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Dec 12, 2012 9:25:30 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Dec 12, 2012 9:25:30 GMT -5
Government Gone Bad By John Stossel www.JewishWorldReview.com | Politicians claim they make our lives better by passing laws. But laws rarely improve life. They go wrong. Unintended consequences are inevitable. Most voters don't pay enough attention to notice. They read headlines. They watch the Rose Garden signing ceremonies and hear the pundits declare that progress was made. Bipartisanship! Something got done. We assume a problem was solved. Intuition tells us that government is in the problem-solving business, and so the more laws passed, the better off we are. The possibility that fewer laws could leave us better off is hard to grasp. Kids visiting Washington don't ask their congressmen, "What laws did you repeal?" It's always, "What did you pass?" And so they pass and pass — a thousand pages of proposed new rules each week — and for every rule, there's an unintended consequence, or several. It's one reason America has been unusually slow to recover from the Great Recession. After previous recessions, employers quickly resumed hiring. Not this time. The unemployment rate is still near 8 percent. It only fell last month because people stopped looking for jobs. Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute understands what's happening. "Add up all the regulations and red tape, all the government spending, all the tax increases we're about to get — you can understand why entrepreneurs think: "Maybe I don't want to hire people. ... I want to keep my company small. I don't want to give health insurance, because then I'm stuck with all the Obamacare mandates." We can see our future in Europe — unless we change. Ann Jolis, who covers European labor issues for The Wall Street Journal, watches how government-imposed work rules sabotage economies. "The minimum guaranteed annual vacation in Europe is 20 days paid vacation a year. ... In France, it starts at 25 guaranteed days off. ... This summer, the European Court of Justice ... gave workers the right to a vacation do-over. ... You spend the last eight days of your vacation laid up with a sprained ankle ... eight days automatically go into your sick leave. ... You get a vacation do-over." Such benefits appeal to workers, who don't realize that the goodies come out of their wages. The unemployed don't realize that such rules deter employers from hiring them in the first place. In Italy, some work rules kick in once a company has more than 10 employees, so companies have an incentive not to hire an 11th employee. Businesses stay small. People stay unemployed. "European workers have the right ... to gainful unemployment," says Jolis. Both European central planners and liberal politicians in America are clueless about what really helps workers: a free economy. The record is clear. Central planners failed, in the Soviet Union, in Cuba, at the U.S. Postal Service and in America's public schools, and now they stifle growth in Europe and America. Central planning stops innovation. Yet for all that failure, whenever another crisis (real or imagined) hits, the natural instinct is to say, "Politicians must do something." In my town, unions and civil rights groups demand a higher minimum wage. That sounds good to people. Everyone will get a raise! The problem is in what is not seen. I can interview the guy who got a raise. I can't interview workers who are never offered jobs because the minimum wage or high union pay scales "protected" those jobs out of existence. The benefit of government leaving us alone is rarely intuitive. Because companies just want to make a buck, it's logical to assume that only government rules assure workers' safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets safety standards for factories, and OSHA officials proudly point out that workplace deaths have dropped since it opened its doors. Thank goodness for government, right? Well, not so fast. Go back a few years before OSHA, and we find that workplace deaths were dropping just as fast. Workers are safer today because we are richer, and richer societies care more about safety. Even greedy employers take safety precautions if only because it's expensive to replace workers who are hurt! Government is like the person who gets in front of a parade and pretends to lead it. In a free society, things get better on their own — if government will only allow it.
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Dec 20, 2012 10:11:39 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Dec 20, 2012 10:11:39 GMT -5
It's the Spending, Stupid! By John Stossel www.JewishWorldReview.com | Listening to progressive media pundits, I'd think the most evil man in the universe is Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform. His crime? He heads a movement that asks political candidates to pledge not to raise taxes. I think Grover accomplished a lot. But I wish he'd convinced politicians to pledge not to increase spending. President Obama says raising taxes to cut the deficit is a "balanced" approach. Balanced ... But what's "balanced" about raising taxes after vast increases in spending? Trillions for war, Medicare, "stimulus" and solar panels. Tax receipts rose — after tax- rate cuts — from $1.9 billion in 2003 to $2.3 billion in 2008, the year the recession started. That increase couldn't keep up with the spending. The deficit doubled — actually, more than doubled — as politicians increased spending to nearly $4 trillion! Our debt, at more than $16 trillion, now exceeds our gross domestic product. Ludicrous, irresponsible spending is why we're in trouble. As JWR columnist Ron Hart points out, Bill Clinton's balanced budget spent $1.7 trillion. "Adjusted for inflation," he writes, "our federal government would (have) a $200 billion surplus. But instead of increasing government spending in line with normal inflation, under Bush and Obama we are spending $3.8 trillion today. Democrats, who believe we have a 'revenue' problem instead of a 'spending' problem, must also think they have a bartender problem, not a drinking problem." The media obsess about tax rates, but spending is more important. As Milton Friedman taught us, spending is a far more accurate gauge of the government burden. If government spends a dollar, that dollar is taxed away from someone. If it's borrowed, it's removed from productive use, setting the stage for higher taxes later. If the government prints more dollars to fund spending, our purchasing power falls. Transferring purchasing power from the people to the government via inflation is a form of taxation. If Republicans and Democrats reach a deal, the tax increases will be real — but spending "cuts" probably illusions. If they actually happen, they will only be reductions in already planned increases. The Wall Street Journal notes that when the two parties talk about cutting spending by $4 trillion over a decade, "those numbers have no real meaning because they are conjured in the wilderness of mirrors that is the federal budget process. Since 1974, Capitol Hill's 'baseline' has automatically increased spending every year according to Congressional Budget Office projections ... . Tax and spending changes are then measured off that inflated baseline." Given our growing debt, can't they even slow the growth of government to the rate of inflation? Or inflation plus 1 percent? Or even inflation plus 2 percent? That might balance the budget within a decade. But the spenders won't even give me that. They want more. Always more. Jonathan Bydlak, founder of the Coalition to Reduce Spending, has a good idea. "It's important to do for spending what Norquist has done for taxes: create a means for voters to hold elected officials accountable when they break campaign promises of fiscal responsibility." Bydlak has no time for any politician who pledges not to raise taxes without pledging to cut spending. He praises Doug Collins, representative-elect from Georgia, and Ted Cruz, senator-elect from Texas, for signing the Reject the Debt pledge and thereby promising voters they would: "ONE, not vote for any budget that is not balanced nor for any appropriations bill that increases total spending; "and TWO, consider all spending open for reduction, and not vote to authorize or fund new programs without offsetting cuts in other programs." Well, sure. Good luck to him. But people are reluctant to give up their favorite programs. Or any programs. Let's not fool ourselves about how dependent politicians have made people on government. To succeed, the crusade to cut spending needs an ideological understanding of how unsustainable our current course is, not just a narrow appeal to short-term self-interest. People will have to see the wisdom of giving up government benefits now — in exchange for something more abstract: a future free society in which our children won't be burdened by debt and taxes.
