Showing posts with label Reid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reid. Show all posts

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Obama Issues Fatwa on 34% of U.S. Economy

America's critical industries -- and, by extension, tens of millions of jobs -- are in the cross-hairs of President Obama and his Democrat cohorts. Consider the following statements:

Obama on 'Face the Nation', September 2009: "...Insurance companies, drug companies are gonna have to be ponying up, partly because right now they're receiving huge subsidies from folks... they're making huge profits on it, Bob. I mean, let's take the Medicare HMO programs that are being run by insurance companies. It's estimated by everybody that they're overcharging by about 14 percent. This amounts to about $177 billion over 10 years. About $17 billion a year, $18 billion a year. That's just going to pad their profits..."

But: "Health Insurance Companies Rank #86 By Industry Profit Margin, Earning $98 on Average Per Policy"

Obama Health Care Town Hall, August 2009: "...right now drug companies are fighting so that they can keep essentially their patents on their brand-name drugs a lot longer. And if we can make those patents a little bit shorter, generics get on the market sooner, ultimately you as consumers will save money..."

But: "Pharmaceutical companies must make a profit to stay in business. Some charge that drug companies make significantly more profits than companies in other industries. In fact, the profitability of drug companies is in line with other major industries. The research-based pharmaceutical industry also pays more taxes than other industries and reinvests more of its profits in research and development than other industries... [and] 98% of doctors said patent rights were very or somewhat important as an incentive for drug production."

Obama town hall meeting, 2008: "...[I want] to repeal some of these tax breaks for these oil companies. But I want to do more than that. I also want to go after their windfall profits, take a segment of those profits..."

But: ""...The average net profit margin for the S&P Energy sector, according to figures from Thomson Baseline, is 9.7%. The average for the S&P 500 is 8.5%. So yes, energy companies are more profitable than many others...but not by an inordinate amount. ...Google, for example, reported a net profit margin of 25% in its most recent quarter. Should we have an online advertising windfall profit tax? ...At the end of the day, we shouldn't emulate Venezuela of all places and slap higher taxes on oil companies just because crude is around $120 a barrel. In free markets, there are times when many companies do well and others will not."

Obama speech on the the Economy, January 2010: "...I won't stop fighting to protect you from the kinds of deceptive practices we've seen from some in the financial sector... We're going to have to do more this year to make sure that banks are responsive to folks who are working hard... I won't stop fighting to make sure there's accountability in our financial system. (Applause.) I'm not going to stop fighting until we have jobs for everybody..."

Jobs for everybody? Jobs for everybody???

The industries that Obama endlessly demagogues, even without considering secondary partners, suppliers and customers, represent more than 34% of the entire U.S. economy and tens of millions of jobs.

And yet Obama continues to lead a Democrat Jihad against them; against their employees, suppliers, customers and shareholders. In fact, every single man, woman and child in this country has a stake in these industries. And yet Obama degrades them; attacks them relentlessly along with his sycophants, surrogates and operatives.

In July of 2009, the American Thinker's Randall Hoven offered excerpts of a speech by the president of the Communist Party of the USA, Sam Webb (hat tip: Mark Levin):

...we can envision winning a Medicare-like public option and then going further in the years ahead... We can visualize passing tough regulatory reforms on the financial industry, which brought the economy to ruin... the expansion of union rights becomes a real possibility... [as does] a second stimulus bill...

...we elected President Obama and a Congress... [and] ...socialism is our objective...

The Right Wing, the American Medical Association, the pharmaceutical and insurance companies have drawn a line in the sand on health care.. restructuring is imperative. The old economic model that rested on bubble economics, cheap labor, financial manipulation and speculation, deregulation, capital outsourcing, environmental degradation, and so forth, has to be replaced by a new model...

A more jaded observer might ask whether Webb is an uncredited speechwriter for President Obama. Put simply, it is clear that Obama has declared a crypto-Marxist Jihad on tens of millions of private sector jobs.

But the American people are growing increasingly angry -- and the Democrat Party is doing to be on the receiving end of that fury in November.


