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Post by relenemiller on Nov 16, 2012 16:47:11 GMT -5
This WH attendee is the most arrogant and narcissistic person ever in the history of our country.
So true....."Why Negotiate?"
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Post by philunderwood on Nov 29, 2012 10:13:05 GMT -5
qando.net/“Fiscal Cliff” negotiations with Democrats? Gimme the usual please … Published November 29, 2012. | By Bruce McQuain. When is the GOP (and the public) going to learn? How many times have we heard that the only thing standing in the way of a grand bargain to reduce our growing national debt is Republican intransigence on taxes? If Republicans would only agree to dump Grover Norquist, Democrats will agree to cut spending and reform entitlements. Then, we can all join hands and sing Kumbaya as we usher in a new era of compromise and fiscal responsibility. Except that now that Republicans have agreed to raise taxes, er, revenue, as part of an agreement to avoid the looming fiscal cliff, liberals appear to have decided that there really isn’t a need to cut spending after all. Yup, in fact they’ve taken entitlement reform “off the table”. Senate Democratic leaders signaled Tuesday they would not agree to any entitlement reforms before the end of the year that cut spending on Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. They also said that any year-end deal to avoid the expiration of tax cuts and implementation of spending cuts — known as the fiscal cliff — must include a provision to raise the debt ceiling, which would otherwise have to be addressed early next year. The White House and Reid have indicated they will not consider cuts to Social Security, a notable change from 2011, when President Obama said “everything is on the table,” including entitlement programs dear to his party’s base. In other words, we’re back to “tax the rich”, raise the debt ceiling and spend, spend spend. Meanwhile, it is left up to the GOP to “compromise” by breaking the tax pledge (led by the Judas goats, Saxby Chambliss and Lindsey Graham) or be forever branded as the intransigent “bad guys” in this. Meanwhile, low information Americans who, by over 60% approve of taxing the rich, will buy the spin by the press painting the GOP as the cause/reason for the calamity while Democrats “lament” the problem (“but, hey, that’s now the law thanks to Republicans”) and gleefully rub their hands in delight at all the new revenue they’ll have to “redistribute”. Some things never change, do they? ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Nov 29, 2012 10:14:49 GMT -5
Looks like it’s time to revive the Tea Party Movement.
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 4, 2012 9:22:15 GMT -5
Fiscal Cliff Notes By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting. First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days. And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year? All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting "the rich" to pay "their fair share" is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics. Taxing "the rich" will produce a drop in the bucket when compared to the staggering and unprecedented deficits of the Obama administration. No previous administration in the entire history of the nation ever finished the year with a trillion dollar deficit. The Obama administration has done so every single year. Yet political and media discussions of the financial crisis have been focussed overwhelmingly on how to get more tax revenue to pay for past and future spending. The very catchwords and phrases used by the Obama administration betray how phony this all is. For example, "We are just asking the rich to pay a little more." This is an insult to our intelligence. The government doesn't "ask" anybody to pay anything. It orders you to pay the taxes they impose and you can go to prison if you don't. Then there are all the fancy substitute words for plain old spending— words like "stimulus" or "investing in the industries of the future." The theory about "stimulus" is that government spending will stimulate private businesses and financial institutions to put more of their money into the economy, speeding up the recovery. But the fact that you call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus. Stimulus spending began during the Bush administration and has continued full blast during the Obama administration. But the end result is that both businesses and financial institutions have had record amounts of their own money sitting idle. The rate of circulation of money slowed down. All this is the opposite of stimulus. What about "investing in the industries of the future"? Does the White House come equipped with a crystal ball? Calling government spending "investment" does not make it investment any more than calling spending "stimulus" makes it stimulate anything. What in the world would lead anyone to think that politicians have some magic way of knowing what the industries of the future are? Thus far the Obama administration has repeatedly "invested" in the bankruptcies of the present, such as Solyndra. Using lofty words to obscure tawdry realities extends beyond the White House. Referring to the Federal Reserve System's creation of hundreds of billions of new dollars out of thin air as "quantitative easing" makes it seem as if this is some soothing and esoteric process, rather than amounting essentially to nothing more than printing more money. Debasing the value of money by creating more of it is nothing new or esoteric. Irresponsible governments have done this, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years. It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all. All the pretty talk about how tax rates will be raised only on "the rich" hides the ugly fact that the poorest people in the country will see the value of their money decline, just like everybody else, and at the same rate as everybody else, when the government creates more money and spends it. If you have $100 and, after inflation follows from "quantitative easing," that $100 dollars will only buy what $80 bought before, then that is the same economically as if the government had taxed away one-fifth of your money and spent it. But it is not the same politically, so long as gullible people don't look beyond words to the reality that inflation taxes everybody, the poorest as well as the richest.
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 5, 2012 9:40:06 GMT -5
Fiscal Cliff Notes: Part II By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | One of the big advantages that President Obama has, as he plays "chicken" with the Congressional Republicans along the "fiscal cliff," is that Obama is a master of the plausible lie, which will never be exposed by the mainstream media— nor, apparently, by the Republicans. A key lie that has been repeated over and over, largely unanswered, is that President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" cost the government so much lost tax revenue that this added to the budget deficit— so that the government cannot afford to allow the cost of letting the Bush tax rates continue for "the rich." It sounds very plausible, and constant repetition without a challenge may well be enough to convince the voting public that, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives does not go along with Barack Obama's demands for more spending and higher tax rates on the top 2 percent, it just shows that they care more for "the rich" than for the other 98 percent. What is remarkable is how easy it is to show how completely false Obama's argument is. That also makes it completely inexplicable why the Republicans have not done so. The official statistics which show plainly how wrong Barack Obama is can be found in his own "Economic Report of the President" for 2012, on page 411. You can look it up. You may be able to find a copy of the "Economic Report of the President" for 2012 at your local public library. Or you can buy a hard copy from the Government Printing Office or download an electronic version from the Internet. For those who find that "a picture is worth a thousand words," they need only see the graphs published in the November 30th issue of Investor's Business Daily. What both the statistical tables in the "Economic Report of the President" and the graphs in Investor's Business Daily show is that (1) tax revenues went up— not down— after tax rates were cut during the Bush administration, and (2) the budget deficit declined, year after year, after the cut in tax rates that have been blamed by Obama for increasing the deficit. Indeed, the New York Times reported in 2006: "An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year." While the New York Times may not have expected this, there is nothing unprecedented about lower tax rates leading to higher tax revenues, despite automatic assumptions by many in the media and elsewhere that tax rates and tax revenues automatically move in the same direction. They do not. The Congressional Budget Office has been embarrassed repeatedly by making projections based on the assumption that tax revenues and tax rates move in the same direction. This has happened as recently as the George W. Bush administration and as far back as the Reagan administration. Moreover, tax revenues went up when tax rates went down, as far back as the Coolidge administration, before there was a Congressional Budget Office to make false predictions. The bottom line is that Barack Obama's blaming increased budget deficits on the Bush tax cuts is demonstrably false. What caused the decreasing budget deficits after the Bush tax cuts to suddenly reverse and start increasing was the mortgage crisis. The deficit increased in 2008, followed by a huge increase in 2009. So it is sheer hogwash that "tax cuts for the rich" caused the government to lose tax revenues. The government gained tax revenues, not lost them. Moreover, "the rich" paid a larger amount of taxes, and a larger share of all taxes, after the tax rates were cut. That is because people change their economic behavior when tax rates are changed, contrary to what the Congressional Budget Office and others seem to assume, and this can stimulate the economy more than a government "stimulus" has done under either Bush or Obama. Yet there is no need to assume that Barack Obama is mistaken about the way to get the economy out of the doldrums. His top priority has always been increasing the size and scope of government. If that means sacrificing the economy or the truth, that is no deterrent to Obama. That is why he is willing to play chicken with Republicans along the fiscal cliff.