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Dec 23, 2012 10:06:32 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Dec 23, 2012 10:06:32 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?p=14573If we had just bought what the establishment GOP was selling, they would have thrown in undercoating for free Published December 22, 2012. | By Billy Hollis. I don’t visit The Corner at National Review as often as I used to. Their pop-behind ads annoy me too much. But with good stuff from Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn, Andrew McCarthy, and a few others of that ilk, I still go by from time to time, despite the ads. Almost as annoying as the ads are the Gentry GOP types who are constantly providing cover for establishment Republicans. Ramesh Ponnuru leads that crew. Ponnuru had a post yesterday, with a follow-on today, that both serve as a fine illustrations. Both are about the intricate strategerizing (as another establishment Republican might put it) around the so-called fiscal cliff. I tried to understand what he was getting at. I really did. But it all just came out as complicated blather to promote some kind of go-along-get-along viewpoint. I never did understand his argument. I’m pretty sure that he wants the Republicans who blocked the last deal to get with the program and support the establishment cohort led by Boehner, but even after reading his posts through twice I still don’t get *why*. He ends the first piece with this paragraph: That some Republicans are willing to see higher taxes for the sake of anti-tax purity is topsy-turvy enough. Adding to the vertigo: The Republicans (inside and outside the House) who fret about blurring the party’s definition are the ones who are doing most to blur it. They are the ones who are, in most cases, accusing Republican leaders of seeking to raise taxes when they are actually trying to cut taxes as much as they think possible—cut them, that is, from the levels the law already has in place for 2013. They’re the ones who are accusing most House Republicans of “caving” to the Democrats, even as some of them prefer that the Democrats get their way entirely. That’s where the convoluted politics of this moment have led us. This word salad sounds like an old Dilbert cartoon to me. In it, Dilbert is asked to sign a document stating "Employee election to not rescind the opposite action of declining the reverse inclination to not discontinue employment with the company." The Gentry GOP’s equivalent seems to be "Voting for the bill to raise taxes in order to not raise taxes while electing to stand firm on not doing anything on spending while ensuring the previous action of claiming to reduce spending." Or something like that. I’m not really sure. On stuff like this, I am a firm believer in the Asimov principle. In an introduction to one of his books, he said (approximately) "When I read something I don’t understand, I don’t assume I’m stupid." There are plenty of reasons for something to be incomprehensible that don’t have anything to do with me: - The author might not know what he’s talking about - The author might be a very bad communicator, and so just can’t explain himself very well - As in the Dilbert example, the author might be trying to obfuscate the issue For the entire discussion over the fiscal cliff, from Democrats, the media, or establishment Republicans, I’m going with the last explanation. It’s pretty clear at this point that the whole thing simply does not matter that much in the long term. No proposal being taken seriously will do anything to alter our long term trajectory. So the entire episode is just for political maneuvering. That’s the part Ponnuru doesn’t seem to get, or at least he doesn’t assign any real weight to it. He doesn’t understand why twenty or so Republicans just won’t go along with the gag. I get it completely. They have the intuition that they are being gamed. Analyzing the details doesn’t help, because those details are intentionally confusing, and leave entirely too much room for statists to make things come out the way they want later. If you’ve ever been subjected to the car salesmen who insists that this wonderful deal he’s offering you won’t be good tomorrow, you know the dynamic here. Those in the GOP who won’t go along with the game sense that the ruling class is using the same technique, with the fiscal cliff deadline as the nominal justification. In general, I’m sick of any argument by an establishment GOP type that it’s necessary to do X to avoid being blamed for Y. Much of this fiscal cliff discussion seems to be in that vein. I’m sick of it because it pre-supposes that there is a path where the GOP won’t be blamed for the bad things that happen. That’s ridiculous.
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Dec 24, 2012 8:00:01 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Dec 24, 2012 8:00:01 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=debtA government we can’t afford Published December 23, 2012. | By Dale Franks. In the Telegraph today, Janet Daley tries to explain the same thing I’ve been trying to explain here for, well, years. Any political leader prepared to deceive the electorate into believing that government spending, and the vast system of services that it provides, can go on as before – or that they will be able to resume as soon as this momentary emergency is over – was propelled into office virtually by acclamation. So universal has this rule turned out to be that parties and leaders who know better – whose economic literacy is beyond question – are now afraid even to hint at the fact which must eventually be faced. The promises that governments are making to their electorates are not just misleading: they are unforgivably dishonest. It will not be possible to go on as we are, or to return to the expectations that we once had. The immediate emergency created by the crash of 2008 was not some temporary blip in the infinitely expanding growth of the beneficent state. It was, in fact, almost irrelevant to the larger truth which it happened, by coincidence, to bring into view. Government on the scale established in most modern western countries is simply unaffordable. In Britain, the disagreement between Labour and the Conservatives over how to reduce the deficit (cut spending or increase borrowing?) is ridiculously insignificant and out of touch with the actual proportions of the problem. Just as our debate here on what constitutes a "balanced approach" to cutting the deficit. The truly silly part of that debate is the demand that "the rich" pay more in taxes, as if that money would somehow close the gap in financing the welfare state. In France, the government wants a 75% tax rate, but… Barack Obama knows that a tax rise of those proportions in the US would be politically suicidal, so he proposes a much more modest increase – an income tax rate of around 40 per cent on the highest earners sounds very modest indeed to British ears. But that is precisely the problem. If a tax rise is modest enough to be politically acceptable to much of the electorate, it will not produce anything like enough to finance the universal American entitlement programmes, social security and Medicare, into a future with an ageing population. There is no way that “taxing the rich” – that irresistibly glib Left-wing solution to everything – can make present and projected levels of government spending affordable. Right now, mandatory entitlement spending alone is 62% of the Federal budget, and it will rise continuously under present law. At the same time, federal revenues don’t even cover the cost of those entitlements, plus interest payment on the national debt. Think about that. We could eliminate the entire Federal Government except for entitlement spending and interest on the national debt, and we would still have to borrow money to pay for it. The president’s proposal for increasing taxes on "the rich" would bring in an extra $40 billion dollars next year. So, instead of borrowing $1.1 Trillion next year, we’ll only have to borrow $1.06 Trillion. Somehow, we are told, this will be massively helpful. Meanwhile, if interest rates return to their historic average levels the cost of debt service alone will rise from $250 billion per year to $750 billion per year. But, really, anyone who isn’t as dumb as a bag of hammers already knows that the amount of government we have is unaffordable, simply by noting that we’ve increased the national debt from $1 trillion to $16.3 trillion since 1980. It took us 190 years to accumulate $1 trillion in debt. And 32 years to multiply it more than 15 times. We have three choices. We can cut all Federal spending by half. We can have massive tax increases on the middle class. We can do nothing and eventually default/hyperinflate our monetary and financial system away. Based on the politics of 2012, I assume it will be the latter. ~ Dale Franks
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Dec 29, 2012 11:15:19 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Dec 29, 2012 11:15:19 GMT -5
neoneocon.com/2012/12/28/fiscal-cliff/December 28th, 2012 Fiscal cliff… …blah blah blah…fiscal cliff, blah blah blah…fiscal cliff, blah blah blah. Sorry to be so cynically dismissive. But my sense is that nothing will happen for a while, and when it does happen it won’t solve a thing, and Republicans will be blamed. And also that this result has been baked in the fiscal cliff cake from the moment Obama won the 2012 election. This is a nice summary: Plus, Obama’s polling [is] in the mid-50s on his handling of the fiscal cliff situation, according to Gallup. Republicans are mired in the 20s. Why cave to the GOP when the president is winning? The public seems reluctant to blame Obama for anything, including the economy in general. And Obama knows it. He has supreme confidence that his PR is better than that of the GOP, and in this he is obviously and resoundingly correct. GOP “leaders” (in name only) have looked like the Keystone cops in this matter, only significantly less competent.