* By the way, is that title politically incorrect? I've gotten a little desensitized by all of the Marxist propaganda disseminated by the Democrats and state-run media, so it's hard for me to tell.


Linked by: Patriot Room. Thanks!

800 years of economic history scream at Democrats to stop the fiscal insanity; Obama, Pelosi and Reid yawn

Warning: if you've just eaten, you may want to read this article a bit later.

"This time is different."

Such is the warning of popular delusions relayed by John Mauldin, who carefully reviewed the evidence presented by economists Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in their new book This Time Is Different.

"...highly leveraged economies, particularly those in which continual rollover of short-term debt is sustained only by confidence in relatively illiquid underlying assets, seldom survive forever, particularly if leverage continues to grow unchecked..."

Reinhart and Rogoff analyzed 800 years of economic history, including 250 financial crises in 66 countries. They looked for patterns, similarities and differences. Put simply: this time is not different. Their prediction, to paraphrase Mister T, is simple: Pain.

An excerpt of their summary expands upon Clubber Lang's word of wisdom.

"The lesson of history, then, is that even as institutions and policy makers improve, there will always be a temptation to stretch the limits. Just as an individual can go bankrupt no matter how rich she starts out, a financial system can collapse under the pressure of greed, politics, and profits no matter how well regulated it seems to be. Technology has changed, the height of humans has changed, and fashions have changed.

"Yet the ability of governments and investors to delude themselves, giving rise to periodic bouts of euphoria that usually end in tears, seems to have remained a constant... we have come full circle to the concept of financial fragility in economies with massive indebtedness. All too often, periods of heavy borrowing can take place in a bubble and last for a surprisingly long time. But highly leveraged economies, particularly those in which continual rollover of short-term debt is sustained only by confidence in relatively illiquid underlying assets, seldom survive forever...

"This time may seem different, but all too often a deeper look shows it is not."


Mauldin tacks on some excerpts from the latest quarterly newsletter from economists Van Hoisington and Hunt, who also reference This Time is Different.

At $3.70 of debt for every dollar of GDP, U.S. debt is excessive... the unwinding of [these elevated] debt levels results in prolonged economic distress...

[Regarding the Democrats' 'Stimulus' program:] ...government actions, even involving sizable sums of money, are far less helpful than they appear... 'Infusions of cash can make a government look like it is providing greater growth to its economy than it really is.'

...It has been more than a year since the Federal Reserve began a massive expansion of Federal Reserve Bank credit, from $1 trillion to $2.2 trillion, flooding the banking system with reserves. This unprecedented action naturally raised inflationary fears since it was assumed that this was the beginning of a monetary creation process which would eventually lead to job and income growth, excessive expenditures, and finally massive price increases.

[Regarding the Democrats' continued hamstringing of the private sector:] ...[the] very first step toward an inflationary cycle has to be to get the monetary aggregates expanding vigorously. That cannot be accomplished with the Fed "printing money", i.e., adding more reserves into banks that cannot or will not make loans. The reason this process has not begun (and will not for a time) is [that no] one needs to borrow, or has the resources or balance sheet to borrow, and banks are busily writing off bad debt.

Despite the concurrent developments of little money growth and declining loan growth... the fear nevertheless remains that an inflation surprise might be just around the corner. The reason to discount this notion is that excessive debt has contributed greatly to a flat, or perfectly elastic aggregate supply curve. A country's inflation is determined by the interaction of aggregate supply and demand.

[Democrats have yet to learn the maxim that "Central planning never works":] ...Whether the supply curve is in a flat, normal, or upward sloping position depends on the extent of excess resources in the economy. Today it is obvious that the U.S. economy has plentiful excess resources, so any increase in demand will result in little price change. This will be the case until our unemployment rate of over 17% (the U6 measure) drops by a considerable amount and we begin to use our factories well above our current 68% utilization rate.

Thus, our current economic circumstances guarantee there will be no surprise inflation...

[Democrat policies are thereby crushing the real economy:] ...The consequences of excessive debt are already painful at the household level. The civilian employment to population ratio, a highly important barometer of the average household's standard of living, fell to 58.2% in December, the lowest reading in 26 years and down from a peak of 64.7% in April of 2000... Thus, the standard of living has worsened as the debt to GDP ratio has marched steadily higher. With debt to GDP still rising, a further deterioration of the standard of living is inescapable.

