Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Wisconsin's Democrat Legislators Go on a Road Trip, Hold Awesome Toga Party, Then Check Out Otis Day and the Knights at the Dexter Lake Club

Pity that Dean Wormer found out.

The Wisconsin senate democrats fled the state today rather than vote on a budget repair bill... WREX [reported that the] senators ran to the Clocktower resort in Rockford...

...The Rockford Tea Party [then] chased the Wisconsin democrats out of the Best Western. They just boarded their bus and [left] the Best Western... Local Rockford News [interviewed] the Tea Party Patriots who chased the Wisconsin Democrats out of town.

...They are reportedly back in Wisconsin. Let’s hope the cops were there to greet them as they crossed the state line... Note to Wisconsin police- While you have these lawbreakers in custody, please check for liquor, drugs, tax records, legal residence, cash in the fridge and birth certificates. Thank you.

In an interview with WKOW by cell phone, Wisconsin State Senator Jon Erpenbach claimed that running away from the state capitol wasn't shirking his job.

He said he was doing his duty, representing the citizens by leaving town during the midst of a multi-billion dollar budget crisis.

Wonder how that argument's going to go over with the electorate.


Hat tip: Memeorandum. Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Chart o' the Day: the Draconian Cuts That President Obama Has Threatened to Veto

The budget numbers are staggering:

• $3,730,000 million ($3.73 trillion) in total spending, representing 25% of GDP -- the highest level since World War II

• $1,600,000 million ($1.6 trillion) in deficits for 2011

• $60,000 million ($60 billion) in proposed cuts

And President Obama has threatened to veto these harsh, brutal, to-the-bone cuts.


'Obama's Revenue Estimates are Either Fantasy or Comedy'

Chris Martenson has an excellent summary of the blatant scam that is the Obama 2012 budget. Think I'm too harsh? Consider the lowlights of "Obama's Revenue Estimates Are Either Fantasy Or Comedy".

Fantasy or comedy? I couldn't decide which way to label the Obama budget, so I went with both.

The bottom line is that the Obama administration has brought forth the most unbelievable revenue increase that I have ever seen proposed in a budget, a whopping 65% increase in revenues in just four years, which will - miracle of miracles - drop the deficit as a percent of GDP from nearly 11% to just 3.2% over those same four years.

The only problem with this scenario is that it stands virtually no chance of actually happening. Revenue will be far lower than projected and the deficit correspondingly higher.

One of my abilities is spotting bogus numbers quickly, and another is to make reasonably accurate projections without a staff of hundreds. For example, in 2009 I called for the Social Security fund to soon begin dipping into negative territory when the CBO was clinging to the illusion that 2017 was the 'below zero' date. Turns out I was right, and it wasn't a terribly difficult call to make. A little trend projection here, some assumptions about early retirement there, a higher and more realistic assessment of peak unemployment, and - voila! - a reasonably accurate projection was made.

Let's look at the recently released Obama budget, which is so far off the mark that no special abilities are required beyond the ability to suppress the urge to chuckle:

The green circles show the rosy deficit-reduction estimates, while the red arrows indicate the incredible 65% increase in federal revenues over a single four year period. 65%! How likely is that? Is it realistic?

[Answer: no. But how about] if we compare the projected increases historically on an inflation-adjusted basis - would that put them in a better and more believable light?

In this next chart, we simply chart each year's federal revenues after correcting for CPI (we used the Obama budget CPI assumptions for the years 2011 - 2015 to discount the future so everything is in 2010 dollars).

Are these numbers any less fuzzy? Nope. Even on this basis the proposed revenue increases are the largest on record, bar none.

Using these assumptions, and generously assuming that things more or less carry on as normal and even more generously that the economy magically grows to $19 trillion as the Obama team has assumed, the actual budget deficit will be no less than 8% of GDP each year between here and 2015.

My estimates translate into a roughly $1.5 trillion cash deficit each and every year -- give or take a little -- digging our national debt hole deeper by another $7.5 trillion by 2015.

This, however, is merely my starting bid. I can easily envision deficits that are far higher in both aggregate and percent-of-GDP terms, due to some combination of rising energy prices and debt overhang dragging the GDP figure downwards, and rising interest rates driving federal costs higher...

As they say on the real blogs, read the whole thing.

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll scream in disgust.

Show it to a Democrat you love. And then batten down the hatches. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.


Hat tip: Brad.

First House Subpoena Targets Beneficiaries of Countrywide Mortgage Sweetheart Deals -- Including Democrats Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad

President Obama likes to call the current financial crisis the "worst since the Great Depression". And I think we all would admit that the meltdown was fueled, in large part, by bad loans backstopped by the American taxpayer through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

So where are the investigations? Where are the criminal charges? Why isn't anyone serving time, especially the Democrats who raped and pillaged Fannie and Freddie -- for hundreds of millions of dollars -- before it collapsed? Well, for obvious reasons, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid stonewalled investigations because it would cost them political capital.

Thankfully, now that the American people have booted Pelosi out of the speaker's seat, we may soon learn the rest of the story.

Taxpayers wanting the whole story of how Countrywide Financial used its VIP loan program to grease politicians and reward its partners at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may soon have it. Thanks for this belated act of political hygiene go to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who Wednesday issued a subpoena to Bank of America, which bought Countrywide during the financial crisis.

