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Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, said Moscow was bidding to help lead efforts to build a new world economic order after the old system collapsed in the global financial crisis. Mr Medvedev said the renewed interest in Russia this year was a sign of a changing world in which the institutions of the western-dominated world order had had their day amid thousands of corporate defaults and the threat of sovereign defaults. Medvedev said, “What had seemed untouchable has collapsed. The bubbles that created the illusion of flourishing economies have burst. And we should use it to build a modern, flourishing and strong Russia … which will be a co-founder of the new world economic order and a full participant in the collective political leadership of the post-crisis world.” That’s just great. Russia is now vying to lead the world economy. Now, I’m not faulting Dmitry. I don’t fault ambition, ever. But I am going to do some “faulting” here. Here’s what I’m going to fault. Western Government, that’s what.
Two points to consider Dmitry. One, the free market didn’t fail. Two, Western Government failed. Yes, we are in a global recession. Yes, times have been tough.
But mind you Dmitry, the vast, vast, vast majority of failures have been directly tied to government. Let’s check it out. AIG? Credit default swaps unregulated by government, thank you Lindsey Grahm and President Clinton. Financial Crisis on Wall Street? Community Redevelopment Act, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, are the root causes. The auto industry? Government imposed café standards and unions. Steel Industry? Unions and regulation caused its demise. Real estate market crash? Again, Community Redevelopment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Outlandish corporate risks gone bad? Enabled by government bail outs.
But the biggest failure? Government? Which one? Pick. U.S., Greece, Spain, Portugal, U.K., Ireland, Japan. Every one of them simply spent more than they took in and bankrupted themselves, except they don’t have to go bankrupt, they can tax. The problem is that when they tax they kill the host that their parasitic nature depends on. They kill the private sector which when you look at the portion of the private sector that is not tethered, buoyed or inflated by government, that portion is doing all right, even in these disastrous times. But even the portion of the private sector that isn’t attached to the wet teet of government will be crushed if government takes much more of the productivity.
And that’s the plan, to take more, to redistribute more, to further slash liberty to the bare. Every nation, every leader needs a kick in the head. They need to be forced to objectively review history and admit that they are wrong in their pursuits. They need to accept the fact that government, more often than not, is not the solution, it’s the problem. Government is unaccountable and suffers little consequence, thus they routinely fail as they are now. This isn’t new. This is the same old story.
Come on readers. How’s our government doing on the Gulf Oil Spill? How is our government doing on the illegal alien problem? Our government couldn’t even run Arlington National Cemetery correctly. If you didn’t see the news today, they found a pile of head stones in a creek bed and were recently found to be burying veterans on top of other veterans. It is rather ironic that our government can’t even manage to run a burial appropriately while at the same time, pushing us in a direction where it’s going to need it’s own burial. There’s more. Social Security? Bankrupt. Medicare? Bankrupt. Medicaid? Bankrupt. Our future, bankrupt. (If we don’t act fast). We have 113 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities crashing down on us. If we don’t change, we are dooming ourselves and our children and our children’s children. Shame on us.
Yet, I’ll give Dmitry this: He’s on the right track. He said this too: “Russia needs a real investment boom”, in order to achieve its modernization goals, he said. To stimulate that, Mr Medvedev announced Moscow would introduce zero taxation on capital gains for companies working on long-term investments starting from January next year and said Russia was improving the legal system to provide better protection for businesses against the long arm of bureaucracy.
Wow, we won the cold war only to be out libertied by the Ruskies! Now that’s down right embarrassing.
Wake up folks. Government is the problem. It’s a cancer, and it’s killing us. We need to get it under control. We need to shrink the tumor or learn to speak Russian or maybe Chinese.
That’s my Reetzality for the day.
Thanks for the read.
Brett Reetz
Obama is still playing the metaphorical role of the parent who spoils, enables, and ultimately ruins his children. The metaphor is this; the parent is the President, the children are Americans. On Saturday, Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic recovery. Rahm Emanuel said,”While some people say you have to spend and some people say you have to cut, the president wants to talk about both cuts and investing,” There’s some of the old audacity, characterizing “spending” as “investing.” (Government spending has a negative multiplier effect which means the economy shrinks by more than a dollar when the government spends a dollar.)