[And the history books demonstrate that everything the Democrats are doing is wrong:] Deficit spending only provides a transitory boost to the economy. It initially raises GDP, as it did in the second half of 2009, but then the effect dissipates and later is reversed, as financial resources available to the private sector are reduced.

...In a separate research study Rogoff and Reinhart write, "At the height of Japan's banking crisis in the 1990s, repaving the streets in Tokyo became a routine exercise. As a result, Japan's gross (government) debt-to-GDP ratio is now nearly 200% and a drag on what once was a vibrant economy."

Our present high deficit situation suggests that taxes will rise (including those of state and local governments), depressing economic activity further. In addition to the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the Obama administration is proposing substantial taxes on financial institutions to pay for the cost of the financial bailout. Since the tax multiplier is high, this will reinforce the drag on economic activity from the lagged effects of deficit spending.

For decades, and to this day, Democrats have ladled entitlement program on entitlement program, bureaucracy upon bureaucracy, debt upon debt until the whole American economy is wobbling on its foundation.

Democrats coerced, bribed, lied and intimidated various constituencies to enact the New Deal (which was originally ruled unconstitutional), the Fair Deal, the Square Deal, Great Society, the War on Poverty, the Community Reinvestment Act, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Fannie, Freddie, the Stimulus Package, and hundreds of unionized bureaucracies, agencies, offices and other groups of lifetime government employees -- most voting Democrat -- in a relentless pursuit of an utterly unconstitutional expansion of the federal government.

Every one of their programs has failed. Every one. And they are about to touch off a catastrophic implosion. The modern Democrats are not smarter than a fifth grader, certainly not one who has read and understands the Constitution and The Bill of Rights.

The Democrat Party must be politically destroyed in the next series of elections if we are to return fiscal sanity and constitutionality to the federal government. We must politically crush the party of economic insanity before it's too late.


Linked by: Linkiest and Ed Driscoll. Thanks!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Every Generation Entertains a Liar, For a Time

By Victor the Contractor

This country has gone through a lot lately, what with the toxic political atmosphere and terrorists trying to upend our way of life. Sometimes I wonder which is more of a threat, Al Qaeda and its thousands of minions queued up to strap on explosive vests or our own government, with the full weight and authority of the law on their side, trying to dismantle Democracy as quickly as possible. That a terrorist organization is desperately trying to preserve and foster a pre-Renaissance way of life is understandable, once you parse out their fear of progress and the uber-patriarchal nature of their society. What I find baffling is that the Democrat-controlled Congress and the White House are so intent on tearing down the very apparatus that enabled them to gain control of two-thirds of the Government and cement themselves in the driver's seat, so to speak.

For in doing so, and by that I mean funding groups like Acorn to stuff ballot boxes with convicts and expired persons' votes... and passing legislation that restricts free speech under the guise of 'Fairness'... the ascendant party will cause a firestorm of resistance from all manner of political bent and sink their own career ships, as it were. And it's happening already, due in part to the facetious nature of their aims. No one with a mind for politics really believes in a world where people share unconditionally or where a 'Politburo' will mete out justice on an even basis and a 'Central Committee' will order up the exact amount of bicycle chains to keep Johnny pedaling away until dinnertime. The advocates of the new social paradigm really want to have control all to themselves and are using the dim-witted Liberal pacifist 'perfect worlders' as useful idiots in their quest for national domination.

I'd love to believe that the Government can legislate equality, 'a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage' and 'the right to adequate health care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health', as taken from Herbert Hoover in a 1928 campaign speech and L.B.J.'s Second Bill of Rights. But I know something the liberals in this country won't readily admit but betray by their very avaricious political practices: people are greedy. Self-interested is a more benign phrase, but you get the point. Most people think first of themselves and their families. If a bit is left over, they will give to charities and maybe volunteer at a soup kitchen during the holidays. But by and large, they are adamantly opposed to a wholesale redistribution of wealth on the basis of giving some sort of payback to the unlucky, uneducated or worse, the lazy. And it galls them even more to hear their Government say that hard work gives the successful an unfair advantage. Only a fool or other 'morally challenged' person would believe in legislating fairness or rewarding sloth.