By March 7, the bank will need to produce all documents related to the company's VIP program, also known as the "Friends of Angelo" program in honor of former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Mr. Mozilo ran the subprime factory at the center of the housing bubble. Sweetheart loans for his "friends" at Fannie, Freddie and on Capitol Hill were part of a strategy to keep the mortgage party going, with minimal oversight of the loans originated by Countrywide and then guaranteed by Fan and Fred (and taxpayers).

In 2009 Mr. Issa persuaded then-Oversight Committee Chairman Ed Towns to issue a similar subpoena. But to protect the less-than-innocent, Mr. Towns asked that names be redacted. The identities of political "friends" in the House were sent only to the ethics committee, where they seem to have fallen down a well. Senate names were not shared with anyone.

Mr. Issa's new subpoena seeks the whole story, unredacted. The scuttlebutt is that most of the 30 Capitol Hill loans went to staff, not elected officials. But revealing internal discussions of why the firm helped "friends" like former Sen. Chris Dodd and Sen. Kent Conrad may suggest important reforms. However that turns out, it probably won't take a subpoena to understand why such reforms were absent from the law Mr. Dodd co-authored last year.

Dodd has never come clean on the full extent of his shady dealings with Countrywide. Which is why he no longer serves the fine people of Connecticut in the Senate.

Now, given all of this information, does it strike you as odd that Dodd and co-conspirator Barney Frank authored the latest "financial reform" bill?

Yes, it does, doesn't it? Criminally odd, in fact.


Update: Jane Jamison is underwhelmed with the choice of opening salvo.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Most Transparent Administration Ever Described as 'Communist Russian state media' By... ABC

Methinks legacy media has grown a bit tired with the tactics of the Chavez administration.

...Over the past few months, as White House cameras have been granted free reign behind the scenes, officials have blocked broadcast news outlets from events traditionally open to coverage and limited opportunities to publicly question the president himself...

"The administration has narrowed access by the mainstream media to an unprecedented extent," said ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has covered seven administrations. "Access here has shriveled."

...Members of the press have always had quibbles with White House media strategies, calling cut-backs in access an affront to transparency, even as administration officials insist they're simply taking advantage of new technologies.

But some say the current dynamic is different, and dangerous.

"They're opening the door to kicking the press out of historic events, and opening the door to having a very filtered format for which they give the American public information that doesn't have any criticism allowed," said University of Minnesota journalism professor and political communication analyst Heather LaMarre.

..."If Nixon had announced he was going to start the 'Nixon channel' and said they were only going to put up stuff he approved of, people would have said, 'Oh my God, this is like Communist Russian state media,'" said David Perlmutter, director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication...

Oh, I'm sure TNC (The Nixon Channel) would have gotten rave reviews from the big three networks during Watergate, don't you?


Pure Comedy Gold: Obama Defends His Budget With an Unparalleled Series of Punch Lines

This has got to be the finest satire since OnionTV began broadcasting in 1853.

With the worst recession in generations behind us (Can't you just feel the powerful thrusts of the recovery?), President Obama has put forward a plan to rebuild our economy and win the future by out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building the rest of the world (With bullet-trains to bankruptcy!). But we cannot win the future if we pass a mountain of debt on to our children and our grandchildren (So let's pass on a whole mountain range!).

That's why the President's 2012 federal budget takes responsibility for our deficits (Rimshot!) and puts the nation on a path to live within its means (After the collapse). It's a responsible approach that cuts wasteful spending and, as so many American families must do every day, it makes tough choices on things we can't afford (Like increasing funding for teachers and the NEA, which will get funneled right back to my campaign fund in 2012! Isn't being Prez cool?). This plan institutes a five-year spending freeze that will reduce domestic spending to its lowest level since the Eisenhower administration (And we calculated those numbers using computers from that administration).

Over the next decade, it reduces the deficit by more than $1 trillion -- two-thirds of it from spending cuts (Which represents 14% of the $8 trillion in my new deficit spending!). Through this budget, the President meets his pledge to cut the deficit he inherited in half by the end of his first term (Eh, what?).

In addition to responsible spending cuts (Rimshot!), the President¹s budget makes targeted investments in America's incubators of growth: education, innovation, clean energy, and infrastructure (Read: teachers' unions, AFSCME, the environmental-flat-Earth-no-growth Marxists and the AFL-CIO). It reforms how Washington does business, putting more federal funding up for competition and reforming government to make it smarter, more effective and better prepared to meet the needs of the 21st century (Public sector unions).

The President's 2012 federal budget restores responsibility to government and spending, while still working to help spur private-sector job creation and grow the economy for the long run.

This stuff is awesome. Someone has a serious shot at a permanent writing gig at SNL.


Paul Ryan: the Mayans were wrong--the world doesn't end in 2012. According to the CBO, it ends in 2037.

Interviewed on the Mark Levin Show last night, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) levied blunt, caustic and, at times, shocking criticism at President Obama's budget.