The federal government needs to stop borrowing money, mostly from China, and start existing within its means. The Federal Government has a monumental cash flow problem meaning the money coming in is less than the money going out. Yet, the current administration could care less. The stimulus did not stop a free fall. It protected government workers who make substantially more than the private sector.
As reported in the USA TODAY by Dennis Cauchon on March 8th, 2010, “Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds. Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector. Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available. These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”
Here’s some Reetzality: According to the USA TODAY analysis, the over-all cost, what “public servants” earn, of a public sector job including benefits is $38,548.00 more than an equivalent private sector job. Well not entirely equivalent. Public sector employees don’t work as hard, aren’t as accountable, and don’t get fired as easily as private sector workers. Glenn Beck is encouraging us to read the Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek which is an influential exposition of classical liberalism. I looked up the word Serf for the literal definition. It is, according to Webster’s, “1. A person in a condition of feudal servitude, required to render services to a lord, commonly attached to the lord’s land and transferred with it from one owner to another. 2. A slave.” Sadly, I think we’re nearing the end of this particular road. We are required to render. Our burden to render is passed from one political class to another. Do we really own our land? Just stop paying the king, I mean the government and see how long you can call home, home. And the kings’ men, I mean the public sector employees, are getting compensated more than the private sector. They are receiving more wealth than the folks actually producing the wealth. And isn’t being forced to pay near fifty percent of a person’s productivity in taxes, whether state, federal, local, property, sales, fuel, personal property, license fees, etc., effectively a partial violation of the Thirteenth Amendment? Doesn’t that make a person half a slave? Well maybe not. We don’t have to work. We can go Surfing. Maybe it’s only share cropper status government is imposing.
Back to serious. The private sector is still collapsing under the present weight of government and the fear of the future increased weight of government and Obama wants to bail out government. Hey President, how about cutting government. How about doing what any private sector enterprise would do when faced with a budget crisis, across the board cuts in wages? Or if your minions in your teachers unions, police and fire fighter unions and the AEIU don’t like it, lay some of them off. Trust me Mr. President, we in the private sector will survive. Further more, these are state entities you are bailing out. Why not allow the States to resolve their own problems? Why continue to enable a failing and likely soon to actually fail top heavy government bloated system that continues to usurp the people’s liberties, principles, perseverance, ingenuity, and optimism? Here’s why. Obama is a bad President, behaving just like a bad parent. He is the parent who keeps saying, “This is the last warning! This is the last time. If you ______________ (fill in the blank with any adolescent transgression) one more time, I will ______________ (fill in the blank with any punishment).” Then, when the bad parent’s child once again commits a transgression, he again enables the child by not imposing consequences. Consider this: Wage cuts in government are almost historically non-existent. Thus, now when we need them, when our future depends on a smaller government (or learning Chinese), government workers will have no part of it. Government workers will behave just like a spoiled child who is facing the imposition of a rarely, if ever, imposed consequence. They will throw a tantrum. And the parent, our President, will come to their aid, blame others, probably George Bush, and do anything he can to commandeer the wet teet into their mouths, further damaging the future.
In fact, this is exactly what he is doing right now. He said so yesterday. I am not making a prognosis here. I am making a diagnosis. Sticking with the parenthood comparison, my experience is that when a parent spoils, enables, and comprehensively fails to raise a child of much merit, eventually, notwithstanding the contempt for the child’s behavior, the parent is held to be responsible. The parent is the bad guy. The children are the ones who suffer. Obama is the parent. Americans are the children. Maybe Obama needs to read some Dr. Spock. It seems like he’s reading Dr. Seuss.
Here’s an interesting analysis of big government. Maybe there’s hope after all, although its tough to root for embedded incompetence. Read on.
PROGRESSIVES CAN’T GET PAST THE KNOWLEDGE PROBLEM
By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds April 4, 2010
“If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” — President Reagan, Jan. 20, 1981.
Economist Friedrich Hayek explained in 1945 why centrally controlled “command economies” were doomed to waste, inefficiency, and collapse: Insufficient knowledge. He won a Nobel Prize. But it turns out he was righter than he knew. In his “The Use of Knowledge In Society,” Hayek explained that information about supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, wants and needs exists in no single place in any economy. The economy is simply too large and complicated for such information to be gathered together.
Any economic planner who attempts to do so will wind up hopelessly uninformed and behind the times, reacting to economic changes in a clumsy, too-late fashion and then being forced to react again to fix the problems that the previous mistakes created, leading to new problems, and so on.