Enter the 'Equality God', who speaks of all enfranchised citizens as being of one mind and resisters as unpatriotic. President Obama is like the Judas goat who leads the unsuspecting sheep down the ramp to slaughter while wearing the mask of a being at peace with himself. Every generation needs a liar: a lost soul who will lead us down the wrong path. This is a good thing in an ironic way. President Obama is reminding us all that freedom requires struggle against those who would enslave us. Whether by skilled tongue or by deceitful wit, the man shows mighty oratory skills that belie a poverty of wisdom. He knows where this leads. The programs that have been enacted and are on the way all culminate in a totalitarian regime that would make Che Guevara proud and compel a nod from Josef Stalin.

Such a man is refreshing for the soul, ironically. President Obama is actually not as likable as President Clinton was, as we are slowly finding out. Although many decried Clinton as a tax-and-spend Democrat while he was in office, he also was seen as a randy free spirit and forgiven for his sexual proclivities by many. His personality seemed open and his anger and predatory nature hidden from public view. It wasn't until he he told the world, "It depends on what the meaning of is, is," that most came to believe him a sociopathic liar who wore an affable mask well.

President Obama was proclaimed a savior to the lower classes and was the great 'equalizer'. He was 'going to give the country back' to the working class by taking it from the rich old Republicans. "If you make less that $250,000, your taxes will not go up," he said, easing the swing voters' fears about him being a tax-and-spend liberal from the old Democrat mold. It's as if many Americans wanted to believe that Obama could avert a bad recession and maybe help out the poorer among us that we were willing to deny the obvious: that he was an un-seasoned legislator who preached Communism and revenge politics as a college professor.

Well, we can see who President Obama really is now. To me, he's like a black John Kerry -- he speaks well but is a bit disconnected in his policies. But he's also like Jimmy Carter, ready to badmouth our economy, way of life and make us generally feel bad about being Americans. The only real good news is that as he reveals his true intentions and the Congress trumpets his Marxist agenda we have been awakened to the threat he embodies. No longer are the Democrats even pretending to be civil: they are obnoxious and haughty on camera now. When I saw Nancy Pelosi explain away the President's campaign pledge to cover Health Care negotiations on C-SPAN as, "he made a lot of promises on the campaign trail," and chuckled about it, I almost had a stroke. Yes, the Democrats have overreached and are transparently arrogant about their ascendancy. And that is a recipe for electoral disaster.

When you forget who sent you to Washington you are subject to recall in very short order. And plenty of voters are so angry now that I can predict a change in leadership in both houses in November of 2010. Its a no-brainer. But there is more to this than politics as usual. The Democrats are setting up a form of government under the guise of 'health care reform' that may be well nigh impossible to undo when it becomes law. And they know this. This seems to be a suicide mission for the Democrats. But don't feel so bad for them: They'll have uber-lucrative lobbyist jobs in the medical industry. At least Harry Reid and Christopher Dodd will. President Obama will be a highly paid speaker at the universities where excellence is required of their students but dismissed as greed in the marketplace. Want a lesson in hypocrisy? Go to college and listen to a professor condemn capitalism while preparing you to excel in it. But I digress.

As the days go by this January and the Congress trades our financial future for votes on the health care bill I can't help but note the naked aggression evident in the process. As more Democrats come forward and explain why health care is a Constitutional right and that the successful must support everybody else I watch the zeitgeist of the country swing right. What is the guy making $45,000 a year supposed to do, make do with less take-home as an illegal gets in-state tuition on the collective workers' tab? And all the while President Obama speaks of fairness and equality. Every generation gets a liar who tries to subvert their way of life to support the drooling masses. When I was a child I watched as President Carter, who was an evangelist Christian (oddly enough), despair about the country's problems and offer few solutions. The damage he did took years to undo.