[On the President's budget]


It has a $1.6 trillion tax increase. Doubles the debt in five years. Triples it in ten years. Adds $13 trillion in new debt over the course of his budget. Borrow, spend, tax -- and does nothing... let me repeat that... nothing to decrease the drivers of our debt. It adds to the problem.

I was incredulous. I really was expecting something different... given that he formed a fiscal commission, I was on the fiscal commission... he told us we have a serious problem, we've got to deal with it, let's go forward... he didn't even put any of the fiscal commission recommendations in here.

His discretionary spending levels are way above what was recommended by the fiscal commission. And [it] was stacked with Democrats, so he's to the left of his fiscal commission, he's not addressing the debt and deficit crisis, and what this does for economic growth -- it costs us jobs... he's doubling down on what he's done the last two years. And, candidly, I thought we'd see... triangulation. A little moderation after the last election. And, unfortunately, he decided not to do that...

[On economic uncertainty]


Milton Friedman said that today's deficits are tomorrow's tax increases... they're just deferred taxes. So this is what businesses see, this is what entrepreneurs see, this is what banks that are financing businesses see.

They see massive deficits, massive borrowing, no end in sight -- there's going to be another tax increase tomorrow on top of the other increases coming into law -- with much higher interest rates, because if we don't get this debt under control, interest goes up. We have to pay people more to lend us money.

...So to suggest that we're going to have these low interest rates forever with economic growth, I think... ignores the obvious.

[On the "continuing resolution" funding the implementation of Obamacare]


We're going to have an amendment on the floor to de-fund Obamacare... but more important... than that, the President wants to lock in these really inflated levels of spending. He increased spending 24% across the board... with the Stimulus an 84% increase... of domestic government agencies, so he wants to lock in those spending increases. And we're trying to take them back. That's what this whole fight's about.

We want to rip out all of the spending increases that took place over the last two years. We're actually going deeper than that this week, because we're doing it just for the next seven months. We're taking back a year's worth of spending cuts for the next seven months. And if you annualize that, we're going about $170 billion in cuts.

For the rest of the fiscal year, we're going down to 2006, 2005 levels in some areas. And we want to put funding limits on bills, on agencies, that are in charge of implementing Obamacare. Now we're obviously going to have an impasse. Something tells me he's not going to sign our bill. So that's part of the impasse we're going to have, starting in March.

Then we go to our budget, which we write, where we show our vision for the government... the debt, the deficit, the economy, taxes... then, after that, sometime in May, this estimate moves around, we have a debt ceiling and we are not interested in rubber-stamping big government. We want to use that as leverage to get serious spending controls around big government as this debt ceiling is dealt with.

[On future tax rates reaching 60-80% in 20 years]


I asked the CBO for these numbers, I know them off the top of my head. My kids are 6, 7 and 9 years old... by the time my kids are my age -- I'm 41 -- I asked the CBO, "What will the future tax rates have to be if we don't get this debt under control?" And this was before the current budget, which makes it worse.

They said the lowest tax bracket, now at 10%, goes to 25%. Middle income tax brackets go to 66%. And the top bracket goes to 88%. We've had those numbers run.

Look, the CBO -- their own economic model breaks down in 2037. Because the computer at the Congressional Budget Office basically says [it] can't conceive of the economy continuing past 2037 because of the strangulation of debt. Because of the debt burden.

So they think the economy crashes well before my kids are even raising their own kids.

You're welcome, kids.

Actually, don't thank me. Thank all of the Democrats who fell for the marketing hype and voted for this catastrophe.


Transcript hat tip: Cub Reporter Biff Spackle.

Most knowledgeable bond investor in the world dumped $120B in U.S. debt last month, coincidentally right before Obama voted 'present' on budget

Bill Gross heads up the world's most successful and powerful bond fund manager, PIMCO. He is so influential with the Obama administration that The New York Times once quipped that he's on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's speed dial.

Which makes the timing of this Reuters story so, eh, curious.

PIMCO's Total Return Fund, the biggest bond fund, cut U.S. government-related debt holdings in January to its lowest in at least two years and added to cash and debt from other developed nations... Holdings in the U.S. government-related debt category, which includes U.S. Treasuries, declined to just 12 percent of the portfolio in January, from 22 percent in December...

Bill Gross, the fund's manager who helps oversee more than $1.1 trillion as PIMCO's co-chief investment officer, has often railed against U.S. deficit spending and its inflationary impact. He has advocated buying bonds with "safe," higher yields -- such as corporate bonds -- that can withstand possible erosion of returns by inflation.

Pimco's apparent lack of confidence in U.S. government-related debt in January preceded Monday's budget presentation by President Barack Obama, who laid out plans to cut the deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years. Under the budget, the deficit would rose tp $1.645 trillion in fiscal 2011, and fall sharply to $1.101 trillion in 2012.

In other words, Gross sold roughly $120 billion in U.S. debt just before President Obama made public one of the most reckless and disturbing budgets in history. And that's according to the liberals.

If I were a more suspicious person, I'd suspect that Gross got the high sign from his buddies in the administration.

Oh, right, but Democrats are for the little people.


Image hat tip: Zero Hedge.

Monday, February 14, 2011

One Chart to Rule Them All: the Obama Budget Apocalypse

I modified an excellent Wall Street Journal graphic to illustrate just how tragic and ineffectual President Obama's proposed budget cuts are.

