Archive for category Democrats
Snake Oil Resold: Repealing Obamacare Will Raise Deficit!
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Deficit, Democrats, Entitlements, Nationalized Health Care on January 9, 2011
The Democrats really think the public is stupid: They are saying that eliminating a new unsustainable Obamacare entitlement will increase the deficit! (Of course, they passed this abomination with cloak room deals, in the dark of night, against the will of the voters.) Let’s see, adding 32 million to a federal health care program will save money. Really!
They who make it their mission to steal from our grandchildren are claiming the high ground and claiming that repeal of this monstrosity will increase our grandchildren’s indebtedness. If the public believes that they will buy bridges in Brooklyn!
Yesterday’s WSJ editorializes against their lies with ObamaCare’s Reality Deficit. The article treats the phony assumptions given to the CBO, and the real assumptions withheld from the CBO, and shows how the CBO can do the math correctly and say that the deficit will increase. Given the real assumptions and complete picture, the CBO would say that the deficit will be reduced by repealing Obamacare.
“Among the worst Democratic abuses was gaming the CBO’s budget conventions to make it seem as if ObamaCare “saves” money.”
“The accounting gimmicks are legion, but we’ll pick out a few: It uses 10 years of taxes to fund six years of subsidies. Social Security and Medicare revenues are double-counted to the tune of $398 billion. A new program funding long-term care frontloads taxes but backloads spending, gradually going broke by design. The law pretends that Congress will spend less on Medicare than it really will, in particular through an automatic 25% cut to physician payments that Democrats have already voted not to allow for this year.”
“The CBO budget gnomes are required to “score” what’s on paper in front of them, no matter how unrealistic, and that’s the method its Congressional masters prefer. The political class makes believe that CBO’s forecasts are carved into stone tablets through divine revelation, but all they really show is that politicians have rigged the budget rules to hide the true cost of entitlements.”
“The government can’t subsidize coverage for tens of millions of new people and simultaneously reduce the deficit, as most Americans seem to intuitively understand. The real offense Republicans are committing in the eyes of Washington is exposing its illusions.”
A quick review of some of the posts on Nationalized Health Care on the right side of this page may refresh any memories that need refreshing. Suffice it to say that the House should repeal the damn law and let the Senate go on record after the November results as favoring it; and let Obama veto any repeal that gets to his desk! 2012 is just around the corner!
More Uncertainty, the sinister kind under Obamacare
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Corporate Welfare, Democrats, Government Regulation, Nationalized Health Care on January 7, 2011
It’s axiomatic that uncertainty breeds caution. In an economy, uncertainty slows growth, inhibits investment and delays or reduces employment. After four years of a Democratic Congress and two years of a Democratic President we have seen plenty of statutory uncertainty. And during the last two years the regulatory uncertainty has increased dramatically from leftist control freaks; just consider recent actions in the FCC and EPA. And quite a bit of this, without statutory authority!
As if that’s not enough, we now see a sinister regulatory uncertainty under Obamacare. This regulatory uncertainty is the discretionary kind, in which Obama supporters are granted waivers from various provisions of Obamacare, but his opponents are not.
Two articles highlight the problem. Dr. Paul Hsieh pens a telling article in The Washington Times, Best health care political pull can buy. “According to the New York Times, many consumer advocates thus fear Obamacare will have the perverse effect of reducing competition and driving up costs.”
“Yet while Obamacare is suppressing genuine marketplace competition for medical services, it is also spurring a more sinister facsimile of competition – for political favors. Employers and insurers with sufficient political clout can save money by obtaining a much-coveted “waiver,” exempting them from onerous new insurance regulations. The 222 current recipients of such waivers include popular employers such as McDonald’s and Universal Orlando as well as the Service Employees Benefit Fund, which insures members of the Service Employees International Union (a major political supporter of the Obama administration). Because these waivers are granted at the discretion of the secretary of health and human services, they create easy opportunities for political favoritism and corruption.”
Karl Rove in his WSJ op-ed, ObamaCare Rewards Friends, Punishes Enemies, adds that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius exceeds her statutory by regulating insurance rate increases needed to cover the additional health services mandated by Obamacare: “Then, on Dec. 21, Ms. Sebelius announced that insurance companies seeking rate increases of 10% or more in the individual or small group market must publicly justify the hikes under standards set by her department.”