Luckily, we got over that 'malaise' quickly enough with President Reagan. Who elso could be a better example of what a President should represent? Ronald Reagan was a leader who, while being humble, proclaimed the greatness of our country and extolled the virtues of freedom. President Obama seems a pale forgery of a leader: He mouths a calculated agenda with hollow and soul-less verbiage. His lack of emotion reminds me of the heartless meanderings of John Kerry on the campaign trail. Who advises these clowns to sound like a doctor telling his patient of cancer and attaching blame in the same breath with reptilian empathy?

How can a man who sounds so scholarly be so morally empty? As a young man in college I thought the professors had a higher moral standard; something to admire and mirror. Soon enough I learned which professor threw the best parties. It wasn't until later -- that I understood that high-mindedness is not the same as compassion -- when I sobered up. President Obama is a true believer, and that makes him all the more dangerous. He believes in falling on his sword to remake the world in his image; and it is a Marxian image. Obama is an angry man, with an angry wife. And though they have achieved much (and who can begrudge a President for being called successful?), they are mentally beck in the ghetto. Although I still have trouble connecting their Ivy League educations with their populist rhetoric. They are adamantly opposed to success by hard work even as they are a shining example of it. I find it ironic that so many liberals work so hard and accomplish great things only to condemn the system that allowed them to prosper when they finally have attained their idea of success.

President Obama is a glaring reminder of why we must be vigilant in who we vote for and confirmation of that old maxim that there is no such thing as a free lunch. All of those swing voters who truly believed that we could soak the rich to support the rest are now finding out that they are the ones who are considered rich by multi-millionaire Congressmen who set tax policy. Making six figures? You are the target to nourish 'Mother Congress' as she provides for the poor. Never mind that about fifty per-cent of the labor force pay no federal taxes to begin with. But they do qualify for a tax credit (built-in welfare, to me). And if we get the abysmal health care that Massachussets rations to its citizens, we are all in big trouble. If you are over fifty you are completely sunk because you'll have to pay for the fifteen year old's abortion but your heart surgery will be out of the question.

A president who misrepresents his intention, agenda and policy platform is like a dubious gift to a truth-starved electorate. He is easy to swallow but, oh, the indigestion he causes! And as we choke on the hubris of this over-reaching Congress and Marxist President I take hope in the violent convulsion that is to come. The public at large will reject this sociopathic, free-spending government as it becomes more evident that we are in for a double-dip recession and a zero job recovery. And with inflation knocking at our door after thirty years of benign fluctuations, voters will be inclined to throw out the dominant party. This will not end well for the Democrats.

And we have President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to thank for showing the American people what will inexorably happen when you let greed and laziness supplant responsibility and a hard work ethic when voting for representation. We have a hard time coming, due partly to the spendthrift nature of the party in power, and that alone is enough to ensure a generation of Republican ascendancy in both houses and a majority of President-Elects. For when the true impact of the massive borrowing and confiscatory tax policy comes to fruition we will have a major recession on our hands and only one party to blame. When one party controls everything, there is only one party to blame.

After November we get to see if a chastened Republican majority can govern with restraint and probity, or whether they will cloy to the press and the liberal establishment for approval. I'll bet it will be a mixture of the two. But we will thank President Obama for reminding us what happens when we buy the lie that there is a free lunch. Or that anybody has a constitutional right to be lazy. I wonder what kind of a President Sarah Palin will be, or if she'd even stoop to the job at this point. Its doubtless that the next President, whomever, can not be much more than a caretaker of the national debt and will have no greater ambition than avoiding the national press until some of this crippling debt is paid down... and that may take a very long while indeed.

Victor The Contractor


Wednesday, January 13, 2010

'This is our moment': US Government running annualized $1.55T deficit as hope, change and central planning policies poison economy

Another economic record has fallen by the wayside as President Obama's plan for reshaping the economy takes hold. Virtuous Republic points us to the Treasury Department's December 2009 Budget numbers (fetchingly titled "SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS, OUTLAYS AND THE DEFICIT/SURPLUS BY MONTH") -- and they represent startling evidence of the Democrats' ruinous fiscal policies.

...despite running an almost $92 billion dollar deficit in December and a $388 billion fiscal year deficit, the Obama administration and the 100% controlled Democratic Congress have little to show for it. Unemployment remains at 10% and 85,000 Americans lost their job in December.