Market mechanisms, like pricing, do a better job than planners because they incorporate what everyone knows indirectly through signals like price, without central planning.
Thus, no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can’t possibly be smart enough to make them work.
Hayek’s insight into economics and regulation is often called “The Knowledge Problem,” and it is a very powerful notion. But recent events suggest that it’s not just the economy that regulators don’t understand well enough — it’s also their own regulations. This became apparent when various large businesses responded to the enactment of Obamacare by taking accounting steps to reflect tax changes brought about by the new health care legislation. The additional costs created by Obamacare, conveniently enough, weren’t going to strike until later, after the November elections.
But both Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Securities and Exchange Commission regulations require companies to account for these changes as soon as they learn about them. As the Atlantic’s Megan McArdle wrote:
“What AT&T, Caterpillar, et al did was appropriate. It’s earnings season, and they offered guidance about , um, their earnings.”So once Obamacare passed, massive corporate write-downs were inevitable.
They were also bad publicity for Obamacare, and they seem to have come as an unpleasant shock to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who immediately scheduled congressional hearings for April 21, demanding that the chief executive officers of AT&T, John Deere, and Caterpillar, among others, come and explain themselves. Obamacare was supposed to provide unicorns and rainbows: How can it possibly be hurting companies and killing jobs? Surely there’s some sort of Republican conspiracy going on here! More like a confederacy of dunces. Waxman and his colleagues in Congress can’t possibly understand the health care market well enough to fix it. But what’s more striking is that Waxman’s outraged reaction revealed that they don’t even understand their own area of responsibility – regulation — well enough to predict the effect of changes in legislation. In drafting the Obamacare bill they tried to time things for maximum political advantage, only to be tripped up by the complexities of the regulatory environment they had already created. It’s like a second-order Knowledge Problem.
Possibly this is simply because Waxman and his colleagues are dumb, and God knows there’s plenty of evidence that Congress isn’t a repository of rocket scientists. But it’s just as likely that adding 30 or 40 IQ points to the average congressman wouldn’t make much difference. The United States Code — containing federal statutory law — is more than 50,000 pages long and comprises 40 volumes. The Code of Federal Regulations, which indexes administrative rules, is 161,117 pages long and composes 226 volumes.
No one on Earth understands them all, and the potential interaction among all the different rules would choke a supercomputer. This means, of course, that when Congress changes the law, it not only can’t be aware of all the real-world complications it’s producing, it can’t even understand the legal and regulatory implications of what it’s doing.
There’s good news and bad news in that. The bad news is obvious: We’re governed not just by people who do screw up constantly, but by people who can’t help but screw up constantly. So long as the government is this large and overweening, no amount of effort at securing smarter people or “better” rules will do any good: Incompetence is built into the system. The good news is less obvious, but just as important: While we rightly fear a too-powerful government, this regulatory knowledge problem will ensure plenty of public stumbles and embarrassments, helping to remind people that those who seek to rule us really don’t know what they’re doing.
If that doesn’t encourage skepticism toward big government, it’s hard to imagine what will.
Examiner Contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, hosts InstaVision at PJTV.com and blogs at InstaPundit.com.
Back to Reetzality. Thank you for the read Mr. Reynolds.
And thank you readers for the read.
That’s my Reetzality for the Day.
WASHINGTON — President Obama acknowledged the deep partisan divisions gripping Congress, but he urged Republican and Democratic leaders Tuesday to cooperate on legislation that creates jobs.
Amazing. Obama actually believes that Washington creates jobs. Techically it can create a job, meaning that Washington can spend money and create “a” job. However, also technically, it costs more jobs than the one created to create the government job. This truth is based upon the negative multiplier effect that government spending has, at best about a .8. I’ve gone through this before but I’ll go again, every dollar the government spends shrinks the economy by twenty cents. Thus, every job the government “creates” takes away more than one job in greater economy. It’s basic economics folks, proven over and over again in history.
And yet, Obama thinks the absence of bi-partisan cooperation is the cause for the shrinking job market. No Mr. Obama, you are once again wrong but you do have a great excuse given that you never worked in the private sector, never made a bottom line, let affirmative action rather than your ability lift you through life, and your “caused by others” narcisism. But, excuse or no excuse, you are still wrong. In fact, it is the opposite of what you are thinking. The absence of bipartisanship is saving jobs and serving, at least a little, as a sea anchor to the free fall of our economy. Those in the private sector (the ones that pay for your fantasies) are relieved that health care failed. They are relieved that cap and trade is a long shot. They are relieved that conservatives are likely to take back the house and senate in November. They are relieved but not thrilled. They are not thrilled because your plans and policies continue to loom on the horizon like a bad storm.
