On some level, then, the president plainly agrees with critics of Obamacare, this page included, that the law needs to be rewritten: He and his administration keep rewriting its major components — remember the mandate that sizable employers offer coverage in 2014? — as practicalities and politics demand.
But in this country we don't change bad laws by presidential fiat. We change them by having Congress rewrite them or by starting from scratch. Obama doesn't want to reopen this law for fear that Republicans and some Democrats will substantially rewrite it. But that's what has to happen.
We understand why the president and leaders of his party want to rescue whatever they can of Obamacare. On their watch, official Washington has blown the launch of a new entitlement program ... under the schedule they alone set in early 2010.
What we don't understand is their reluctance to give that failure more than lip service. Many of the Americans who heard their president say Thursday that "we fumbled the rollout of this health care law" would have been pleased to hear him add: So we're admitting it. This law is a bust. We're starting over.
Epic failure of the development and launch of the federal exchange website? Check
Modifications to the stipulations of the law by whim of the executive? (Delaying the employer mandat until after 2014 midterms) Check
Handouts to favored businesses, favored constituencies? Check
Fraudulent statements about the nature of the new law? ("If you like your plan you can keep it. Period.") Check
Fraudulent statements about the nature of the law's financing. (It's a mandate! No, wait, it's a tax!) Check
Fraudulent statements about the cost of the law globally as well as individually? (Remember the mythical $2500 individual savings, and the mythical deficit reduction?) Check
Lies in testimony to Congress from those in charge? Check
The main question at this point is whether this was all intentional. Is this an intentional chaos designed to create a demand for single payer? It wouldn't surprise me in the least. One thing may work against that strategy: failure of the government on this scale should raise serious doubts on that front also.
Just before taking on her position as President Obama's National Security Advisor, current UN Ambassador Susan Rice surfaced to interject her expert opinion regarding yet another international crisis. She called on all of her expertise in international relations, foreign affairs, and national security to tell us that Edward Snowden, the man who told us all that the NSA says all our data are belong to them, has not damaged national security.
She said it's too soon to judge whether there will be any long-term
serious repercussions from the intelligence leaks by the former National
Security Agency contractor who fled to Hong Kong and then Russia after
seizing documents disclosing secret U.S. surveillance programs in the
U.S. and overseas, which he has shared with The Guardian and Washington
Post newspapers.
"I don't think the diplomatic consequences, at least as they are foreseeable now, are that significant," she said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have called Snowden's leaks a serious
breach that damaged national security. Hagel said Thursday an assessment
of the damage is being done now
We now know exactly why Mr. Obama finds Ms. Rice so valuable. Just like the salesperson in a shady used car dealership, she's willing to make the sale by telling the customer, the "mark," just what the owner wants them to believe.
From the inimitable Mark Steyn, writing at National Review and discussing the IRS' appetite for doing things that decent, honorable, moral government servants ought to know they shouldn't:
If you don’t instinctively know it’s wrong to stay in $3,500-a-night
hotel rooms at public expense, a revised
conference-accommodations-guidelines manual isn’t going to fix the real
problem.
So we know the IRS is corrupt. What happens then when an
ambitious government understands it can yoke that corruption to its
political needs? What’s striking as the revelations multiply and
metastasize is that at no point does any IRS official appear to have
raised objections. [emphasis mine] If any of them understood that what they were doing
was wrong, they kept it to themselves. When Nixon tried to sic the IRS
on a few powerful political enemies, the IRS told him to take a hike.
When Obama’s courtiers tried to sic the IRS on thousands of ordinary
American citizens, the agency went along, and very enthusiastically.
This is a scale of depravity hitherto unknown to the tax authorities of
the United States, and for that reason alone they should be disarmed and
disbanded — and rebuilt from scratch with far more circumscribed
powers.
I use a phrase in my office, with my employees, and at home, with my children, that applies here, in spades: "When in doubt, do the right thing." As Mr. Steyn rightly points out, it's striking that it took three years for the harassment policies to come to light, that nobody stepped forward sooner. "When in doubt, do the right thing." I rarely expect and less-rarely see such character from politicians. But the government employees of the IRS do not work for politicians, they work, or rather they should work, for all of the American people. All of 'em. And when politicians, for whom re-election and ideological victory are all-consuming, direct you to do things you know are wrong, shouldn't one of these individuals have had the ... well ... the balls to stand up and put a stop to it? Just one stand-up guy, one Gary Cooper? Anyone?
NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, dubbed by the Wall Street Journal's clever James Taranto as "the worst writer in the English language" (a good example found here), is a China-phile of some repute. He stated at one point that China is better governed than America primarily because he saw the Democrats' statist approaches to problems as the only solutions, not realizing that Republicans wouldn't engage in negotiations that would merely dilute the badness, and famously wished before qualifying caveats that we could be "China for a day" so that all-powerful, all-knowing leaders could just choose and implement the right solutions and make all our troubles disappear.
Well, with the Olympics upon us, Yahoo! has a slideshow of what's happened to all of those spectacular Beijing Olympic venues in just four short years. Go ahead and see what infrastructure spending for propaganda purposes looks like. It's perhaps that a baseball venue in China would simply disappear, but rowing, kayaking, cycling, and volleyball are still Olympic sports.
For those of you in need of a refresher course, here's a link to a nice summary of the evolution of the American Flag. Learned a few things myself, actually. For instance,
36-Star American Flag - 1865 to 1867
One star was added to the flag for the admission of Nevada
3 months before the flag became official, a 36-star flag was used to cushion President Lincoln's head the evening of his assassination at Ford's Theatre
"The Lincoln Flag" is currently on display at the Columns Museum of the Pike County Historical Society in Milford, PA
Andrew Johnson was the only president to serve under this flag
Fascinating stuff. Enjoy your hotdogs, burgers and beer, and wear some red-white-and-blue today.
J. E. Dyer at Hot Air, writing lucidly on the (mistaken) belief in the infallibility of government by many with an almost religious fervor. He dubs this Govfall, the religion of government infallibility. The proximate cause, the appeals court ruling on the EPA's right to regulate your every breath.
The ruling describes the EPA’s opinion on global warming and greenhouse gases as “unambiguously correct” – which is a deeply silly formulation for characterizing any scientific theory, but would also have been considered, by our Founders and virtually all federal jurists up until the last 20-30 years, as comprehensively invalid language for any kind of judicial ruling. Judges aren’t competent to make decisions for the public on this matter. Their competence is in interpreting the law, not certifying scientific conclusions...
If we cannot behave, in our economic lives, as if we think catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is a much-falsified theory waiting for some solid proof, then we are not effectively free to think it. We are constrained to behave as if we don’t. That situation differs only by the jackbooted thugs at the door from the lifestyle of people under communist rule, in which you’re free to “think” whatever you want, as long as you say and do only government-approved things, and never speak about or live by your own beliefs.
Sometime in the last century, the weight of sentiment among those who aspire to government jobs, in any role in any of the branches, tilted toward the religion of Govfall. It has become unendurable to them to think of the people out here doing things they disapprove of, and they have diligently enlarged the purview of government to encompass ruling on ideas and theories – always invoking the supposed disasters and wrongs that government power is either averting or redressing...
Just so. The passage of the ACA was just another example of this, and unfortunately for the liberty of 320 million Americans it was upheld (largely) by the Supreme Court today. I'll have more about that later.
Here's Brian Williams informing you about the gunwalking program Fast & Furious, about which, if you had previously been relying on Mr. Williams to inform you, you might not have been aware it existed.
So that's it. A little political dustup in Washington between those evil racist partisan Republicans and the noble African American Attorney General Eric Holder. Just another example of our "broken politics.
Not exactly. Here's Bill Whittle, in 7 pithy minutes, giving you the full story. "A few processes under the radar" indeed.
John Hinderaker at Powerline Blog documents three instances in which Mr. Holder's testimony to Rep. Issa's committee has been, ahem, less than truthful. Two of the items were so obviously false retractions were required.
But heck, we don't even have to go to a full-throated evil racist conservative to get the information out. America's news source The Daily Show and Jon Stewart can do the job.
Curious, I thought. Puzzling even. How could that be, when every day we're hearing about the steadily rising national debt? So I had a look at the U.S. National Debt Clock. Sure enough, click on it every two seconds and America's debt notches upward about $100,000. It's now less than 300 billion short of $16 trillion. Recall that just about a year ago there was a showdown over raising the debt ceiling above the statutory limit (at the time) of $14.294 trillion. Last time I checked, $16 trillion was nearly $2 trillion more than $14.294 trillion. So I needed more information. And there, in the story itself, I found the answer.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Everyone knows America has too much debt. What they don’t know is that things are getting better, not worse.
Little by little, our economy is reducing its debt burden, slowly repairing the damage caused by 10, 20 or 30 years of excess.
If you want to know why economic growth has been so tepid, here’s your answer. Four years after the storm hit, the economy is still deleveraging. And it’s very hard for any economy to grow when everyone is focused on increasing their savings.
Total domestic — public and private — debt as a share of the economy has declined for 12 quarters in a row after surging over the previous decade.
The rapid rise in federal debt over the past four years has distracted us from the big picture. The level of public debt is indeed worrisome, but it’s not as big a worry as the economy’s total level of debt — public and private...
As much as we hear politicians, pundits, tea-party patriots and the Congressional Budget Office obsessing about government debt, it was excessive private debt — not public debt — that caused the 2008 financial meltdown. And it was private debt — some of it since transferred to the public — that lies behind the current European debt crisis. (Greece is unique in having a public sector that ran up spending while its private sector is rather conservative.)
And then I took a look at the author of this MarketWatch story, and suddenly it all made sense. It's Rex Nutting, the journalist who fed the Obama campaign the punch line that Mr. Obama has really been the stingiest of presidents in terms of growth of government spending. He conveniently ignored the fact that the 2009 budget was held for Mr. Obama to sign by the Democrat-controlled congress, ignored that the non-stimulating 'stimulus' was wholly his and his alone, and ignoring the fact that the burst in spending was to be temporary with TARP and the 'stimulus' and should have returned to lower levels in 2010 and 2011 but didn't. Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute took apart Mr. Nutting's central thesis without even digging in to the politics of the budgets, and there were a host of other validcritiques.
So Mr. Nutting is at it again. It was all about the headline. "U.S. DEBT LOWER!!!" Huzzah! Huzzah! Presto! The Obama campaign, almost miraculously, has a new talking point to throw at the less-informed. But it's private debt - the debt held by private individuals in the private economy - that's dropping. Mr. Nutting buries the data 16 paragraphs into the story.
In the U.S., household debt has now fallen to 84% of GDP from a peak of 98%. Nonfinancial corporate debt has fallen to 77% from a peak of 83%. Financial sector debt has plunged from 123% of GDP to 89%. Public debt has risen to 89% from 56% [of GDP].
The U.S. government debt keeps climbing rapidly, and will soon approach once again a statutory debt ceiling. Private debt, not so much. Well, when people feel economically threatened they retrench - pay down debt, save, spend less. Why would they be economically threatened. Stagnant jobs, falling home equity, falling median income, soaring government debt, future entitlement debt bombs, threats of higher taxes, and continued drunken-sailor spending by our elected officials in Washington. Not to mention soaring energy costs, an anti-business NLRB, and a regulatory regime intent on stepping on the neck of business growth.