So Soviet style, top down, 5 year like plans have failed miserably throughout history and they are failing now. I guess that is policy you get when your ruling elite class attends a university system that is the last refuge for aging Marxists.

It gets better, well better if one is lecturing a bunch of leftists who hate the capitalistic system that allows them to excel. Tax revenues are down and of course that points out the obvious, that the Soviet like economic policies of our Democratically controlled government are failing to revive American business and the fortunes of the employed (or those who would like to be employed). Declining revenues might be one thing if they were caused by actual tax reductions for individuals and business, but that isn’t the case as the Obama “tax cuts” are only reductions in withholding (just wait until April comes around).

So, after running a record-setting $1.4 trillion deficit, the Obama recovery translates to a... $1.55 trillion deficit for 2010.

And the hits just keep on coming.

Yep, you read that right: individual income taxes are down nearly 20% year-over-year, while corporate income taxes have dropped nearly 33%!.

But remember, folks, President Obama says the recession is over.

Perhaps that's because it's transitioned to a flat-out depression. And, don't look now, but socialized medicine represents the coup de grâce to an economy that is wheezing, flat on its back.

Hello, Dr. Cloward? Dr. Piven? Your students' plan is working to perfection.


Update: Jim Hoft illustrates the Cloward-Piven strategy in action.

Fasten your seatbelts, kids -- it's gonna be a bumpy ride.


Linked by: Patterico. Thanks!

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Proof of Senility: Sen. Reid Takes Two Years to Recall Racist Remark

Dan from New York:

Attn: How Soon We Forget Dept.

AP, January 09, 2010

Reid Apologizes for Racist Remarks on Obama Two Years Ago


The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate apologized on Saturday for comments he made about Barack Obama's race during the 2008 presidential bid.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described then-Sen. Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect." Obama is the nation's first African-American president.

"I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments," Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.

"I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama's legislative agenda."

###

And for what better reason, Harry, than because Barack Obama is "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect"?

Just an FYI: it's never newsworthy when Democrats promote racial division. Because that's been the status quo for over 150 years.


The Obama Recovery: more than 50% will pay no federal taxes in '09 -- a John Galt Tipping Point

This week's well-publicized unemployment rate might have remained at 10%, but a hidden problem lurks just beneath the surface.

• The number of people with a job fell by 589,000 last month.
• Even worse, the number of people outside of the labor force grew by an astonishing 843,000 in December alone (this number is used to calculate the unemployment rate).
• Since the stimulus package was passed in February, the number of people who have moved outside of the labor force has grown by 3.2 million. December's number represents more than a quarter of that number! In fact, the total number of employed persons has fallen by 4 million since the stimulus passed.

Even more startling:

• A record 6.1 million people -- representing 40% of the unemployed and 4% of the entire workforce -- have remained unemployed for over 27 weeks.

And the civilian labor force continues to shrink apace, hitting a five-year low of 64.6%:

• In December 153.059 million were in the labor force, 15.267 million were unemployed and 83.865 million were not in the labor force. This represents a 64.6% participation rate, which is a five-year low -- or 3.073 million jobs below the five-year average.
• "Had those 3 million still be in the labor force (and, of course, not employed), the number of unemployed workers would have been 18.340 million, which in turn would result in [a real] unemployment rate of 12%."

And total, non-seasonally adjusted unemployment claims just hit another record:

• Total [NSA] "insurance claims (consisting of Initial, Continuing and EUC claims) hit another record of 11,268,100".

Further, as you might expect of the Democrat braintrust of Obama, Pelosi and Reid -- and their plans to centrally plan one-sixth of the economy -- the news gets considerably worse:

• Taxes are going up for Americans with health insurance as the President "signaled to House Democratic leaders Wednesday that they'll have to drop their opposition to taxing high-end health insurance plans to pay for health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans." The taxes on so-called "Cadillac" plans will reduce the income of millions of union- and non-union workers alike.
• Married couples are also targeted under the health care bill. An unmarried couple would pay $2,000 or more in premiums the moment they were married. This represents yet another Democrat policy that undermines marriage, encourages single-parent families and strengthens the culture of dependency.
• The AP report that the "drain on federal and state finances could force Congress to consider raising the federal unemployment insurance tax".