Mr. Obama I would strongly suggest that you open a lemonade stand and work it on weekends. I believe you will have time to do so since you don’t write or read the bills that you telemarket and infomercial. But in truth, it would serve you well to learn the basics of private enterprise and business and a lemonade stand is great start. You’ll have a bottom line, the cost of the stand, the lemonade, cups, and labor. You’ll have income from the sales. And if you do it right, you will learn that increasing costs decreases profitability. And that’s what your missing Mr. Obama. The agenda that you telemarket and infomercial sends the message that costs are going up, that government is going to be doing a lot more “taking.” In response to your messages, the private sector tightens its belt, stops spending, stops hiring, stops lending, stops risking. Picture you lemonade stand Mr. Obama. What if you we’re going to expand and build a second lemonade stand but lemons were going to be taxed? Further, what if the tax would increase the price and the increased price would decrease sales? Decreased sales would decrease income which would certainly decrease your appetite for expansion and risk. See my point Mr. Obama. You need to work in a lemonade stand. Working in a lemondae stand would educate you on why your agenda is so inconsistent with a growing economy. I swear, I’m serious. And don’t feel bad, all work is noble for the most part. I worked in one and taught me a ton about the realities of business and the economy. I think I was six years old when I learned it. It’s never too late to start Mr. Obama. Go for it. Get out there and sell some lemonade, learn the ropes of the private sector and then go back to your employer, us, and do the right thing based upon your new higher education. And indeed it is a higher education because it taught me way more than your “poison” Ivy league farce taught you.
You know what they say Mr. Obama, “If it rains lemons, make lemonade.” Go for it Obama. It will do us all a bunch of good.
Captain Obonga to the Rescue!
I am so relieved. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Captain Obonga. I had no idea that the government, that failed to prevent a terrorist on the watch list whose father reported him as a radical without a passport from getting on a plane headed to Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underwear, no idea whatsoever that that government could fix everything else. The next thing you know they’ll be joking that the government can’t even keep strangers out of White House dinners? But you set me straight Captain Obonga. Thank you.
O.K., on a more serious note (although the first note was serious, I just utilized humor to demonstrate the seriousness, now I’ll get rid of the humor) was that a speech or what? Shoot, here comes the humor again. Captain Obonga is going to do everything. Pheewww! Say good bye to worries my little friends, I mean you American People. You “they” people.
O.K., O.K. O.K., I took a serious pill, so here goes, firm, fair and frank. The State of the Union address was a rambling cacophony of lies, misrepresentations, false promises, insincerity, rewriting of recent history, bragging, blaming, arrogance, ignorance, condescension, and otherwise consistent with a complete ripper of a marijuana fest. Thus, the “Obonga” nick name. We’ll call it a “BS”-afest instead.
Folks, he’s going to raise our taxes either directly or indirectly and has already done so with his deficit spending. Wait, small correction-maybe. He may have only raised our childrens’ taxes. Folks, he’s not going to endorse nuclear energy or off shore drilling. Folks, he has no desire to assist small business. He doesn’t even respect business for what it does. He said that all student loans would be forgiven in twenty years but in ten years if a graduate goes into public service. That’s right, we need more social workers and bureaucrats in our future than business people because social workers and bureaucrats are just so damn critical. See folks, this is another window into Captain Obonga’s soul. He values government more than the private sector. And he doesn’t understand basic values either; like paying off your debt. What in the world would justify a person to stop paying a debt if it’s not paid off? Shoot, that’s that pesky “keep your word” stuff. God that’s irritating. So what’s the big deal? I cut a deal, borrow some money for a four year degree which I actually spend six getting, drag the payments out for twenty years and then tell the lender that Captain Obonga told me I didn’t have to pay anymore after twenty years. Wait, wait, wait. I thought of something. Why don’t I just grab a public sector job in let’s say year nine, work it for a year, stop paying which is absolutely justified since I’ll be doing something so critical to America, actually serving the public for America, like for example, collecting tolls on a turnpike, and then, when I’m free of my promise to re-pay my student loan, I quit my cherished public sector job and go into the private sector and stick the tax payer with the rest of my debt. So many possibilities.