So no, although I'm certain that Mr. Nutting's latest venture will be quoted by administration flacks as evidence of the boss's frugality, Mr. Obama doesn't get credit for falling "total" U.S. debt, except to the extent that the stagnant, low growth economy he has engineered is making people worried enough to reign in their personal debt.
"Democracy died tonight...the end of the USA as we know it." No, actually. Democracy died when leftists/progressives threw a temper tantrum and fled Wisconsin rather than allow Governor Walker's reforms to be passed by the democratically elected legislature and signed into law by the democratically elected governor. And then, having lost that irrational, tantrum-fueled battle, they decided to try to undo the legal actions of duly-elected representatives by packing the court with a sympathetic jurist ... and failed. Then having lost the chance to have a court overturn the laws, they decided to continue the tantrum and stage recall elections, basically over a policy disagreement ... and failed. This is not the end of the USA. We would have been much closer to "the end of the USA as we know it" had they been successful with any of these irrational tantrums. The way to settle policy differences is by winning a regularly scheduled election. The problem with that approach is apparent, what with the overwhelming win by the governor due to the success of his reforms, turning a $3.6 billion deficit into a surplus without a tax increases or service cuts.
"We just got outspent $34 million to $4 million dollars." What, we're not counting outside expenditures from, say, the unions, who poured as much as $30 million into the effort? I'm sure this guy was disappointed in Mr. Obama outspending John McCain in 2008 too.
"If the people you see here behind me can't get it done, it's done."
Buddy, it's done. Trust me, or just read the returns yourself. And stop wallowing in self-pity and despair. The "end of the USA as we know it" won't come from democratically-run elections going against you. Instead, it'll come when the losers of such elections take to the streets to overturn them.
From The Cato Institute's Michael Tanner, in the pages of the NY Post. He writes it from a "why should anyone trust the government" angle, but if you just focus on Obama's government healthcare takeover and want to convince yourself that that was a colossal and expensive mistake, well, read on.
For example, a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows family premiums increasing by a whopping 9% this year, three times more than the previous year’s increase. The average family policy now costs more than $15,000 per year. Not only has ObamaCare failed to slow premium growth, but at least 2 percentage points of that increase is directly attributable to the health-care law’s provisions.
ObamaCare is also already reducing our health-insurance choices. The new law has already driven a number of insurance companies out of the market, meaning there will be less competition and fewer choices. Moreover, the new law has already cut back on flexible-spending accounts used by some 30 million workers, slashing permissible contributions in half and limiting what account funds can be used to pay for. And just released regulations from HHS may well eliminate most health savings accounts, effecting another 10 million workers and their families. And, of course, once the individual mandate kicks in, in 2014, assuming its not struck down by the Supreme Court, all of us will have to purchase a government-designed insurance plan, even if it is more expensive or contains benefits that we don’t want.
We also know that ObamaCare is going to cost us more in debt and taxes. A new study from the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the subsidies in the bill will add $1.36 trillion to the national debt over the first seven years after the bill is fully implemented. And at a time when 47% of Americans already pay no income tax, the bill’s tax credits will remove as many as 8.1 million more Americans from the tax rolls.
And we know that the health-care law will slash payments to physicians and hospitals, meaning it will be more difficult for us to find and see a physician. The government’s own actuaries estimate that these payment cuts could force as many as 15% of hospitals to close.
Let's see. Fewer doctors and hospitals (reduced access) - check. A huge increase in the national debt - check. Reduced freedom of choice in health care insurance options - check. Increasing levels of income redistribution - check. Increased costs, more even than the previous rate of increase, for those reduced options and access - check.
[T]he Kaiser Family Foundation released its October tracking poll and found that only 34% of respondents have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act, down from 41% in September. Notably, the decline was due to losing Democratic supporters, who dropped to 52% support from 65% month to month. Meanwhile, 51% of the public is opposed to the vast new government health-care entitlement, up from a prior 2011 average of 45%.
I might remind Mr. Stern that China's 5 year plan is just that, a "plan." Remember that Mr. Obama also had a "plan" for a boatload of "green jobs." How's that workin' out for you?
David Frum, ostensibly a Republican, asks in New York Magazine "When did the GOP lose touch with reality?" Judging by his composition it's a fair question to turn back on the inquisitor.
He starts out by trying to emphasize his Republican street cred.
I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration.
Believes in free markets? Check. Low Taxes? Check. "Reasonable" regulation. Well, one man's reasonble is another man's unreasonable. Let's just file this one under "less regulation than Mr. Obama wants" and move on. Limited government? Check. Voted for McCain in '08? Given the other choice you'd kind of have to, so check. Criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration? Haven't we all, Mr. Frum.
So it's all good. Until we hit the next paragraph.
America desperately needs a responsible and compassionate alternative to the Obama administration’s path of bigger government at higher cost. And yet: This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners.
Let's take these one at a time, and see how the square with his assertions of his limited government/low tax/free market declarations. First up: "the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate." The GOP did nothing of the kind. What the GOP did do was to insist on substantial budget cuts (limited government) and no tax increases (low tax) in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, wanted a blank check. He was looking for a way to avoid any spending cuts while raising taxes on the upper earners - which analyses have shown is not enough to pay for such spending anyway, and which Mr. Obama himself admitted is the wrong medicine in a sluggish economy.
Next we have this: "In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed." Okay, I think we're in agreement about the economy. Where your reality testing is suspect, Mr. Frum, is in what follows that generally supportable statement. Republican politicians have never demanded "massive budget cuts," only a reduction in the growth of future spending. You've fallen into the baseline budgeting trap. "Massive cuts" to beltway insiders and liberal journalists means decreasing the rate of growth of government spending from 10% to 4%. To those of us in the real world that's a 4% increase in spending that would be a lot more affordable and reasonable than 10%.
I'm also concerned that you think Republicans "shrug off concerns of the unemployed". I suspect you are referring to those politicians resisting the call to provide endlessly flowing unemployment benefits. Already they've been extended to nearly 2 years, and Republicans are cruel to want to stop them there? Studies show that extending unemployment benefits extends unemployment. Or perhaps you're referring to the Republicans' insistance that Democrats who want this live by their "pay-go" standard and cut spending elsewhere to fund it. Or maybe you're living in pure fantasy land, and you believe, as apparently the president does, that extending unemployment benefits "creates jobs." Regardless, this is not "shrugging off concerns of the unemployed," and putting it that way is pure demagoguery of the sort I'd expect from Sen. Harry Reid, among others.
Let's move to your final preposterous assertion in that section, that Republicans simply want "more tax cuts for the very highest earners." Aside from presidential candidates and their proposals for various flat, flatter, and flattest tax reforms (which would help the struggling private economy, many believe), is there anyone in Congress who has proposed cutting only the top marginal rate? By the way, if you're going to suggest that preventing the rates from rising with expiration of the Bush cuts is a cut in marginal rates then you misunderstand the concept. That is preventing an increase, not pushing for a cut. Let's assume you really are for "low taxes," as you state. Then wouldn't blocking a tax increase be desireable?
But there are more puzzling assertions in this essay.
It was not so long ago that Texas governor Bush denounced attempts to cut the earned-income tax credit as “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.” By 2011, Republican commentators were noisily complaining that the poorer half of society are “lucky duckies” because the EITC offsets their federal tax obligations—or because the recession had left them with such meager incomes that they had no tax to pay in the first place. In 2000, candidate Bush routinely invoked “churches, synagogues, and mosques.” By 2010, prominent Republicans were denouncing the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan as an outrageous insult. In 2003, President Bush and a Republican majority in Congress enacted a new prescription-drug program in Medicare. By 2011, all but four Republicans in the House and five in the Senate were voting to withdraw the Medicare guarantee from everybody under age 55.
I'll have to move swiftly though this miasma, in order not to bore the readers, but this is nonsense.
The push to reform Medicare (by making it a grant program to buy insurance rather than a government provided insurance benefit) shows allegiance to private enterprise, to individual freedom of choice, but mostly to the principle of fixing future problems before they are unfixable. Medicare's future unfunded liability is nearly $100 Trillion. That's Trillion, with a T. Those under 55 are ten years away from qualifying for Medicare. Ten years.
The mosque in "lower Manhattan" was to be 2 blocks from Ground Zero of the 9-11 attacks, an understandably sensitive location. Rather than an example of Americans being insensitive to Muslim sensibilities, it is instead an example of Muslims being insensitive to non-Muslim sensibilities.
And Democrats (among others) have now so bastardized and warped the tax code that half of Americans pay no federal income tax. That's not good for America, and in particular it's not good, for those who want a growing and vibrant economy, to stifle those who would provide jobs and economic growth with a steadily heavier burden of taxation. You know what's at the end of the road of steadily more progressive taxation, don't you?
So Mr. Frum, what we have here is a non sequitur. You assert that you want limited governnment, less regulation, low taxes and that you oppose Mr. Obama's policies. Your objections show us, however, that you don't really want those things. You ask in this article whether you're crazy. You're not. You are, however, deluding yourself if you think that Republicans should and will support Democrat, or even Democrat-lite policies of centralized control, bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation and balkanization, all of which stifle economic growth and freedom.
The question isn't "when did the GOP lose touch with reality?" The question, Mr. Frum, is when did you become a Democrat?
*no time now, I hope to be adding some links later for reference.
11/21/11 2020: A ha! I got the links added - and a few grammatical corrections as well.
Newsbusters' Noel Sheppard notices MSNBC's Martin Bashir calling on Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to either raise taxes on the "wealthiest" Americans or resign. That's ridiculous enough, but I noticed another problem or two. Martin Bashir is, as he proves in the transcript, both economically and politically ignorant. First economics:
So here’s a message to the House leadership, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Mr. Cantor. 68 percent of Americans and 68 percent of all millionaires believe that it’s time to raise taxes on the wealthiest individuals so that this nation’s economy can start moving again.
"Raise taxes on the wealthiest individuals so that this nation's economy can start moving again?" And that's going to jump start the economy and spur hiring how? Do I need to cite the long list of economists, Republicans, and yes, Democrats who have chimed in that it's not a good idea to raise taxes in a down economy? I could start with the President himself.
But that's only the warm-up act. Referring to Congress, Mr. Bashir asks:
But honestly, what have they done? What have they done to address the persistently high level of unemployment? What have they done to reduce the vast gulf between the haves and the have-nots in America.
Is that the job of Congress? To "reduce the vast gulf between the haves and the have-nots in America?" Can anyone tell me where the Constitution authorizes the Legislative branch to intervene in that way? Heck, does the Constitution authorize any branch of government to equalize economic results among the people?
I'm not going to belabor the point. It's simply a shame that he's in a position to influence the debate on TV.
President Obama’s re-election campaign argues in a memo set to be released this morning that Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — the two frontrunners for the Republican nomination — have “embraced policies that the American people oppose” on Social Security and immigration.
And in the case of health care reform, the polls were roughly 55-35 against just at the time it was passed and signed - "against the will of the American people," as it were. And it continues to be unpopular.
There are, of course, other examples. But logical consistency has never been Mr. Obama's strong suit.
Ed Morrissey shows that even on Social Security and Immigration Mr. Obama is out of the mainstream himself.
