Archive for category Welfare
Redistribution–Obama’s Supplemental Poverty Measure
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Government Regulation, Statism, Welfare on March 8, 2010
Robert Rector highlights Obama’s New “Poverty” Measurement in today’s NRO post; as you may guess it has nothing to do with actual poverty.
“The current poverty measure counts absolute purchasing power— how much steak and potatoes you can buy. The new measure will count comparative purchasing power — how much steak and potatoes you can buy relative to other people. As the nation becomes wealthier, the poverty standards will increase in proportion. In other words, Obama will employ a statistical trick to ensure that “the poor will always be with you,” no matter how much better off they get in absolute terms.”
“The weird new poverty measure will produce very odd results. For example, if the real income of every single American were to magically triple over night, the new poverty measure would show there had been no drop in “poverty,” because the poverty income threshold would also triple. Under the Obama system, poverty can be reduced only if the incomes of the “poor” are rising faster than the incomes of everyone else.”
“The government’s own data show that the typical American defined as poor (according to the traditional, pre-Obama poverty measure) has two color televisions, cable or satellite service, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He also has a car, air conditioning, a refrig erator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had suf ficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs. While this individual’s life is not opulent, it is far from the stark images conveyed by the mainstream media and liberal politicians.”
So the “poor” will always be with us no matter how rich they become. Why do this you may ask? Obama’s stated objective is to exercise what he would call a primary function of government: redistribution of wealth. Doing this creates dependency on government and dependency creates voters for the re-distributor.
Of course, there’s a downside. Redistribution by definition removes capital from reinvestment opportunities. As a direct consequence the wealth of society is lowered. The standard of living goes down proportionately. Ultimately, there will be no more wealth to re-distribute. What’s left is a permanent underclass, dependent only upon other dependents!
I fear Obama is the ultimate Communist. Tzars. Government control of major industries. Promotion of public employee unionism. Create major new welfare programs when existing programs are near bankruptcy. And now, a redefinition of “poverty” from absolute terms to relative terms.
I’m reminded of Orwell’s Animal Farm, “while all of us are equal, some are more equal than others!”
Tom Motherway
“Paygo” Is Really Meaningless!
“Now, Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else,” saith Obama in his weekly radio address last month.“After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It’s easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What’s hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that’s what we must do.” (See: Politico post.)
As Steve Martin used to say, EXCUSE ME!!!
When this “bedrock principle” was raised by Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky that Congress could only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere, to ask where the $10 Billion in extended unemployment and Cobra benefits was being paid for, the Democrats were outraged and foot-in-mouth Vice President Joe Biden lambasted the Republicans as inhumane!
As Jay Ambrose of the OC Register points out, you would think that the Democratic Congress could find a measly $10 Billion in all the pork they’ve barbecued in recent legislation.
“The special sadness in all of this is the hypocrisy of a president who just recently sold paygo as a mighty step toward fiscal responsibility. Not only was Biden then turned loose on an honest man trying to make paygo work, but the whole paygo law is by and large a con game to begin with. It can be waived with flimsy excuse and seems to exempt virtually every other budgetary sentence that begins with a capital and ends with a period. Even if it were religiously heeded, the budget could be swamped by the costs of the exceptions.”
I cannot say it any better: “It’s time to start worrying, fellow Americans. Really worrying.”
Tom Motherway
A Politician Who Tells the Hard Truth
Posted by Tom in Deficit, Nationalized Health Care, Politics, Social Security, Welfare on March 4, 2010
I listened to Chris Matthews MSNBC’s leftist Obama fan at the Bohemian Grove last summer and met him after the panel discussion; he is indeed liberal. That made me appreciate all the more his recent interview with Representative Paul Ryan from Wisconsin. The “unsustainability” of the current welfare system is the topic and Chris recognizes our need to defend ourselves at the same time, but he doesn’t seem to connect the dots!
In any case, I like this guy, Ryan.
Tom Motherway
“You Can’t Borrow Against the Future…You Don’t Have One”
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Deficit, Democrats, Nationalized Health Care, Statism, Welfare on February 27, 2010
I can’t say it any better than Mark Steyn does in today’s NRO post, When Responsibility Doesn’t Pay. Here are a few lines as a tease to the whole article–a must read if there ever was one!
“While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand-new, even-more-unsustainable entitlement at the health-care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen — because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is farther upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter Seventeen or Eighteen.”
“What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th-century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless, insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany, and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social-democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 — or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: Ten grandparents have six kids have four grandkids — ie, the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility — the point from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared to Spain and Italy, Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.”
“So you can’t borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don’t have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when ten grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?”
Click on the link above and read on….you’ll see that California is further along in the chapters!