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Dec 29, 2012 18:56:03 GMT -5
Post by Ritty77 on Dec 29, 2012 18:56:03 GMT -5
I really would like to see Boehner replaced. The Conservatives need to stick to their principles. They get blamed for everything anyhow. 51+% of the voters don't care about the truth. May as well stick with our guns and continue to offer a clear alternative. Eventually, if it's not too late, truth may win out.
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Dec 30, 2012 7:53:16 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Dec 30, 2012 7:53:16 GMT -5
I couldn't agree more.
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Jan 9, 2013 10:02:53 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Jan 9, 2013 10:02:53 GMT -5
A Man's Home Is His Subsidy By John Stossel Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailMore Sharing Services3 www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Obama administration now proposes to spend millions more on handouts, despite ample evidence of their perverse effects. Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says, "The single most important thing HUD does is provide rental assistance to America's most vulnerable families — and the Obama administration is proposing bold steps to meet their needs." They always propose "bold steps." In this case, HUD wants to spend millions more to renew Section 8 housing vouchers that help poor people pay rent. The Section 8 program ballooned during the '90s to "solve" a previous government failure: crime-ridden public housing. Rent vouchers allow the feds to disperse tenants from failed projects into private residencies. There, poor people would learn good habits from middle-class people. It was a reasonable idea. But, as always, there were unintended consequences. "On paper, Section 8 seems like it should be successful," says Donald Gobin, a Section 8 landlord in New Hampshire. "But unless tenants have some unusual fire in their belly, the program hinders upward mobility." Gobin complains that his tenants are allowed to use Section 8 subsidies for an unlimited amount of time. There is no work requirement. Recipients can become comfortably dependent on government assistance. In Gobin's over 30 years of renting to Section 8 tenants, he has seen only one break free of the program. Most recipients stay on Section 8 their entire lives. They use it as a permanent crutch. Government's rules kill the incentive to succeed. Section 8 handouts are meant to be generous enough that tenants may afford a home defined by HUD as decent, safe and sanitary. In its wisdom, the bureaucracy has ruled that "decent, safe and sanitary" may require subsidies as high as $2,200 per month. But because of that, Section 8 tenants often get to live in nicer places than those who pay their own way. Kevin Spaulding is an MIT graduate in Boston who works long hours as an engineer, and struggles to cover his rent and student loans. Yet all around him, he says, he sees people who don't work but live better than he does. "It doesn't seem right," he says. "I work very hard but can only afford a lower-end apartment. There are nonworking people on my street who live in better places than I do because they are on Section 8." Spaulding understands why his neighbors don't look for jobs. The subsidies are attractive — they cover 70 to 100 percent of rent and utilities. If Section 8 recipients accumulate money or start to make more, they lose their subsidy. "Is there a real incentive for the tenants to go to work? No!" says Gobin. "They have a relatively nice house and do not have to pay for it." Once people are reliant on Section 8 assistance, many do everything in their power to keep it. Some game the system by working under the table so that they do not lose the subsidy. One of Gobin's lifetime Section 8 tenants started a cooking website. She made considerable money from it, so she went to great lengths to hide the site from her case manager, running it under a different name. "Here's a lady that could definitely work. She actually showed me how to get benefits and play the system," says Gobin. Although Section 8 adds to our debt while encouraging people to stay dependent, it isn't going away. HUD says it will continue to "make quality housing possible for every American." Despite $20 billion spent on the program last year, demand for more rental assistance remains strong. There is a long waitlist to receive Section 8 housing in every state. In New York City alone, 120,000 families wait. Some are truly needy, but many recipients of income transfers are far from poor. America will soon be $17 trillion in debt, and our biggest federal expense is income transfers. They are justified on the grounds that some of that helps the needy. But we don't help the needy by encouraging dependency. Government grows. Dependency grows. Keith, you might want to make the last line a permanent part of the site.
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Jan 20, 2013 14:40:08 GMT -5
Post by Ritty77 on Jan 20, 2013 14:40:08 GMT -5
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Jan 28, 2013 10:35:59 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Jan 28, 2013 10:35:59 GMT -5
Hillary lip-synced more than Beyonce By Mark Steyn www.JewishWorldReview.com | If I'm following this correctly, according to one spokesperson for the Marine Corps Band, at Monday's Inauguration Beyoncé lip-synced to the national anthem but the band accompanied her live. However, according to a second spokesperson, it was the band who were pretending to play to a tape while Beyoncé sang along live. So one or the other of them was faking it. Or maybe both were. Or neither. I'd ask Chuck Schumer, the master of ceremonies, who was standing right behind her, but he spent the entire performance staring at her butt. If it was her butt, that is. It might just have been the bulge of the Radio Shack cassette player she was miming to. In an America with an ever more tenuous grip on reality, there's so little to be sure of. Whether Beyoncé was lip-syncing to the band or the band were lip-syncing to Beyoncé is like one of those red pill / blue pill choices from "The Matrix." Was President Obama lip-syncing to the Founders, rooting his inaugural address in the earliest expressions of American identity? ("The patriots of 1776 ... gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.") Or maybe the Founders were lip-syncing to him as he appropriated the vision of the first generation of Americans and yoked it ("preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action") to a statist pitch they would have found utterly repugnant. The whole event had the air of a simulacrum: It looked like a presidential inauguration, but the sound was tinny and not quite in sync. Obama mouthed along to a canned vocal track: "We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future." That's great! It's always reassuring to know the head of state is going to take issue will all those people wedded to the "belief" that America needs either to shove every granny off the cliff or stake its newborns out on the tundra for the wolves to finish off. When it comes to facing the music, Obama is peerless at making a song and dance about tunes nobody's whistling without ever once warbling the real big numbers (16 trillion). But, like Beyoncé, he's totally cool and has a cute butt. A couple of days later, it fell to the 45th president-in-waiting to encapsulate the ethos of the age in one deft sound bite: What difference does it make? Hillary Clinton's instantly famous riposte at the Benghazi hearings is such a perfect distillation that it surely deserves to be the national motto of the United States. They should put it on Paul Krugman's trillion-dollar coin, and in the presidential oath: "Do you solemnly swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?" "Sure. What difference, at this point, does it make?" Well, it's the difference between cool and reality – and, as Hillary's confident reply appeared to suggest, and the delirious media reception of it confirmed, reality comes a poor second in the Obama era. The presumption of conservatives has always been that, one day, cold, dull reality would pierce the klieg-light sheen of Obama's glamour. Indeed, that was the premise of Mitt Romney's reductive presidential campaign. But, just as Beyoncé will always be way cooler than some no-name operatic soprano or a male voice choir, so Obama will always be cooler than a bunch of squaresville yawneroos boring on about jobs and debt and entitlement reform. Hillary's cocksure sneer to Sen. Johnson of Wisconsin made it explicit. At a basic level, the "difference" is the difference between truth and falsity, but the subtext took it a stage further: no matter what actually happened that night in Benghazi, you poor sad loser Republicans will never succeed in imposing that reality and its consequences on this administration. And so a congressional hearing – one of the famous "checks and balances" of the American system – is reduced to just another piece of Beltway theater. "The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigor were fled," as Gibbon wrote in "The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire." But he's totally uncool, too. So Hillary lip-synced far more than Beyoncé, and was adored for it. "As I have said many times, I take responsibility," she