O.K. Folks, now I’m really going to be serious, actually I have been. I was just using humor to exemplify how much of a joke the State of the Union Address was. Our president has never made a bottom line, hangs out with communists and terrorists, loves Government, big government, is a progressive democrat, wants to socialize medicine, (He said he’s not quitting in his pursuit of his anti-American Agenda (He didn’t say “anti-American” but it is)), has no understanding of the economy, nothing is his fault, and after listening to his speech, wants to run everything.
Prior to his address, it was suggested that the Obama Administration was going to do a “re-set” on its agenda due to the rapidly growing trend against them. The pundits got it half right. Obama did do a reset but not on his agenda. He did a reset on the focus button so that the picture we see is different than before, blurred; but the content, the actual content, is exactly the same.
Beware folks, this guy does not like us “they” people. But he’s afraid of us and that’s why he reached out last night and spun the focus button. He changed the focus to hide. What he didn’t change was the content of his ambitions which are very un-American. Only our ability to see it was changed. But folks, you need not worry. I know this guy and his ambitions will come back into focus sooner than you think, definitely by November.
NOTE: I use the “Captain” title to remind folks of the Titanic, you know that unsinkable ocean liner that sank on its first voyage. Of course, America could never be like the Titanic.
GOOD LUCK OBONGRESS!
There is an economic term called a “multiplier effect.” The multiplier effect is the efficacy of spending. It is the ability of spending to produce an effect on the economy, either growing it or shrinking it. Let’s assume the government spending multiplier effect is 1.0 (one). That means that an increase in one unit of government purchases, and thereby, in the aggregate, demand for goods would lead to an increase by one unit in real gross domestic product (GDP). Thus, the added public goods are essentially free to society. If the government buys another airplane or bridge, the economy’s total output expands by enough to create the airplane or bridge without requiring a cut in anyone’s consumption or investment. If the multiplier is greater than 1.0 as OBONGRESS tells us, then government spending creates more growth than the actual spending. That’s the multiplier effect. But we have a problem OBONGRESS, government spending has a multiplier effect of less than 1.0. Studies, focusing on World War II and the Viet Nam War, have shown that at best the multiplier effect is .8, less than one. This is probably higher than it actually is because war time shrinks the supply of labor so wages tend to rise and the unemployed become employed. A negative multiplier, which .8 is, is a bad thing. It means it costs us more as a nation to spend a dollar than a dollar. Spending shrinks the economy and OBONGRESS, here’s a hard fact, that’s what’s going on right now. Your spending is shrinking the economy. You’re spending is hurting the economy, that thing you claim to be so concerned about. Here’s a hard analysis. If OBONGRESS were right, why isn’t its spending growing the economy. Spend like a drunken sailor and grow the economy, right? Wrong, it doesn’t work. History proves it doesn’t work, over and over again. Damn that history. Governments, including ours, hate history. It’s such an irritation to their voluminous tripe.
But, and this is a big “BUT”, if OBONGRESS really cares about people, and really doesn’t just want to collapse the economy to mass produce need and thereby mass produce needy voters who vote for help, not change, then here’s what they’ve got to realize.
As stated, as history proves, government spending shrinks the economy and hurts people. Sure, if you get a nice government contract you make some money, but you make it at the expense of the economy. The dollar you make, costs the economic society more than a dollar. That’s the point. You also risk partaking in a downward spiral much like the one our nation is in presently.
So what do we do stimulate the economy? How do we create jobs? I will tell you soon. It’s been established that government doesn’t create jobs in the comprehensive national economy. Who does? The private sector. But why isn’t the private sector creating jobs? Because the private sector is cautious, it is financially conservative by nature. What does the private sector fear the most, what does money fear the most? Risk and Uncertainty, that’s what. What does the private sector do when faced with risk and uncertainty? It reduces risk, it tightens its belt. It doesn’t hire, doesn’t expend venture capital, doesn’t expand. It hangs on to what it has which is the smart and natural thing to do.
