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Post by philunderwood on Mar 5, 2013 9:24:28 GMT -5
Budget Politics By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do? The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place. The example was deliberately extreme as an illustration. But, in the real world, the same general pattern can be seen in local, state and national government responses to budget cuts. At the local level, the first response to budget cuts is often to cut the police department and the fire department. There may be all sorts of wasteful boondoggles that could have been cut instead, but that would not produce the public alarm that reducing police protection and fire protection can produce. And public alarm is what can get budget cuts restored. The Obama administration is following the same pattern. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, released thousands of illegal aliens from prisons to save money — and create alarm. The Federal Aviation Administration says it is planning to cut back on the number of air traffic controllers, which would, at a minimum, create delays for airline passengers, in addition to fears for safety that can create more public alarm. Republicans in the House of Representatives have offered to pass legislation giving President Obama the authority to pick and choose what gets cut — anywhere in the trillions of dollars of federal spending — rather than being hemmed in by the arbitrary provisions of the sequester. This would minimize the damage done by budget cuts concentrated in limited areas, such as the Defense Department. But it serves Obama's interest to maximize the damage and the public alarm, which he can direct against Republicans. President Obama has said that he would veto legislation to let him choose what to cut. That should tell us everything we need to know about the utter cynicism of this glib man. The sequester creates more visible damage and more public alarm than if the president were given the authority to trim a little here and a little there in the vast trillions of dollars spent by the government, in order to make a relatively small "cut" that still leaves total federal spending higher than last year. Only in Washington is a reduction in the rate of growth of spending called a "cut." Moreover, costly boondoggles not covered by the sequester can continue and grow. Obviously Obama wants public alarm, which he can use to help defeat the Republicans in the 2014 elections, so that Democrats can take back control of the House of Representatives. When Obama was offered the authority to make the spending cuts wherever he chooses, anywhere in the government's multi-trillion dollar budget, it was the only power that this power-grabbing president has rejected. Why? Because with this new power would go responsibility for the consequences of his choices. And responsibility for consequences is precisely what both the Obama administration and the Senate Democrats have been avoiding for years, by refusing to pass a federal budget, as required by the Constitution of the United States. Democrats prefer to get the political benefits from handing out goodies, while Republicans can be blamed for not subsequently raising enough taxes to pay for the Democrats' spending spree. If Obama succeeds in maneuvering the Republicans into positions that cause them to lose control of the House of Representatives in the 2014 elections, then as a president who never has to face the voters again, he would be in an ideal position to create a big spending liberals' heaven. But it will be far from heaven for the economy, with Obama-appointed bureaucrats burying businesses in red tape and job-killing costs, while expanding the size and arbitrary powers of government. We could become the world's largest banana republic.
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Post by philunderwood on Apr 4, 2013 10:38:59 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=home-loansWhat was Einstein’s definition of “insanity”? Published April 3, 2013. | By Bruce McQuain. Oh yeah, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Today’s example, via the usual suspects, just boggles the mind: The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession. In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default. This is just, frankly, incredible in its stupidity. We’ve been here, done this and suffered the consequences in terms of a financial meltdown and an economy that seems to be in permanent “recession”. We’d have the T-shirt too, but they took it off our backs. Consider the administration’s solution to the perception that we’re “leaving too many people behind: Let’s do again what was a major contributor to the last melt down. No prob. They’ll just blame the banks and the “market”. The result: more people “left behind”. I mean, it hasn’t even been a decade yet. We’re not even doing this with a new administration. These are, for the most part, the same people who crashed it last time. Why is it that “leaving too many people behind” is the priority, when in the past those who were supposedly left behind, found some way in the future to catch up? Why is it government’s job to “insure” risky loans because of that feel-good claptrap? Because we’re freakin nuts, that’s why. We’re bound and determined to ruin this country based on an ideology that plays to “feelings” and “emotions” rather than good common sense, the laws of economics and freedom and libery. That’s why. This is tar and feathers worthy, yet we’ll sit around like lumps while a majority claims it’s a “good idea” because it is “only fair”. “Fair”. The word that will – is – ruining this country. ~McQ
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Post by Ritty77 on Jun 10, 2013 12:27:37 GMT -5