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 6, 2012 9:03:04 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=fiscal-cliffFiscal cliff: Politicians play “chicken” with your lives and livelyhood Published December 6, 2012. | By Bruce McQuain. Because we’re served by the worst political class ever: President Obama’slead negotiator in the “fiscal cliff” talks said the administration is “absolutely” willing to allow the package of deep automatic spending cuts and across-the-board tax hikes to take effect Jan. 1, unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher income tax rates on the wealthy. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in an interview with CNBC that both sides are “making a little bit of progress” toward a deal to avert the “cliff” but remain stuck on Obama’s desired rate increase for the top U.S. income-earners. “There’s no prospect for an agreement that doesn’t involve those rates going up on the top two percent of the wealthiest,” Geithner said. Apparently there is no way to raise the desired revenue, at least according to Obama/Geithner, that “doesn’t involve those rates going up on the top 2%”. No way. Oh, wait … What we said was give us $1.2 trillion in additional revenues, which could be accomplished without hiking taxes — tax rates, but could simply be accomplished by eliminating loopholes, eliminating some deductions and engaging in a tax reform process that could have lowered rates generally while broadening the base. Say, wasn’t that President Obama in July of 2011 at a press conference? Why yes it was. So there is a way, but he and apparently his “negotiator” refuse to pursue it (btw, no I”m not fooled by the illusion that this isn’t just as much a tax hike as what they’re proposing)? It that what is happening? Why yes, yes it is. So there is another way to do this, apparently. Unless our President was telling a tall one about what he’d be willing to do in July? Yeah, I know, perish the thought. Lie to us? Unthinkable. Instead according to Turbo Tax Timmy, they’d “absolutely” take us over the cliff, because, you know, raising taxes on the “rich” is now the only acceptable position. You and your life? You’re a mere pawn for these poppinjays. They’re fine with playing with your life and livelihood to score a political win. They have no problem holding your life and property ransom and using your future to force their desired resolution. But if we go over the cliff, screw you. Meanwhile, in the House, Speaker Boehner continues to look for a comfortable place to lie down and surrender. In the Senate the GOP actually tried to bring the President’s proposal to a vote and Majority Leader Reid denied it. Because it was, per Reid, a “stunt”. This is all a “stunt”. A miserable stunt perpetrated by a miserable group of people who have no concept of leadership or service to their country but are long on ego and party. It is the price of always voting for the “lesser of two evils”. Screw ‘em. ~McQ
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Post by relenemiller on Dec 6, 2012 22:48:10 GMT -5
Obama can do what he wants, when he wants and there is no stopping him.
Remember the self prophetic words to Putin? I'll have more flexibility once I'm elected (or something to that affect!
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 7, 2012 7:50:56 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=debt-ceilingTaxes, Spending, and the Fate of the Republic Published December 6, 2012. | By Dale Franks. The direction the country is taking bothers me. Increasingly, I see little hope for a bright prosperous future. Frankly, things cannot continue going in the direction they’re heading without a disastrous result. Mark Steyn wrote earlier this week: Generally speaking, functioning societies make good-faith efforts to raise what they spend, subject to fluctuations in economic fortune: Government spending in Australia is 33.1 percent of GDP, and tax revenues are 27.1 percent. Likewise, government spending in Norway is 46.4 percent, and revenues are 41 percent – a shortfall but in the ballpark. Government spending in the United States is 42.2 percent, but revenues are 24 percent – the widest spending/taxing gulf in any major economy. This is unsupportable, by any measure, and should be seen to be so by anyone with common sense, irrespective of political party, but apparently is not. And it’s important to recognize that the reason revenues are at a historically high 24% of GDP—the historical average is around 18%—is that GDP growth for the last 4 years has been atrociously bad, and well below the 3% historical trend rate of growth. In a rational world, we would make a decision to settle on a continuum somewhere between cutting government spending to 24% of GDP, and raising taxes to 42.2% of GDP, which would necessarily imply massive tax increases on the middle and, yes, even the lower class. At the moment, however, it is impossible to cut spending to 24% of GDP. Not just politically impossible, though that appears to be true also, but I mean impossible impossible. The reason it is impossible is that 24% of current GDP will not cover the cost of mandatory entitlement spending and service on the national debt. More than 62% of government spending is mandatory spending on essentially social security and Medicare. Another 6% is interest on the national debt, and it’s only that low because 1) the Fed has been buying massive amounts of US treasury bonds, and 2) interest rates are historically low. In other words, 68% of the federal budget is taken up by entitlements and debt service, alone. We could eliminate the entirety of the rest of the federal government and, at current rates of taxation, would still run a deficit. At the current rate of spending, we can expect to add over $12 trillion dollars in debt over the next decade. To combat this, the president has requested an additional 1.6 trillion in new revenue, which he expects to gain by increasing tax rates on only the upper class. Even assuming, arguendo, that such a taxation plan would actually result in that much additional revenue—which it likely would not—we would still add an additional $10 trillion in debt. And that, of course, assumes interest rates would not rise from their current low levels. A rise to the historical rates of interest would increase debt service costs from $250 billion per year to $650 billion per year, or approximately 15% of the budget. Neither Congress nor the President are proposing a serious plan to balance the budget, which would require a politically impossible mix of massive budget/entitlement cuts, and/or massive tax increases on the middle and lower classes. Absent such a plan, we will inevitably default on our debt, or hyperinflate our way out of it, both of which are merely two sides of the same coin. In either case, the dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency, and the life savings of every single person in the country—except, perhaps, those embodied in some classes of hard asset—will be rendered worthless. There will be massive unemployment, and a high possibility of civil strife. Imported goods will essentially be unobtainable, and I’m not just talking about BMWs and Land Rovers, but everyday things we never even think about, like fresh fruit from Chile in the winter, or clothes from Singapore and Taiwan at any time. The least damaging course of action would be a massive reduction in government spending. A more damaging course would be a massive increase in taxation. The most damaging course would be to do nothing but nibble at the edges of spending and taxation until we default, either formally, or de facto through hyperinflation. So far, we are set on the third course. We are set on a path to completely destroy the currency and economic life of the Republic, and we will inevitably do so without massive tax increases, massive spending cuts, or some mixture of the two. Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, the Fiscal Cliff negotiations—by which I mean "farce"—continue. Personally, I’m a charter member of the Let It Burn club. The Democrats have set up a narrative in which, no matter what happens, Republicans will get the blame. And yet, 18 months ago, what we’re now calling the Fiscal Cliff was unilaterally hailed as a wise, bipartisan, and far-seeing compromise that would set the country on the road to financial rectitude. And quite frankly, the president is giving every indication that he wants to go over the Fiscal Cliff, and that he can weather the political and economic fallout from it. OK. Then let’s test that theory. This is not a risk-free strategy. As Ace of Spades points out: The Walk Away/Let It Burn option is growing on people. One cautionary note, though: This will provoke a serious constitutional crisis and may undo the Republic. So a soft Let it Burn could turn into a genuine collapse of the Republic. Obama is a tyrant. If Republicans do not lift the debt ceiling, it is perfectly obvious what he will do, as he’s argued for it before: Like Putin, he will begin unilaterally asserting power he doesn’t have. And what will be the recourse? Court, I suppose. Impeachment, sure, but Democrats will block conviction. So whether or not the President can suddenly assert sweeping power over the purse — sweeping aside the last real check on his power granted to the House of Representatives — will depend on the vote of Justice Go Along to Get Along Roberts. President Obama has already asked for it. It’s that one exception I mentioned before: He is asking for unilateral power to raise the debt ceiling and no president should ever have that power. Our constitution is clear that the money bills must originate in the house. Equally clear is the principle of Congressional supremacy, in that Congress may pass laws even over a presidential veto. The debt ceiling is clearly a Congressional, not a presidential prerogative. Congress, of course, has already amended the Constitution’s strictures in practice. For instance, the Senate takes House bills, say, for building a dam, and strips the original language, then loads it up with budgetary items. The House accepts them in conference. Additionally, we have operated without a federal budget—though one is required annually by law—since 2009. This is a…constitutional novelty. But giving unilateral budgetary power to the president goes far beyond novelty. In my view, granting this power to any president will mark the end of the Republic, just as surely as the creation of the First Triumvirate marked the death knell of the Roman Republic. The American people elected President Obama. It is only right that they should reap the full measure of the consequences of that decision. Ace is right. Going over the Fiscal Cliff may undo the Republic. But if that is true, then I’m entirely unconvinced that the Republic should be saved. ~ Dale Franks
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 8, 2012 9:26:24 GMT -5
The following US economic statistics were announced today: The Monster Employment index rose 2 points to 158 in November. The Reuter’s/University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index a very steep 8.2 points to 74.5. Nonfarm payroll employment in November increased by a lackluster 146,000 new jobs. Average hourly earnings increased by 0.2%. The average workweek was unchanged at 34.4 hours. Turning to the household survey, the unemployment rate fell to 7.7%, as 350,000 workers left the labor force, bringing the labor force participation rate back down to 63.6. At the historical rate of labor participation, the unemployment rate would actually have jumped by 0.2% to 11.4%. In all, the labor market remains moribund, as job creation remains weak and labor force participation remains at historic lows. ~ Dale Franks
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 13, 2012 10:53:26 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=fiscal-policyUS average marginal effective tax rate about 40%? Published December 13, 2012. | By Bruce McQuain. So tell me again why the government can’t seem to get along with what it already gets? Taking into account all taxes on earnings and consumer spending—including federal, state and local income taxes, Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, excise taxes, and state and local sales taxes—Edward Prescott has shown (especially in the Quarterly Review of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 2004) that the U.S. average marginal effective tax rate is around 40%. This means that if the average worker earns $100 from additional output, he will be able to consume only an additional $60. And yet the prevailing political attitude seems to be that of France’s “leadership”, i.e. government, has first claim on all your earnings and if you protest you’re “greedy”. Who’s greedy? Speaking of France, California seems bound to duplicate its latest tax scheme: Consider California, which just enacted higher rates of income and sales tax. The top California income-tax rate will be 13.3%, and the top sales-tax rate in some areas may rise as high as 10%. Combine these state taxes with a top combined federal rate of 44%, plus federal excise taxes, and the combined marginal tax rate for the highest California earners is likely to be around 60%—as high as in France, Germany and Italy. Yet they wonder why people are fleeing the state. Impact and implications? Higher labor-income and consumption taxes also have consequences for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. A key factor driving U.S. economic growth has been the remarkable impact of entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple, Fred Smith of FedEx and others who took substantial risk to implement new ideas, directly and indirectly creating new economic sectors and millions of new jobs. Entrepreneurship is much lower in Europe, suggesting that high tax rates and poorly designed regulation discourage new business creation. The Economist reports that between 1976 and 2007 only one continental European startup, Norway’s Renewable Energy Corporation, achieved a level of success comparable to that of Microsoft, Apple and other U.S. giants making the Financial Times Index of the world’s 500 largest companies. Yet we continue to try to recreate Europe’s debacle here. The economy now faces two serious risks: the risk of higher marginal tax rates that will depress the number of hours of work, and the risk of continuing policies such as Dodd-Frank, bailouts, and subsidies to specific industries and technologies that depress productivity growth by protecting inefficient producers and restricting the flow of resources to the most productive users. If these two risks are realized, the U.S. will face a much more serious problem than a 2013 recession. It will face a permanent and growing decline in relative living standards. These risks loom as the level of U.S. economic activity gradually moves closer to that of the 1930s, when for a decade during the Great Depression output per working-age person declined by nearly 25% relative to trend. The last two quarters of GDP growth—1.3% and 2.7%—have been below trend, which means the U.S. economy is continuing to sink relative to its historical trend. But your political and financial lords and masters know best, don’t they? Just ask them. They continue down this road despite the fact the destination is in plain sight in Europe and it isn’t pretty. Occam’s Razor states “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” Said another way, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely explanation. In this case the simplest explanation is incompetence. But is it really incompetence? With the European example staring them right in the face it’s hard to believe anyone is that incompetent. The conclusion to their policies have already been proven to be a disaster. So one has to being to consider other possibilities when those who are pushing the policies seem oblivious to the obvious. You have to begin to wonder if it is a problem of hubris. I.e. “the only reason it hasn’t worked before is we weren’t in charge”. We’ve seen that in any number of instances throughout history where discredited or obviously illogical ideological ideas were tried and they again failed. Or you have to consider the words “by design”. But then you’re stuck with trying to come up with a valid reason “why”. Recreating Europe’s debacle, or Japans’s or, for heaven sake, our’s in the ’30s would seem to be something smart politicians would attempt to avoid. But here we are. Economic growth requires new ideas and new businesses, which in turn require a large group of talented young workers who are willing to take on the considerable risk of starting a business. This requires undoing the impediments that stand in the way of creating new economic activity—and increasing the after-tax returns to succeeding. And yet, we see a government bent on erecting even more impediments via increased taxation, costly new laws and onerous regulation. Isn’t it about time we demanded to know “why?” More importantly, maybe we should ask whose side they’re on. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 20, 2012 10:27:09 GMT -5