Right now, given the OBONGRESS agenda, which is creating debt at the greatest rate in history, what it is really creating is risk and uncertainty. It is scaring the hell out of the private sector. The private sector is terrified about the exploding national debt, looming regulation, looming increased taxes, government take overs of industry, cap and trade legislation, and based on my analysis, everything OBONGRESS is doing or proposing. So, based on the private sector’s fear, they have and will continue to tighten their belts, avoid risk, and avoid expansion. So as long as OBONGRESS presses on with its agenda, it will shrink the economy. Econ 101, there it is.
Now, here’s the solution. If OBONGRESS really wanted to create jobs, really wanted to grow the economy, then here’s what it needs to do. Eliminate risk and uncertainty, that’s what.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that if the private sector were confident that the dollar would hold its value, the government wouldn’t explode, taxes wouldn’t explode, the cost of employment wasn’t going to sky rocket, and regulation would be reduced, the private sector would take risks. The private sector would chance into new innovative projects with new products, new ideas, and most importantly, new jobs. And here’s a somewhat important point; the private sector has a positive multiplier effect. That means that when McDonald’s, the franchise or some family named McDonald, ventures out and spends money, it grows the economy more than a dollar for every dollar they spend or invest in a venture.
This economic analysis isn’t unknown, it is basic. It is well known. And yet, OBONGRESS ignores it. As a side note, OBONGRESS claims they saved the auto industry and the banking industry. Really? Sort of, is the answer. Yes there are banks in existence and auto manufactures in business that wouldn’t be if the government hadn’t stepped in. But, the overall cost to our economic society to save these companies is greater than the benefit. If you’re an auto worker you receive a benefit. The rest of our economic society receives a detriment greater than the benefit received by the auto worker. Evidently, OBONGRESS doesn’t just want to redistribute the wealth, they also want to redistribute the suffering.
So OBONGRESS, take a look at history, read up on economics, and do the right thing. Give the private sector a climate without uncertainty and risk. Let the private sector keep what it earns and believe it will continue to keep what it earns in the future rather than having it be expropriated by a drunken OBONGRESS, because that fear, that fear that our government is a growing cancer, shuts down the private sector. It hurts folks, hurts them bad.
One more note, for my entire business life, the biggest bill I’ve ever had to pay is the bill to the government. It has never been an insurance premium. It has never been health care. It has always been you government. And that bill, that I pay monthly, limits what I can spend with a positive multiplier effect. So do the right thing, and give us hard working Americans our confidence back. Let us believe that the cancerous government is going to stop growing. If you do, you’ll get your jobs and you’ll get to take credit for creating them, a minor league lie by your standards, but I’ll let you run with it.
Note: Here’s a link which I took my multiplier effect lanaguage from. A good article by Robert J. Barro. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258618204604599.html
Second Note: Thank God for Massachusetts. A second revolution has begun. It might have started in Virginia and New Jersey actually.
I Pray For It.
My fellow Americans. In the months past I have realized that my ideologies are not in line with American desires. I do not apologize for my ideologies, I do believe in them. But you don’t. I have received the message and as much as I believe in my ideologies, I believe in democracy more. I understand that my role as President is to lead according to the people’s wishes and I have been advised of your wishes and I hear you America. I hear you. So, using an old American cliche, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. I know that there are folks that are in need of affordable health care. But I also know, have been told by the people of Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, that the majority of Americans relish their freedom, their liberty, and do not relish the idea of a government run health care system. I have heard you America. However, I continue to hold to my desire to provide for those Americans who cannot afford health care. I will not let you folks down. So tonight I propose that we go back to the drawing board. That we reset the process and truly make it bi-partisan, truly make it transparent. I believe that working together, truly working together we can produce a bill that satisfies all people, their needs, their expectations, their desires. So I am proposing that we scrap the current bill, toss it out, it has been rejected and my proposal is consistent with this democratic mandate of the American people.
And I do not deny that I was wrong in my ambitions as far as process, not goals, but methodology. I do not deny that the American people disagreed with me, not necessarily my ideologies, buy my solution. And I am man enough, American enough, to admit when I am wrong and I am doing so tonight. But I will not quit, I will not surrender. I will keep pushing for a health care system that is fair, affordable, and not a burden on the American people. A health care system that utilizes true competitive principles, increases the supply of health care, has incentives to be better, to strive for perfection. Not a French system, a British system, or even a Canadian system, but an American system that does not violate our ideals, our principles, or our constitution. And as I have admitted my error, my misread of the American way, I ask that America have faith that at heart, I am an American, that my goals are American in every respect. And I ask America to accept my admission, forgive if you need to, and work with me to create and pass a bill that truly builds the greatest health care system in the world. A system that provides for need, but does not encourage it. A system that is fair. A system that does not steal from Peter to pay for Paul.