From, of all places, an Associated Press Fact Check by Stephen Ohlemacher, discussing whether "millionaires and billionaires" really do pay less in taxes than secretaries. They start by quoting Mr. Obama who, to be fair, is only parroting the class warfare nonsense that Democratic politicians have been spouting since the advent of the late Ted Kennedy. (His older brother Jack didn't lead him down this particular path.)
"Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," Obama said Monday. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that."
Now from the AP:
The data tells a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.
There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That, however, was less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.
The two questions that remain? One, someone explain to me again what "paying your fair share" really means, in dollars and cents. Two, how can Democratic politicians continually spout nonsense like this?
Mr. Obama says "It's hard to argue against that." Well, it would be hard to argue against if it were true.
9/20/11 1610: Oops...link to AP fact check added. My bad.
The U.S. Postal Service posted a net loss of $3.1 billion in its third quarter and warned again it would default on payments to the federal government if Congress did not step in.
Total mail volume for the quarter that ended June 30 fell to 39.8 billion pieces, a 2.6 percent drop from the same period a year earlier, as consumers turn to email and pay bills online.
The mail carrier, which does not get taxpayer funds, has struggled to overhaul its business as mail volumes fall. It has said personnel costs weigh heavily and is facing a massive retiree health benefit prepayment next month.
"We are experiencing a severe cash crisis and are unable to continue to maintain the aggressive prepayment schedule," Joseph Corbett, the agency's chief financial officer, said in a statement.
"Without changes in the law, the Postal Service will be unable to make the $5.5 billion mandated prepayment due in September."
Does the USPS want to survive? Well, then drop your personnel costs dramatically. Deliver mail only twice or thrice weekly, and cut your bloated carrier staff. And reform your pensions. Act like a private company - you know, one that doesn't get taxpayer funds - by going to defined contribution pensions and reforming the retiree health plan.
Technology changes everything. The Pony Express isn't still in business.
He didn't just say that, did he? The President doesn't like the choices the voters made emphatically in 2010? Maybe if he rounded up and imprisoned the dissidents.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air runs the "Obamateurism of the Day" feature (here's a link to a list of them), wherein our president's least presidential moves are chronicled. It's definitely worth a look each day. I have a feeling this one will actually make it as tomorrow's "OOTD".
Laura Ingraham juxtaposing Obama and Carter. Brilliant. Shhhh ... don't tell anyone, but do you think there might be a theme, some sort of underlying principle, that guides misguided Democratic policy choices?
Chris Matthews thinks the screeching kids in the back seat are now trying to drive the car. Don't tell him, but the problem is that the screeching kids have been driving since January 2007*, and the adults, realizing we're lost, are trying to claw their way back into the front seat and behind the wheel.
The heart of Mr. Obama's press conference today, via The Hill:
President Obama on Friday kept up the pressure on Republicans to agree to revenue increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, claiming 80 percent of the public supports Democrats' demand for tax increases.
"The American people are sold," Obama said. "The problem is members of Congress are dug in ideologically."
Throughout the press conference, Obama blasted Republicans for ignoring what he said is the will of the American people by rejecting tax increases that would balance out spending cuts in a debt package.
Let's leave aside the assertion that "the American people are sold" on increasing taxes. (They're not.) Why, particularly, do spending cuts need to be "balanced" by tax increases? There are three reasons I can imagine, and none of them have anything to do with what's "best" for the country.
because in the interest of "fairness" more money needs to be collected and distributed from those who have
because in the interest of "compromise" Mr. Obama expects Republicans to roll over and give him the tax increase his filibuster-proof Democratic Congress wouldn't give him, even with low GDP growth and high-unemployment
because by demagoguing Republicans into agreeing to raise taxes he hopes to turn them all into George H. W. "read my lips" Bush before the next election.
I think the first reason is the driving force, but the third, with the President already in full re-election lockdown, is definitely a major consideration. Funny, none of those reasons involve actually helping economy grow and create jobs. Or perhaps in his next press conference Mr. Obama could explain how raising taxes will do that.
The so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats, the "centrist" Democrats who are just so much more conservative than those fire-breathing liberals who lead the Democratic party (and for whom these Blue Dogs voted, I might add) are upset at Republicans over the debt-ceiling negotiations.
But this time around, moderate Democrats are starting to sour on the process, arguing that the intractability among Republican rank and file is threatening their support.
“I’ve been for cutting the deficit for a long time, that’s what the Blue Dog mantra is about — but not in a radical way and not in the way that harms the economy. These folks are hijacking the issue as a way that is very unfortunate, and they’re voting ideology versus what I think is in the best interest of the country,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), a member of the moderate Blue Dog Caucus.
You know, Representative Cardoz, (D-Calif.), maybe they're just voting for what they think is in the best interest of the country. You know, voting their conscience, as opposed to yours. But if you think it's better to sharply raise taxes on the job creators in America's private economy, in the middle of history's most-sluggish recovery and a stagnant job market, then by all means join with Mr. Obama and denigrate the intentions of the Republicans, and demagogue the issue in class warfare terms.
The Daily Caller, in the person of reporter Amanda Carey, gets it wrong in a story trumpeting the "offer" from President Obama to "put Medicare and Social Security cuts" on the negotiating table. That's the headline, at least. In the story she phrases it somewhat more eloquently, as "major changes to Social Security and Medicare."
The Obama administration, in seeking $4 trillion in spending cuts in a debt limit deal, has put major changes to Social Security and Medicare on the table if Republicans agree to increased tax revenues.
The offer caters to both sides in the debt limit negotiations and according to the Washington Post, President Obama will urge congressional leaders on Thursday to seize the opportunity to act. The compromise, however, still puts both Republicans and Democrats in tough spots.
Democrats have vowed to protect Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans still argue that tax increases are not realistic legislative proposals. If leadership from both parties agree to the Obama’s compromise, the next move will be to sell the plan to their respective bases and to members of Congress.
Ms. Carey, judging by her thumbnail photo that accompanies the story, is way too young and recently graduated from J school to understand why her formulation in the third paragraph is so inaccurate, so I'll outline it for her here.
Republicans primary argument is not that "tax increases are not realistic legislative proposals," though indeed they are not. Their primary argument is that tax increases will take money from the private economy that is necessary for future economic growth. If your primary goal is job creation and a GDP growth then you don't siphon capital from the job creators. (If your goal is redistribution then fine, have at it.)
Finally, Mr. Obama is desperately seeking to be seen as the adult offering reasonable compromise between the sniping children in party leadership. He's not. If he were, we wouldn't have seen the harmful 'stimulus' outsourced to the Democratic leadership of Pelosi/Reid, we wouldn't have seen the moronic cash for clunkers program, we wouldn't have seen ObamaCare pushed through on a one party vote while a recovery was attempting to take hold, we wouldn't have seen no Democratic budget proposal for two years (other than Mr. Obama's - which was voted down 97-0 earlier this year), we wouldn't have seen the drilling moratorium and pushes for carbon taxes that would both increase the price of fossil fuels and siphon more money from the economy, and we wouldn't have seen repeated demands for "tax increases on the wealthy" and the ridiculous sniping over corporate jets. He still is looking for "increased tax revenue" despite previously admitting that increasing taxes in the midst of economic malaise is not helpful.
If Democrats wanted to solve the problem their "compromise" should consist of a) admission that our current tax structure is quite progressive already and that any tax rate increase for the foreseeable future is harmful, b) admission that both Medicare and Social Security need reform, not "cuts," and not demagoguery, and c) admission that ObamaCare was a bad idea that will only make matters worse both economically and in terms of personal freedom and choice. The country needs to make the safety net programs sustainable and promote economic growth, and not use them for political gain and redistribution.
By the way, Ms. Carey can be excused a bit, for she is young. NYT Columnist David Brooks, on the other hand, has no excuse. In this tantrum of a column he both misrepresents the position of the Republican opposition and then denigrates them, for good measure.
The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them...
"The legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities?" "A thousand impartial experts?" Surely, he must be joking. Mr. Brooks is referring to his tribe as "intellectual authorities," and being in agreement with him they are therefore "impartial." But Mr. Brooks, I think, is well aware that there are, of course, other tribes, other "intellectual authorities" equally "impartial" in the eyes of others.
7/7/11 1205: Ed Morrissey: it's not a revenue problem, its a spending and recession problem. So fix the spending and the recession - the revenue will follow.
Over at Legal Insurrection Michael Alan recognizes the signs. He embedded a video from Mary Katherine Ham that contains more evidence that "spreading the wealth around" is the real goal. I'll follow his lead and embed the video also.
Gee, and to think, you all could have found that here 5 days ago. And I don't think he's thinking just about removing corporate jet subsidies.
He has, in his unscripted moments, a thoroughly redistributionist soul.
Fast forward. With the 'stimulus' that cost the country over $800 billion dollars in deficit spending (which did not, incidentally, keep the unemployment level under 8%), combined with keeping that additional spending on into the future, combined with the trillion-dollar ten-year cost of ObamaCare, combined with annual deficits of $1.4 to 1.7 trillion and the failure to address the not-so-long term problems with funding Social Security and Medicare, combined with the demagoguing of "the rich," "oil companies," "business" (and, frankly, anyone who isn't a union member or a registered Democrat), let's see if you can guess what Mr. Obama wants out of the talks to raise the debt ceiling.
The key disagreement is over taxes. Democrats, including Obama, say a major deficit-reduction agreement must include tax increases or the elimination of tax breaks for big companies and wealthy individuals. Republicans are demanding huge cuts in government spending and insisting there be no tax increases.
Let's remember that, first, it is possible to see steadily decreasing deficits even without tax increases and "huge cuts" in spending, to use the phraseology of the AP report. Here's Cato's Dan Mitchell, and he'll inform you in this video about the "current services baseline" that puts the lie to those "huge cuts."
Second, remember Mr. Obama's tendency to look at the economy as a political tool for rewarding his supporters and punishing those who are not, a tendency which largely explains why he has failed to help it recover. He's been too busy rewarding the UAW and unionized Boeing employees, among others, and punishing non-unionized workers in red South Carolina, Boeing itself, and GM and Chrysler bond-holders. Who could possibly object to job-killing, economy-stifling tax increases if they're hitting the "right" people?
Who indeed. Mr. Obama doesn't just want the UAW to have a large stake in GM. He'd like his administration to have its own large stake in the entire U.S. economy, so that the wealth can best be "spread around." There is, after all, a point where "you've made enough money," and apparently he and the Democrats in Washington know just where that is.
The debt ceiling will need to go up, but taxes shouldn't, and spending cuts should be the focus of everyone in the room. If Mr. Obama wants tax increases, make him propose them for 2012. He won't do that, of course. There's an election later that year.
6/26/11 1515: Via The Corner, Sen. John Kyl lays it out.
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) says a deal to raise the debt ceiling will come down to whether or not President Obama abandons his “ideological bent” to raise taxes on the American people.
“The president has to make a decision,” Kyl said on Fox News Sunday. “Which is more important to him, solving this problem reducing spending somewhat or making sure that we raise taxes on the American economy? If that’s his ideological bent here and under all circumstances that’s what he is going to insist on, we’ve got a big problem.”
"Ideological bent," "redistributionist soul," whatever. The point here is that it's apparent that Mr. Obama has a belief that higher tax rates on the producers and job-creators in and of itself is good, regardless of the economic disincentives and contraction that might occur. I shouldn't have to point this out, but there is a name for someone with such an ideological bent.