'Forward' to the Past? By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | The political slogan "Forward" served Barack Obama well during this year's election campaign. It said that he was for going forward, while Republicans were for "going back to the failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place." It was great political rhetoric and great political theater. Moreover, the Republicans did virtually nothing to challenge its shaky assumptions with a few hard facts that could have made those assumptions collapse like a house of cards. More is involved than this year's political battles. The word "forward" has been a political battle cry on the left for more than a century. It has been almost as widely used as the left's other favorite word, "equality," which goes back more than two centuries. The seductive notion of economic equality has appealed to many people. The pilgrims started out with the idea of equal sharing. The colony of Georgia began with very similar ideas. In the midwest, Britain's Robert Owen— who coined the term "socialism"— set up colonies based on communal living and economic equality. What these idealistic experiments all had in common was that they failed. They learned the hard way that people would not do as much for the common good as they would do for their own good. The pilgrims nearly starved learning that lesson. But they learned it. Land that had been common property was turned into private property, which produced a lot more food. Similar experiments were tried on a larger scale in other countries around the world. In the biggest of these experiments— the Soviet Union under Stalin and Communist China under Mao— people literally starved to death by the millions. In the Soviet Union, at least 6 million people starved to death in the 1930s, in a country with some of the most fertile land on the continent of Europe, a country that had once been a major exporter of food. In China, tens of millions of people starved to death under Mao. Despite what the left seems to believe, private property rights do not exist simply for the sake of people who own property. Americans who do not own a single acre of land have abundant food available because land is still private property in the United States, even though the left is doing its best to restrict property rights in both the countrysides and in the cities. The other big feature of the egalitarian left is promotion of a huge inequality of power, while deploring economic inequality. It is no coincidence that those who are going ballistic over the economic inequality between the top one or two percent and the rest of us are promoting a far more dangerous concentration of political power in Washington— where far less than one percent of the population increasingly tell 300 million Americans what they can and cannot do, on everything from their light bulbs and toilets to their medical care. This movement in the direction of central planning, under the name of "forward," is in fact going back to a system that has failed in countries around the world— under both democratic and dictatorial governments and among peoples of virtually every race, color, creed, and nationality. It is one thing when conservative leaders like Ronald Reagan in America and Margaret Thatcher in Britain declared central planning a failure. But what really puts the nails in the coffin is that, before the end of the 20th century, both socialist and communist governments around the world began abandoning central planning. India and China are the biggest examples. In both countries, cutbacks on government control of the economy were followed by dramatically increased economic growth rates, lifting millions of people out of poverty in both countries. The ultimate irony is that the most recent international survey of free markets found the world's freest market to be in Hong Kong— in a country still ruled by communists! But the Chinese communists have at least learned, the hard way, a lesson that Barack Obama seems oblivious to. We are going "forward" to a repeatedly failed past, following a charismatic leader, after a 20th century in which charismatic leaders led countries into unprecedented catastrophes.
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 23, 2012 10:44:58 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=fiscal-policyUS average marginal effective tax rate about 40%? Published December 13, 2012. | By Bruce McQuain. So tell me again why the government can’t seem to get along with what it already gets? Taking into account all taxes on earnings and consumer spending—including federal, state and local income taxes, Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, excise taxes, and state and local sales taxes—Edward Prescott has shown (especially in the Quarterly Review of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 2004) that the U.S. average marginal effective tax rate is around 40%. This means that if the average worker earns $100 from additional output, he will be able to consume only an additional $60. And yet the prevailing political attitude seems to be that of France’s “leadership”, i.e. government, has first claim on all your earnings and if you protest you’re “greedy”. Who’s greedy? Speaking of France, California seems bound to duplicate its latest tax scheme: Consider California, which just enacted higher rates of income and sales tax. The top California income-tax rate will be 13.3%, and the top sales-tax rate in some areas may rise as high as 10%. Combine these state taxes with a top combined federal rate of 44%, plus federal excise taxes, and the combined marginal tax rate for the highest California earners is likely to be around 60%—as high as in France, Germany and Italy. Yet they wonder why people are fleeing the state. Impact and implications? Higher labor-income and consumption taxes also have consequences for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. A key factor driving U.S. economic growth has been the remarkable impact of entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple, Fred Smith of FedEx and others who took substantial risk to implement new ideas, directly and indirectly creating new economic sectors and millions of new jobs. Entrepreneurship is much lower in Europe, suggesting that high tax rates and poorly designed regulation discourage new business creation. The Economist reports that between 1976 and 2007 only one continental European startup, Norway’s Renewable Energy Corporation, achieved a level of success comparable to that of Microsoft, Apple and other U.S. giants making the Financial Times Index of the world’s 500 largest companies. Yet we continue to try to recreate Europe’s debacle here. The economy now faces two serious risks: the risk of higher marginal tax rates that will depress the number of hours of work, and the risk of continuing policies such as Dodd-Frank, bailouts, and subsidies to specific industries and technologies that depress productivity growth by protecting inefficient producers and restricting the flow of resources to the most productive users. If these two risks are realized, the U.S. will face a much more serious problem than a 2013 recession. It will face a permanent and growing decline in relative living standards. These risks loom as the level of U.S. economic activity gradually moves closer to that of the 1930s, when for a decade during the Great Depression output per working-age person declined by nearly 25% relative to trend. The last two quarters of GDP growth—1.3% and 2.7%—have been below trend, which means the U.S. economy is continuing to sink relative to its historical trend. But your political and financial lords and masters know best, don’t they? Just ask them. They continue down this road despite the fact the destination is in plain sight in Europe and it isn’t pretty. Occam’s Razor states “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” Said another way, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely explanation. In this case the simplest explanation is incompetence. But is it really incompetence? With the European example staring them right in the face it’s hard to believe anyone is that incompetent. The conclusion to their policies have already been proven to be a disaster. So one has to being to consider other possibilities when those who are pushing the policies seem oblivious to the obvious. You have to begin to wonder if it is a problem of hubris. I.e. “the only reason it hasn’t worked before is we weren’t in charge”. We’ve seen that in any number of instances throughout history where discredited or obviously illogical ideological ideas were tried and they again failed. Or you have to consider the words “by design”. But then you’re stuck with trying to come up with a valid reason “why”. Recreating Europe’s debacle, or Japans’s or, for heaven sake, our’s in the ’30s would seem to be something smart politicians would attempt to avoid. But here we are. Economic growth requires new ideas and new businesses, which in turn require a large group of talented young workers who are willing to take on the considerable risk of starting a business. This requires undoing the impediments that stand in the way of creating new economic activity—and increasing the after-tax returns to succeeding. And yet, we see a government bent on erecting even more impediments via increased taxation, costly new laws and onerous regulation. Isn’t it about time we demanded to know “why?” More importantly, maybe we should ask whose side they’re on. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Dec 26, 2012 11:51:06 GMT -5