said. In Washington, the bold declarative oft-stated acceptance of responsibility is the classic substitute for responsibility: rhetorically "taking responsibility," preferably "many times," absolves one from the need to take actual responsibility even once. In the very same self-serving testimony, the Secretary of State denied that she'd ever seen the late Ambassador Stevens' cables about the deteriorating security situation in Libya on the grounds that "1.43 million cables come to my office" – and she can't be expected to see all of them, or any. She is as out of it as President Jefferson, who complained to his Secretary of State James Madison, "We have not heard from our ambassador in Spain for two years. If we have not heard from him this year, let us write him a letter." Today, things are even worse. Hillary has apparently not heard from any of our 1.43 million ambassadors for four years. When a foreign head of state receives the credentials of the senior emissary of the United States, he might carelessly assume that the chap surely has a line of communication back to the government he represents. For six centuries or so, this has been the minimal requirement for functioning interstate relations. But Secretary Clinton has just testified that, in the government of the most powerful nation on Earth, there is no reliable means by which a serving ambassador can report to the Cabinet minister responsible for foreign policy. And nobody cares: What difference does it make? Nor was the late Christopher Stevens any old ambassador but, rather, Secretary Clinton's close personal friend "Chris." It was all "Chris" this, "Chris" that, when Secretary Clinton and President Obama delivered their maudlin eulogies over the flag-draped coffin of their "friend." Gosh, you'd think if they were on such intimate terms, "Chris" might have had Hillary's email address, but apparently not. He was just one of 1.43 million close personal friends cabling the State Department every hour of the day. Four Americans are dead, but not a single person involved in the attack and the murders has been held to account. Hey, what difference does it make? Lip-syncing the national anthem beats singing it. Peddling a fictitious narrative over the coffin of your "friend" is more real than being an incompetent boss to your most vulnerable employees. And mouthing warmed-over clichés about vowing to "bring to justice" those responsible is way easier than actually bringing anyone to justice. And so it goes: Another six trillion in debt? What difference does it make? An economic stimulus bill that stimulates nothing remotely connected with the economy? What difference does it make? The Arab Spring? Aw, whose heart isn't stirred by those exhilarating scenes of joyful students celebrating in Tahrir Square? And who cares, after the cameras depart, that Egypt's in the hands of a Jew-hating 9/11 truther whose goons burn churches and sexually assault uncovered women? Obama is the ultimate reality show, and real reality can't compete. Stalin famously scoffed, "How many divisions has the Pope?" Secretary Clinton was more audacious: How many divisions has reality? Not enough.
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Jan 29, 2013 16:31:11 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Jan 29, 2013 16:31:11 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=collective-actionThe myth of “collective action” Published January 29, 2013. | By Bruce McQuain. As we launch ourselves further into an era of “collective action” as Obama called it in his 2nd Inaugural address, we can be sure that reality won’t stop the left from remaining true believers in its ultimate power and good and demanding it be forced on us all. But what does that really mean? Let’s hark back to Mancur Olson’s critique of collective action for a moment and point out a little ground truth about it, shall we? Olson’s critique of collective action is complicated, and it is made less accessible by an ungainly prose style. But the gist is that large numbers of people do not naturally band together to secure common interests. In fact, the larger the group, the less likely it is to act in a truly collective manner. As Olson explained, the interests that unite large groups are necessarily of the lowest-common-denominator variety. Therefore the concrete benefits of collective action to any individual are usually small compared with the costs — in time, effort and money — of participation. “Free-riding” is a constant threat — as the difficulties of collecting union dues illustrates. By contrast, small groups are good at collective action. It costs less to organize a few people around a narrow, but intensely felt, shared concern. For each member, the potential benefits of joint action are more likely to outweigh the costs, whether or not success comes at the larger society’s expense. Now, to me, that’s common sense. The bigger the group the more unlikely it will find common ground than a smaller group. So urging a nation of 300 million to a common effort or collective action? Yeah, not going to happen – at least in the areas Obama is likely to want to make such an effort. That’s not to say that collective action won’t happen. It happens everyday in DC as Charles Lane points out: Hence, the housing lobby, the farm lobby and all the special-interest groups that swarm Congress. Hence, too, the conspicuous absence of an effective lobby on behalf of all taxpayers or, for that matter, all poor people. If there is any “collective action” that will take place in DC, besides those noted, it will be among the politicians who band together (and break apart) depending on what they’re after this week or next. Their constituency? Not that big of a concern to most. Those that reside inside the beltway are more likely on their radar than those who voted to put them in office. So when Obama called on Americans to once again act “as one nation, and one people,” he was, at best, stating an aspiration. No he’s not – he’s mouthing platitudes to calm the masses, put the opposition on the defensive and set himself up to get his way. And this is how that will work: Olson’s assessment of reality, both historical and contemporary, is less lofty but more accurate: “There will be no countries that attain symmetrical organization of all groups with a common interest and thereby attain optimal outcomes through comprehensive bargaining.” Nope. It will be the group/party that is able to appeal the best to the masses and thereby garner more of a veneer of support for their agenda than can the other party/group, whether or not the ultimate goal of the action is good for the country or the majority or not. Whether it really benefits the country as a whole usually has little bearing on the effort. And the minority? Well, they’re simply left hanging in the wind. Their call for “collective action” is a cover, a means of draping the usual politics in high sounding rhetoric. The reality of the situation is that what he calls “collective action” is simply a new code phrase for continued class warfare and redistribution of income. The purpose of proposing “collective action” is to enable him and his cronies to label anyone who opposes them and their actions as divisive, unpatriotic and just about any other name they can think of necessary to demonize and dismiss them. Meanwhile, the “collective” dismantling of this once great country will continue apace. ~McQ
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Feb 5, 2013 16:04:39 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Feb 5, 2013 16:04:39 GMT -5
Prophets and Losses By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | Now that the federal government is playing an ever larger role in the economy, a look at Washington's track record seems to be long overdue. The recent release of the Federal Reserve Board's transcripts of its deliberations back in 2007 shows that their economic prophecies were way off. How much faith should we put in their prophecies today — or the policies based on those prophecies? Even after the housing market began its collapse in 2006, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in 2007, "The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained." It turned out that financial disasters in the housing market were not "contained," but spread out to affect the whole American economy and economies overseas. Then Chairman Bernanke said: "It is an interesting question why what looks like $100 billion or so of credit losses in the subprime market has been reflected in multiple trillions of dollars of losses in paper wealth." What is an even more interesting question is why we should put such faith and such power in the hands of a man and an institution that have been so wrong before. This is not just a question of a bad guess by Ben Bernanke. The previous chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Alan Greenspan, likewise misjudged the consequences of the housing boom and bust. Nor was the Federal Reserve's staff any more accurate in its prophecies. According to the New York Times, "The Fed's own staff still forecast that the economy would avoid a recession." Today, the economy has not yet fully recovered from the recession that the Federal Reserve System's staff and chairmen thought we would avoid. We all make mistakes. But we don't all have the enormous and growing power of the Federal Reserve