At the end of the day, President Obama must decide how the country will proceed. “He’s got to make that choice,” Kyl said. “And the best choice, I think, is not doing anything to harm the economy.”
From the Wall Street Journal editorial page, discussing the 'hard choices' Mr. Obama made in reducing spending with his proposed budget.
The White House actually touts as tight-fisted a budget proposing a record $1.645 trillion deficit for fiscal 2011, due largely to a new surge in spending to 25.3% of GDP. That's more spending than in any year since 1945. Federal debt held by the public—the kind we have to pay back—will rise to 75.1% [of GDP] in 2012, which is the highest since 1951 and more than double what it was as recently as 2007. [chart at the link]
This $3.73 trillion budget does a Cee Lo Green ("Forget You," as cleaned up for the Grammys) to the voter mandate in November to control spending. It leaves every hard decision to the new House Republican majority. And it ignores almost entirely the recommendations of Mr. Obama's own deficit commission. No wonder the commission's Democratic co-chairman, Erskine Bowles, said Monday that this budget goes "nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare." And he's an ally.
How unserious is this budget? Although the White House trumpets $2.18 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, those savings are so far off in the magical "out years" that you can barely see them from here. More than 95% of the savings would happen after Mr. Obama's first term in the White House is over, and almost two-thirds of the promised deficit reduction would arrive after 2016. Pretending to cut deficits by pushing all real cuts into the future is Budget Flimflam 101.
Mr. Obama's budget put him in the position of back-bencher, not national leader. By letting the House Republican majority make all of the hard choices on programs and entitlements he and his minions in the media will be able to demagogue the 'cuts' and cruelty of the needed spending restraint. Well, back to what worked. He cut his teeth in politics by railing against the evil George Bush administration; why not rail some more against the evil Republican budget plan?
And don't give me these meaningless ten year totals, designed simply to make the sum total sound impressive. The out-years always change. There's no obligation on future congresses and future presidents to even use those projections as guidelines. And this budget has little if any spending reductions. The tax increases ("expiration of the Bush tax cuts" in liberal-speak) Mr. Obama is counting on for 2013 will probably be just as bad an idea then and won't pass a Republican House.
He's abdicating responsibility on spending restraint because, frankly, spending restraint is hard. Better just to vote "present" and let grown-ups make the hard choices. And then denounce them.
Newsweek magazine was on such a downward spiral that recently it sold - the entire national newsmagazine - for the princely sum of $1. We can argue over what was ultimately the cause of the magazine's decline - the growth of the internet and online publishing, a pathologically leftist bent, or simple intellectual inadequacy by those charged with making the publication worth reading (the writers and editors). Perhaps it was really a combination of all three, although it should be noted that some publications seem to be thriving. Here's a story by Andrew Romano, courtesy of the headlines at Hot Air, that adds weight to the third hypothesis.
"The Professor And The Prosecutor" discusses the steady decline of Barack Obama's popularity and effectiveness and contrasts it with the steady improvement in those same characteristics for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. And the head-scratching starts right away.
...with economic growth in a near stall, unemployment approaching 10 percent, and experts warning of a double-dip recession, Obama is struggling to recover from the worst midterm rout in 65 years—while Christie, 48, is more popular than ever...
There are many reasons Christie is outpacing Obama. In the Garden State, a governor can pass his agenda without a Senate supermajority, and he doesn’t have to endure the same radioactive levels of scrutiny and vitriol as the commander in chief. But Christie’s success isn’t solely circumstantial. As his time in Trenton has proved, and as last week’s event in Hackettstown confirmed, it’s also the product of his distinctive approach to governing.
The Senate supermajority hasn't got a thing to do with it. With 60 Senators during much of the last two years Mr. Obama could pass most anything he wanted - if he could convince Democrats it was worth passing. Fortunately there were just enough thinking Democrats in the Senate to stop at least some of his most egregious excesses, like Cap & Trade. Unfortunately some tricky parliamentary maneuvers got the health care reform bill around those final road blocks. Recall that all of these things that didn't work (like the 'stimulus'), and won't work (like the health care bill), were passed with no Republican votes. Yet they were passed, Democrats own them, and they haven't worked.
The easiest way to understand why Christie has flourished and why Obama has faltered is to look at the jobs they held before entering politics. From January 2002 to December 2008, Christie served as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor; earlier, Obama spent 12 years as a constitutional-law professor at the University of Chicago. Today, Christie leads like the prosecutor he once was, identifying the crime, fingering the culprit, and methodically building a case designed to convince a jury of his peers.
In other words, Mr. Christie collects and organizes the facts, presents them coherently and as a result wins arguments. And Mr. Obama? It is said that when you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, attack the opposition. Mr. Obama has done way too much attacking of his Republican opposition for anyone to now think the facts or the law support his positions.
The first lesson of Christie’s success: keep it simple. Within minutes of lumbering into Hackettstown’s American Legion Blue Ridge Post 164, Christie has managed to sum up his agenda in less than 140 characters. “We’re spending too much, borrowing too much, and taxing too much,” he says. “We need to spend less, borrow less, and tax less.” The capacity crowd applauds. It’s an easy message to grasp. After all, who’s to say Trenton shouldn’t respond to the fiscal crisis the same way families do?
That's not the first lesson, Mr. Romano. The first lesson is that Mr. Christie accurately identified the problems. Mr. Obama has not yet accurately identified the problems. Perhaps he should listen to Mr. Christie's summation above, the simple one.
Of course, the policy reality is more complex; most economists agree, for example, that government should spend more during a recession, not less.
Let me re-write that for Mr. Romano. "I believe that government should spend more, not less, during a recession and I know of some economists who agree with that (cough - Paul Krugman - cough)." However "most" economists don't agree, or rather, no one really knows if most economists agree on this. In fact, here's one who doesn't (again courtesy Hot Air).
Now comes a real howler.
Like any good prosecutor, however, the real engine of Christie’s success has been his calculated pursuit of enemies. While Obama takes pains to acknowledge the validity of his critics’ concerns in an effort to find common ground, Christie’s strategy is to use the power of the bully pulpit to make his opponents look foolish...
With Christie, someone always deserves the blame—a conviction his aggrieved constituents seem, for now, to share...It’s hard to imagine the professorial Obama pursuing or promoting smackdowns with as much gusto as the Garden State governor—especially now, with a GOP House forcing him to moderate his agenda.
Here is where I pause for effect. ... After a bloody campaign season, and just 4 weeks after the election, that something this clueless about the statements of Mr. Obama about the Republican opposition can be written is breathtaking. Here are just a couple of examples. From the former:
On Monday, the president dismissed Republicans as "not serious." At a rally before more than 20,000 people in Madison, Wis., on Tuesday night, Obama accused the GOP of working to "hoodwink a whole bunch of folks all across the country" about his governmental philosophy. And he twice sarcastically dismissed Republicans as not "interested in facts."
And I could cite others. But back to Newsweek.
But in the weeks and months ahead, Republicans will undoubtedly indulge in a little hypocrisy—by calling for tax cuts estimated to add $700 billion to the deficit over 10 years, for example, then refusing to raise the debt ceiling. The president shouldn’t be afraid to isolate, ridicule, and conquer.
I shouldn't have to point this out, but Republicans are not arguing for a tax cut. They are arguing for preventing a scheduled tax increase. Mr. Romano doesn't even couch this in the familiar dodge of referring to "letting the tax cuts expire," synonymous with raising taxes, yet avoids that phrase entirely. Does anyone really think it's a good idea to raise taxes in a stagnant economy?
You might think that's enough, but there's one final bit of nonsense in the article.
But while Christie has framed the debate for maximum maneuverability—like his tough-talking but eminently practical hero, Ronald Reagan, who has been canonized by conservatives even though he raised taxes 12 times as president—Obama has received little credit for even his most impressive accomplishments.
Okay, I'll bite. Accomplishments like what? Health care? A disaster in the making - fiscally, medically, and bureaucratically. The 'stimulus'? Hardly. Foreign policy? He's alienated Britain, our staunchest, longest-serving ally. He's demonstrated ineptitude with China, South Korea, North Korea, Poland, Iran, among others. Israel & the Palestinians? Free trade with Columbia?
This is not going to enlighten and inform public debate. Mr. Romano glosses over the 'accomplishments' of the administration while attributing literally all of Mr. Christie's success to style and style alone. Perhaps, to borrow the author's construct, he should keep it simple. Mr. Christie's successes stem from identifying the problems and proposing clear solutions. Mr. Obama's lesson should be to start at step one, and to correctly identify the problem. Here's a hint: it's not the Republican opposition.
George Will has a very well-researched, and very accurate, column describing in painstaking detail the government-pushed folly that is the Chevy Volt. It's all there:
it's not electric, it's a hybrid
the government is using taxpayer dollars to bribe people to buy it
bankrupt California is tacking on its own bribe ... for the Nissan Leaf only, as the Volt is a hybrid
Even with the bribe it's pricey
to charge it you use home electricity - produced largely by coal-fired plants
it's battery has a range of 40 miles - or less
it seats only four - the battery is quite large
GM is still 61% government-owned, and paid back some of it's government debt with more government debt.
Alas, this is yet more evidence that the government does not know best - but you already knew that. The hosannas from green-thinking people notwithstanding, the Volt is not the automotive equivalent of Reardon Metal.
As a parent who occasionally uses McDonald's for a meal with my kids, and as they often do order the Happy Meal on those occasions, I'd like to notify those out in San Francisco that a) we don't get the Happy Meal for the toy, we get it because it's a simple way to order a kid-sized meal and b) stay out of our lives, will you? If I thought McDonald's was an awful choice for a kid's meal they could clamor for the toy all they wanted, and we wouldn't go there. But I don't feel that way. There are parents who think tasty, quickly provided meals that aren't made from tofu and carrots are the most evil thing on the planet, and they don't take their kids to the Golden Arches. Great. Your kids, your choice.
The NY Times has a story today about conflict in the nanny state over cheese. And, of course, all over the push are the evil fingerprints of Big Dairy.
Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese.
Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat; an ounce of many cheeses contains as much saturated fat as a glass of whole milk.
When Michelle Obama implored restaurateurs in September to help fight obesity, she cited the proliferation of cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese. “I want to challenge every restaurant to offer healthy menu options,” she told the National Restaurant Association’s annual meeting.
But in a series of confidential agreements approved by agriculture secretaries in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Dairy Management has worked with restaurants to expand their menus with cheese-laden products.
It's not necessary that "every restaurant" be encouraged or particularly required to offer "healthy menu options." Let's not even get into the obvious point that even if there are those healthier choices on the menu you can't make people order them. Let's look at the market economics. If you want healthy menu options and a restaurant doesn't have them, you'll go elsewhere. If a restaurant's business is declining because more and more people make that choice they'll start serving healthier options. The market can and will correct this if it's what the people want.
On the other hand, the government's war on fat, salt, and other allegedly unhealthy choices is misguided. More than content, the issue is calories. Overweight people need to eat less and exercise more. Period. Having calorie and fat content on the menus probably should not be mandatory, but it will be helpful if the government targets the obesity issue by focusing on educating people on a) caloric intake and calories burned and how it relates to weight gain and loss, and b) increasing activity and getting kids active. Here it's a greater uphill battle, with the proliferation of couch-bound video games, hand-held games, online chatting, and other sedentary activities, not to mention cutbacks and limits on school gym programs.
