to understand.
Take France’s new Socialist President Francois Holland. He never stops talking about his dislike and disgust for the rich. He is almost more obsessed with hate for the rich than Obama is. Yet it turns out Holland is…drumroll please…filthy rich himself.
That’s right. Socialist Holland owns not one, not two, but three homes in Cannes on the French Riviera. Unbelievable.
In America let’s think of the biggest haters of the rich. Obama is now filthy rich. He has been since selling his autobiography after getting elected to the U.S. Senate, and buying a $2,000,000 Chicago home (with help from a convicted felon). Once Obama leaves the White House (hopefully soon), he’ll spend the rest of his life getting paid millions for books and $200,000 a pop for speeches to the business groups he hates so much.
Bill and Hillary Clinton hate the rich. They left the White House broke and owing millions in legal fees. After quickly capitalizing with books, speeches and foundations they turned zero into an $80,000,000 fortune in a few short years. I’ve never heard of a job like that. I’m not referring to being President. I’m referring to hating the rich. It seems to magically make you…filthy rich.
Al Gore is far richer than his old boss Bill Clinton. Gore the bore is worth about one billion dollars from his TV network, documentaries and stock options. All of that wealth is based on disliking the rich, and trying to tax them to death in order to save the world from global warming. But Gore uses more energy on one trip in his private jet than all of us do in a decade of driving. And Al’s 20,000 square foot mansion uses more electricity in a year than most of us pay for rent in a decade. And, don’t forget Gore started out the privileged son of a U.S. Senator.
Or take New York’s disgraced ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer. The great anti-business, anti-Wall Street crusader never bothered to disclose that his daddy owns half the buildings on Manhattan’s Fifth Ave. I’ve never owned one building in my life, yet I fight for capitalism every day. I am a capitalist evangelist. Yet someone whose daddy practically owns the world’s most exclusive avenue takes great pleasure in putting self-made rich men in prison. Do you see the irony there? Do you see the pattern?
These people are hypocrites of the highest order. They are angry and guilty for having never earned a dime of their own fortunes. By dumb luck they were dropped down the right chimney, lucky sperm club members who had everything handed to them.
So, they hate self-made rich people. Self-made men and women remind them of what they are not. They remind them of the wealth they never earned. Remind them of the deep-seated guilt they feel every day of their lives. Remind them, but for the grace of God, they could (and probably would) be riding a bus in the Bronx, headed to a blue collar job.
That’s why leftist politicians (and lawyers, media and the Hollywood elite) hate the self-made rich so much. Because they never earned their own money- and they know it.
I figured it out 30 years ago in college. I was Obama’s classmate at Columbia University, Class of ’83, a blue-collar, middle class, S.O.B. (son of a butcher) surrounded by filthy-rich, spoiled brats. Almost all my classmates were sons and daughters of privilege. They went to the fanciest prep schools, vacationed in Europe, lived in mansions on leafy streets in legendary towns from Great Neck to Sutton Place to Beverly Hills. Yet they all hated the rich. They wanted to bring down capitalism.
“Woe is me.” They were pitiful and pathetic in their white guilt. Their act to make believe they weren’t the luckiest, most spoiled, and privileged bunch in the world made me ill.
Nothing has changed in 30 years. The rich kids I met at Columbia hated the rich because they were embarrassed by the tens or hundreds of millions they had without deserving or earning it. Today they are the mainstream media, the leftist D.C politicians, and the donors that support them.
They still hate the rich. They just never disclose to anyone how rich they were on the day they were born, how every door has been opened, how everything has been handed to them their entire lives, and how every failure has been papered over with mommy and daddy’s money.
That’s the secret. Show me a self-made man or woman and I’ll show you a fiscal conservative. I'll show you someone that is proud of their success and feels they deserve to keep more of their own money.
But show me a leftist politician who hates the rich, and 95% of the time I'll show you spoiled brats who inherited their wealth, power and connections.
And the other 5% of leftists (like the Obama's and Clintons) got filthy rich by attacking the rich. That turns out to be a very lucrative business.
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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