System — or the seemingly boundless confidence that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke still shows as he intervenes in the economy on a massive scale. Not only does the Federal Reserve System control the money supply and regulate banks, the Fed's willingness to keep buying hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of government bonds makes it easier for the Obama administration to keep engaging in massive deficit spending that runs up a record-breaking national debt. The reason that the Federal Reserve can afford to continue buying huge amounts of government bonds is that the Fed is authorized to create its own money out of thin air. They use the fancy term "quantitative easing," instead of saying in plain English that they are essentially just printing more money. Being wrong is nothing new for the Federal Reserve System. Since this year is the one hundredth anniversary of the Fed's founding, it may be worth looking back at its history. President Woodrow Wilson explained the reasons for creating the Federal Reserve System. He said that the Federal Reserve "provides a currency which expands as it is needed and contracts when it is not needed" and that "the power to direct this system of credits is put into the hands of a public board of disinterested officers of the Government itself" to avoid control by private bankers or other special interests. The Federal Reserve was supposed to prevent shocks to the economy that can come from drastic inflation or deflation, and reduce the dangers that can come from widespread bank failures. These are all good goals. But what is the Fed's track record? In the hundred years before there was a Federal Reserve System, inflation was less than half of what it became in the hundred years after the Fed was founded. The biggest deflation in the history of the country came after the Fed was founded, and that deflation contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. As for bank failures, they reached levels unheard of before there was a Federal Reserve System. Like so many "progressives," then and now, Woodrow Wilson seemed to think that, if those who made government decisions had no financial interest in those decisions, then they could be trusted to wield their powers in the public interest. But the enormous power wielded by the unelected leaders of the Fed over the economy, unchecked by the constraints of the market, has repeatedly turned out to be more than human beings can handle.
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Feb 14, 2013 8:04:12 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Feb 14, 2013 8:04:12 GMT -5
This one looks better in it's original form, but here's the c&p version: Fact checking the 2013 State of the Union speech By Glenn Kessler www.JewishWorldReview.com | A State of the Union address is often difficult to fact-check, no matter who is president. The speech is a product of many hands and is carefully vetted, so major errors of fact are relatively rare. But State of the Union addresses often are very political speeches, an argument for the president’s policies, so context is sometimes missing. Here is a guide through some of President Obama’s more fact-challenged claims, in the order in which he made them. As is our practice with live events, we do not award Pinocchio rankings, which are reserved for complete columns. “After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over 6 million new jobs.” The president is cherry-picking a number that puts the improvement in the economy in the best possible light. The low point in jobs was reached in February 2010, and there has indeed been a gain of about 6 million jobs since then, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But the data also show that since the start of his presidency, about 1.2 million jobs have been created — and the number of jobs in the economy is about 3.2 million lower than when the recession began in December 2007. “We buy … less foreign oil than we have in 20 [years].” This claim lacks context. The Energy Department has cited a host of reasons why foreign oil imports have declined, noting the main reason was “a significant contraction in consumption” because of the poor economy and changes in efficiency that began “two years before the 2008 crisis” — in other words, before Obama took office. “Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion — mostly through spending cuts, but also by raising tax rates on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. As a result, we are more than halfway towards the goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists say we need to stabilize our finances.” This is debatable, depending on how you do the numbers. Many budget analysts measure the decline in deficits from August 2010 — which was a high point for spending. (Obama’s $2.5 trillion figure adds in interest savings from reducing anticipated debts, which is different from actually cutting spending or adding revenue.) But agreement starts to break down quickly about the $4 trillion goal, which translates to just $1.5 trillion in additional work. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in a recent report, argued that $2.7 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years has been enacted so far, including tax increases, but that another $2.4 trillion was needed to reduce the ratio of debt to gross domestic product to 70 percent. The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues instead that $1.5 trillion is needed to achieve a 73 percent ratio. Those numbers could have real-world consequences for government programs. “On Medicare, I’m prepared to enact reforms that will achieve the same amount of health care savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.” This carefully crafted phrase recently earned the president a prized Geppetto Checkmark. Obama wants us to compare the savings in 2022. Granted, that would be six years after Obama’s second term ends. But administration officials argue that changes in health-care policies take time to achieve budget savings, and that the right mix can produce greater savings in the long run. Using Congressional Budget Office estimates of the president’s budget, we see that over 10 years, Obama’s proposals would achieve $337 billion from 2013 to 2022, compared to $483 billion for Bowles-Simpson in the same time period. (Bowles-Simpson, or more accurately the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is considered by many in Washington to be the model for a bipartisan approach for deficit reduction.) However, in 2022, both would achieve exactly the same amount of savings — $68 billion. Administration officials say they believe their proposals would achieve greater savings than Bowles-Simpson after 2022, which would be consistent with the increase in savings toward the end of the first 10-year budget window. “Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy.” This interesting factoid comes from this 2011 study, which we have not had a chance to fully study. But about two-thirds of the calculated impact comes from “indirect impacts" and “induced impacts” (see page ES-3) — which is always the subject of debate and conjecture. “After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.” Obama again is cherry-picking a jobs number. The low point for manufacturing jobs was reached in January 2010, and so there has been a gain of 500,000 jobs since then. But BLS data show that the number of manufacturing jobs is still 600,000 fewer than when Obama took office in the depths of the recession — and 1.8 million fewer than when the recession began in December 2007. Moreover, growth in manufacturing jobs has essentially stalled since last July. “I ask this Congress to declare that women should earn a living equal to their efforts, and finally pass the Paycheck Fairness Act this year.” There is clearly a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women — such as women tending to leave the workforce when they have children — make it difficult to make simple comparisons. The administration’s back-up document for this statement asserted that “on average women generally make 23 cents on the dollar less than men.” But the White House is using a figure (annual wages, from the Census Bureau) that makes the disparity appear the greatest. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, for instance, shows that the gap is 19 cents when looking at weekly wages. The gap is even smaller when you look at hourly wages — it is 14 cents — but then not every wage earner is paid on an hourly basis, so that statistic excludes salaried workers. In other words, since women in general work fewer hours than men in a year, the statistics used by the White House may be less reliable for examining the key focus of the legislation — wage discrimination. Weekly wages is more of an apples-to-apples comparison, but it does not include as many income categories. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis surveyed economic literature and concluded that “research suggests that the actual gender wage gap (when female workers are compared with male workers who have similar characteristics) is much lower than the raw wage gap.” They cited one survey, prepared for the Labor Department, which concluded that when such differences are accounted for, much of the hourly wage gap dwindled, to about 5 cents on the dollar.