Sure, fat provides 9 calories per gram, and cutting back on fat cuts large amounts of calories from a diet, but the target shouldn't be the fat as much as the calories consumed vs. calories burned. Get that in balance and you'll have a lot less obesity to worry about. The hard thing is doing it without being a nanny.
As you watch this year's ads -- and I've been watching all too many lately -- you'll notice a striking difference between Democratic and Republican attack ads: Democrats are attacking over personal issues, Republicans are attacking over policy.
Of course. And voters who disagree, and still plan to vote for this rancid collection of human refuse running with an 'R' next to their name? Why, Senator John Kerry knows who you are.
"It's absurd. We've lost our minds," said a clearly exasperated Kerry. "We're in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don't weigh in. It's all short-order, lowest common denominator, cheap-seat politics."
First, Senator, just exactly who are you calling "know nothings," (wrote the orthopaedic surgeon/engineer)? Second, if one party is practicing "lowest common denominator, cheap-seat politics" wouldn't you say it's the one using the personal attacks and "gotcha!" politics (see Paul, Rand: assault by MoveOn.org hired protestor)
Former Senator Phil Gramm has in today's Wall Street Journal an interesting look at the Great Depression, and the echoes of FDR's policy choices that he sees in President Obama's policies. He notes that if employment is the measure, the U.S. has done worse with the 'stimulus' than most other countries affected by the financial crisis and recession.
Obama administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have argued that without their policies the economy would be worse, and we might have fallen "off a cliff." While this assertion cannot be tested, we can compare the recent experience of other countries to our own.
The chart nearby compares total 2007 employment levels in the United States, the United Kingdom, the 16 euro zone countries, the G-7 countries and all OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries with those of the second quarter of 2010. There are 4.6% fewer people employed in the U.S. today than at the start of the recession. Euro zone countries have lost 1.7% of their jobs. Total employment in the U.K. is down 0.6%, G-7 average employment is down 2.4%, and OECD employment has fallen 1.9%.
This simple comparison suggests two things. First, that American economic policy has been less effective in increasing employment than the policies of other developed nations. Second, that if there was a cliff out there, no country fell off. Those that suffered the most were the most profligate...
Indeed. But Mr. Gramm's look back at the depression-era policies of Mr. Roosevelt finds dramatic increases in spending - which started under Pres. Hoover - and in taxes, that did little to stem the depression, but rather prolonged it. He also finds much of the same tax-the-rich class warfare that we hear from Mr. Obama. This quote from Winston Churchill is instructive.
The Roosevelt administration also conducted a seven-year populist tirade against private business, which FDR denounced as the province of "economic royalists" and "malefactors of great wealth." The war on business and wealth was so traumatic that the League of Nations' 1939 World Economic Survey attributed part of the poor U.S. economic performance to it: "The relations between the leaders of business and the Administration were uneasy, and this uneasiness accentuated the unwillingness of private enterprise to embark on further projects of capital expenditure which might have helped to sustain the economy."
Churchill, who was generally guarded when criticizing New Deal policies, could not hold back. "The disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts," he noted in "Great Contemporaries" (1939), is "a very attractive sport." But "confidence is shaken and enterprise chilled, and the unemployed queue up at the soup kitchens or march out to the public works with ever growing expense to the taxpayer and nothing more appetizing to take home to their families than the leg or wing of what was once a millionaire. . . It is indispensable to the wealth of nations and to the wage and life standards of labour, that capital and credit should be honoured and cherished partners in the economic system. . . ."
Sharp guy, that Churchill. It's too bad his bust is no longer in the White House. Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats would rather tilt at the windmill of "the wealthy" (otherwise known as "those who employ") for what they perceive as their traditional political gain than pursue policy that would grow the economy. Most economists, and most politicians, in fact, will tell you that it's a bad idea to raise taxes in a struggling economy. Last quarter growth was 1.7%. Positive, but barely so, and in no way indicative of a "robust recovery."
The Boston Globe, no friend of Republicans, finds fault with Obama's Democrats for failing to address the pending tax increase issue before adjourning for midterm campaigning. Predictably, it wanted the tax increase to be blocked for middle class taxpayers but still to take place for the job creators. But nothing was done, and that in itself is a problem.
Democrats worry that they have been robbed of their most valuable populist talking point: that cuts on income taxes should be extended for the middle class, but not for the wealthy.
“It is both a political and a governmental mistake,’’ said Representative Michael Capuano, a Somerville Democrat, of the delayed vote. He pushed for a vote this week and tried floating an alternate proposal — to no avail. “To me, it is a classic example of what’s wrong with Washington.’’
The tax cut extension is expected to remain a political issue over the next few weeks, but not in the way Democrats had initially intended. Rather than using it on the campaign trail against Republicans, Democrats could find themselves on the defensive as the GOP yesterday began framing the vote delay as an example of government ineptitude and cowardice.
Democrats have only themselves to blame for the mess they will see one month from tomorrow. They could have pursued policies that would allow recovery to take place. (Note: government does not create recovery, but it can create the environment for it.) Then, able to point to that accomplishment with pride, with employment once more growing, Mr. Obama and his hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal congressional leadership would have had the political capital necessary to try to pass their agenda with support not just from newspaper editors and CNN/MSNBC talking heads but with some of the 53% that voted for him. Now, however, they chose in their policies the triple binds of hamstringing recovery, robbing Americans of freedom in the healthcare bill, and creating unsustainable debt while threatening tax increases.
It took a mind-bogglingly large and ineffective stimulus (Paul Krugman's recommendation for a much larger stimulus notwithstanding) , the takeover of healthcare (one sixth of the U.S. economy), and a takeover of American auto makers and banks to do it, but the Tea Party has grown in importance and influence such that a large number of small government, low taxes, lower regulation, free enterprise types will likely be elected to Congress in about a month. If this article is any indication, they could have found their inspiration in my adopted home state, New Hampshire.
New Hampshire has perfected the art of penny-pinching.
Recently New Hampshire was ranked as the least politically corrupt state in the nation. It is a nice distinction to have, but it also begs the question as to why.
We can talk about how wholesome we are, but the real answer is that New Hampshire taxes less and spends less than most states. Without anything being taxed or government contracts to give out there is little incentive to hire a lobbyist or for a public official to be bribed.
With the stakes at play so low it also means that the state has little ability to do big things. If the state’s “Live Free or Die” motto ever gets old we can just replace it with “Think Small.”
The state legislators get paid - are you ready? - $100 per year. No, that's not a typo. And the Governor is currently a Democrat, but in this state you cannot get elected to that position unless you take the No Income/Sales Tax pledge - a situation which annoys the liberal Concord Monitor no end. Back to "Think Small."
Along with no income stream that’s broad-based — like an income or sales tax — going to state coffers, there is also the fact the state’s budget is kept at, as Rep. Margie Smith, the House finance chair, calls it, at a “structural deficit.” This means that the Legislature approves projects that it has no ability to pay for when you add up the collective price tag. So before anyone takes a look at the next budget and the liabilities, there is no way state revenues can pay for them all. The discussion begins with where do we cut versus what can we grow or what can we sustain.
Washington could use a system like that. Keep cutting until the budget is balanced, and keep taxes constant. Simplify the tax code to eliminate those loopholes and payoffs, that is, stop using the tax code to "enccourage" behavior. The big benefit? Lobbyists won't have any reason to bribe Congressfolk with trips to Munich for Oktoberfest.
So when I see the more and more people climbing on to the smaller government bandwagon I quote John McClain: "Welcome to the party, pal!" The Tea Party may not have started in New Hampshire, but it can certainly point to the Granite State as an example of what they're after.
November is certainly coming. I'm sorry, I just needed this video on my site.
(Borrowed from Ben Howe at RedState, via Hot Air. Feel free to disperse widely.)
"Fundamentally transform America?" America didn't need "fundamental" transformation, and never has. That should have been the first clue - even before the election in 2008 - that this was not the man for the job. The Obama presidency, with its government takeovers of the financial sector, auto industry
and heatlhcare and its unaccountable czars, while accumulating debt at an astonishing pace, and the Democratic Congress with its disdain for constitutional restraint and mystery bills passed in mysterious ways, has forced a sizable segment of the population to finally realize that belief in the infallibility of government is sadly misplaced. We now have unsustainable entitlement programs financed by unpayable debt.
Those of us who never had such a belief in the infallibility of government offer a hearty "welcome aboard" and "it's about time!" to the new guys.
And so brave Sir Barack set forth into the dark forest of consumer financial protection, accompanied by his favorite sycophants in the media.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama named Wall Street critic
Elizabeth Warren a special adviser Friday and tasked her with setting up
a new agency to look out for consumers in their dealings with banks,
mortgage companies and other financial institutions.
Calling Warren "one of the country's fiercest advocates for the middle
class," Obama said she would ensure the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau ends abusive practices.
"Never again will folks be confused or misled by pages of barely
understandable fine print that you find in agreements for credit cards
or mortgages or student loans," he said, standing alongside Warren and
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the White House Rose Garden.
Obama credited Warren with developing the concept of the new consumer
agency, and he said, "It only makes sense that she should be the
architect."
But the dreaded three-headed Republican knight loomed ahead, vowing to cut off Sir Barack's head of the consumer protection unit using the most terrifying weapon yet devised, the Senate confirmation hearing. Could brave Sir Barack fight the knight, debating him openly in the court of public opinion, and winning the day for his comely appointee?
As the specter of the Republican knight preparing for battle loomed, brave Sir Barack found a different path. One which avoided the awesome confrontation entirely.
Obama
did not nominate Warren to be the bureau's director, however. Instead
he is creating a role that allows her to avoid a lengthy confirmation
fight with Senate Republicans who view her as too critical of Wall
Street and big banks. The business and banking community opposed Warren
as director, contending she would make the agency too aggressive
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and
Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators
present concur; and he shall nominate, and
by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors,
other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other
Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise
provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by
Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in
the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments
Brave Sir Barack was not dissuaded, nor was he humbled by his avoidance of the public joust, the open debate as prescribed by the rules of engagement, and chivalry. He proudly thought himself the clever victor in this now-nonexistent confrontation, having avoided being killed in nasty ways. Brave, brave, brave Sir Barack.
Today's Wall Street Journal carries an op-ed by a Harvard political economist, Alberto Alesina, who looked at the relative worth of tax cuts and spending cuts vs. "stimulus" spending and tax increases in dealing with both economic recovery and deficits. If you're an Obama economic model believer, a liberal who trusts that the government can generate economic growth through extraction of cash from the economy redistributing it to favored projects and constituencies the results are not pretty.
In the U.S., meanwhile, recent stimulus packages have proven that the
"multiplier"—the effect on GDP per one dollar of increased government
spending—is small. Stimulus spending also means that tax increases are
coming in the future; such increases will further threaten economic
growth.
Economic history shows
that even large adjustments in fiscal policy, if based on well-targeted
spending cuts, have often led to expansions, not recessions. Fiscal
adjustments based on higher taxes, on the other hand, have generally
been recessionary...