“Insurance regulation has traditionally been a state responsibility, and 43 states must already approve proposed insurance-rate increases. ObamaCare does not authorize HHS to deny rate increases, but the agency said that if a state “lacks the resources or authority” to conduct the kind of review the agency wants, it will conduct its own”
And this after exempting AARP’s lucrative “Medigap” plans from rate review and other Obamacare requirements. This so-called “non-profit” won’t pay any of the new taxes on insurance companies; nor will it be required like other insurers to spend 85% of Medigap premiums on medical claims. Oh, by the way, AARP spent a big chunk of the $121 million in advertising supporting Obamacare passage.
A line from Hamlet, “Something is rotten in…Denmark,” is sadly appropriate! The lack of basic morality here is troubling, but not unexpected considering who is in power.
Another Usurpation Under, What Else? Obamacare!
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Democrats, Federalism, Government Regulation, Nationalized Health Care, Statism on December 22, 2010
It seem that under the new Obamacare law, Tsar Sebelius can do whatever the hell she wants, without statutory authority. As today’s WSJ article, Sebelius’s Price Controls, indicates, she has instructed the states to approve medical insurance rate increases only to the extent of 10% or less and block others. This, despite the fact that the new Obamacare law has increased required covered care which mandates will cost well beyond 10%!
We have reached Communist level control in this country under Obama and his leftists thugs. They dictate services increases and price controls without any economic justification.
Tom Sullivan in Connecticut, against Tzar Sebelius’s mandate, approved a 20% increase justified by required increased services. “I find myself in an unprecedented place and time, as do my counterparts throughout the country,” Mr. Sullivan wrote to Mr. Blumenthal, “in overseeing the implementation of one of the most far-reaching policy initiatives enacted by the federal government in recent history.” State regulators, he continued, are “in an unenviable position as we are required by Congress to approve richer benefit packages, while simultaneously being called upon by you to reduce rates.” He ultimately resigned and his predecessor reversed his decision.
“Congress, which by some miracle declined to give HHS the formal legal authority to explicitly block premium increases, despite a direct appeal from President Obama. Instead, Ms. Sebelius is creating by regulatory fiat larger de facto powers to achieve the same end.”
Yesterday, we saw the FCC grant itself authority to regulate the internet and expropriate private property in the name of net neutrality. No statutory authority. Here we see Comrade Sebelius grant herself authority to block justified premium increases. No statutory authority.
Is it any wonder that businesses won’t invest, won’t hire, while the economic recovery is stuck in “slow” and unemployment in “high?” This regulatory uncertainty is as bad as legislative uncertainty. Investors and businesses don’t know what will come next. These unelected bureaucrats can grant themselves power and exercise it at will!
Our nation will not recover until we rid ourselves of this leftist scum.
Restore Federalism–It’s Imperative
Posted by Tom in Constitution, Democrats, Federalism, Government Regulation, State Finances on December 5, 2010
This news item caught my eye, the DOT is billing Chris Christie the governor of New Jersey $271 million for refusing to subject the New Jersey taxpayers to the costs of overruns for the phantom Hudson River tunnel. The bureaucrats are pissed! Not “hell hath no furry like a woman scorned” but, ‘hell hath no furry like the DOT leftist bureaucrats scorned!’
“It’s not surprising that the same federal transit agency that had no clear way to pay for cost overruns of a project already hurt by poor planning and inequitable cost-sharing is relying on bureaucratic power plays to wring even more money out of New Jerseyans,” he said.
Christie notes that other states that have similarly pulled the plug on federally funded transportation projects have not been forced to repay money that’s already been spent.
The strict 30-day deadline reeks of petty vindictiveness aimed at a governor who’s increasingly being spoken of as a 2012 GOP presidential candidate.
The big shot federal spenders transfer all kinds of mandates and hooks to the states, this and Medicaid being examples that come to mind.
We need to stop this silliness and return the roles of government to their proper spheres. Feds handle national concerns, defense, disputes between states and their citizens, interstate and foreign commerce, foreign relations and little else. (No education, energy, labor, housing, just to name a few.) States handle judicial matters between citizen litigants, education, and public infrastructure. All else is left to the individual, family, community organization, local charity, synagog, church, or mosque. This is known as the principle of subsidiarity: let the lowest cognizant part of society handle what it should be capable of handling.