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Post by philunderwood on Aug 27, 2013 9:37:41 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?p=15576Stagnant wages, among other things, a result of the economic doldrums By Bruce McQuain That’s certainly one of the factors keeping GDP growth low. Four years into the economic recovery, U.S. workers’ pay still isn’t even keeping up with inflation. The average hourly pay for a nongovernment, non-supervisory worker, adjusted for price increases, declined to $8.77 last month from $8.85 at the end of the recession in June 2009, Labor Department data show. Stagnant wages erode the spending power of consumers. That means it is harder for them to make purchases ranging from refrigerators to restaurant meals that account for most of the nation’s economic growth. Not only that, but unemployment remains historically high years after the “recovery”. The question, however, is why wages are remaining stagnant. The WSJ cites three factors: Economic growth remains sluggish, advancing at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of less than 2% for three straight quarters—below the prerecession average of 3.5%. That effectively has put a lid on inflation, which has been near or below the 2% level the Federal Reserve considers healthy for the economy. With demand for labor low, prices not rising fast and 11.5 million unemployed searching for work, employers aren’t under pressure to raise wages to retain or attract workers. Emphasis mine. The Fed is happy with the inflation rate. And the administration, despite numerous claims to be focused like a laser beam on “j-0-b-s” has done little if anything to address unemployment or economic growth. Finally, given the uncertainty that regulation and new laws (such as ObamaCare) bring to the table, employers are even less likely to hire until the regulatory and legal dust settles and they have a much better idea of how both effect their business and industry. It’s not about “pressure”. It’s about a lack of incentive. Secondly: Businesses are changing how they manage payrolls. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in a recent paper said that, in the past, companies cut wages when the economy struggled and raised them amid expansions. But in the past three recessions since 1986—and especially the 2007-2009 downturn—companies minimized wage cuts and instead let workers go to keep remaining workers happy. As a result, to compensate for the wage cuts that never were made, businesses now may be capping wage growth. “As the economy recovers, pent-up wage cuts will probably continue to slow wage growth long after the unemployment rate has returned to more normal levels,” the researchers said. Another point to make, again considering the unemployment rate, is that those working are glad to still have a job. And with the economy still struggling it is unlikely that many feel the time right to push for higher wages. In fact, it is a “buyers market” right now when it comes to labor. And it will remain one until we get into much higher growth percentages and the demand for labor begins to outstrip the supply. We’re not even close to that at this point. Finally: Globalization continues to pressure wages. Thanks to new technologies, Americans are increasingly competing with workers world-wide. “We are on a long-term adjustment, as China, in particular, but all developing countries, get their wages closer to ours,” said Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University. According to Boston Consulting Group, there will be only a roughly 10% cost difference between the U.S. and China in making products such as machinery, furniture and plastics by 2015. Technology is also replacing workers in many industries. Automation is especially tough on low skilled workers. But again, given laws like ObamaCare, the incentive at work is to have fewer employees, not more. Businesses will automate where it makes sense and helps make a profit. It is also a means of closing that wage gap mentioned above, so it isn’t a trend that is likely to end anytime soon. All of those factors and what I’ve mentioned in addition to them combine to make unemployment and wage growth both remain static. There simply aren’t any incentives at the moment to hire more people. Certainly not in GDP growth. Certainly not with the plethora of new regulations and laws. In fact, as is mentioned in the article, at the moment there are only two paths to higher wages: The only path to wage gains is through a stronger economy or an increase in demand for specialized skills. The economy is moribund and has been for quite some time with GDP growth under 2% for the last three quarters. That narrows the path to wage gains to a single one – developing specialized skills. It isn’t a path open to everyone, unfortunately, for a number of reasons. So how could government help change all of that? Quite simply by getting out of the way – something it seems completely unable to comprehend or do. And because of that, it continues to contribute negatively to the economic situation we endure. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Sept 11, 2013 10:09:25 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=syriaWhy no one buys Obama’s strike talk By Bruce McQuain Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, talking about the speech Obama made about Syria last night, had this to say: Yesterday, though, Obama sounded contradictory and confused. He attempted to rouse moral outrage over the use of chemical weapons against scores or hundreds children in Damascus on August 21st, which is an easy case to make — but thousands of children have been killed in the Syrian civil war in all sorts of ways, by all sides. Obama argued that Bashar al-Assad had to be deterred from using chemical weapons in the future, but left out any call for regime change, which is still the official strategic goal of the Obama administration. To Americans reluctant to engage in another war, Obama cajoled us to action, claiming that only the United States had the power to bring Assad to heel. In this instance, Obama is completely right. However, to bring “Assad to heel” would take a whole lot more of American power than this president is willing to use. If, in fact, he keeps it “small”, i.e. a very limited strike, people are asking ‘what’s the use’. It won’t bring Assad to heel as he claims we have within our power. He’s wanting one thing but not willing to do what is necessary to achieve it. And we all know about how mission creep works. Especially when there is a political ego involved. But that sort of incoherence wasn’t at all confined to that portion of the speech. As Politico’s editor-in-chief said: ‘Two weeks of zig-zag foreign policy by President Barack Obama – marching to war one moment, clinging desperately to diplomacy the next – culminated Tuesday night, appropriately enough, in a zig-zag address to the nation that did little to clarify what will come next in the Syria crisis but shined a glaring hot light on the debate in the president’s own mind. ‘The speech began with an earnest statement on behalf of Zig, a sober appreciation that military power has its limits and good intentions don’t necessarily equate to good policy: ‘I have resisted calls for military action because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force, particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.’ ‘But it was followed the next paragraph by some piercingly indignant words making the case for Zag, the conviction that conscience and the obligations of global leadership sometimes require America to act. The aim was to shake a skeptical public out of complacency: ‘The images from this massacre are sickening: men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas, others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath, a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk. As another columnist for Politico said: “In a painful reminder of why presidential addresses are usually day-of bookings – made when the White House can match the right timing with a clear message for the American people – Obama went before the cameras in the East Room and said… not much that he hadn’t said already over the last two weeks. Back to Morrissey: So what was Obama asking of the American people? Nothing. What new and convincing information did Obama bring to the American people? None. What new argument did Obama make to shift the strong momentum against military action? He had none. There was nothing new in this speech from Obama that hadn’t been argued at length in his six broadcast-network interviews the day before, or that his White House and State Department hadn’t offered in the previous week before the speech. Meanwhile Obama wants the vote in Congress to be delayed because, well, you know, he’d lose. But all is right with the world now … Obama has made a speech and the spin machine is hard at work trying to pretend this all went according to some plan that no one knew about previously. ~McQ
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Post by Ritty77 on Dec 22, 2013 8:50:36 GMT -5
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Post by Ritty77 on Feb 10, 2014 19:36:38 GMT -5
12 Unspoken Rules For Being A LiberalBy John Hawkins There may be no official rule book for being a liberal, but that doesn't mean there aren't rules. There are actually quite a few rules liberals go by and the more politically active liberals become, the more rigidly they tend to stick to their own code of behavior. These rules, most of which are unspoken, are passed along culturally on the Left and viciously enforced. Ironically, many liberals could not explain these rules to you and don't even consciously know they're following them. So, by reading this article, not only will you gain a better understanding of liberals, you'll know them better than they know themselves in some ways. 1) You justify your beliefs about yourself by your status as a liberal, not your deeds. The most sexist liberal can think of himself as a feminist while the greediest liberal can think of himself as generous. This is because liberals define themselves as being compassionate, open minded, kind, pro-science and intelligent not based on their actions or achievements, but based on their ideology. This is one of the most psychologically appealing aspects of liberalism because it allows you to be an awful person while still thinking of yourself as better than everyone else. 2) You exempt yourself from your attacks on America: Ever notice that liberals don't include themselves in their attacks on America? When they say, "This is a racist country," or ",This is a mean country," they certainly aren't referring to themselves or people who hold their views. Even though liberals supported the KKK, slaughtering the Indians, and putting the Japanese in internment camps, when they criticize those things, it's meant as an attack on everyone else EXCEPT LIBERALS. The only thing a liberal believes he can truly do wrong is to be insufficiently liberal. 3) What liberals like should be mandatory and what they don't like should be banned: There's an almost instinctual form of fascism that runs through most liberals. It's not enough for liberals to love gay marriage; everyone must be forced to love gay marriage. It's not enough for liberals to be afraid of guns; guns have to be banned. It's not enough for liberals to want to use energy-saving light bulbs; incandescent light bulbs must be banned. It's not enough for liberals to make sure most speakers on campuses are left-wing; conservative speakers must be shouted down or blocked from speaking. 4) The past is always inferior to the present: Liberals tend to view traditions, policies, and morals of past generations as arbitrary designs put in place by less enlightened people. Because of this, liberals don't pay much attention to why traditions developed or wonder about possible ramifications of their social engineering. It’s like an architect ripping out the foundation of a house without questioning the consequences and if the living room falls in on itself as a result, he concludes that means he needs to make even more changes. 5) Liberalism is a jealous god and no other God may come before it: A liberal "Christian" or "Jew" is almost an oxymoron because liberalism trumps faith for liberals. Taking your religious beliefs seriously means drawing hard lines about right and wrong and that's simply not allowed. Liberals demand that even God bow down on the altar of liberalism. 6) Liberals believe in indiscriminateness for thought: This one was so good that I stole it from my buddy, Evan Sayet: " Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust. There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization." 7) Intentions are much more important than results: Liberals decide what programs to support based on whether they make them feel good or bad about themselves, not because they work or don't work. A DDT ban that has killed millions is judged a success by liberals because it makes them feel as if they care about the environment. A government program that wastes billions and doesn't work is a stunning triumph to the Left if it has a compassionate sounding name. It would be easier to convince a liberal to support a program by calling it the “Saving Women And Puppies Bill" than showing that it would save 100,000 lives. 