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Mar 20, 2013 8:58:37 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Mar 20, 2013 8:58:37 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=401kAre we looking at a Cyprus moment here? Published March 19, 2013. | By Bruce McQuain. I have to preface this by saying absolutely nothing would surprise me any more. Since this administration has come into office, what would have, or should have been, unthinkable previously has not only happened but has been cheered by a certain element of our population. ObamaCare is the most visible evidence of this. But there is plenty of other stuff too. Drone strikes on US citizens are “okay”, i.e. “legal”. Speaking of “legal” how about this: The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters. The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates. More shredding of Constitutional guarantees. And what do we hear for the most part? A collective yawn. We’ve all seen what has happened on Cyprus with the government imposing a “levy” on savers. A “levy”. Outright theft is what it is. And even while they’ve lowered the amount of the “levy” they’re still imposing it. Couldn’t happen here, could it? Don’t bet on it. What other government is desperate for revenue? And where is it that 19 trillion dollars exist that is currently out of their reach? Try 401(k)’s. Katie Pavlich has the story: As a reminder, the United States government has been eying and researching how Americans use their 401k plans for quite some time now. Recently we saw the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggest the government help “manage” retirement plans. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is weighing whether it should take on a role in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, a move that would be the agency’s first foray into consumer investments. “That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring and are interested in in terms of whether and what authority we have,” bureau director Richard Cordray said in an interview. He didn’t provide additional details. The bureau’s core concern is that many Americans, notably those from the retiring Baby Boom generation, may fall prey to financial scams, according to three people briefed on the CFPB’s deliberations who asked not to be named because the matter is still under discussion. The retirement savings business in the U.S. is dominated by a group of companies that handle record-keeping and management of investments in tax-advantaged vehicles like 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts. The group includes Fidelity Investments, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Charles Schwab Corp. (SCHW) and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. (TROW) Americans held $19.4 trillion in retirement assets as of Sept. 30, 2012, according to the Investment Company Institute, an industry association; about $3.5 trillion of that was in 401(k) plans. So we have a new government agency (created in 2011) looking for a job to justify its continued existence and an administration and political elite looking for revenue while over 19 trillion dollars lays in front of them. The statement “the …. bureau is weighing whether it should take on the role of helping Americans manage [their] retirement savings” should send shivers down your spine. Why do they feel the need to consider such a thing? Well, it’s because you need their protection: This agency, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank-Act, is very concerned about how safe your retirement savings are. They are apparently concerned that retiring baby boomers may become victims of financial scams. That’s right, it’s save the geezers instead of the children. You’re simply too dumb to manage the account you’ve spent your entire working life amassing. You have to have government help to do it and that means what? Government access and, one would assume, at some point government permission to spend your dollars. How else does government save you from “scams” (you know, like Social Security)? You sputter, “but they have no right…”. Since when has government really been concerned with rights? If it can give spy agencies access to your financial records “legally” to combat terrorism, how big of a stretch is it to believe they’ll grant another agency access to your financial records (401(k)) to combat “scams?” And, with the camel of government’s nose under the tent, how long before that access turns into some sort of “levy” for this service they provide that you never asked for? ~McQ
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Mar 24, 2013 8:41:57 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Mar 24, 2013 8:41:57 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=middle-eastObama’s Middle East policy is a disaster Published March 21, 2013. | By Bruce McQuain. Do you remember the promises? When Obama took over, the Middle East would come to love the US again. As Obama, famously declared in his 2009 Cairo speech, his election meant a “new beginning” with the Muslim world. The truth, however, is much uglier: President Obama’s first journey to Israel as president comes amid earth-shattering change in Middle East, much of it for the worse. The Arab Spring, which once raised hopes of freedom and dignity, has diverged onto the dark path of Islamist authoritarian rule. In Syria, tens of thousands of people have died in a bitter civil war that might have recently seen its first use of chemical weapons. And Iran continues its march toward nuclear weapons capability, heedless of international condemnation. Obama’s effort to seek peace between Palestinians and Israelis is in tatters. And Libya? One word: “Benghazi”. How about the much anticipated and promised love fest that would occur after that mean old George W Bush was retired and The One waved his mighty hand and blessed his own Middle East policy? Yeah, it hasn’t quite worked out that way: According to the latest survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, confidence in Obama in Muslim countries dropped from 33% to 24% in his first term. Approval of Obama’s policies declined even further, from 34% to 15%. And support for the United States in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan is lower today than it was in 2008 in the closing year of George W. Bush’s administration. Israel, our closest and most important ally in the area isn’t much enamored with Obama: Of all the strained relationships in the Middle East, the partnership with Israel is the most important and potentially the most easily repaired. Obama is not popular in the country. A poll released last week showed he had a scant 10% approval rating in Israel, with an additional 32% saying they respect but don’t like him. And, if the tactic of stiffing Israel had the intent of winning popularity among Palestinians, that too hasn’t worked: If Israelis don’t like Obama, Palestinians are even less favorable.Washington’s perceived failure to take a harder line with Israel over the final status of Jerusalem, and U.S. opposition to President Mahmoud Abbas’ successful campaign for higher Palestinian status in the United Nations, have engendered a deep sense of frustration. Passions spilled over in Bethlehem this week, when young Palestinians defaced a billboard with Obama’s image and burned pictures of him in the streets. Obama’s symbolic nods to Israel’s history are likely to raise Palestinian ire even further. In fact, none of the administration’s policy initiatives have had any positive impact, or, for the most part, any impact at all (despite a fawning media telling us how wonderful a SecState Hillary Clinton was, this is her legacy too). So, what will Obama do today in Israel? What he usually does. Make a speech: The hope that Obama will say the right things in Thursday’s speech at Jerusalem’s convention center is negated by doubts he will follow through. The president has to assure Israelis and Palestinians that he is still engaged if the peace process has any chance of moving forward. In part, this means convincing them that he still matters. Key point emphasized. If you’ve watched Obama even casually over the past years, you can’t help but have noticed that he’s very strong on “talking the talk”, but hardly ever “walks the walk”. He doesn’t know how. And there’s absolutely no reason this particular issue will see him even attempt it now. Oh, he’ll say the “right things”. That’s what he does. His problem is he never then does the “right things”. Rhetoric is his action. It’s for the history books, not as a guide to leadership. He’s not a leader. But you know that. And the results of that lack of leadership are evident for all to see in the Middle East. ~McQ
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Apr 6, 2013 12:45:54 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on Apr 6, 2013 12:45:54 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=obamacareDoh! Most Democrats now believe ObamaCare won’t help and may hurt them Published April 5, 2013. | By Bruce McQuain. Cry me a freakin’ river: Two-thirds of Democrats now believe Obama’s health care reforms will either hurt them personally or have no effect on their daily lives, a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows. In comparison, just 27 percent of Democratic respondents said the reforms would help them. As for the rest? Just 3 percent of Republicans and 15 percent of independents believe the president’s overhaul will help them personally, the poll shows. Even worse for the White House, 68 percent of self-identified Republicans and more than a third of all independents said the reforms would hurt them personally. But a Democratic Congress rammed it through anyway, didn’t it? And a sell-out Chief Justice found it to be “Consitutional”, so now we have to live with it – at least temporarily. Yet most of the country believes it won’t do what was advertised and will instead cost them more. And most of them have believed that (rightfully so) since the beginning. Yet we still have it. How anyone, even Democrats, believed that adding layers of government regulation, taxation and bureaucracy could possibly make the health care system less expensive remains one of those mysteries of life. Well, not really. It’s call delusion. And in this case, it was something they wanted to believe badly and facts and reality just got in the way of that belief. And now what has their secular faith brought us? Another in a long line of disastrous and costly government programs that we can’t afford. And now they want to bitch. Screw ‘em. ~McQ