Consider the anticipated spending trajectory over the next decade as entitlement spending and interest payments balloon.

I've marked the Obama cuts in yellow. Repeat: I've marked the Obama cuts in yellow.

Mr. Obama's budget, to be released Monday, calls for spending cuts and tax hikes that would slice about 14% of the approximately $8 trillion in cumulative federal deficits that would occur over the next 10 years without action being taken. It estimates the deficit will fall to $1.1 trillion next year as the economy picks up and the president's proposed spending freeze begins to have effect...

The current projected budget deficit is $1.6 trillion, a figure twice revised upwards from a starting point of $1.3 trillion.

...in other words, in less than six months, the FY 2011 budget—which has still yet to pass, scheduled for a vote this coming March 4—has had a deficit which has risen 23%.

And in response the president proposes to cut less than $100 billion a year from his bloated federal budget.

As for the President's vaunted "deficit commission"? Predictably, Obama blew them off.

Ask congressional Republicans about President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget proposal and they will seethe about an abdication of presidential leadership on the deficit... [but ask] former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson about it, and he shrugs. Reached at his Cody, Wyo., home, the former co-chairman of President Obama’s debt commission does not believe the commission’s work to bring down the federal debt has been abandoned, just because most of its recommendations are nowhere to be found in the budget plan.

...White House officials say there’s a reason why the president did not lay down his cards on what to do to curb the growth of Social Security and Medicare, to overhaul the tax code to bring in more revenue or to radically pare back spending. That moment will come soon, behind closed doors when Republicans and Democrats sit down together to work through the nation’s debt troubles...

I adapted the chart immediately above to reflect the timing of these disastrous budgets.

You see, dear reader, we have a president who has no interest in stabilizing the country's fiscal situation. Nor does he have any inclination to tackle the tough issues of entitlement reform.

This President is a walking, talking disaster and that's what the liberals are saying:

"...this president is too weak, too cautious, too beholden to politics over policy to lead. In this budget, in his refusal to do anything concrete to tackle the looming entitlement debt, in his failure to address the generational injustice, in his blithe indifference to the increasing danger of default, he has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests... To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama’s cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts."

That’s Andrew Sullivan, formerly Obama fan numero uno in the blogosphere, now coping for the second time in eight years with crushing disappointment from a president he ardently supported. Ed’s already written a bunch about the budget today so I won’t belabor it, but have a look at Andrew Stiles’s bullet-point list of the lowlights if you missed it. $26.3 trillion in new debt — repeat, new debt — alone over the next decade. Says Jake Tapper, summing things up in a single harrowing line, “At no point in the president’s 10-year projection would the U.S. government spend less than it’s taking in.”

On March 4, 2009, I wrote an article that included the statement "Obama's destruction of the economy is intentional."

Two years later, my point is proved. Case closed.

His budget proposal is so reckless, so wild, so egregious that there can be no doubt of his goal. I can only conclude that he seeks the destruction of America's capitalist system, free enterprise, and our way of life.

When even moonbats like Andrew Sullivan are heading for the hills, it's safe to say that we are careening towards an unmitigated disaster.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin, Betsy Newmark, Ed Driscoll, Beltway Confidential, Marathon Pundit, and Memeorandum. Thanks!

Say, I wonder how all of those "mortgage rescue" programs rolled out by the Obama administration are working out?

Gee, I was out of town last week. Anyone know how all of those "mortgage rescue" programs rolled out by the Democrats are working out?

The rolling real estate crash that ravaged Florida and the Southwest is delivering a new wave of distress to communities once thought to be immune — economically diversified cities where the boom was relatively restrained.

In the last year, home prices in Seattle had a bigger decline than in Las Vegas. Minneapolis dropped more than Miami, and Atlanta fared worse than Phoenix...

[Overall,] housing remains stubbornly weak. That presents a vexing problem for the Obama administration, which has introduced several initiatives intended to help homeowners, with mixed success.

CoreLogic, a data firm, said last week that American home prices fell 5.5 percent in 2010, back to the recession low of March 2009. New home sales are scraping along the bottom. Mortgage applications are near a 15-year low, boding ill for the rest of the winter.

Turns out all of the Democrats' grandiose schemes are working just as well as their prior experiments with housing: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD and the rest of the unconstitutional, federally administered disasters.

The government now owns or guarantees: (a) 95% of all new residential mortgages issued; and (b) more than 50% of all existing residential mortgages.

The founders of this country were pretty damn smart: they specifically enumerated the areas of control the federal government could exercise, leveraging thousands of years of human experience.

But the masterminds in the Democrat Party defied them: the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Square Deal, Great Society, Affordable Housing, Cash for Clunkers, you name the program.

Every single one has failed. And still the Democrats persist. And we, the American taxpayer, are left holding the bag.


Sunday, February 13, 2011

Relo Expert: Top 10 Reasons Businesses Flee California

Corporate relocation specialist Joe Vranich tracks businesses moving into and out of California. Given the current climate, he's only seeing the latter. In the first five weeks of 2011 alone, he's watched 30 corporations move to greener pastures.