Meanwhile in Egypt, an Islamic Constitution is signed into law
Published December 26, 2012. | By Bruce McQuain.
And apparently, our current government, given their history, will really have no problem with it. Why do I say that? Because their love affair with the Muslim Brotherhood extends back quite some time. Despite all the warnings that the Brotherhood was radical and Islamist, this administration and Democrats have been making overtures for years.
Going back to April 2007, Democrats made special efforts to link up with the MB when visiting then-House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., met with Dr. Saad el-Katatni, the MB’s parliamentary leader, at former U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone’s home, at a time when then-Secretary Condoleezza Rice has publicly refused to meet with the Brotherhood. Mr. Ricciardone, who I can call a friend, once told me that his friendship with another MB leader, Essam El- Erain, extended for close to 30 years. Perhaps that was the catalyst for this meeting and subsequent meetings that took place at his residency. A stream of meetings as well as public and private contacts followed between current U.S. Ambassador Ann Paterson and members of the Brotherhood since her arrival to Egypt shortly after the revolution. The ambassador seemed to favor the Brotherhood and the hardliner Salafis over the rest of the secular players in Egypt. In fact, she has turned down requests for meetings from heads of political parties and other secular politicians, myself included, who opposed the Brotherhood. In addition to the ambassador, other U.S. officials such as Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Sen. John Kerry made the pilgrimage to the MB headquarters and made sure to meet with their leader, Khairat El-Shater, at times even publicly praising him, as did Mr. Kerry. Those visits were made during a time where no political group had emerged as a leader in post-revolution Egypt. The result, of course, is a state much more inclined to hostility toward Israel and the United States. Additionally, with the signing of the new Constitution, the secular state is dead. It will relegate women and minorities to second-class status. Additionally, given the Brotherhood’s history, Egypt is likely to lend more support to Hamas and Hezbollah. It is also likely, given the fact that it controls a border area on Gaza, that weaponry into that area will flow unimpeded. I wanted to bring John Kerry’s role in this to light, since it is likely he will be the next Secretary of State. Just as he provided propaganda fodder for the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, he and other Democrats have provided “justification” for the Muslim Brotherhood’s move to establish Sharia law in Egypt.
The MBs used these high-level meetings to tell the Egyptian people that the U.S. was supporting them and did not object to their rule. Many of us reached out to U.S. officials at the State Department and complained that the U.S. policy regarding the MB was putting the secular forces in Egypt at a disadvantage because it seemed to be propping up the MB, but our concerns were dismissed. We warned of the MB’s desire to impose Sharia law once in power and the grim effect it would have on the rights of the millions of Christians and moderate Muslims, including women and children, yet all of our warnings were dismissed. It seems that a policy decision was made to bring the MB to power in Egypt at all costs, and it happened. As it turns out, the situation in Egypt, backed by Democrats and this administration, has made the country a less reliable US ally, has turned the cultural clock there back to the seventh century with the establishment of Sharia law, and has relegated a large portion of Egyptians to second-class status all the while becoming much more of a threat to the country of Israel. If the purpose of foreign relations is to create situations that are favorable to the United States, this has been an epic failure. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Jan 29, 2013 16:14:06 GMT -5
Shouting Louder By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | An old-time trial lawyer once said, "When your case is weak, shout louder!" Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shouted louder when asked about the Obama administration's story last fall that the September 11th attack on the U.S. ambassador's quarters in Benghazi was due to an anti-Islamic video that someone in the United States had put on the Internet, and thereby provoked a protest that escalated into violence. She shouted: "We had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?" Students of propaganda may admire the skill with which she misdirected people's attention. But those of us who are still old-fashioned enough to think that the truth matters cannot applaud her success. Let's go back to square one. After the attack on the American ambassador's quarters in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the Obama administration immediately blamed it on the anti-Islamic video. Moreover, this version of what happened was not just a passing remark. It was a story that the administration kept repeating insistently. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice repeated that story on five different television talk shows on the same Sunday. President Obama himself repeated the same story at the United Nations. The man who put the anti-Islamic video on the Internet was arrested for a parole violation, creating more media coverage to keep attention on this theme. "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Secretary Clinton now asks. What difference did it make at the time? Obviously the Obama administration thought it made a difference, with an election coming up. Prior to the attack, the administration's political theme was that Barack Obama had killed Osama bin Laden (with an assist from the Navy SEALs), vanquished Al Qaeda and was now in the process of putting the terrorist threat behind us. To have the attack in Benghazi be seen as a terrorist attack — and a devastating one — would have ruined this picture, with an election coming up. The key question that remains unanswered to this day is: What speck of evidence is there that the attack in Benghazi was due to the much-discussed video or that there was ever any protest demonstration outside the ambassador's quarters? If there is no evidence whatever, then the whole attempt to say that a protest over a video escalated into an attack was a deliberate hoax by people who knew better. There is no point in the administration saying that they did not have all the facts about the attack immediately. All the facts may never be known. But the real question is: Did you have even a single fact that would substantiate your repeated claims that some video led to a protest in Benghazi that got out of hand and led to the attack? Interestingly, Hillary Clinton herself was not featured in this campaign, even though as Secretary of State she was a key figure. Hillary was not about to create video footage that could come back to haunt her if she runs for President of the United States in 2016. In a larger context, the Benghazi attack showed that you cannot unilaterally end the "war on terror" or the terrorists' war on us, by declaring victory. For years, the Bush administration's phrase "war on terror" was avoided like the plague by the Obama administration, even if that required the Fort Hood massacre to be classified as "workplace violence." But, no matter how clever the rhetoric, reality nevertheless rears its ugly head. Once the September 11th attack in Benghazi is seen for what it was — a highly coordinated and highly successful operation by terrorists who were said to have been vanquished — that calls into question the Obama administration's Middle East foreign policy. That is why it still matters.