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May 28, 2013 10:17:44 GMT -5
Post by philunderwood on May 28, 2013 10:17:44 GMT -5
The Bullying Pulpit By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | We have truly entered the world of "Alice in Wonderland" when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a Congressional subcommittee to be denounced on nationwide television for not paying more. Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to "a worrisome federal deficit," according to Senator Carl Levin — one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has. Because of "gimmicks" used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Senator Levin said, "children across the country won't get early education from Head Start. Needy seniors will go without meals. Fighter jets sit idle on tarmacs because our military lacks the funding to keep pilots trained." The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws. It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven't. What is a tax "loophole"? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes. If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Yet words like "gimmicks" and "loopholes" suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don't pay any more taxes than the law requires. Are people who are buying a home, who deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns, using a "gimmick" or a "loophole"? Or are only other people's deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK? Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago that "the very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it." If the line in tax laws was drawn in the wrong place, Congress can always draw it somewhere else. But, if you buy the argument used by people like Senator Levin, then a state trooper can pull you over on a highway for driving 64 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone, because you are driving too close to the line. The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but exercises additional powers that we have never voted to give it. That is when "public servants" become public masters. That is when government itself has stepped over the line. Government's power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us. When Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department started keeping track of phone calls going to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen (and his parents) that was firing a shot across the bow of Fox News — and of any other reporters or networks that dared to criticize the Obama administration. When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than to intimidate people who might otherwise donate to organizations that oppose this administration's political agenda? The government's power to bully has been used to extract billions of dollars from banks, based on threats to file lawsuits that would automatically cause regulatory agencies to suspend banks' rights to make various ordinary business decisions, until such indefinite time as those lawsuits end. Shakedown artists inside and outside of government have played this lucrative game. Someone once said, "any government that is powerful enough to protect citizens against predators is also powerful enough to become a predator itself." And dictatorial in the process. No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F.A. Hayek called it "the road to serfdom." How far we continue down that road depends on whether we keep our eye on the ball — freedom — or allow ourselves to be distracted by predatory demagogues like Senator Carl Levin.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:23:18 GMT -5
Post by Ritty77 on Jul 5, 2013 17:23:18 GMT -5
The Left’s Central DelusionIts devotion to central planning has endured from the French Revolution to Obamacare.By Thomas Sowell July 5, 2013 12:00 AM The fundamental problem of the political Left seems to be that the real world does not fit their preconceptions. Therefore they see the real world as what is wrong, and what needs to be changed, since apparently their preconceptions cannot be wrong. A never-ending source of grievances for the Left is the fact that some groups are “over-represented” in desirable occupations, institutions, and income brackets, while other groups are “under-represented.” From all the indignation and outrage about this expressed on the left, you might think that it was impossible that different groups are simply better at different things. Yet runners from Kenya continue to win a disproportionate share of marathons in the United States, and children whose parents or grandparents came from India have won most of the American spelling bees in the past 15 years. And has anyone failed to notice that the leading professional basketball players have for years been black, in a country where most of the population is white? Most of the leading photographic lenses in the world have — for generations — been designed by people who were either Japanese or German. Most of the leading diamond-cutters in the world have been either India’s Jains or Jews from Israel or elsewhere. Not only people but things have been grossly unequal. More than two-thirds of all the tornadoes in the entire world occur in the middle of the United States. Asia has more than 70 mountain peaks that are higher than 20,000 feet and Africa has none. Is it news that a disproportionate share of all the oil in the world is in the Middle East? Whole books could be filled with the unequal behavior or performances of people, or the unequal geographic settings in which whole races, nations, and civilizations have developed. Yet the preconceptions of the political Left march on undaunted, loudly proclaiming sinister reasons why outcomes are not equal within nations or between nations. All this moral melodrama has served as a background for the political agenda of the Left, which has claimed to be able to lift the poor out of poverty, and in general make the world a better place. This claim has been made for centuries and in countries around the world. And it has failed for centuries in countries around the world. Some of the most sweeping and spectacular rhetoric of the Left occurred in 18th-century France, where the very concept of the Left originated in the fact that people with certain views sat on the left side of the National Assembly. The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised — “liberty, equality, fraternity” — what they actually produced were food shortages, mob violence, and dictatorial powers that included arbitrary executions, extending even to their own leaders, such as Robespierre, who died under the guillotine. In the 20th century, the most sweeping vision of the Left — Communism — spread over vast regions of the world and encompassed well over a billion human beings. Of these, millions died of starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin and tens of millions in China under Mao. Milder versions of socialism, with central planning of national economies, took root in India and in various European democracies. If the preconceptions of the Left were correct, central planning by educated elites who had vast amounts of statistical data at their fingertips and expertise readily available, and were backed by the power of government, should have been more successful than market economies where millions of individuals pursued their own individual interests willy-nilly. But, by the end of the 20th century, even socialist and communist governments began abandoning central planning and allowing more market competition. Yet this quiet capitulation to inescapable realities did not end the noisy claims of the Left. In the United States, those claims and policies have reached new heights, epitomized by government takeovers of whole sectors of the economy and unprecedented intrusions into the lives of Americans, of which Obamacare has been only the most obvious example. — Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2013 Creators Syndicate, Inc.www.nationalreview.com/node/352704
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Jul 25, 2013 17:27:00 GMT -5
Post by Ritty77 on Jul 25, 2013 17:27:00 GMT -5