I am not going to quit, I am not going to give up. I am proposing a new path, a path reflective of the obvious message given to me by America.
I thank you for your support. God Bless America.
Why don’t you try that Mr. Obama. It would be the manly thing to do and it might save your second term. Might.
So do yourself a favor, step down from your pedestal, listen to the people, and do the right thing. Just a suggestion Mr. Obama.
Captain Obama on the economy!
THE PRESIDENT’S ECONOMIC RECOVERY BOARD . . . ARE THEY SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER?
by Dave Cribbin
You wouldn’t think so if you read the transcript from the November 2 meeting of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB), the group responsible for presenting ideas to promote economic recovery to the President. It was a free for all of government interventionists and central planners who would have made Joe Stalin proud. Fittingly, it was held in the Roosevelt Room, perhaps in honor of that other great believer in free markets, I mean central planning, F.D.R.
His economic wunderkinds put the children at B. Bernice Young Elementary in New Jersey to shame with their own tune whose chorus, “We need a price on carbon, mmm mmm mm, and then we need a cap “ was music to the President’s ears. This gathering of mercantile songbirds was less a forum on serious economic ideas, than it was a murder of crows squawking praise of two mutually exclusive economic propositions: increasing manufacturing jobs by making energy green and expensive. This song doesn’t work!! It’s like singing the words to “Silent Night” to the tune of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.” Artificially raising the price of energy causes recessions and job losses in manufacturing. It doesn’t promote economic recovery.
The President’s solo first verse was sung while he patted himself and the others in attendance on the back, crooning, ” We have pulled the economy back from the brink.” No matter how many times I hear him sing this one, it just never gets old!
Jeffrey Imelt of GE recited a self-serving little ditty that only through greater exports will we be prosperous once again. Evidently GE is looking for additional government help in the export markets. A loyal green believer, he then added to this musical round with a verse from that old clean energy standard, higher energy prices are an economic stimulus. This guy has pipes!
Songbird and publisher of the Spanish -Language newspaper La Opinion, Monica Lazano treated us with a spicy Latin hit called The Lazano Multiplier. It went like this: “One taxpayer dollar spent to support small business export assistance creates $500 in taxpayer gains.” What this song lacks in economic reality it makes up for in it’s fascinating rhythm.
John Doerr, Al Gore’s dance partner in green deception and Kleiner Perkins added his voice to the chorus: “We agree the most important thing we could do to have America lead in this industry and generate a lot of jobs fast is to put a price on carbon; a price and a cap on carbon.” It’s a beautiful little tune of government intervention sung in the key of Green. He implored our leader that by raising up the cost of all forms of carbon-based energy, “… we could create hundreds of thousands, even a million jobs in a year, in a permanent new industry — high-wage jobs, that are not going to be outsourced.” I was spellbound as I waited to hear the next verse in this lovely song of hope and change. What hi-tech cutting edge industry would blossom in this new bright green era? What a letdown; he reached for a note and fell flat with that ridiculous dirge, “Cash for Caulkers,” an earthy ballad of a million American workers caulking their way across this great land.
Could Mark Gallogy, investment banker extraordinaire and member of the President’s transition team, rescue this tune? After a hopeful start explaining that there has been little growth in US demand for electricity, he belted out his verse. Expecting a song of setting the free markets loose, I was crushed to hear the same sad sack melody called Put a Price on Carbon.
Paul Volker chirped in with a classic tune from years gone by, reminding Imelt and the rest that we need a more competitive business environment not just subsidies for exports. Ultimately, he too disappoints when he forgets his lines about how that can be done.
The longer it went on, the worse this song kept getting. Richard Trumka’s version of God Bless the Recovery Act was worse than anything you could imagine. The balance of the meeting was dominated by Big Labor, whose song, We are the Champions looks good only on paper. Their real life track record in creating new jobs is outdone only by their ability to cripple every manufacturing industry they represent.
After getting to the end of the transcript, I’m convinced that the President would be better off with an advisory team of fifth graders. Why? Because with about a half hour’s worth of economics 101, they would understand that the keys to our nation’s continued economic success are low taxes, a stable dollar, and less government interference in the private sector. A concept that has eluded the President and his advisers!
