Tag Archives: government

Extremes

Posted on by
Reply

Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama gave an interview to the AP in which he described Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s positions as “extreme.”  Yet both Obama’s descriptions and his countervailing positions demonstrate pretty conclusively which of the two is extreme.

Obama had this non sequitur in his remarks about what he has “learned about [Romney] this campaign:

What we’ve also seen is Gov. Romney has not been willing to, I think, own up to some of the responsibilities that are required if you’re president of the United States. So there’s been obviously a lot of discussion about his unwillingness to release his tax returns.

Apparently honoring the law (here, concerning the required releasability of personal tax returns) is “not willing to own up to some of the responsibilities that are required if you’re president of the United States.”  But ignoring the law (vis., DOMA) is such a responsibility.  Ignoring the will of the Congress and implementing carbon cap-and-trade by Executive fiat is such a responsibility.  Ignoring the will of the Congress (the failed DREAM ACT) and implementing immigration parameters by Executive fiat is such a responsibility.  Refusing to enforce our borders while attacking states that do attempt to enforce them, using laws that ape Federal law, is such a responsibility.

Obama made this argument about Romney being short on facts in his campaign.

[T]he most prominent argument that he’s been making for why voters should vote for him is this notion that Obama took the work requirement out of welfare, and he’ll put it back.

Never mind that the explicit requirement for actual work has been withdrawn, and the states’ “flexibility” includes the option to not require work or work training.

And without a trace of irony, Obama had this to say:

Well, I think that if you don’t have a good argument for how you’re going to make things better, then you stay focused on how you can discredit the incumbent.

After accusing Romney of being responsible for the cancer death of a woman (he did say in a separate interview that he didn’t really believe that, but in that same interview, he refused to repudiate the ad that made the accusation, or to call out the SuperPAC (run by his ex-Deputy Press Secretary) for having run it).  And after accusing Romney of being a felon over Romney’s position at Bain while rescuing the Olympics—stemming from Obama’s own “misunderstanding” of SEC filings.

On those extreme positions themselves, Obama had this:

[Romney] has signed up for positions, extreme positions that are very consistent with positions that a number of House Republicans have taken.

Obama then listed the Republicans’ $5 trillion tax cut proposal, the elimination of tax credits for wind energy, and an amorphous objection to the Republicans’ Medicare proposals as those “extreme” positions.

If I understand Obama aright, then, it’s extreme to cut taxes, especially in a recession: it’s extreme to leave more of private citizens’ money in the hands of the original private citizens instead of those of whom Obama favors.

It’s extreme, in a time of enormous government spending and debt buildup, to cut spending—especially to fringe energy sources like wind power.  Obama proudly pointed out that he’s doubled the output of wind-generated electricity with his tax credits.  Let’s see: total electricity generated in the US in 2008 was nearly 3.5 Terawatts.  Wind-generated electricity in 2011 was nearly 47 Megawatts.  Obama has pushed wind energy from nearly nothing to twice nearly nothing.  And that doubling came, as he so proudly said, only with the aid of government subsidy.  Wind-generated electricity is fringe not because it’s an idiotic idea, but because it cannot compete in the free market on its own; it needs a constant propping up.

Finally, it’s extreme to take steps to reform Medicare so as to preserve it for tomorrow’s seniors, while leaving it alone for today’s seniors and near-seniors (who have no chance of adjusting to any changes).

But what are Obama’s plans?  He’s carefully nebulous about those, but we can look to his record and see his plans.

Obama intends to ratchet up the taxes on Americans of whom he disapproves.  He intends to ratchet up his spendinginvesting in his favored companies and in his favored unions.  He already has taken the (not at all extreme, he says) measure of removing $700 billion from the present form of Medicare in putting it into his Obamacare to pay for that.

Who’s extreme?

Federal Waste, Climate Change, and Federal Outsourcing

Posted on by
Reply

Fox News ran an article late last week concerning the State Department’s own Office of the Inspector General’s report concerning State’s handling of taxpayer funding of activities in support of the climate change meme—in other countries, yet.  The OIG audit itself can be read here, and the auditors’ list of State programs sampled can be seen here.

What the OIG found in State’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs and its Office of Global Change (OES/EGC), “the nerve center of the Obama administration’s international climate change policy,” was…interesting.  The findings, which included aggregate overspending of some $214 million over the period 2006-2010 that was the subject of the OIG audit, included these:

  • 7 of 19 program totaling $34 million in grants had no particular plans for results monitoring.  Thus, as OIG wrote, “…[State] may not always have reasonable assurance that federal funds were spent in accordance with the grant award; that the grant recipient performed program activities as dictated in the grant award; and that the program’s indicators, goals and objectives were achieved.”
  • [G]rant oversight officers failed to provide written reviews of compliance with State Department reporting standards….
  • [V]isits to climate change sites were rare, and then little effort went into actual examination.  [R]eports “typically summarized meetings held with grantee officials where only the statuses of the programs were discussed.”
  • Requirements that grant recipients submit quarterly financial statements seemed routinely to be ignored.  [A] recipient in Hyderabad, India, who got two separate grants totaling $1.1 million continued to receive funding, even though reporting requirements were not followed.
  • Indeed, reporting requirements for detailed results were not included in any of the seven grants examined by OIG.