With more and more taxes levied upon a smaller and smaller group of taxpayers, the odds that a good portion of the population will "go Galt" are skyrocketing:

• A "major reason that a depression hasn’t appeared and the public is not in open revolt" is that a record 20 million people received unemployment benefits in 2009.

• "Financial and economic history shows that the lower rungs on the chain experience hardship first [followed by] an inexorable march up the food chain... [h]owever, in this crisis, the welfare checks, food stamps and unemployment benefits are still rolling so there has not been as much impact, including political angst from this segment."

• In 2008, 46.7% of US citizens paid no federal income taxes.

• In 2009, more than 50% of US citizens are likely to pay no federal income taxes.

Disclosure: I am long in tar, feathers, pitchforks and torches.


Friday, January 08, 2010

By their own calculations, Democrats risking 25 million American lives

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Lame Duck) and President Barack Obama like to claim that 14,000 U.S. citizens lose their health care insurance each and every day.

On a rare Saturday session of the Senate in November of 2009, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NV) called out the fraud inherent to the Democrat health care bill.

[Democrats] continue to claim this bill costs about $800 billion... [but] that is a totally dishonest number... The way that number was arrived at was that they don’t start spending money on this bill until the fourth or the fifth year. They couldn’t get the score they wanted from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), so they changed the starting point. They moved back another year in the ten-year cycle. They went from four years to five years as to the starting point of most of the spending in this bill...

What they don’t tell the American people is they’re not spending anything in the first four or five years of the bill... They do cut Medicare throughout the ten-year period. But they don’t spend the money. They don’t start the spending programs until the year 2014, when this bill is fully phased in, when all these new programs, these massive expansion of entitlements are created, these brand-new entitlements. When all this new spending occurs, this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.

Bernard Madoff would be proud.

The question any rational person would ask is this: if health care reform is so urgent that 14,000 people a day are risking death for lack of health insurance, why would Democrats wait five years to begin the program, thereby putting 25 million Americans at risk?

Oh -- I can answer that question. Because they lie. Incessantly, continually and habitually. They lie about everyone and everything. Because if they told the truth, they could no more win public office than Michael Moore could endorse SlimFast.

 

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Welcome to CaliCare

Due to its lax immigration policies and easy access to welfare -- factors that indisputably increase crime rates -- California now spends more on its prisons than on the entire ten campus University of California system.

In 2001, California spent $680 million on medical services for its prisoners.

In 2004, California spent in excess of $1 billion for prisoners' health care services.

Last year, California spent $3 billion on health care for its prisoners.

In other words, over the last eight years, health care costs for California's single-payer prison system have more than quadrupled.

Yet in a June speech, President Obama justified a government takeover of the entire health care system with an observation on rising costs. He stated, "...more and more Americans are forced to worry about not just getting well, but whether they can afford to get well. Millions more wonder if they can afford the routine care necessary to stay well. Even for those who have health insurance, rising premiums are straining family budgets to the breaking point—premiums that have doubled over the last nine years..."

Compare and contrast: over the last eight years, costs for California's single-payer prison health care system -- controlled by Democrats for decades and heavily laced with unions at every level of government -- have increased more than four times.

The costs of premiums for the private health care system -- with all of its innovation and access to the latest drugs, diagnostic tests, advanced equipment and research, have only doubled in nine years.

Government can't possibly run things better than the free market. And California's prison health care system is just a microcosm of what we can expect.

And something else for seniors to consider: the costs for their care will compete with the health care costs of the federal prison system. And, if California is any indication, the prisoners' medical will come before seniors. There's only so much of taxpayers' money to go around.

Welcome to CaliCare. It's the Democrat Utopia of California translated to the entire freaking United States.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Which kind of infrastructure is most important?

As the government contemplates trillions in new bailout spending, it is worth considering real infrastructure projects. And there is no infrastructure quite as important as that which undergirds the two-parent family.