The Retirement Surprise In Detroit's BankruptcyBy Robert Pozen July 25, 2013 When Detroit recently filed for bankruptcy, one number surprised a lot of observers--$6.4 billion in other post-employment benefits (OPEB). OPEB is primarily comprised of unfunded obligations to pay health care costs for municipal employees. By contrast, the unfunded pension obligations of Detroit were $3 billion--less than half the size of its OPEB. So municipal officials and city residents should focus on slowing the growth of unfunded healthcare obligations, which typically receive much less publicity than pension deficits. Detroit is not unique in this respect. The unfunded health care obligations of most cities are much larger than their unfunded pension obligations. The Pew Charitable Trust did a study in 2013 of both pension and OPEB shortfalls in the 30 largest cities in the United States. The three cities other than Detroit with the largest pension shortfalls were: $14,302 per city household in New York City, $12,170 per city household in Philadelphia, and $11,389 per city household in Portland, Oregon. But the shortfalls for OPEB, primarily healthcare obligations, were significantly larger. According to Pew, the three cities other than Detroit with the largest OPEB shortfalls were: $22,857 per city household in New York City, $18,962 per city household in Boston $13,487 per city household in San Francisco. Unfunded retiree healthcare benefits are generally larger than unfunded pension deficits for regulatory reasons. Only in 2006 did the government accounting board begin to require that local governments report their unfunded retiree healthcare obligations in their public financial statements. Until then, these unfunded obligations were below the radar screen and allowed to increase rapidly. But the government accounting board did not require any city to fund its OPEB shortfalls. As a result, even the worst funded city pension funds are 50% or 60% funded. By contrast, the funded healthcare obligations in the average city are 5% and zero in many cities. The only silver lining is that it is legally much easier for a city to change its health care obligations than its pension promises. Accrued pension obligations are often protected by the state constitution. By contrast, accrued healthcare benefits may usually be modified, unless the political opposition is too strong. So if health care benefits can be legally reduced, subject to political constraints, what are the most fruitful strategies for cities to pursue? Here are six strategies that various cities have utilized; they are listed in order from easiest politically to the most difficult. 1. Many cities have reduced retiree healthcare promises for new municipal employees. Although politically palatable, these reductions will take years to have a material impact on a city's unfunded healthcare liabilities. 2. Cities could require all public employee retirees to join Medicare when they reach age 65. While more cities are asking their retirees to take advantage of their Medicare eligibility, some cities continue to pay a significant portion of Medicare premiums for their retirees. 3. Cities could require public retirees before age 65 to obtain their health insurance through the new state connectors under the Affordable Healthcare Act. But such health insurance would still require premiums to be paid by public retirees, although some would receive partial federal subsidies. 4. Cities could change their health care policies for retired workers by increasing deductibles and co-payments. Cities could also cut back on the scope of health care provided--for example, by making retirees pay the full cost of dental and eyeglasses. 5. Cities could increase the number of working years for their employees to become eligible for retiree healthcare. In some cities, public employees are eligible for retiree healthcare after 10 or 15 years of full-time work; this period for eligibility could be extended to 20 or 25 years of full-time city work. 6. Cities could begin to fund their health care obligations in advance, as they do for their pension obligations. This funding, which could come partly from general municipal revenues and partly from public employees, would be invested in a separate trust. In sum, most cities need to reduce their unfunded healthcare obligations to retirees. Although such reductions will be politically controversial, they are necessary for most cities--in the short term to avoid a spike in the interest rates paid on their municipal bonds, and in the long term to avoid a fiscal crisis like the current one in Detroit. Pozen is the former chairman of MFS Investment Management, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School, a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, and author of the book The Fund Industry: How Your Money Is Managed.www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/07/25/the_retirement_surprise_in_detroits_bankruptcy_100503.html
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Aug 18, 2013 10:50:54 GMT -5
Post by Ritty77 on Aug 18, 2013 10:50:54 GMT -5
When Words Lose Their MeaningPolitics and the English language in 21st-century America.By Charles C. W. Cooke December 13, 2012 In 1946, a frustrated George Orwell, tired of “the special connection between politics and the debasement of language,” put pen to paper. “A bad usage,” Orwell averred, “can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.” Those of us who had the misfortune of being alive during the recent general election will understand well what he was getting at. The two key taxonomical terms that we use in American political life are largely meaningless. Whether it is a case of thought corrupting language or language corrupting thought, our politics is suffering as a result. I contribute to the problem as keenly as anyone by identifying myself as a “conservative” when I am a “conservative” in no meaningful way. My opponents do the same thing, describing themselves as “liberals” when they, too, are no such thing. It is one big conspiracy of ease. We do this despite its being self-evident nonsense. The Left terms the Right “radically conservative” in the same breath in which it charges hysterically that we wish to “transform the government,” which is to follow an oxymoron with a non sequitur. Not to be outdone, the Right speaks angrily of “prescriptive” and “controlling” and “statist” “liberals.” What, for example, should we make of Barack Obama’s simultaneous charges that Mitt Romney was a “severe conservative” and that he wanted “to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, . . . the social policies of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s”? What of the president’s frequent claim that Romney — again, a “conservative” — wanted to “end Medicare as we know it”? What of Obama campaigning under a banner that read “Forward” while ensuring us that, if he had his druthers, the existing state would stay in the same form in perpetuity, only to be expanded but never to be shrunk? (And certainly never subjected to the risk of reform.) Whether or not Obama’s claims of Republican radicalism were fair, it was certainly bizarre to watch the president move coolly between charges of iconoclasm and insinuations that Romney was running as champion of the status quo. Orwell’s aim was “the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness.” “Conservative” and “liberal” are probably here to stay, so we might have to alter rather than abolish their usage. If so, the first task will be to try to close the gap between what the words mean in the minds of those who reflexively use them and what they mean practically in our current environment. Like Hayek, who wrote the seminal essay on this subject, I believe that the great joy of a free people is their dynamism. The relentless innovation that occurs in environments of liberty is the very opposite of traditional conservatism, at least in the reactionary, European sense of the word. The rise and fall of ventures and ideas — left to salutary neglect and subjected to the arbitration of free consumers and citizens — is the perfect opposite to the stasis of intrusive government and of the command economy. Look at the American computer industry to see this principle in action. In this respect, I am a “liberal.” By and large, it is “the Right” that is happy to allow Schumpeter’s creative destruction to take its course, and “the Left” that advocates the use of force to prevent it from doing so. It is the Right that wants to abolish federal departments and to free up schools from federal and labor-union control, and the Left that wants to keep things exactly as they are — if not indeed to reinforce that control. It is the Right that was happy to let General Motors sink into history, and the Left that speaks of the American car industry as if it were 1957. It is the Right that wants to reexamine the New Deal and Great Society on both philosophical and actuarial grounds, and the Left that will permit neither reexamination, all pieces of the state that have thus far been built being untouchable. And so on, and so forth. Who, one might ask, are the “conservatives”? Yet there are few anarchists among us. Almost all of us on the right are in favor both of a libertarian underpinning to American dynamism and of the rule of law to keep the frame steady. I am a “conservative” insofar as I wish to conserve America’s radical Constitution and to keep intact its classical-liberal provisions and presumptions — those of limited government, local control, free markets, freedom of speech and assembly, the right to bear arms, trial by jury, blind justice, and so forth. But you can see the problem: When a radically liberal framework exists, as it does in the form of the United States Constitution, one ends up being both sides of the terminological coin. To be a radical liberal, one must also be a conservative in order to keep the framework. Thus the radical becomes the conservative, and those who would prefer the European principles of government unlimited by static values, an enlightened ruling class, and centralized control — and who are opposed to the maintenance of the radically liberal framework, as “progressives” (another thorny word) have always been — become the liberals. Where it matters, a man who is conservative of radical principles remains a radical in the same manner that a man who is conservative of his marriage remains married. “He is only a very shallow critic,” said G. K. Chesterton, “who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.” At a time when sticking with the status quo is unsustainable, there is limited advantage in holding onto the “conservative” mantle. Burke, of course, remains a touchstone. But, as Dan Foster asked in a recent issue of National Review, what should we do with Burke “if the Jacobins have already won?” Even if the answer is “the Ryan plan,” it is still the “conservatives” who have suggested the radical option — radical compared with the conservatism of those who call themselves “liberal.” Would that our language reflected that reality. — Charles C. W. Cooke is an editorial associate at National Review.m.nationalreview.com/articles/335519/when-words-lose-their-meaning-charles-c-w-cooke
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