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Post by philunderwood on Feb 13, 2013 10:13:42 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=liveblog2013 SOTU Liveblog Published February 12, 2013. | By Dale Franks. Well, I was gonna try and liveblog this via a service like CoverItLive, but that’s no longer free, and the free ones only allow a very small number of monthly views. So, I guess I have to step back into the past and liveblog it Old Skool. You’ll need to refresh the page regularly, if you’re following along. I hope CoverItLive fails spectacularly. So, this is the night when the president turns his full focus on jobs. Again. For the 5th time. 18:10 OK, the King is entering the House of Commons. 18:13 One of the best improvements to politics I can think of would be for the president to transmit a written SOTU to Congress. If nothing else, it would deprive Sheila Jackson-Lee of her photo op. 18:16 If I was Obama, I wouldn’t start off by talking about the Constitution. 18:18 We have cleared away the rubble of crisis. Not true. You’re still president. 18:19 Obama talks about revitalizing the economy, as if his policies weren’t an obstacle to that. 18:22 I guess Obama was for the sequester before he was against it. 18:23 I think it’s precious that Obama talks as if Social Security was remotely sustainable in its current form. 18:24 "Everyone must pay their fair share," especially the rich, those greedy, bloated, plutocratic bastards. 18:24 Obama wants "bipartisan, comprehensive tax reform" that leaves the system of income taxation essentially unchanged. Like Social Security. Our entire political class lives in the past, and they don’t even seem to know it. 18:30 Obama is pushing 3D printing. That’s a really good idea. In a couple of years, home 3D printers will make great guns. 18:31 "Nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime." And yet, somehow, they will. 18:34 I can not believe this guy is implicitly taking credit for energy production increases done in SPITE of, bet because of, his policies. 18:36 We can choose to believe humans cause climate change. Or we can believe that it has something to do with the thermonuclear furnace in the sky. As a great number of scientists believe, since he’s all giddy about science. 18:37 Man, this guy loves executive orders. 18:39 "I’m proposing a partnership with the private sector," because there just isn’t enough crony capitalism yet. 18:41 Let’s help people buy more homes. Like we did, you know, before 2008, with the Community Reinvestment Act. 18:42 Preschool for every child in America. Why not puppies, too? Better yet, why not let the states take care of this? 18:44 German kids are ready for a job when they graduate high school. Because Germany doesn’t have the NEA, resisting every possible education reform. I’d be satisfied if high schools graduated students who were literate. 18:46 Every kid shouldn’t go to college. Not all the baby turtles make it to the ocean. 18:46 "Putting more boots on the southern border." Right. Just let Canadians come in willy-nilly. Maple lover. 18:49 The Violence Against Women Act is an anathema. The Federal Government has no general police power. 18:51 "No one who works should live in poverty!" Raise the minimum wage and fewer poor people will work. Hey, why stop at $9 an hour? Make it $100, and we’ll all be farting through silk. 18:54 We will have stronger families, stronger communities, and a stronger America, by ensuring the government takes and spends more of their money. 18:54 "By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over." And by the end of the next year, the Taliban will be back in charge. 18:56 Al-Qaeda is dead! Yay! 18:58 "The leaders of Iran should know that now is the time for a diplomatic solution." That’ll have ‘em quaking in their boots. 19:00 "We should remember that today’s world presents not only dangers, but opportunities." Not just pain, but joy. Also, blinding glimpses of the obvious. 19:03 So, far this administration’s batting average on change in the Mideast isn’t very good. 19:04 "We will maintain the best military in the world!" But a smaller, less capable one than we used to have. 19:06 Wait, long lines at polling places are a violation of fundamental rights? Umm, the right not to be inconvenienced by queues? 19:08 "What I’ve said tonight matters little." That would’ve been the perfect place to stop. 19:09 So. Gun control. roll out the dead kids. Never mind that murders have declined by half since 1991. Guns are bad. 19:11 "The victims deserve a vote" on gun control! No. They don’t. NO ONE DESERVES A VOTE ON MY RIGHTS. 19:14 So, why hasn’t this little black lady voted since 1964? Am I missing something? 19:15 "The word ‘citizens’ describes what we believe." Really? ‘Cause clearly you believe in a lot of things I don’t. Well, basically it was the same tired crap he’s pushed for the last 4 years. Government is the market. Rich people owe us stuff. Blah, blah, blah. Thank God it was shorter than I feared. I can’t believe this dolt is president. But, I guess the libs thought that about Bush, so we’re even. ~ Dale Franks
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Post by philunderwood on Feb 18, 2013 10:16:13 GMT -5
Magical Fairyland budgeting By Mark Steyn www.JewishWorldReview.com | "I'm also issuing a new goal for America," declared President Obama at his "State of the Union" on Tuesday. We'll come to the particular "goal" he "issued" momentarily, but before we do, consider that formulation: Did you know the president of the United States is now in the business of "issuing goals" for his subjects to live up to? Strange how the monarchical urge persists even in a republic two-and-a-third centuries old. Many commentators have pointed out that the modern State of the Union is in fairly obvious mimicry of the Speech from the Throne that precedes a new legislative session in British Commonwealth countries and Continental monarchies, but this is to miss the key difference. When the Queen or her viceroy reads a Throne Speech in Westminster, Ottawa or Canberra, it's usually the work of a government with a Parliamentary majority: in other words, the stuff she's announcing is actually going to happen. That's why, lest any enthusiasm for this or that legislative proposal be detected, the apolitical monarch overcompensates by reading everything in as flat and unexpressive a monotone as possible. Underneath the ancient rituals – the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod getting the door of the House of Commons slammed in his face three times – it's actually a very workmanlike affair. The State of the Union is the opposite. The president gives a performance, extremely animatedly, head swiveling from left-side prompter to right-side prompter, continually urging action now: "Let's start right away. We can get this done. ... We can fix this. ... Now is the time to do it. Now is the time to get it done." And at the end of the speech, nothing gets done, and nothing gets fixed, and, after a few days' shadowboxing between admirers and detractors willing to pretend it's some sort of serious legislative agenda, every single word of it is forgotten until the next one. In that sense, like Beyoncé lip-synching the National Anthem at the Inauguration, the State of the Union embodies the decay of America's political institutions into a simulacrum of responsible government rather than the real thing, and a simulacrum ever more divorced from the real issues facing the country. "Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion," said the president. Really? Who knew? "Now we need to finish the job." Just one more push is all it'll take. What's he on about? The annual "deficit" has been over a trillion for every year of Obama's presidency. The cumulative deficits have, in fact (to use a quaint expression), increased the national debt by $6 trillion. Yet Obama claims Washington has "reduced the deficit" by $2.5 trillion, and all we need to do is "finish the job." Presumably this is a reference to allegedly agreed deficit reductions over the next decade, or quarter-century or whatever. In other words, Obama has saved $2.5 trillion of Magical Fairyland money, which happily frees him up to talk about the really critical issues like high-speed rail and green energy solutions. These concepts, too, exist mainly in Magical Fairyland: if you think Obama-approved taxpayer-funded "high-speed rail" means you'll be able to board a train that goes at French or Japanese speeds, I've a high-speed rail bridge to Brooklyn to sell you. Take, for example, the "goal" Obama "issued": "Let's cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next 20 years." What does that even mean? How would you even know when you've accomplished that "goal"? What percentage of energy used by my home and business is "wasted"? In what sense? Who says? Who determines that? Is it 37 percent? 