The newest trend Vranich is reporting: employees asking management to move out of state. Some business owners tell Vranich they were unconvinced about moving until they were persuaded by employees to leave.

Vranich lists a variety of reasons owners have had enough with California, from which I created a "top 10".

10 - California’s high corporate tax rates — Colorado has only a 4.6 percent corporate tax as opposed to California’s 8.84 percent, and 10.84 percent on banks and financial institutions.

9 - Hostility from government agencies — local, county and state employees often view business owners as “the enemy,” according to Vranich’s clients.

8 - Costly, business-killing regulatory measures. And with AB 32 [Ed: "The Global Warming Solutions Act"] implementation already taking place, regulatory costs will climb higher.

7 - Extravagant state spending with no end in sight.

6 - Unfriendly business environment — California is ranked 51st (even behind D.C.) in the country for being a “business friendly state.”

5 - High cost of doing business within California’s cities, which are some of the highest in the nation.

4 - High personal income tax rates — California’s personal income tax is 9.55 percent.

3 - California’s Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT is 6.65 percent for business and 7.25 percent for individuals).

2 - Litigious environment in California — businesses can be sued for just about anything.

1 - General quality of life - other states offer less traffic, lower real estate prices and better schools.

California, led for decades by the locusts known as Democrats, is headed down the drain. The voters' decision to reelect a two-time failure as governor cemented its fate. Jerry Brown won't stand up to the monstrous public sector unions that bought him the governorship -- and he can't fix the problems confronting the state without nuking the public sector unions. More than two-thirds of the state's entire budget goes to salaries and benefits.

The average total compensation for an employee of the state of California is $106,000 a year. And the state retirement system (CalPERS) shows that the average defined benefit pension is $67,000 a year for a 30-year employee.

Fraud and abuse of the taxpayer is rife throughout state government. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that "[n]early three-quarters of Los Angeles County firefighters and lifeguards who retired in the last three years successfully claimed they were disabled on the job and won enhanced pension benefits."

The very same week the San Francisco Chronicle noted that , "In the game of megabuck public paychecks, outgoing San Francisco police brass are hauling away the gold... former Police Chief Heather Fong – who retired in 2009 – received a grand total of $528,595 in her final year. ... Now that she's gone, she's pulling down an annual pension of $229,500 for life."

I don't begrudge any cop or firefighter gold-plated benefits. But their benefits have to be rooted in reality, not fantasy. Californians' failure to deal the public sector unions a collective blow by electing fiscal conservatives will only delay and amplify the pain they'll feel.

The collapse of California's finances will come quickly and by surprise. But it will come, probably far sooner than anyone thinks.


Ohio Governor John Kasich: the Era of Having Public Sector Union Bosses Control the Budget Process Is At an End

The Chris Christie virus is spreading. And it would appear that Ohio's new Republican governor -- John Kasich -- has caught the bug. He's explicitly warned public sector unions that the days of their unaffordable compensation, benefits and pension packages are over.

A day after hundreds of public employees jammed the Statehouse to protest a bill they believe will kill their unions, Gov. John Kasich said he is working on an even-tougher version, one that would punish workers who go on strike.

If the Republican-controlled legislature doesn't fashion a collective-bargaining reform bill to his liking, Kasich said yesterday, then he will include language in the coming state budget to enact the changes he wants... "We would outlaw strikes, and the penalties would either be firing or docked wages," the governor said.

Asked what recourse public union workers would have under his proposal, Kasich said, "They have a job. They should continue to negotiate and try to come up with something."

Kasich's statements underscored the resolve of Republicans, who enjoy hefty majorities in the House and Senate, to roll back the power of public-employee unions. On Wednesday, a Senate committee opened hearings on a measure sponsored by Sen. Shannon Jones, R-Springboro, to eliminate collective bargaining for all state workers and significantly weaken it at the local level.

... [The proposal] would prohibit all public employees, not just police and firefighters, from going on strike. Along with possible termination, workers could be fined two days' pay for every day they strike, and their unions could lose the right to deduct dues from paychecks... Kasich restated his intent to eliminate binding arbitration, the use of outside arbitrators to break contract stalemates with public-safety forces...

You may remember Kasich from his days in Congress. When Democrats crow about "the Clinton surplus" they are really complimenting Kasich and his band of fiscal conservatives who kept shoving sensible spending bills into Clinton's hands to sign. Which he did. After the '94 mid-term debacle, Clinton wasn't willing to expend much political capital fighting Kasich's crew.

And Kasich's common sense approach to dealing with unions is precisely what is needed now. The nefarious anti-taxpayer alliance of big government Democrats and public sector union bosses has run its course, economically and ethically. The unions must be shattered once and for all.

There is no alternative if fiscal sanity is to be restored.


Bob Herbert Sets New Standard for Idiocy at The New York Times

Ever wonder how Bob Herbert got hired at the Times? I'll bet editor Bill Keller is wondering that today after reading the columnist's latest world-class nutbaggery, which was layered paragraph upon paragraph like some sort of delusion cake. I'll spare you all of the details: just consider a few "highlights":

• "More and more Americans are being left behind in an economy that is being divided ever more starkly between the haves and the have nots."