Consider that, of 23 peer-reviewed U.S. studies since 2000, 20 found that family structure directly affects crime and/or delinquency.

"[R]esearch strongly suggests both that young adults and teens raised in single-parent homes are more likely to commit crimes, and that communities with high rates of family fragmentation (especially unwed childbearing) suffer higher crime rates as a result."

For example, a 23-year study found that nearly 90% of the change in violent crime rates can be attributed to the change in percentages of out-of-wedlock births (divorce rates, on the other hand, had no relationship with crime).

In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted that the "relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation's mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime."

In addition, the statistical link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is conclusive. There have been dozens of studies that link the availability of welfare benefits to out-of-wedlock birth.

One study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.

Research for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of combined AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 117 percent increase in the crime rate among young black men.

In 1995 Dr. Patrick Fagan wrote a seminal summary of the situation: "Over the past thirty years, the rise in violent crime parallels the rise in families abandoned by fathers... High-crime neighborhoods are characterized by high concentrations of families abandoned by fathers... The rate of violent teenage crime corresponds with the number of families abandoned by fathers... Neighborhoods with a high degree of religious practice are not high-crime neighborhoods... Even in high-crime inner-city neighborhoods, well over 90 percent of children from safe, stable homes do not become delinquents. By contrast only 10 percent of children from unsafe, unstable homes in these neighborhoods avoid crime... Criminals capable of sustaining marriage gradually move away from a life of crime after they get married."

But what caused the breakdown of the American family? There are certainly many factors, but the welfare system; glorification of the single-parent household; and ill-conceived legislation are among the chief culprits.

Welfare: In 1994 the Maryland NAACP published a report that concluded "the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today."

Author Robert Rector argued that "[f]or thirty years, the welfare system has paid for non­work and non­marriage and has achieved massive increases in both." Rector noted that when New Jersey began denying increases in cash welfare benefits to single mothers who have additional children while on welfare, out-of-wedlock births decreased 10% with no increase in abortions.

Glorification of single-parent households: During a 1994 commencement address at George Washington University First Lady Hillary Clinton stated, "If it ever did, [the American family] no longer does consist of two parents, a dog, a house with a white picket fence, and a station wagon in the driveway."

In 1992 Vice President Dan Quayle ignited a media kerfuffle by criticizing the character of Murphy Brown for raising a child out of wedlock without any discernible father figure. Though mocked for months in the press, Quayle's words now seem prescient: It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.

Furthermore, "Feminist" organizations have long opposed measures to reduce single-parent families and revamp welfare accordingly.

But even more important than Hollywood, the media and feminist efforts to glorify single-parent households, legislation played a critical role in the breakdown of the family.

Legislation: Tax law hits married couples directly in their wallets. Studies have determined that the "marriage penalty" disincentivizes both marriage and labor, since "[the] best approach to appear to have a lower family income is to not have an employed spouse in the home."

Research shows that tax and transfer programs have a direct effect on marital stability. Financial stress contributes heavily to family problems, including marital difficulties that can lead to divorce. Therefore, tax policies that penalize married couples by increasing their tax liabilities, contribute directly to the breakdown of families.

Tax policies of the 1940s provided a family-oriented tax structure which preceded the sustained prosperity and social stability of the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time period, the rate of divorce actually declined.

Social researcher Allan Carlson proposed a variety of pro-­family tax policies, saying "a tax code recognizes that tax structure does influence human behavior. It would help children and strengthen families."

Other experts have offered a series of legislative proposals that strengthen the family, including: (a) identifying every child's father, by having states ensure that a document exists at birth to identify the name and social security number of both parents; (b) forcing fathers to take responsibility for their children through programs like Charles Ballard's National Institute for Responsible Fatherhood, in which fathers are strongly encouraged to legitimate their children, attend school, and find gainful employment; (c) rescind no-­fault divorce laws for parents with children; and (d) eradicate the destructive incentives of the welfare system.

Put simply, Congress can pave the way through intelligent legislation based on data, not opinion. If government is going to spend hundreds of billions on "infrastructure projects", no infrastructure is as important as that which underpins the two-parent American family.