23 percent? So we're going to cut it down to 18.5 percent or 11.5 percent by 2033, is that the "goal"? Barack Obama is not the first president to "issue" "goals." John F. Kennedy also did, although he was more mindful of the constitutional niceties: "This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.'" That's a goal! No wiggle room. A monkey on the moon won't count, nor an unmanned drone. We need an actual living American standing on the surface of the moon, holding Old Glory, by Dec. 31, 1969. Whoever's writing Obama's speeches these days either has a tin ear – you don't "issue" goals, you set them – or he has a very refined sense of the ersatz nature of contemporary political discourse. Old-school monarchs issued "edicts." One thinks of King Charles the Bald in his Edict of Pistres in AD 864, announcing, among other things, that henceforth selling a horse to a Viking would be punishable by death. No doubt the odd equine transaction slipped through the regulatory net, but historians seem to agree that the sale of mounts to Norsemen certainly diminished. And, more to the point, his courtiers would have thought Charles the Bald was an even bigger schmuck than they already did if, instead of an edict, he was issuing a new goal to reduce the sale of horses to Vikings by 50 percent by the year 884. These days, the edicts are issued by commissars deep in the bowels of the hyper-regulatory state, and most of them are, like King Charles, a little too bald in their assumptions of government power to be bandied in polite society. So, in public, the modern ruler issues goals, orders dreams, commands unicorns. People seem to like this sort of thing. No accounting for taste, but there we are. "America moves forward only when we do so together," declared the president. I dunno. Maybe it's just me, but the whole joint seems to be seizing up these days: the more "activist" Big Government gets, the more inactive the nation at large. But the president's sonorous, gaseous banalities did serve notice that the Republicans don't want to get too far behind on his "goals." He's right that Washington "moves forward" like a pantomime horse lurching awkwardly across the stage and with the Republicans always playing the rear end. A "bipartisan" agreement means that the Democrats get what they want now and Republicans at some distant far-off date. Try it: New taxes and government programs now, alleged deficit reduction of $2.5 trillion a decade hence. Illegal immigrant amnesty now, alleged rigorous border enforcement the day after tomorrow. Washington has settled into a comfortable pattern: instant gratification for spending binges that do nothing for any of the problems they purport to be solving, assuaged by meaningless commitments to start the 12-step program next year, or next decade or next century. No other big spender among the advanced democracies lies to itself about the gulf between its appetites and its self-discipline. "Tonight, let's declare," declared the president, "that in the wealthiest nation on Earth..." Whoa, hold it right there. The "wealthiest nation on Earth" is actually the Brokest Nation in History. But don't worry: "Nothing I'm proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime." "Should"? Consciously or not, the president is telling us his State of the Union show is a crock, and he knows it. Under Magical Fairyland budgeting, Obama-sized government "shouldn't" increase our debt. Yet, mysteriously it does. Every time. Because, in a political culture institutionally incapable of course correction, that's just the way it is.
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Post by Ritty77 on Feb 22, 2013 22:11:47 GMT -5
Obama’s sequester deal-changerBy Bob Woodward, Friday, February 22, 5:59 PM Bob Woodward (woodwardb@washpost.com) is an associate editor of The Post. His latest book is “The Price of Politics.” Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this column.Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday. What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened? The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.” The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later. “There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.” The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government. Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved. Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.” A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn’t even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government. At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearing on Lew’s nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: “Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?” “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lew responded, “and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States.” “Did you make the suggestion?” Burr asked. “Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action.” In other words, yes. But then Burr asked about the president’s statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it. Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: “Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment.” That statement was not accurate. On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a “meat-cleaver approach” that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform. At noon that same day, White House press secretary Jay Carney shifted position and accepted sequester paternity. “The sequester was something that was discussed,” Carney said. Walking back the earlier statements, he added carefully, “and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward.” This was an acknowledgment that the president and Lew had been wrong. Why does this matter? First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans. (The Republicans are by no means blameless and have had their own episodes of denial and bald-faced message management.) Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester. Reinforcing Lew’s point, a senior White House official said Friday, “The sequester was an option we were forced to take because the Republicans would not do tax increases.” In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection. So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made. © The Washington Post Company www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bob-woodward-obamas-sequester-deal-changer/2013/02/22/c0b65b5e-7ce1-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_story.html
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Post by philunderwood on Feb 23, 2013 6:51:38 GMT -5
Lies and deception from government, who’da thunk it?