• "As poverty increases and reliable employment becomes less and less the norm, the dwindling number of workers with any sort of job security or guaranteed pensions (think teachers and other modestly compensated public employees) are being viewed with increasing contempt."

• "...there are not enough tax revenues being generated to pay for the basic public services that one would expect in an advanced country like the U.S. The rich are not shouldering their fair share of the tax burden."

• "The U.S. cannot cut its way out of this crisis."

• "Long-term joblessness is a recipe for societal destabilization. It should not be tolerated in a country with as much wealth as the United States. It's destructive, and it's wrong."

Hey, everyone: the genius Bob Herbert thinks anyone who pays taxes isn't paying enough. Don't be fooled about his rhetoric concerning "the rich": you could confiscate every penny from the rich and it wouldn't be enough.

Hell, former Obama budget director Peter Orszag admitted as much last September, noting that a "middle-class tax increase is unavoidable, but it will probably take a bond crisis to push politicians to act."

No, folks: apparently Bob Herbert believes you're not paying enough. After all, you're only paying federal, state and local income taxes. FICA and Medicare taxes. Property taxes. Excise taxes. Gas taxes. Sales taxes. Fees for registering your car, your dog, adding on to your house. Taxes on your phone calls, your cable TV, your Internet connections. Can you think of anything that isn't taxed?

And don't say breathing because the EPA is working on carbon dioxide regulations as we speak.

In short, Bob Herbert believes that government isn't big enough! Despite massive borrowing, crippling levels of debt at every level of government, imminent bankruptcy for states and municipalities, and pension plans that are collapsing as we speak, Herbert wants more government control!

Bob Herbert is going to cure unemployment by taking more money from the employers.

Yes, folks, this is what passes for informed commentary among the Leftists. They are all economic illiterates who view government as some sort of heroic enterprise and private business as the enemy. And yet they complain about unemployment while pillorying the engines of job creation.

Herbert's intellectual peers have created endless bureaucracies, endless agencies, endless central planning experiments, and Politburo-style control of every aspect of our lives. They control health care, how cars are built, the kind of mileage cars must achieve, where we can drill for oil and gas, how much water can flow into a toilet, light bulb design, carbon dioxide emission, how much dust a farmer can kick into the air, "light pollution", and tens of thousands of other areas.

Herbert and his ilk have created hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations, laws and dictates. They have authored so many different rules that no one on the planet has a full grasp of their scope.

And still they are not enough for the Times and its preeminent dimwit, Bob Herbert.

The progressives' greed has no limits. Because they never learn: no matter how many times their Statist agenda fails, they insist it was because it wasn't big enough.

Bob Herbert is a thought leader for progressives, which proves once and for all that liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid. There can no longer be any argument over that issue.


Reading between the lines of President Obama's speech to the Chamber of Commerce: We can't go back to the free market--it actually works!

Centrist my foot.

Last week's speech to the Chamber of Commerce by President Obama contained dozens of platitudes and an ostensible homage to the free market, but the critical paragraph of his speech could not disguise his distaste for entrepreneurship and business.

If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports to help you compete, the benefits can’t just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that expanding trade and opening markets will lift their standards of living as well as your bottom line.

Here Obama resorts to his standard rhetoric: class warfare of the sort socialists have used for more than a century. This rap is no different than that employed by Vladimir Lenin, Juan Peron, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and dozens of other failed Marxist crackpots.

The playbook is simple: foment envy and hatred of some arbitrarily defined group called "the rich". Pity that the liberals who fall for this patter don't realize Obama defines "the rich" to include the sixth-generation farmer, the family that runs two dry-cleaners, or the businessman who risked everything to create a small manufacturing company. Obama has proposed no tax on "millionaires and billionaires" -- folks like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who are among his strongest supporters. Instead he proposes higher taxes on moderately successful businesses; increased taxation on capital gains; and estate taxes that punish asset-rich (but cash-poor) businesses like family farms.

We can’t go back to the kind of economy and culture that we saw in the years leading up to the recession, where growth and gains in productivity just didn’t translate into rising incomes and opportunity for the middle class.

Translation: we can't go back to the free market. What would we do with all of those millions of government bureaucrats who exist only to create new regulations on top of the hundreds of thousands of pages of existing laws and dictates?

In short, Obama's rhetoric rings hollow. Consider this graph depicting the change in household income, by segment, from 1980 to 1990. Using 2006 inflation-adjusted dollars, the percentage of poorest households decreased under President Reagan's much-derided "voodoo ecnomics"; likewise the percentage of wealthy households increased dramatically.

President Obama's speech to the Chamber was anything but triangulation. It was a call for more government, more regulation, and more of his failed "spread-the-wealth" policies.

Government bureaucrats aren't angels, though Obama would like you to believe they are. Corporate self-interest is far superior, provably superior, to any command-and-control, Soviet-style board of central planners.

Because Obama's economic theories can't work... and have never worked in all of human history.


Hat tip: Brad.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

'When special interests put their thumb on the scale, and distort the free market, the people who compete by the rules come in last.'

"When special interests put their thumb on the scale, and distort the free market, the people who compete by the rules come in last." -- Barack Obama, 2 August 2008

The United States is on an unprecedented spending and borrowing binge.

For the third consecutive year, the budget deficit will top $1 trillion.