The composition of fiscal adjustments is therefore
critical. Based on what we know, the U.S. and Europe are currently at
greater risk from increased stimulus spending than from gradual but
credible spending cuts.
Europe
seems to have learned the lessons of the past decades: In fact, all the
countries currently adjusting their fiscal policy are focusing on
spending cuts, not tax hikes. Yet fiscal policy in the U.S. will sooner
or later imply higher taxes if spending is not soon reduced.
The
evidence from the last 40 years suggests that spending increases meant
to stimulate the economy and tax increases meant to reduce deficits are
unlikely to achieve their goals. The opposite combination might.
Now the Obama administration is considering whether to maintain the
Bush tax cuts or let them expire. Unfortunately, little of the
administration's analysis refers to incentives. Rather the discussion is
mainly about whether the poor or the rich spend a greater fraction of
added disposable income, whether the rich can afford to pay more taxes,
and so on.
From the standpoint of incentives, the important point
is that higher marginal tax rates harm the economy. For example, if all
of the 2003 Bush tax cuts (which alone reduced the average marginal
rate by two percentage points) were undone for 2011, I estimate that GDP
growth for 2011-12 would be reduced by 1.1 percentage points...
My
hope is that the administration will shift away from programs based on
Keynesian reasoning and toward policies that emphasize favorable
economic incentives. Extension of the full tax cuts of 2001-03 and a
reduction in the period of eligibility for unemployment insurance would
be good starts.
You know, some of those guys from Harvard are pretty smart. You'd think a guy from Harvard would know that, but unfortunately Mr. Obama's experience at America's oldest university was limited to its Law School.
As we approach the November mid-term elections, with Republicans itching to strike while the iron is hot, it's worth remembering that there will most likely be some close elections. And with close elections comes the potential for vote shenanigans to swing the result. Here are a few links to keep in mind as we drop under 2 months to go.
First, former FEC nominee Hans von Spakovsky, now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage foundation, writes at National Review's The Corner about the aroma wafting from the Justice Department as regards the maintaining of proper voter rolls by the states. It seems a number of states have had no one removed from their voter rolls due to death, which should certainly make one ineligible. Several states have more registered voters than people of voting age, a situation that also exists in Philadelphia.
In the spring of 2006, I reviewed portions of the city of
Philadelphia’s 2005 voting list. I found that underaged voters,
deceased voters, and incarcerated felons were registered to vote and
had remained on the voting list, despite the fact that none of them were
eligible to vote in Pennsylvania (or, in most cases, anywhere else).
In Pennsylvania, a voter must be 18 or older as of the date of the election to be eligible to vote. Yet at least 130 voters on the list were under the age of 18. Thirty-four of whom had a birth year of 2004 — the year of the election. And 215 voters on the list had a birthdate of: “00-00-00.”
Just looking at the years of birth for the registered voters, I found 54
voters listed with years of birth ranging from 1825 – 1899. While it
is possible that a voter born in 1899 could still be alive in 2004 (he
or she would be 105), it is clearly impossible that someone born in
1825 would.
Digging a little bit deeper, I was able to find confirmed deceased
voters still on the list. I took a sample of 385 registrants born
between the years 1900 and 1905, and found that 51 (thirteen percent!) were in fact dead, according to the Social Security Death Index.
J. Christian Adams, a former voting rights attorney in the DOJ, is now a private citizen and is bringing lawsuits against his old bosses for their failure to enforce the portion of the law directing states to expunge ineligible voters from the rolls. He notes that most often voter fraud is insufficient to swing an election; sometimes, though, it may be, or we would still have Senator Norm Coleman in Minnesota, and would have most likely had Governor Dino Rossi in Washington. The potential problems are enormous with the smorgasbord of absentee ballots, hundreds of thousands in many cases, as well as provisional ballots and same-day registrations.
Every illegitimate vote for one candidate negates a legitimate one for the opposing candidate. While voter suppression (and particularly intimidation) are more noteworthy due to direct negation of legitimate votes, opening the door to voting improprieties indirectly negates other legitimate votes. The law gives the Justice Department under AG Eric Holder the responsibility for enforcing these provisions, and the DOJ is at this time sadly derelict in its duties with an election only two months away. Mr. von Spakovsky writes
It’s too bad that a private citizen has to carry out the responsibility
of the Justice Department because it has failed to do so and, in fact,
refuses to do so for ideological and political reasons that have nothing
to do with the impartial administration of justice.
Yes, it is too bad. Maybe we should go to the purple finger?
Is it possible that Lakoff, et al, really do not understand why so
many people reject the collectivist, statist principles of the Left?
Certainly we are treated, yet again, to another “Tax the RICH” spiel
from Robert Reich that can be boiled down to You people don’t spend your money the way WE think you should, so WE, Big Government, will take it and spend it the correct way!
Say what you will about Beck’s non-partisan, religiously themed,
rally last Saturday (predictably the Left is … now moving to attack his
Mormonism, but they’re not bigots of course), but no where was there any
call for top-down, Big Government solutions. There was no demand for theocracy, only an urging for individual responsibility.
If one were to point out the major difference between, in Lakoff’s
words, Progressive and Conservative morality, is that Progressives
believe in controlling people (via Big Government) for their own good
and Conservatives call for people to control themselves as individuals for their own good.
Now which is really the foundation of Liberty?
The left, as I've noted before, likes to pretend that they're operating on a frictionless plane or, if you prefer an alternate metaphor, that they can drop a rock in the pond and create no ripples. Creating easy credit for those with limited ability to repay the loan was simply right and just, because isn't home ownership good? And that easy credit would of course not inflate home prices and lead to foreclosures. And paying for 99 weeks of unemployment is the right thing to do because those out of work need the money, even if sometimes they delay looking for work because of it. And increasing business taxes has no effect at all on prices, business investment, employment, or even where a business decides to locate.
Conservatives are wary of the ripples. And the reason this upcoming midterm election is shaping up to be a sea-change for the public is because a good chunk of independents, and even some democrats, are now also both aware of, and wary of, the ripples.
As it pours outside my home this morning, on a vacation day that I had planned to take my family to Fenway Park for the afternoon Red Sox game against the Seattle Mariners (perhaps the rain is fitting?), I note that the so-called "recovery summer" is currently neither. Read that Mike Allen report at Politico.com. It is best seen as a work of fancy, wishful thinking that clicking your heels together like Dorothy and chanting "there's no place like a growing economy" will doubtless make it so. The actions of the government have, with the exception of stabilizing some giant financial institutions with money that is being paid back, failed rather dramatically.
There's the efforts in housing, including HAMP and the home-buyers tax credit. Result? A plunge in home sales now that the credit has expired, and government-assisted mortgage restructuring that has helped one-tenth of the number it was alleged to help, has interfered with more successful private efforts,is leading to a second round of defaults, and (I'm sure) is more costly than it ever was projected to be.
In order to stabilize the residential markets, jobs have to return and
prices have to stabilize. The Obama administration has gotten in the
way of both processes. Thanks to ill-advised taxpayer-subsidized
interventions, prices have remained unrealistically high, and no one
wants to buy until they pay the right amount for the value of their
investment. And until we quit penalizing capital and introducing
massive ambiguities into regulatory regimes and expanding them, jobs
won’t get created and new buyers won’t materialize anyway.
There's the uncertainty over the looming tax increase due to the unwise expiration date on the Bush-era tax cuts. Here it is, nearly September, two months before the mid-term elections on which Congress-folk will be focusing, and for all we know in this down economy everyone, or perhaps only the producers and job-creators, will be facing a sizable stifling tax increase.
Then there's Obama-care, with its court-challenged individual mandate, its burdens on small businesses that produce most of the jobs, and its cost-cutting fantasies that everyone now understands were more wishful fancy on the part of those who passed it. Notably, those who passed it touting those savings now no longer make that case.
Yesterday Republican John Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader, called (among other things) for a reversal of many of these harmful policies. Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post proves to be scared of the mythical boogieman in the closet, rather than the actual monster in the room.
Let's take Boehner's prescriptions seriously for a moment. Dispense
with the most obviously political parts -- firing the economic team, as
if that would change the underlying policy
Perhaps not, but that''s an Obama problem, not a Boehner problem.
Leave out, also, the phony
controversy. Boehner denounced an obscure provision of the health care
law that requires businesses to report expenditures greater than $600.
It was a good idea -- cracking down on tax cheats -- poorly executed.
Both sides want to change it.
It's not clear that both sides want to change it - if so, it could easily have happened already as the problem is now well known and Republicans are squarely behind removing it. This is not a "phony" controversy at all. It'll be very real to the businesses that have to abide it.
And forget the Republican's favorite legislative bogeymen -- measures
to enact cap-and-trade, or to make it easier for unions to organize.
Those aren't likely to pass.
Yes, but these further burdens to the struggling economy are not likely to pass primarily because of Republican opposition. Ms. Marcus thus gives no credit to Republicans for their "good" (in her estimation) ideas. She appears, however, to be agreeing that Cap & Trade and card check are indeed bad ideas, and that is a useful admission. Step One, perhaps.
So the Boehner plan boils down to the internally inconsistent demands
that the president forswear any plan to increase taxes during a
recession and that he immediately put the brakes on spending -- during that very recession.
These are not internally inconsistent. It will be detrimental to raise taxes in a recession - that much you can count on. And the Obama spending has been on "stimulus" projects that have not stimulated and on protection (and expansion) of government employees, many of whom have both excessive salaries (e.g., Bell, CA) now and unsustainable pensions to come. Cut their pay by 20%? Why not?It's not as if their pay is lower than private sector comparative jobs. And, while you're at it, eliminate any unnecessary or redundant jobs. And give them the same retirement options the rest of us have - 401k, Social Security, and IRAs.
Economic uncertainty is built into the Obama economic program. If Mr. Obama were truly concerned about recovery he certainly wouldn't have pursued the mother of all uncertainties and bigger government boondoggles, which only adds to the uncertainty. And the debt.
Continuing its water-carrying for the Obama Administration, the Associated Press tries to debunk some of the "misconceptions" surrounding the controversy over the Ground Zero Mosque. They try to convince us that, gee, it's not really at Ground Zero, it's a whole 2 blocks away. And isn't this antithetical to the American tradition of religious freedom? Number one on their hit list? The misconception that Imam Rauf, heading up the mosque project is a radical.
No one has established a link between the cleric and radicals. New York
Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said, "We've identified no law
enforcement issues related to the proposed mosque."
Well, one thing you don't need is a link between Rauf and radicals if you can show that the Imam himself is a radical. Then you really don't need the link, do you? The AP gives us a head start later in this section.
He has denounced the terrorist attacks and suicide bombing as
anti-Islamic and has criticized Muslim nationalism. But he's made
provocative statements about America, too, calling it an "accessory" to
the 9/11 attacks and attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi children to the U.S.-led sanctions in the years before the
invasion.
Calling America an "accessory" to the 9/11 attack is not "provocative," it's flat out wrong and inflammatory. Or "radical," if you will. Perhaps the AP could fact check that assertion. And questionable research in the Lancet seems to always have a home with America-bashers, which Christopher Hitchens notes and deconstructs here. In Imam Rauf's words, "we tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim
blood on its hands than al-Qaida has on its hands of innocent
non-Muslims." "We," indeed.