8) The only real sins are helping conservatism or harming liberalism: Conservatives often marvel at the fact that liberals will happily elect every sort of pervert, deviant, and criminal you can imagine without a second thought. That's because right and wrong don't come into the picture for liberals. They have one standard: Does this politician help or hurt liberalism? If a politician helps liberalism, he has a free pass to do almost anything and many of them do just that. 9) All solutions must be government-oriented: Liberals may not be as down on government as conservatives are, but on some level, even they recognize that it doesn't work very well. So, why are liberals so hell bent on centralizing as much power as possible in government? Simple, because they believe that they are better and smarter than everyone else by virtue of being liberals and centralized power gives them the opportunity to control more people's lives. There's nothing scarier to liberals than free people living their lives as they please without wanting or needing the government to nanny them. 10) You must be absolutely close minded: One of the key reasons liberals spend so much time vilifying people they don't like and questioning their motivations is to protect themselves from having to consider their arguments. This helps create a completely closed system for liberals. Conservative arguments are considered wrong by default since they're conservative and not worth hearing. On the other hand, liberals aren't going to make conservative arguments. So, a liberal goes to a liberal school, watches liberal news, listens to liberal politicians, has liberal friends, and then convinces himself that conservatives are all hateful, evil, racist Nazis so that any stray conservatism he hears should be ignored. It makes liberal minds into perfectly closed loops that are impervious to anything other than liberal doctrine. 11) Feelings are more important than logic: Liberals base their positions on emotions, not facts and logic and then they work backwards to shore up their position. This is why it's a waste of time to try to convince a liberal of anything based on logic. You don't "logic" someone out of a position that he didn't use "logic" to come up with in the first place. 12) Tribal affiliation is more important than individual action: There's one set of rules for members of the tribe and one set of rules for everyone else. Lying, breaking the rules, or fomenting hatred against a liberal in good standing may be out of bounds, but there are no rules when dealing with outsiders, who are viewed either as potential recruits, dupes to be tricked, or foes to be defeated. This is the same backwards mentality you see in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, except it's based on ideology, not religion. townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/08/31/12-unspoken-rules-for-being-a-liberal-n1687730/page/full
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Post by philunderwood on Feb 11, 2014 9:59:19 GMT -5
Great article; I envision a number of good letters to the editor here.
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Post by Ritty77 on Feb 17, 2014 18:17:29 GMT -5
The Minimum-Wage Executive Order Is Unconstitutional By Peter Kirsanow February 17, 2014 The president issued an executive order last week purporting to raise the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $10.10 an hour. The order is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court made clear in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer that “the President’s power, if any, to issue the [executive] order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.” Furthermore, “when the president takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter.” Nothing in the Constitution grants the president authority to set or raise the minimum wage independently of an act of Congress. Furthermore, although the president generally has authority to improve the efficient discharge of federal contracts, the president’s minimum-wage order is incompatible with the expressed and implied will of Congress. Congress has made its will regarding the minimum wage for federal contractors abundantly clear in four separate statutes: The Service Contract Act, the Davis Bacon Act, the Walsh-Healey Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Under those statutes, the minimum wage for many, if not most, employees of federal contractors is the prevailing minimum wage for employees in the specific job classification in the locality where the work is to be performed. For the remaining classifications of employees for whom no prevailing minimum wage exists, the minimum wage is slotted into the minimum for similar jobs, or is governed by the minimum set by Congress in the Fair Labor Standards Act, i.e., $7.25. Interestingly, the executive order, replete with enough double negatives and disjunctive clauses to make the average federal bureaucrat’s head explode, contains a severability and savings clause as well as several qualifiers that the order be implemented “consistent with applicable law,” ”to the extent permitted by law,” and consistent with “prevailing wage law.” If the order is so implemented, most of it will be rendered a nullity, for its substantive provisions directly conflict with applicable law. Moreover, these clauses don’t render the order constitutional. This suggests that the White House came up with the idea for the executive order and put it in the State of the Union address before fully vetting it with the people charged with crafting the actual language and implementing it lawfully. The result is an order that is unconstitutional and/or a charade. Nonetheless, the order exists and, until such time as Congress or the courts weigh in, federal contracts will contain the president’s minimum and federal contractors will have to consult with their lawyers on how it applies. www.nationalreview.com/corner/371284/minimum-wage-executive-order-unconstitutional-peter-kirsanow
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Post by Ritty77 on Mar 13, 2014 11:26:43 GMT -5
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