Under President Obama the federal government has incurred "more debt than the previous 43 presidents combined... [while] government has taken more control, by purchasing General Motors and Chrysler, monopolizing the student loan market and by owning over half of America's mortgages."

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels likened the federal debt to the Soviet threat during the Cold War: "We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors... Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy'."

And just who are the special interests that the president decries as he rings up these catastrophic deficits?

According to OpenSecrets, labor unions are -- by far -- the dominant contributor to campaigns.

And the lion's share of those donations -- and all donations -- go straight into Democrat campaign coffers.

Dr. Antony Davies of Duquesne University (PDF) states that "Labor unions have given twice as much money to politicians as the Telecommunications, Insurance, Tobacco, Pharmaceuticals, and Real Estate industries combined."

More than half of all union members are public sector workers. Which means the Democrat Party is the party of big government special interests.

Unions funnel more than 90% of members' dues into Democrat campaigns--while Democrat politicians and bureaucrats keep spending on "government programs" (i.e., public sector union employment) to keep those campaign contributions flowing.

This nefarious partnership has resulted in insane and "unsustainable" levels of spending. And that's according to Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin.

Public sector unions need to be de-certified and dismantled if this country is to survive.


Hat tips: Brad, Dr. Antony Davies (graphs from original PDF report) and Gateway Pundit.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Sweet Fancy Soros: U.S. Government May Sell 100-Year Bonds In Hope That Buyers Will Be Dead Before Full Payments Are Due

If this isn't evidence of an impending federal default, I don't know what would pass the test.

The U.S. government is now considering selling debt that would stretch out for 40 years, 50 years – or even 100 years, according to minutes from last week's regular Treasury meeting. With interest rates so low, there's a growing belief that the government could benefit from locking in today's borrowing costs by pushing trillions in debt obligations decades into the future.

Best of all, the banksters experts are recommending these long-dated maturities.

On Monday, a member of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee raised the issue at a regular quarterly meeting with officials from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank of New York... The group consists of 13 senior executives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, RBS Securities, Bank of America and investment firms active in Treasury trading, including Soros Fund Management, Moore Capital and Tudor Investment Corp.

The TBAC member, who was not identified in minutes of the meeting published on Wednesday, recommended that the Treasury consider ultra-long bond issuance, defined as securities issued with a tenure of 40, 50 or 100 years... Investors would welcome the sale of such ultra-long debt as it would satisfy the long-term investment needs of banks, pension funds, insurers and retail investors.

"This is a test. For the next sixty seconds, this station will conduct a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test."


Unexpectedly: crucial phone conversations between Rahm Emanuel and Blago now "mysteriously missing" from federal prosecutors' evidence

Ain't Chicago politics -- especially at the national level -- grand?

Two seemingly crucial phone conversations between then Governor Rod Blagojevich and then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel are "mysteriously missing" from the collection of evidence held by prosecutors, according to Blago's defense team.

The calls were made around December 8, 2008, the day before Blago was arrested by the Feds.

You may recall that Blago appeared to be caught on tape negotiating with various parties for Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat. His discussions with White House adviser Rahm Emanuel and SEIU muckety-mucks were taped by the FBI. Only the tapes with Emanuel have -- unexpectedly! -- gone AWOL.

Attorneys for former governor Rod Blagojevich have asked a federal judge to order prosecutors to produce two phone calls his lawyers say are mysteriously missing from evidence... it appears at least one of the alleged conversations was between then Chief of Staff John Harris and then congressman Rahm Emanuel, who had just taken the post as president-elect Obama's chief of staff...

They argue that the government has only tendered three of those conversations... "The fourth and final phone call is the call that is mysteriously missing," writes defense attorney Lauren Kaesberg. "The government never turned over this pivotal recording, nor a transcript of this call."

...During a Tuesday morning campaign appearance, Emanuel made his most extensive comments yet on his involvement in the Senate transactions, noting that the transition team report on the matter noted that “nothing inappropriate” had taken place.

Whether or not Emanuel was caught on tape bartering with Blago, he's a decidedly shady character.

Is there anything wrong with mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel making $18.5 million dollars as an investment banker in the 2 ½ years after he got out of the Clinton White House – much of it from Clinton donors?

“I defy you to tell me anybody you know who jumped out of government into a business for which he had no credentials or background, made $18.5 million in two years and then jumped back into government,” said Gery Chico, Emanuel’s rival for the mayor’s office.

...What credentials did Emanuel present to go to work in investment banking after a career raising campaign funds for Mayor Daley and President Clinton, then advising Clinton on policy issues?

...Chico, del Valle and former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun have also hit Emanuel for taking $360,000 as a board member for mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

Make that "bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which helped touch off the financial meltdown."

Yes, Rahm Emanuel appears to be a perfect choice to lead Chicago into the next decade. Above reproach, with no ethical issues whatsoever, and a pristine track record of honesty and fair dealings.


Obama's "tough budget cuts" in pictures

President Obama's 2012 budget will be roughly $3,800,000 million ($3.8 trillion).

The anticipated 2012 budget deficit will be $1,500,000 million ($1.5 trillion). This means we are borrowing that amount from our children to fund all of the Democrats' Utopian spending programs.