But let's leave all that radical talk aside, and instead wonder whether some additional evidence might surface of truly radical statements. That would change things, wouldn't it? Terrorism specialist Steve Emerson claims to have the goods, 13 hours of audiotapes. Hat tip: Ace of Spades, who helpfully adds
Obama and the MFM staked the entirety of their crdibility and judgment
on the assertion that this was a moderate man interested only in peace,
and of course in no way a supporter of terrorism, and anyone who
suspected otherwise was an ignorant bigot with a heart full of hatred.
I have to admit, however, that I found it irrelevant whether the Imam was "radical", or whether it was really Ground Zero. My opposition to the siting of the Ground Zero Mosque was based on the following:
Roughly 3000 people were killed when two planes were hijacked and flown deliberately into the World Trade Center towers
These planes were hijacked and flown into the towers by 19 Muslim men murdering in the name of Islam.
Islam has a history of building monuments to their conquests. This is to be called Cordoba House, Cordoba in Spain being the capital of the Caliphate. And yes, two blocks away is close enough.
Having been shocked and hurt at the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi now one year ago, the Lockerbie bomber who was granted compassionate release with allegedly three months to live and was celebrated on his arrival in Libya, I did not wish for similar insult to come to the families of those who lost their lives on 9-11.
Let them build it elsewhere. Frankly, all of Manhattan should be off-limits for this project.
The entire article in today's Wall Street Journal by a former Fannie Mae VP is well worth reading. Edward Pinto calls some of the paths under consideration today nonsense, and explains why. Most important, particularly if you don't want to wrap your brain around the policy choices, is this little history lesson.
In 1991, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
was advised by community groups such as Acorn that "Lenders will respond
to the most conservative standards unless [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]
are aggressive and convincing in their efforts to expand historically
narrow underwriting."
Congress made this advice the law of the
land when it passed the inaptly named Federal Housing Enterprises
Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 (GSE Act of 1992). This law
imposed affordable housing mandates on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Thus,
beginning in 1993, regulators started to abandon the common sense
underwriting principles of adequate down payments, good credit, and an
ability to handle the mortgage debt. Substituted were liberalized
lending standards that led to an unprecedented number of no down
payment, minimal down payment and other weak loans, and a housing
finance system ill-prepared to absorb the shock of declining prices.
In
1995, HUD announced a National Homeownership Strategy built upon the
liberalization of underwriting standards nationally. It entered into a
partnership with most of the private mortgage industry, announcing that
"Lending institutions, secondary market investors, mortgage insurers,
and other members of the partnership [including Countrywide] should work
collaboratively to reduce homebuyer downpayment requirements."
The
upshot? In 1990, one in 200 home purchase loans (all government
insured) had a down payment of less than or equal to 3%. By 2006 an
estimated 30% of all home buyers put no money down.
"[T]he
financial crisis was triggered by a reckless departure from tried and
true, common-sense loan underwriting practices," Sheila Bair, chair of
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, noted this June. One needs to
look no further than HUD's affordable housing policies for the source
of this "reckless departure." If the mortgage finance industry hadn't
been forced to abandon traditional underwriting standards on behalf of
an affordable housing policy, the mortgage meltdown and taxpayer
bailouts would not have occurred.
And when were these policies put in place? I'll give you a hint - it wasn't during the tenure of George W. Bush. And who was one of the most vocal (and protective) proponents of the policies? Why, none other than Rep. Barney Frank, (D-MA).
Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus
on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller
of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll
the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. . . .
Right, best we not focus on "safety and soundness," and instead just roll the dice. That was in 2003, the same year that Mr. Bush's administration proposed reining in the GSE's. This from the same guy who thinks President Obama is having problems politically because he didn't blame Republicans enough upon taking over.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, via the Associated Press, on "extending the Bush Tax Cuts," otherwise known as preventing a tax increase in the middle of an economic recession and struggling recovery.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday it would be "deeply irresponsible" for the Obama administration to support a wholesale extension of Bush era tax cuts, including breaks for the wealthy.
Geithner said in a nationally broadcast interview that President Barack Obama strongly believes those reductions should be retained for the "95
percent" of taxpayers with individual incomes under $200,000 a year and
families below $250,000.
Nobody likes a know-it-all, so perhaps there was some useful humanity in
Tim Geithner's imperfect answers during yesterday's Senate confirmation
hearings. The Treasury nominee faced questions about his failure to pay
payroll taxes for several years, and he's lucky the votes on his
confirmation will come from Senators, and during a financial panic,
rather than from a jury of his taxpaying peers.
Perhaps the most embarrassing moment for Mr. Geithner was his attempt
to evade the questions by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl on why he had only
remedied the error on back taxes for two of the four years. Because the
statute of limitations had run out on the 2001-2002 tax payments, Mr.
Geithner was not legally required to pay them -- and didn't until a
Treasury confirmation hearing seemed possible.
But instead of
fessing up that he had obeyed only the letter of the law, he insisted
yesterday that, gee whiz, the earlier tax dodge didn't even occur to him
-- an excuse that came off as legalistic and implausible. His replies
finally brought Mr. Kyl to insist, "Would you answer my question rather
than dancing around it -- please?"
Mr. Geithner replied
that "I did not believe I was avoiding my liability," and that he had
worked in government his entire life and "would never put myself in the
position where I was deliberately not meeting my obligation as a
taxpayer."
Right. Mr. Geithner, allow me to advise you on some terminology that may help your concept of responsibility, both governmental and personal. "Allowing the Bush Tax Cuts to expire," after the current tax rates have now been in place for 7 years, is in reality a tax increase. "Extending the Bush Tax Cuts" is really preventing said tax increase. Most importantly, "meeting your obligation as a taxpayer" means paying what you owe. And I shouldn't have to tell a treasury secretary that.
You want to be responsible? Don't raise taxes during a recession. Instead, ease back on the clearly non-stimulative governmental spending. That would be responsible government.
Hey, why not? I like people willing to tell it like it is. Blunt is in.
Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'
"They believe in certain things. They believe in bigger government, higher taxes, and more spending. Here it is. Bigger government, higher taxes, more spending. I believe in less government, lower taxes, and in empowering local officials who are elected by their citizens to be able to fix their problems. That may lead to a disagreement or two."
The reporter's objections probably stem from the governor's refusal to defer to the majesty of the fourth estate and its higher calling. A reticence, I might add, that has never been more appropriate.
Abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and rebuild government financing of housing from scratch? Barney Frank, D-MA, the chairman of the House Financial services committee, thinks it's a good idea.
A top House Democrat on Friday said his committee was preparing to
recommend "abolishing" mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac and rebuilding the U.S. housing-finance system from scratch.
"The remedy here is...as I believe this committee will be recommending,
abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their current form and coming
up with a whole new system of housing finance," said Rep. Barney Frank
(D., Mass.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Mr. Frank's history with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac does not inspire confidence in his competence to oversee the job. Let's review.
Taxpayers are now on the hook for as much as $200 billion to rescue
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and if you want to know why, look no
further than the rapid response to this bailout from House baron Barney
Frank. Asked about Treasury's modest bailout condition that the
companies reduce the size of their high-risk mortgage-backed securities
(MBS) portfolios starting in 2010, Mr. Frank was quoted on Monday as
saying, "Good luck on that," and that it would never happen.
There you have the Fannie Mae problem in profile. Mr. Frank wants
you to pick up the tab for its failures, while he still vows to block a
reform that might prevent the same disaster from happening again.
At least the Massachusetts Democrat is consistent. His record is
close to perfect as a stalwart opponent of reforming the two companies,
going back more than a decade. The first concerted push to rein in Fan
and Fred in Congress came as far back as 1992, and Mr. Frank was right
there, standing athwart. But things really picked up this decade, and
Barney was there at every turn.
Please go read the Wall Street Journal's concise summary of his involvement, none of it helpful, in the mortgage giants. Here's more from the WSJ, circa 2004. Here's the NY Times, in 2003, discussing the Bush Administration - yes, that evil and incompetent Bush Administration - proposal to reform the GSEs:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10— The Bush
administration today recommended the most significant regulatory
overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan
crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new
agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume
supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored
companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending
industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress,
to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies.
It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it
would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of
their ballooning portfolios.
Mr. Frank's response then?:
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing
any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of
Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services
Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more
pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of
affordable housing.''
Perceptive. And here's the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby, in 2008, with a further indictment.
'THE PRIVATE SECTOR got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it."
That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. ... The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were
made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in
dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the
market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan,
when at his inauguration he said, 'Government is not the answer to our
problems; government is the problem.' "
In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were:
"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
government is the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying
much the same thing.
Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing
Wall Street has its share of private-sector culprits -- many of whom
have been learning lately just how pitiless the
private sector’s discipline can be -- they weren't the ones who "got us
into this mess." Barney Frank's talking points notwithstanding,
mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held
standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to
unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke
up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they
do so - or else.
All of this from Mr. Frank now is happening because his knees are shaking over the election of Sen. Scott Brown on Tuesday. Independent voters in Massachusetts are in a mood to turn the bums out, and one of those bums, if you've absorbed anything at all from the stories above, is Mr. Frank. So he proposes abolishing and reforming mortgage financing, and now he'll present himself to the voters later this year as a white knight, riding to the rescue. Rather cynical, I'd say.
So definitely, let's reform the companies, or abolish them, it matters not. What matters is setting appropriate lending standards, ones that do not expose banks, then GSEs, then eventually taxpayers to excessive and unaffordable risk.
Just don't let Barney do it. And don't let him get away with avoiding his responsibility for the crisis. As Jeff Jacoby writes, his fingerprints are all over it.
The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First
Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has
no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that
allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would
corrupt democracy...
President Obama jumped at the decision to rail against the influence of big corporations that this would unleash
President Obama called it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health
insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their
power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday
Americans.”
We can talk about free speech vs. the detrimental influence of large independent expenditures by unions and corporations, if you like. But Drew M. handles the discussion nicely over at Ace of Spades today, and Justice Kennedy's majority opinion (pdf) is worthy as well. From the former:
Sure the Constitution protects ‘the press’ but as bloggers of today
and pamphleteers of the founding era know, you don’t need to be a
corporation to be ‘the press’. Clearly corporate media isn’t a
necessary condition of ‘the press’ so why should media corporations be
afforded special protections for 1st Amendment activities others
aren’t?
There's also the inconvenient fact that corporations are nothing
more than an aggregation of individuals (investors, workers, managers,
etc). Each of these people have first amendment speech rights. Why
exactly should those rights be destroyed simply because they are
exercising them collectively instead of individually? (hint: they
shouldn't)
There’s simply no merit to the left’s critique and they won’t like
where it leads. The beauty of being a lefty is that every case is
different and the argument you use one day, isn’t applicable to similar
circumstances the next day if it doesn’t help you.
From the latter (pp 3-4):
Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content. The Government may also commit a constitutional wrong when by law it identifies certain preferred speakers. There is no basis for the proposition that, in the political speech context, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers. Both history and logic lead to this conclusion.
Read that once more, and think about it. Do you really want the government deciding which entities can have their voices heard, and which cannot?