Regardless of what anyone might think of the idiocy of spending taxpayer money on the chimera of man-caused global warming, here is a potful of that money being shipped overseas for…well, just because, apparently, given the interest in oversight shown here.  At least, had that money been spent at home, there might have been one or two domestic jobs created or saved, instead of those jobs being outsourced.

A Modest Proposal for Financial Law

Posted on by
Reply

Standard Chartered PLC agreed to pay a $340 million “fine” for improper financial transactions amounting to $250 billion, a fine of just a tad over 1% of that total.  Judge Jed Rakoff, of the United States Federal District, refused to sanction a proposed settlement between the SEC and Citigroup Global Markets of a $160 million “fine” for an improperly handled billion dollar CDO fund, arguing in part that there was no basis for a punitive settlement when there was no allegation or admission of a wrongdoing.

It is, in fact, routine for supposedly misbehaving financial entities and their Federal regulators to negotiate such chump change fines, whether or not actual wrongdoing is conceded or alleged.  This disconnect between the sanction and the (phantom) misbehavior generally is not the result of cronyism; all the players are, say I, fundamentally honest.  No, such settlements are driven by the complexity of our financial laws, of which Dodd-Frank is only the latest addition.  The defendant financial institution usually finds it cheaper to pay the government’s vig than to defend itself, even when innocent, and the government usually finds it cheaper to charge only a taste and make no demand for admission of wrongdoing than to prosecute a case.

As a result of this unnecessary complexity, the government simply continues to hector the financial institutions and the financials simply continue to misbehave (my remark about honesty not withstanding) with the settlements just part of the cost of doing business.

Accordingly, a modest proposal.  Get rid of the financial laws and the regulations.  Replace them with a few simple laws (which, in their simplicity will need no implementing regulations) to the effect of honoring freely signed contracts, the products sold having to be openly and clearly described, all parties to the contracts, and their roles, having to be clearly and openly described.  There might be one or two others, but you get the idea.

Then get serious about cases.  If these laws are violated, hale the miscreants into court and go for serious penalties.  No more “negotiating” pocket money payments.  That’s like negotiating with Willie Sutton over his “community service.”  $250 billion in illegal trades ought to get that much as the floor of a fine.  If that puts the misbehaving company out of business, I suggest that a criminal organization won’t be missed.

Paul Ryan and the European Press

Posted on by
Reply

Spiegel Online International occasionally summarizes the views of other European (mostly German) newspapers on the subjects of the time.  Monday’s edition brought these remarks about the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate, Congressman Paul Ryan (R, WI).

From Süddeutsche Zeitung:

…Ryan fits in almost absurdly well with the caricature of Romney the Democrats have been painting for weeks now — namely that he is a cold, money-grubbing multimillionaire and would have to transfer nary a cent to Washington in taxes if his pupil Ryan actually got the opportunity to implement his radical fiscal concepts.

From Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

[Ryan’s] ability to attract swing voters is likely to be limited. Although they may be dissatisfied with the current situation, it is unlikely that a radical restructuring of the social system will warm their hearts….

From Handelsblatt:

The choice of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential candidate is…an act of desperation.

And so on.

As I wrote a while ago about Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, if the liberal European press doesn’t like Ryan, he must be pretty good.

Subsidy and Food

Posted on by
Reply

Here are some minor facts concerning a particular subsidy, courtesy of an The Wall Street Journal op-ed.

USDA lowered its 2012 corn forecast by 13% from last year’s, to 10.8 billion bushels, the shortest harvest since 2006, even though the planted acreage is the highest since 1937 and 4% more than last year.

only 24% of the corn crop is in good or excellent condition in the 18 major corn belt states, down from 72% just since June.

USDA’s world agricultural outlook board estimated that global corn consumption will be reduced by 38.9 million tons, with US problems responsible for ¾ of the shortage.

As a result,

Corn futures are up nearly 50% over the last six weeks.  The US accounts for 60% of global exports, and corn feeds cows, pigs, chickens, and humans through its role as a key ingredient in a broad range of foods.

Those corn futures will be realized as actual, sharp price increases that consumers will pay.  The price increase wouldn’t be so bad, but for a certain Federal subsidy.

The food-to-fuel mandate, Renewable Fuels Standard, requires 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol to be blended into the gasoline supply this year, rising to 36 billion gallons by 2022.  Fully 40% of 2011’s corn production went to ethanol, and courtesy of our EPA (though the subsidy originated in an earlier administration), and now more corn is devoted to fuel than to livestock or other foods.

But not to worry.  Despite the drought, the resulting corn crop failures, and the succeeding price increases driven by the crop failure, despite all of these hardships and negative impacts on the food supply, the ethanol makers got theirs.  The Renewable Fuels Association put out a statement, without a trace of irony, that there’s no danger of an ethanol shortage:

obligated parties under the RFS will have every opportunity to demonstrate compliance this year.

Helps to have your priorities straight.