Finally, the president has proposed "tough budget cuts" that total $775 million. No, that's not a joke.

Let's illustrate the magnitude of Obama's cuts.

Obama's cuts aren't even visible in this chart. Let's zoom in.

Blowing it up about ten times allows us to see a tiny little sliver: those are the cuts.

Blowing the chart up a further ten times still barely exposes Obama's proposed cuts.

President Obama's budget director Jack Lew in a Sunday opinion piece outlined some off the "tough choices" Obama is willing to make to cut spending in his 2012 budget request due out on Feb. 14... The cuts are relatively small, however, in the larger scheme of things. In total, the $775 million in detailed cuts fall far short of demands by congressional Republicans and will do little toward tackling the deficit, which is estimated to be $1.5 trillion this year by the Congressional Budget Office...

...Lew said that the Valentine's Day budget will proposed cutting in half community service block grants to grassroots groups in poor communities... He said "this cut is not easy for" Obama.

Not easy.

Our country's going bankrupt and he can't find anything to cut.

These Democrats are so far off the reservation that there's really no hope left for them as a political party. You need to expose this irresponsible President and his sycophants to everyone you know. We must begin laying the groundwork for 2012.

If we are to salvage this Republic, we must eradicate every Democrat -- for there are no moderate Democrats left -- at the ballot box in 2012. At every level of government. Because this degree of dishonesty and wanton fiscal destruction must be rewarded with political obliteration.


Hat tip: Memeorandum. Linked by: Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Small Dead Animals, The Blaze, Moonbattery, and Weasel Zippers. Thanks!

Monday, February 07, 2011

How to save $500,000,000 in Medicare [Dr. Jay]

Dr. Jay writes:

I believe I've come up with a way to save a crap-load (a medical term meaning "a lot") of money in the health care system.

I have been pondering one of the great mysteries of medical practice. I spent four years of college, four years of medical school and three years of post-praduate training in order to understand medical terminology and diseases. But once in practice, armed with all of that knowledge and training, I must learn a new and even more esoteric code that serves as a substitute for all of medical accomplishments. This code does not directly correspond to accepted medical practice. It is not even internally consistent. But learn it I must or perish from the inability to be paid.

I speak of course about the CPT and the ICD codes.

In medicine every medical condition is reduced to a numerical code. That is because 40 years ago computer systems were primitive and limited in memory. They could typically use numbers as shorthand -- and not long numbers at that. So two great classes of codes were established of procedures and diseases (CPT and ICD respectively). These were things you could do and the conditions you were doing it for. English could not be used because the computers were insufficiently advanced. So every medical interaction that required a payment from an insurance company required numerical identifiers, plus all of the other correct data elements (insurance policy number, employer, address, etc.)

And since physicians are fairly smart, they learned the codes and got paid, so the modifiers were invented. You could not just use codes to represent what had happened, you had to modify them in a variety of circumstances. And then the codes were changed, and then again, now annually.

So a huge industry of coders developed, working for doctors, insurance companies, government agencies, billing companies, educators and all manner of other parties. Costs escalated constantly for books, classes, correspondence, employees, records, follow-ups and delays; all of which serve to simply gum up the system.

For example: can anyone explain why it is reasonable to have a different code for the same examination in an office, the hospital, the nursing home and the emergency room? Wouldn't it be easier to simply use the examination and say it was in the office, the hospital, and so on? Easier, faster, no complicated interpretation, much less likely to make a mistake and delay payment. We would reduce the costs of all medical care by a conservative 15% to perhaps as much as 30%. And it would serve to make the system more efficient and faster.

Yes, it's a radical idea: we use English instead of numerical codes.

Why must there be an additional code if two procedures are done on the same day? Why not just list the two procedures? And why use a different additional code for an examination and a procedure on the same day?

Put a single medical dictionary into practice and then simply use that very precise medical terminology. It is what [gasp] doctors are taught in the first lace and upon which the whole medical system is based. There is a big difference between pancreatitis, esophagitis and tonsillitis; there is no need for three completely different codes. Imagine how many people would be free to more productive work than pushing paper.

Of course, there is one practical problem with this suggestion. If we used English instead of the CPT and ICD coding system, the delays in payments to patients would be reduced. Indeed, that is the reason for the whole thing in the first place; to reduce the outflow of money to patients and doctors. But the costs incurred by the rapid payment of claims would be more than offset by the reduced costs of less man hours, postage, coding books, training and communications requirements. How much money is being saved by Medicare and the insurance companies by delaying justified payments to patients and Doctors? Could it really be 15% to 35% of the costs? And if it is, isn't that a flagrant example of almost criminal inefficiency?

I do believe I have outlined a fairly simple way to save the entire health care system a lot of money. In fact, it saves money for all concerned: government, regulators, insurance companies, providers and patients.

When do we start?

Because this idea is so simple and so elegant, it is certain that we will have to wait until after we have excised Democrats from control of the Senate and the White House.

Remember, Jay: the modern Left that now controls the Democrat Party wants the system to collapse. It's called the Cloward-Piven Strategy and it has been documented copiously throughout the Inter-tubes.

So, to answer your question, we can start in 2012 provided we can eradicate these locusts at the ballot box.