Dave Cribbin is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
Back to Reetzality. If we don’t vote out the liberals in 2010, we will lose the country we love. The evidence that we must do so is overwhelming. The reality of our plight is saddening. Shame on the liberals and their faulty logic and reasoning. They don’t even know that parasites should not kill the host, especially the last one, America.
Obama's Change on Thanksgiving!
1. Don’t. They don’t listen. You won’t change them, and listening to Bush being attacked, no matter how accurate, has gotten boring. Talk about skiing or football or their kids.
But if you do decide that engagement is necessary, I’ll continue.
2. Recognize that the Left has a very concise argument style. Here it is: A. They change the subject by answering a question by asking a question. I.E. “You say health care is not a right, what about Public Education? Is public education a right? Do you want to ban public education?” B. Two wrongs make a right. I.E. But Bush did . . . C. Personal Attack. I.E. “So just let the uninsured die.” D. Eye roll. I.E. “Oh, that old argument again.” E. Lie. I.E. “Our health care is thirty-seventh in the world.”
Point out the style of argument with the lefty. For example. “You just answered a question with a question.” “You changed the subject.” “That’s not true.” “You didn’t answer the question.”
Don’t engage in their style of argument. It doesn’t work and it’s true objective is to avoid logic and reason and remain in the logic/reason free comfort zone they exist in. Don’t go there.
I continue . . .
3. Use history in support of your argument. For example, “there is no historical reference that socialized health care improves health care.”
4. Use math. I.E. “How mathematically are we going to pay for the policies Washington is pushing? If you don’t have an answer, shouldn’t you be analyzing your desired policy more?”
5. Bring the argument to a personal level. For example, “So you want to tax the more successful to give to the less successful? Would you use that policy in your family? Would you want it in your child’s class room. Where in the progression of analysis do you apply your “share the wealth” policy? At what level do you throw out your principles?”
6. Stick to principles. Attack their arguments with principles. For example, “Are you planning on leaving your children with your debt? That’s what your chosen policies will do. And you’re o.k with that?”
The bottom line is that the liberal agenda is unprincipled and un-American. And here’s another bottom line, the vast majority of Americans are not liberal when it comes to their personal lives. They leave their liberalism for other folks to pay. I’ve hung with liberals and generally, there are exceptions, they are the most selfish un-giving folks I know. Maybe they soothe their irony through their liberalism. Maybe liberals balance their personal selfishness by being generous with other people’s money? Who knows?
In any event, Thanksgiving is here and it is a time to give thanks. We still have a great country and there is still hope. Be thankful, we’ve got it better than the rest. And don’t hate the liberals. Hate their policies but not them. They are infected. They need help. They can’t reconcile themselves with themselves. They are illogical. They can’t win their arguments with accepted logic or reason. They are to be given pity.
So when they spout off at Thanksgiving, pity them for their illness. Pray for them. Be nice. Or be like them, just for a day, and love a loser, them.
Obama-Care
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she’s prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that’s what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a “critical milestone,” may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.
In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.
Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan “reform” and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be “universal coverage.” The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country’s fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.
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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run “exchanges” where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level—that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.
At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don’t provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this “firewall”—which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on “free” health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington.
Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It “pays for” about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, “saving” about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.
• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to “pay for” universal coverage. While Medicare’s price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.
Even though the House will assume 91% of the “matching rate” for this joint state-federal program—up from today’s 57%—governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington’s budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.
• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point “surcharge” on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won’t have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.
This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn’t indexed for inflation. Yet it still won’t be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they’ll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.
Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don’t offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers’ premiums, which eat into wages. Such “play or pay” taxes always become “pay or pay” and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.
Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won’t buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.
• The insurance takeover. A new “health choices commissioner” will decide what counts as “essential benefits,” which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.
The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.
The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as “private” health insurance. ***
All of this is intentional, even if it isn’t explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama’s own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back “public option” entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.
As Congress’s balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can’t regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.
Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of “change,” but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi’s handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.
Back to Reetzality. Write your congressman. To not do so is to not defend your country from the cancer within, otherwise called the Liberal Agenda. What a a bunch of evil losers those liberals? Well I’ll give Obama this; he’s given us transparency. We can now see and smell the feces of his politics even with the sugar coated facade.
And that’s my Reetzality for the day.