In a recent post I echoed the call for repeal of the 17th Amendment resulting in the states’ election of senators. This for the additional check and balance on the power of special interests in direct elections and the reinforcement of states rights and responsibilities. That is important in this runaway federal spending and taxing orgy foisted upon us by Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the leftist Democrats.
We really need to return governing power and responsibility to the states and to the individuals. It is the only way we can reign in the overreaching federal government. Our Tenth Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Let’s return to the time when we lived by that sage amendment to our founding document!
Hope And Change
With condolences to my liberal friends……..
Today’s Nonclassical Liberalism….against the American grain!
Posted by Tom in Democrats, Individual Freedom, Liberalism, National Character, Statism on December 4, 2010
Emmett Tyrrell pens an interesting analysis of today’s left in the weekend WSJ, Liberalism: An Autopsy. American voters who identify themselves as liberals are down to 20% of the electorate while those identifying themselves as conservatives are 42% and the powerful independents who swung right in the last election are 29%. What happened to the so-called liberals?
Tyrrell traces their decline from JFK forward. He put us on the path to big government and his successor LBJ dramatically expanded that path. So while JFKs by executive order legitimized public employee unions, Johnson gave us the Great Society with legislation in education, voter rights, poverty, medicare and medicaid. Kennedy threw open the floodgates of public unionism and its incestuous alliance with politicians. Johnson showed us how big and bankrupting government can be with its bankrupting parasitical Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Granted the expansion of the leftist progressive thinking started much earlier, reached a plateau with FDR. But Truman’s and Ike’s return to normalcy provided only a brief respite. The size, the power, the intrusiveness of big government was shown with Johnson’s Great Society. As implied from the moniker the Great Society demanded a Small Individual with less freedom and consequently less potential.
Tyrrell makes an excellent point that “conservatives have had Edmund Burke and the Founding Fathers as their cynosures.” Sadly the liberals search in vain for their cynosures, denied them, save perhaps the British Fabian Socialists or Karl Marx, they lack intellectual mentors.
The vile overreach of big government was shown in the person of Obama who with Reid and Pelosi engaged in the stimulus-Obamacare, generation choking spending orgy. They steal from our grandchildren:
“Over the past two years the Democrats showed their true colors. Faced with an entitlement crisis, they rang up trillion dollar deficits. We now face an entitlement crisis and a budget crisis—and liberals have no answer for it beyond tax and spend. They still have support in the media, but even here they are faced with opposition from Fox News, talk radio and the Internet.”
“As a political movement liberalism is dead. They do not have the numbers. They do not have the policies. They have 23 seats in the Senate to defend in 2012 (against the Republicans’ 10) and Republican control of state houses and legislatures will give them even more seats in the future.”
Tyrrell generously concludes with, “Liberalism R.I.P.” I only hope he is not premature in his assessment!
JFK-BHO, What a Contrast!
Posted by Tom in Democrats, National Character, Presidency on November 22, 2010
As a kid raised in a Roosevelt Democratic household, I learned politics from a pro, my Dad. This was tough St. Louis, ward politics from a working-class, Irish-Catholic perspective. So I was rooting for, campaigning for and praying for Kennedy’s election when in the Army Reserves in Chicago I watched the election returns, even though at 18 I couldn’t vote.
Reading Warren Kozak’s op-ed in today’s WSJ, Remembering JFK in an Age of Terror, reminded me why I was so star struck. He tells of a speech by Kennedy on the steps of the UN on September 25, 1961:
“Terror is not a new weapon,” the young president tells the world body. “Throughout history, it has been used by those who could not prevail either by persuasion or example. But inevitably, they fail either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know; be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.”
“Free men standing up to their responsibilities”—there is a lasting quality in those seven words that harks back to who we are as a people, to our War of Independence and our frontier days. It describes 18-year-old Marines on Pacific islands and in Afghanistan today. And it carries even more weight because this president, 18 years earlier, had almost lost his own life as a Navy officer on a patrol torpedo boat, PT-109, during World War II. He served his country in war despite his privileged background because, like most men of his generation, he believed in freedom and standing up to aggression. In other words, he took responsibility.