Besides which, there is a current example of a large and influential block of individuals exercising political speech through their donations that must be very familiar to Mr. Obama and the Democrats, and which was completely unaffected by the restrictions of McCain-Feingold in shaping policy. This group of individuals was considered at every turn by those crafting the health care legislation. Their influence likely cost Mr. Obama the chance to ever have "reform." Their influence was so broad and so deep that the Senate bill that passed catered to their whim. The provisions that catered to them was the reason why most physicians were against the bill. It's a large reason why it was so difficult to manage the costs of reform.
I think we know that I'm referring to the trial lawyers, the tort bar. The unwillingness to cross that bridge is the reason that Mr. Obama and the congressional Democrats can't crow about passing a reform bill, because enough physicians would likelly have supported any bill that had real tort reform. But so scared were Democrats of losing the support of the deep pockets that finance their campaigns that Howard Dean famously admitted that they couldn't and wouldn't be touched.
So whine all you want about the "evil" of corporations' free speech rights under this ruling. Then tell me that it's okay that some pigs are more equal than others.
It's actually kind of a rhetorical question. I think everyone really knows the main thing wrong, and this is a prime example.
What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?
Here’s a case study.
On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal
Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major
disaster.”
The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify,
saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the
preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”
I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the
home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to
get on the health care bill.
In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be
written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain
why the bill is long.)
Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.
How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
That's from Jonathan Karl at ABC's 'The Note.' I'm, sorry to quote it so extensively, but it's necessary I believe. This is the Senate Majority Leader trying to buy the vote of another Senator with $100M of your (and my) tax dollars. Oh, sure, we're supposed to feel that this is a selfless act, because it goes to the people of her state and not directly into her pocket. But the money will be distributed to politcally favored groups, who will no doubt recycle some of it in campaign contributions and support to her re-election efforts, and so it goes. An endless cycle of legal bribery.
This health care bill will remake one fifth of the US economy. If it's not worth voting for without this clause, it shouldn't be worth voting for with it, $100M of "walking around money" or not. The "this is what you have to do to pass legislation argument" doesn't wash. Either it's a great bill, and it should pass on it's own merits, or it's a lousy bill that doesn't deserve support. And that's the case regardless of how much of our money Mr. Reid wants to throw to the wavering Senators.
It seems that the number of 'stimulus' jobs 'created or saved' in Massachusetts were a lot fewer than reported. Who says so? Why, the area's biggest Democratic support apparatus, The Boston Globe, who else?
While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively
report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number
is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money
miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that
has not yet started...
The federal stimulus report for Massachusetts has so many errors,
missing data, or estimates instead of actual job counts that it may be
impossible to accurately tally how many people have been employed by
the massive infusion of federal money. Massachusetts is expected to
receive an estimated $1 billion more in stimulus contracts, grants, and
loans.
Awesome. And guess what's on the way now? More 'stimulus,' because the last one worked so well.
Senate Democrats will take up a new job-creation bill in the wake of
the 10.2 percent unemployment rate, Majority Leader Harry Reid told his
colleagues Tuesday.
Sen.
Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told The Hill that Reid (D-Nev.) made the
announcement about a new jobs bill at the Senate Democrats’ weekly
lunch.
Reid said he was looking at an initiative focused on job creation “and that our caucus will take it up,” Cardin said.
You want to help the economy, Senator? Stop spending like Nicholas Cage, and stop demonizing private business, entrepreneurship and "the wealthy," because those are the foundation on which the economic recovery needs to be built.
11/11/09 1730: Ed needs to add Massachusetts to the list.
I guess the next question is which liberals/Democrats/journalists
(BIRM) will be using the number 640,239 in their talking points?
11/12/09 1145: And now he has. The sample size may now be large enough to safely assume that every state grossly inflated their 'stimulus' numbers for jobs 'created or saved.' As a result, we know the number is lower. Much, much lower.
(Sorry about the duplicate post - it's been deleted.)
Bedford – Brian Poznanski, a Nashua
state representative and St. Anselm College junior, was arrested Friday
morning by Bedford police for underage drinking.
Poznansk was
one of 22 people arrested at a party at [redacted], and
charged with alcohol violations after police were called at 12:30 a.m.
for a large fight on the front lawn of the home.
Following the town's new policy, all underage drinkers were arrested, including Poznanski, who is 20 years old.
But this is the Union-Leader reporting, so we find out in Paragraph 6:
Poznanski, a Democrat, was elected to his first term in the House in
November 2008 as one of the 10 Hillsborough District 26 representatives
from Nashua's Wards 5, 8 and 9.
He has the lingo down pat, I'll give him that.
Yesterday Poznanski said he hopes his arrest will not "get in the way" of future political activity on his part.
"I
want to put this aside and continue working. I realize it may pose a
small speed bump, and if so, I hope to work through that," Poznanski
said.
In other words, moveon.org. Don't worry, kid. It's only career-threatening for Republicans. Look, for example, at a certain RI congressman.
All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly
acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work
began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a
government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate
that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond
60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously
against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back
"public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in
place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.
As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new
obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start
making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are
allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the
reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants.
Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical
rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost
technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.
The public option doesn't represent "consumer choice" or
"competition." It represents yet another government intrusion in the
private market designed to distort and eventually eliminate the private
market. It's 1990 pages of smoke and mirrors, strobe lights, and
special effects. The progressives are feigning disappointment at
something that they know isn't the least that could be passed, but the
most, and something that they know can later be transformed into what
they're after. Single payer.
So keep arguing about Medicaid rates, maybe moving them closer to
Medicare (gasp!), and shifting costs onto the states by expanding
Medicaid (the states love
this), or "public options" dictating Medicare rates, or maybe (gasp!)
Medicare +5. In twenty years there'll be a tremendous wait for
physician appointments, particularly for specialists, waits for
elective surgery like hip replacement, and waits for testing like MRI.
The engineering world may develop some marvelous breakthroughs but
nobody will be able to afford them.
Is this the "worst bill ever?" I don't know. Read the editorial and see what you think. There's a lot of competition for the top spot. Let's just say it'll be the worst bill ever, until the next one.
From President Obama's speech to Congress on health care reform:
Now, finally, many in this chamber -- particularly on the Republican
side of the aisle -- have long insisted that reforming our medical
malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care.
(Applause.) Now -- there you go. There you go. Now, I don't believe
malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I've talked to enough
doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to
unnecessary costs. (Applause.) So I'm proposing that we move forward on
a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors
focus on practicing medicine. (Applause.) I know that the Bush
administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in
individual states to test these ideas. I think it's a good idea, and
I'm directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward
on this initiative today. (Applause.)
That was, at the time, all theater as well. He doesn't really commit to anything except "moving forward on a range of ideas." Everyone watching, everyone in the room, knew he had no intention of allowing true tort reform, the kind that's been shown to work in, for example, Texas, including caps on non-economic damages. The wording was designed for people to feel like he understood the problem and addressed the issue, but not to commit to actually doing anything about it. Sure enough, this is exactly what we have in the House bill.
The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is
over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to
favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative
legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers
(page 1431-1433 of the bill):
Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,”
establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement
alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state
is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on
the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.
No one should be the least bit surprised that the same Democratic Party
that takes in over 80% of political donations from trial lawyers has
attempted to kneecap tort-reform pilot programs in ObamaCare ... Maybe they should just call themselves the
Ambulance Chasers Party and be done with it.
Over at Firedoglake a writer named "Scarecrow" attempts to convince that the 1990 page behemoth House health care bill unveiled this morning doesn't go far enough in expanding Medicaid coverage. Rarely have I seen something so clueless on the day to day economics of medicine for those who work in the field. There's a lot of talk about government policy, and all it does is to obscure the issue of service, as in, will it be available?
So, in order to protect private insurers from competition from a
lower-cost PO and avoid paying providers Medicare rates plus 5 percent,
which Blue Dogs think is too low, the House bill would pay providers
even less (or no more*) than Medicare and take more than 3 million
people completely out of the private market.
But of course, the market carve-out for Medicaid saves money, which
means that if Blue Dogs really wanted to save money, they would enlarge
the Medicaid carve out — say, up to 250 or 350 percent of FPL. In other
words, if the fiscal-deficit scolds were genuinely serious about
reducing the cost of the reform bill, they would expand eligibility to
public health care to a lot more people and forget about shielding
private insurers from competition.
But then they’d be accused of creating a powerful argument for
Medicare for all, and we can’t have that. Because as Joe Lieberman
reminds us, those government entitlement programs just increase the
deficits — uh, except when they lower them.
Deficit, schmeficit. Maybe if we cut the rates to half of Medicaid levels we can have years with a surplus! Scarecrow adds an update; it doesn't help any.
* Update: A provision in the earlier House bills would
increase Medicaid payments to match or come close to Medicare payment
levels. If this provision is still in the revised bill, it should
mitigate concerns that Medicaid payments will unduly discourage
providers from treating more Medicaid patients.
Oh, that's much better. As a provider, out there trying to keep my own practice alive, pay my employees appropriately and have their own pay keep up with inflation (at a minimum), deal with rising supply costs, rising bureaucracy costs, rising health care costs, and rising overhead, Medicare and Medicaid don't cut it. Doctors drop Medicare because they can't pay the bills on Medicare patients, and Medicaid pays significantly less. Scarecrow looks at the governmental macroeconomics of health care reform rather than the effects on medical practices, seeing the forest but missing the trees. And I think that is what a lot of legislators in Washington are doing, and they're missing the individual trees. This isn't just a game where if you shift dollars around from pocket to pocket they multiply miraculously.
It's difficult enough to become a doctor, what with an extra four years of school, an extra 3 to 6 years of residency and then fellowship training, and then face the gradual buildup of a practice as your community slowly becomes comfortable with you as the go-to person when they find themselves in need. If the payoff after all that effort is that you'll annually be at risk of bankruptcy based on which way the country's breezes are blowing, then fewer and fewer bright, motivated individuals will make the effort - and delay their gratification - to get there. Oh, and there'll be vultures circling overhead watching every move, ready to swoop in for their pound of flesh, because we can't have tort reform, either. Better to go get that MBA or JD and see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Are all the doctors going to leave? No, because true altruism will motivate some, scientific interest will motivate others, and the fact that medicine is a relatively recession proof and permanent employment will motivate others. But that won't be enough to replace those who leave and also keep up with a growing population with growing medical needs. The places that will be hardest hit will be poor areas, and rural ones.
A lot of physicians chose to go into "the family business," as the sons or daughters of physicians themselves. This is true for me and two of my partners. And I can tell you that none of us are recommending that our children follow in our footsteps. Mine are still too young, but of the other two partners none of their six kids have done it.
So keep arguing about Medicaid rates, maybe moving them closer to Medicare (gasp!), and shifting costs onto the states by expanding Medicaid (the states love this), or "public options" dictating Medicare rates, or maybe (gasp!) Medicare +5. In twenty years there'll be a tremendous wait for physician appointments, particularly for specialists, waits for elective surgery like hip replacement, and waits for testing like MRI. The engineering world may develop some marvelous breakthroughs but nobody will be able to afford them. Oh, except for members of congress, because they are special, and the very, very wealthy. And people (like me) who know doctors in the system, as Gwendolyn pointed out yesterday. We'll know who to talk to; we'll get to the head of the line.
On the other hand, I guess the good news is that doctors won't be in the upper echelons of income anymore, so they won't have to pay the surtax on the wealthy that'll fund these Medicaid rates.