Primer on European Welfare State Terror Threat Levels
Posted by Tom in Humor, Nationalized Health Care, Welfare on December 14, 2009
As President Obama continues on his program to make the USA a socialistic European welfare state, it is important to learn the nuances of and variety in the various terrorism threat levels employed by European subdivisions. So as a public service I republish today’s article from the European edition of the Toomey Times:
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was during the great fire of 1666.
The Scots raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line in the British army for the last 300 years.
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide”. The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France ’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.
It’s not only the French who are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout loudly and excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”
The Germans also increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose”.
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the New Spanish navy can get a really good look at the Old Spanish navy.
All kidding aside, it is very difficult to pay for effective defense when almost all the tax money goes to welfare.
Tom Motherway
Guns and Butter–We’ll Have Neither
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Defense, Financial Policy, Foreign Policy, Welfare on November 19, 2009
When Jerry O’Driscoll the other evening cited President Eisenhower’s belief that a strong economy was the basis for military strength, I questioned whether this was a chicken-egg issue. Jerry held his ground that economic strength was the foundation–it came first. On later reflection, I agree that this was logical at least since late medieval history. The reason is that it costs money and plenty of it to maintain a strong military which per se is uneconomic. The military produces nothing, save security.
In ancient times one could argue that armies would fight, kill and conquer for booty and spoils. That started to change in Roman times. The change continued in medieval times. But by Napoleon’s time, “an army travel(ed) on its stomach,” as Russia learned to its advantage.
What the military does produce though is critical to economic strength. Without security the economy cannot be maintained; without security innovation will not flower; without security economic risk will not be undertaken. There’s a symbioses here. QED, military strength is a good investment!
Since WWI American military might has been the protector of the free world. Our blood, lives, and treasure have pulled Western Europe out of two world wars and maintained the power balance needed to drive the Soviet Union into bankruptcy. They have also kept the Pacific Basin free from Japan in WWII and with the Truman Doctrine maintained the line in East Asia against the Chinese Communists until in recent times capitalism is beginning to take roots in China.
In essence we have paid with blood, lives and treasure for the free world’s economic protection. We have paid for its luxury to produce enough to institute welfare states–to become socialists! Yes, our blood, our lives, our money have given France the ability to look down its nose on us as money-grubbing capitalists with no appreciation of culture and no concept of leisure. While France takes the month of August off, has a 35 hour work week, and is guaranteed 30 annual holidays, we–at least those with real jobs–have settled for two weeks vacation and worked overtime, paying taxes all the while.
Where are we going from here? Obama is traveling the world bowing and apologizing for our past. He is abandoning our military commitments and our allies. He is ruining our economy for generations to come. And, he is logically disarming our nuclear capability and dithering on whether we should try to win–in his words–the “war of necessity” in Afghanistan. He wants to make us European. He’s a multi-nationalists. He would cede sovereignty to the UN. In short, he would rather be liked than right. In his morally-relativistic world, “being liked” is the measure of success!
Victor Davis Hanson penned an excellent litany November 19th on National Review Online, appropriately titled: Circling Sharks Smell American Blood. One paragraph worth note: “France, of all nations, is now warning us to get a backbone with the Iranians. So far the theocracy has snubbed our new outreach efforts aimed at stopping its nuclear proliferation. Iran’s Russian patrons now talk more nicely to us — but mostly because we caved on land-based missile defense in Eastern Europe, and got nothing really in return.” Yep, you heard that right, France is telling us to get a backbone!
Back to “guns and butter.” Past history shows that it is difficult to have a welfare state (butter), a strong military, and a vibrant economy. The strong economy can support the military but not the welfare state at the same time. Obama is bent on wrecking the economy by borrowing against our grandchildren’s future to create a more encompassing, more invasive welfare state. So in the end we will have neither guns nor butter. Come to think of it, we won’t have much of a country either.
Tom Motherway
Obamacare–This States The Problem, Succinctly!
Posted by Tom in Nationalized Health Care, Welfare on November 18, 2009
An email from my son, Matt, this morning: ”Great one paragraph summary:”
He was referring to today’s WSJ op-ed by Jeffrey S.Flier, Dean of the Harvard School of Medicine who has had to contend with Romney’s Massachusetts health care system and now faces Obamacare. Here’s the paragraph:
Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. And deep flaws in Medicare and Medicaid drive spending without optimizing care.
The full article is worth reading.
Tom Motherway
Here We Go Again
Stephen Spruiell’s NRO post, Spreading the Wealth, is worth the read. In it he reports on Robert Rector’s Heritage Foundation estimate of Obama’s $10.3 trillion in welfare programs over the next decade.
Clinton’s legislation promised as “end to welfare as we know it.” Obama’s redistributionist agenda should result in an end to American prosperity as we know it. There will be more and more with their hands out and fewer taxpayers to grease those palms. As Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.