“The United States has both the will and the weapons.” No apology for our strength. No apology for our past. No apology for who we are, and yet the world still admires him.”
What a refreshing contrast to the weak, apologizing, groveling, America-bashing president we now have in office! And what a happy time to have been proud to be a Democrat!
Obama: Bailout King or Head Pusher?
Posted by Tom in California, Constitution, Democrats, Federalism, State Finances, Stimulus/Bailout on November 22, 2010
We read in today’s WSJ that 30 of the 50 states face deficits totaling more that $127 Billion. We also read that the Obama administration wants to permanently extend the federal subsidy for Build America Bonds, the program that uses your hard-earned dollars to reduce interest on state bond issues.
Steven Malanga in his op-ed, The ‘Build America’ Debt Bomb, points out the enabling nature of this addictive federal program for the spendthrift states. The BAB was initiated to help prop up the muni bond market at a time when private bond insurers were thought to be in trouble. It would subsidize higher rates so that new non-taxable investors would come into the muni market. It was designed as temporary and perhaps temporarily justifiable. But like all temporary taxes, like all temporary handouts, like all temporary unemployment insurance, and like all temporary bailouts, in the hands of the Democrats, it tends to become permanent.
The greatest user of the program is the bankrupt state of California which has issued $21 Billion of BABs. Note that CA’s credit is in the tank. Its taxes are among the highest. Its regulatory climate among the harshest. And its green regulatory costs astronomical. As you may have heard CA has an ongoing budget problem to the tune of $20 Billion. It’s ongoing in the sense that the $20 Billion is expected to repeat itself. With a Democratic governor and legislature, there is little hope. If CA can’t tax more for fear of driving out more businesses and CA can’t borrow more from traditional muni investors because its credit is in the tank, then it must look to new markets for lenders. Obama’s BAB drug will continue to serve up sucker new investors but at a costs to the U.S. taxpayers. Why should we pay this?
Malanga points out: “The Obama administration believes the BABs’ direct federal subsidy is a more efficient way to raise money than traditional tax-free municipals. But when money that would otherwise go to private business flows into subsidized government activities, resources are misallocated.
“This is no idle speculation: The financial press is full of stories of investment managers recommending BABs over corporate bonds with similar ratings, thanks to the advantage of federal subsidy. There is also a future bailout risk, given that the federal government might not allow a state or local government to default on a Build America Bond. None of this is what voters signed up for on Nov. 2.”
As I pointed out in a recent post, as long as someone else will pay for the free lunch, there is no reason for the states to stop stuffing themselves. States will only face reality when they are forced to face reality. Congress should reject the BAB extension, provide for state bankruptcy, and promote a constitutional amendment precluding the federal bailout of sovereign states. Oh, and repeal the 17th Amendment; we need a return to federalism.
Deficit Reduction-Competing Plans
Posted by Tom in Business, Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Deficit, Democrats, Entitlements, Environment, Financial Policy, Foreign Trade, Government Regulation, National Character, National Debt, National Endowments and GSEs, Social Security, Taxation, Unions on November 17, 2010
Now we have another deficit reduction plan to compare the the Obama Deficit Reduction Commission plan, this the “Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force” announced by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici. Here’s the WSJ high level comparison:
We won’t reduce deficits and their concomitant generation burdening debt until we reform congressional spending. Listening to another commission or task-force will not do the trick. Congress must get serious and tell the truth to the America people–there is no free lunch, THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH!
In addition to reducing the deficit, we must promote an environment for growth: certainty of taxation well into the future, certainty of limited regulation of business, and elimination of rent-seeking-giving subsidies and regulations.
All the principles of freedom and growth are anathema to the current state of Obamaism: Instead of reforming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security Obama’s Democrats added Obamacare as an additional unsustainable entitlement with concomitant business and personal uncertainty. Instead of cleaning up the Fannie-Freddie generated financial mess Obama’s Democrats continued the charade of propping them up to do more future damage. Instead of cutting unnecessary spending, Obama’s Democrats passes such folly as cash for clunkers and bought GM for the UAW. So, bottom line, oppose Obama’s Democrats while they’re in office and turn them out of office ASAP.