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Post by philunderwood on Mar 2, 2013 8:41:50 GMT -5
Keystone XL pipeline: How long will Obama delay this time
Published March 2, 2013. | By Bruce McQuain.
In the wake of sequestration, an opportunity to do the right thing for this country arises. Unfortunately, it arises within an administration ideologically, and therefore adamantly, opposed to the idea of more fossil fuel:
Today the State Department released yet another positive environmental review for the northern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline project. The State Department approved the original pipeline route through Nebraska, which was supposedly less environmentally friendly, without any problems. It is no surprise, then, that the State Department also seems to look favorably on this second iteration of the project in this fourth report—a report that should have been unnecessary. For the record, the pipeline also received a stamp of approval from Nebraskans. Yes, that’s right, the Obama State Department has given the Keystone XL pipeline favorable reviews before. It has been the executive, in this case, arbitrarily overruling the reports, inserting himself in a process he really has no business in and delaying the project. IER senior VP Daniel Kish sums it up pretty well:
"This is, as President Obama says, ‘a teachable moment.’ It teaches us why our government’s policies continue to stifle job creation, investment and new energy sources and instead spends valuable time and increasingly limited resources studying things to death. "While we welcome this report, we also note this is the 4th such environmental report on the Keystone XL pipeline proposal and since it is only a “draft” there will be at least 5 federal environmental studies before a decision is made by our government on the pipeline. The Canadian government made a decision in 6 months; our government has taken 54 months so far. This is an abject lesson in why – when it comes to energy – no one wants to deal with our government. This is evident also by continuing falling production on federal lands at the same time U.S. oil and gas production on non-federal lands makes historic gains. It is time for our Leaders to make a decision….Canada’s did a long time ago. Too many are hurting and too much is at stake for any more time or money to be wasted on trivial matters and long addressed and re-addressed chimeras advanced by opponents of any and all affordable sources energy." 54 months, numerous positive reports and counting. Canada, meanwhile, has moved on, planning, while we dither, to sell it’s product to China. Pipelines don’t have to run through other countries which make life difficult, they can run only in Canada, to their coast for shipment to the Far East. What is Obama delaying?
The project will accommodate up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day, create some 179,000 jobs on American soil, and continue good trade relations with a close ally. The benefits won’t stop with the oil sector, though—the Keystone project will have a positive ripple effect even in areas without the pipeline that will provide goods and services to support the pipeline. And where do we stand in the wake of this latest favorable report?
Before any real decision is made, there will be a 45-day comment period and some time for the State Department to consider the comments. Then the notably anti-carbon Secretary of State, John Kerry, will give his recommendation and the final decision will lie with the President. Any feeling of confidence that this administration, no matter how late in the game, will make the right decision isn’t exactly surging in me right now. More than anything, it’s just sad that the lives and livelihoods of so many Americans rest in the incompetent hands of Barack Obama and John Kerry. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Mar 4, 2013 9:45:14 GMT -5
For Obama, politics always trumps governing By Michael Barone www.JewishWorldReview.com | Do we have a president or a perpetual candidate? It's not an entirely unfair question. Even as Barack Obama was warning of the dreadful consequences of the budget sequester looming on March 1, he spent days away from Washington, apparently out of touch with Democratic as well as Republican congressional leaders. In the meantime, Obama fans were lobbing verbal grenades at none other than the Washington Post's Bob Woodward. His offense: He's continuing to make it clear, as he did in his book "The Price of Politics," that it was Obama's then-chief of staff and now Treasury Secretary Jack Lew who first proposed the dreaded sequester. This inconvenient fact threatens to interfere with the ready-for-teleprompter narrative that the Republicans want to cut aid to preschoolers in order to save tax breaks for corporate jets. It appears that Obama prefers delivering such messages to crowds of adoring supporters over actually governing. His theory seemed to be that if he kicked his job approval rating up a few points, Republicans would agree to the revenue increases he is promoting, just as they agreed to a tax rate increase in the "fiscal cliff" showdown. But his job rating continues to hover just above 50 percent. That's not nearly high enough to compel cooperation. In addition, his campaign rhetoric undercuts his credibility with politicians of the opposite party and perhaps of his own. It's not that these people resent being criticized. They understand that that is part of the game. But the substance of the criticism suggests the president is not serious about public policy. Take that old chestnut about corporate jets. The actual issue here is about depreciation -- over how many years can a purchaser deduct the cost of a corporate jet? Do you have to spread out the deduction over seven years? Or can you take it all in five? No doubt, serious arguments can be made for one view or the other. As they can for the depreciation schedules of hundreds or thousands of products. Lawyers and lobbyists can make a living doing this. But the bottom line is that the amount of revenue at stake is small, pathetically small next to trillion-dollar federal budget deficits. Obama keeps talking about corporate jets because it tests well in polls. And that's the reason, I think, he keeps talking about universal preschool, not just for disadvantaged children. Polls show that large majorities of Americans would be willing to have more government money spent for preschool for disadvantaged children. The impulse to help adorable but needy little kids is very strong. Unfortunately, the evidence that preschool programs do any permanent good for such children is exceedingly weak. Preschool advocates point to a 1960s program in Ypsilanti, Mich., and a 1970s North Carolina program called Abecedarian. Research showed those programs produced lasting gains in learning. But no one has been able to replicate the success of these very small programs staffed by unusually dedicated people. Mass programs like Head Start staffed by more ordinary people don't work as well. Kids in such programs seem to make no perceptible lasting gains. That's too bad, because disadvantaged kids need help. So why is Obama emphasizing universal preschool, which would cost a lot more than preschool for the disadvantaged? The reason, I suspect, is that you would have to hire lots more credentialed teachers, which means you would get lots more teacher union members. Teacher union leaders would love to see more dues money coming in, and to channel more to the Democratic Party. To my suspicious eye, the preschool proposal doesn't make much sense as policy, but it makes a lot of sense as politics. Demagoguery about preschool and corporate jets is not going to convince Republicans that Obama can be a reliable negotiating partner. Instead, it reinforces the evidence that he never will be. This is the president who, in his grand bargain negotiations with Speaker John Boehner, agreed on $800 billion in more revenue -- and then, in a phone call, told Boehner he wanted $1.2 trillion instead. And it's the president who first proposed the sequester, then promised it would never happen and then denounced it when it seemed clear it would. We need serious changes in public policy, as Obama's Simpson-Bowles Commission recommended. But this president doesn't seem much interested in that kind of governing.
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