A few basic economic growth imperatives;
- Repeal Obamacare while eliminating employer tax benefit subsidies, while eliminating interstate insurance competition barriers and while enacting stringent malpractice tort reform; reform Medicare over time as a high-deductible insurance policy with means testing; and reform Social Security with later retirement, means-testing and private accounts as an option for the means tested high-earners.
- Go for a flat, low-rate income tax both personal and corporate, eliminating extraterritorial corporate taxation, and all personal deductions, including home mortgage deductions.
- Eliminate all federal agency rule-making. If Congress can’t define it specifically as a law, then it should not govern, period! Now, there will obviously be extremely well defined and narrow exceptions to this like the difference in typeface, boldness or color of signs and warnings!
- Abolish all subsidies and mandates, farm subsidies/mandates, green subsidies/mandates, ethanol subsidies/mandates. If a product or service is not in and of itself economic enough or green enough to make it in the free market, then it should fail. In no case should it be subsidized.
- Eliminate all trade barriers that protect unions or their work rules. The Mexican trucking proscription under NAFTA is an example.
- Negotiate, sign and ratify as many free trade deals as are reasonable. As the world’s largest consumer, we hav the leverage, if we would only use it intelligently.
- Preclude all public service unions. Repeal Taft-Hartley and minimum wage laws.
- Eliminate all unnecessary government spending like, NPR, NEH, Department of Education, etc.
- Eliminate and forego all unfunded mandates to the states. Federalism must be re-energized and government pushed down to lower levels.
We need to get the point across to the American people that we are broke. We can’t afford the free lunches anymore. We need individual responsibility. We are not a socialistic nation.
In short, if we got government out of the way, this country would once again blossom!
NEH’s Insult to Vets
Posted by Tom in Academics, Centrally Managed Economy, Constitution, Democrats, Free Speech, National Character, National Endowments and GSEs on November 11, 2010
A despicable insult to our vets was the subject of Hannity’s interview of Professor Penelope Blake: The National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored a WWII-Pacific conference in Hawaii with $140,000 of our taxpayer money to promote a hate America message.
The conference included topics like: • Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War in Japanese History and Memory (Yaguchi, U of Tokyo • Pacific Islanders and the War: Remembering Guadalcanal as a Turning Point (White, U of Hawaii) • The Pacific War in Hawaiian Culture and History (Osorio, U of Hawaii) • The Hawai‘i Japanese American experience: racism, heroism, and beyond (Nishimoto, U of Hawaii)
It seems that these “academics” are basically anti-American, purveying the following propositions at the taxpayer funded conference:
- They maintain Japan was the ‘victim of Western opression’ to justify Pearl Harbor.
- Americans were ‘conquerors and invaders” in freeing Guam from the Japanese oppressors.
- U.S. war memorials like the Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery are symbols of military aggression and brutality.
- U.S. military has repeatedly committed rapes throughout its history.
- Veterams’ memories of their own experiences in the war are suspect and influenced by media and their own self-delusion.
Now no one would deny these leftists their rights to speak their opinions freely, that is their constitutional right. But that this outrage, reminiscent of Obama’s apologies for America, continues under U.S. sponsorship is simply an unacceptable use of taxpayer money. Particularly at a time Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the Democrats have our economy burdened by recurring Trillion Dollar plus deficits and unsustainable debt. No, more than that, even in good times it is a shameful waste of taxpayer money, period!
It all gets down to the proper role of government. Is the purpose of government to fund the Great Society’s NEH, or NPR, or is that better left to sponsors of education and the arts? Private endowments, corporations and patrons do, as in times prior to the Great Society, sponsor education and the arts.
I wonder if our newly elected House has the guts to defund NPR and eliminate the NEH in the necessary upcoming budget cutting exercise. I sure hope so. After all under the leftist-Obama apologetics, the U.S. is no longer a “Great Society!”
I also wonder if the Senate were elected as originally set out in Article 1 Section 3 of the Constitution, instead of as set out in the 17th Amendment, if the NEA or NPR would exist today!
Finally, how many other National Endowments for the (fill in the blank) are in existence wasting our heard earned money? Time to find out!