Monthly Archives: December 2011

Progressives, RINOs, and Taxes

Posted on by
Reply

Now that the Republican fiasco with the temporary payroll tax cut is sort of ended for a little bit, it’s time for these gentlemen and gentlewomen to recover their heads from rectal storage and get serious—and coherent—about tax policy for the US.

This last week has been a textbook example of a Keystone Kops failure to perform.  Others can run the post mortem on their failure; I want to look ahead to early in the next year.

When the new year dawns, and the “negotiation” over the payroll tax cut extension for a whole year begins, we can expect the Progressives to resume their hobby horse demand to pay for the tax cut with their class war-oriented tax increase on groups of Americans of whom they utterly disapprove.  The House Republicans and the Senate RINOs need to change the terms of that debate, rather than continuing to surrender the frame of the discussion to the other side.

The discussion needs to acknowledge, with gratification, the Progressives’ avowal that tax cuts are good for Americans and our economy.  The discussion needs to acknowledge, with enthusiasm, that the Progressives want a 2% tax cut for Americans, and that their leader, President Obama, wants a 3% tax cut on both employees and employers.

Then the House Republicans, and their nominal colleagues, the Senate RINOs (assuming the latter can find their principles anywhere at all nearby), need to push for an income and corporate tax cut of 3%—just as Obama has asked for.  And also acknowledging the need for stability and predictability for all Americans, these worthies need to push for the income tax cuts to be permanent—no more of this annual dual between talking point lists for personal political gain.  After all, as Obama himself said all week long, the $40 per paycheck that this small cut represents “makes all the difference in the world” to those who get it.  Of course, these $40 should be made permanent.

The Republicans and RINOs also need to push the Progressives, when the latter resist the income tax cut and its permanence, about the Progressives’ demand, instead, to reduce funding for an already dysfunctional Social Security system while they also refuse to allow reform of the system (or of Medicare or Medicaid, come to that).

I look forward to the Republicans and the RINOs getting their act and their message together, recovering their integrity and their principles, and arguing for a more serious, income, tax cut.  And after that, they need to push, for the same reasons, for the permanence of the Bush tax cuts (and not allow this also to be merely another periodic talking points duel).

Merry Christmas

Posted on by
Reply

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.
-Ralph W. Sockman

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
-Benjamin Franklin

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
-Hamilton Wright Mabie

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.  If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.
-Calvin Coolidge

Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great and good philosopher and teacher. Others of us believe in the divinity of the child born in Bethlehem, that he was and is the promised Prince of Peace.
-Ronald Reagan

 

And from a Christmas card my daughter sent me some years ago:

Q: Why did Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cross the road?
A: Actually, he never did.  Froze in the headlights.  Tough break.

More Big Government

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s another impact of Big Government regulations on local communities—this time not so local—and the regulations are long-standing Big Government interference.

The US has four—count ’em, four (New York/New Jersey, Baltimore, Norfolk, and Miami)—deep water ports on the east coast (by deep water, I mean ports that can handle, regardless of tide levels, ships with a draft of 46 feet to 48 feet).  Charleston Port, in Charleston, SC, would like to join that short list, especially with alterations to the Panama Canal due to be completed in the next two years, so that modern ships of that draft can get quickly to a west coast port, if they can’t deliver their stuff via the east coast.  Indeed, the Canal is being altered to handle “Post-Panamax” ships that can handle cargo loads of 8,000 containers of the size you see on flatbed trucks or on freight trains, if you drive around the countryside very much.  That’s up from a current shipping capacity of 3,000 such containers, and that’s the capacity that drives the draft.

But government regulations are in the way.  If Charleston is lucky, they’ll get the red tape worked through and be able to begin deepening its port in 10 years.  It won’t be cheap, either: it cost Charleston $4.2 million just to get started on the tape.  At an additional cost of $20 million and 8 years, the Army Corps of Engineers must

meticulously study all the possible implications of port deepening: the environmental impact of digging up the channel bottom, shoreline and channel dynamics, saltwater intrusion up the rivers, oxygen content of the water and its effect on fish and a cost/benefit analysis of deepening versus leaving it as is.

And then it has to be “peer-reviewed” for another two years.  Some of this stuff makes no sense, either.  How would deepening the channel bottom move more seawater further inland, up the rivers (except, possibly, from disturbances while dredging is in progress)?  How would any of this impact O2 content (again, except during the dredging)?  The cost/benefit seems self-evident.  But what do I know; I’m just a poor, dumb redneck Texan.

Oh, yeah, one more little fillip: Charleston just did this.  They completed a (14-year) project to deepen their port (not enough, it turns out) in 2004.  They just need to update that study, right?  Nah.  Gotta do the whole thing all over again, from scratch.

Meantime, here’s the economic benefit that Charleston will be missing out on because of this red tape, courtesy of the South Carolina State Ports Authority, via the link above.  Every inch [sic] of added draft in the shipping allows this:

• 358,000 pounds of coffee, worth more than $500,000
• 36 John Deere tractors, worth more than $2.4 million
• 58,000 pairs of Adidas shoes, valued at $5 million
• 9,600 laptop computers, valued at $8.5 million
• 1,540 55-inch TVs, worth approximately $3 million

Charleston wants to deepen its port by 5 feet to 50 feet.  Here’s what those 60 more inches would mean for the city.  Per boatload

• $30 million worth of coffee
• $144 million worth of tractors
• $300 million worth of running shoes
• $510 million worth of laptops
• $180 million worth of TVs.

Government regulations are worth more than that, though; they must be.

Here’s another item, loosely related.  Coast Guard safety regulations limit the capacity of ferry boats.  Because the CDC says the average adult American’s weight has ballooned from 160 lbs to 185, the Washington state ferry service has had to reduce its per ferry passenger capacity from 2,000 to 1,750.

But, really, it’s not like we’re wasting all that regulatory money.  Government helps out, too.  Think about Chevrolet’s much hyped and little appreciated electric car, the Volt, which Chevrolet can’t sell at its sticker price of $40,000 per each.  Wrapped up in that little bundle of batteries are government subsidies (both Federal and state) of $250 thousand, per each.  That’s a lot of help.

Hmm….

Religion vs. Atheism in the Public Square

Posted on by
1

The atheists are at it again.  The Daily Caller describes this situation in Warren, MI.

It seems that the city has allowed a Nativity scene to be displayed, as it has done for a number of years, in the City Hall lobby.  This offends the Freedom From Religion Foundation and a local associate, complainant Douglas Marshall.  Marshall wants to place his own sign next to the Nativity to balance the display.

City Mayor Jim Fouts appears to have a clear understanding of the issue at hand, though.  In response to last year’s letter to Fouts, in which Marshall also objected to the Nativity, the mayor stated that the city was not at all endorsing any religion; on the contrary, all religions were free to have their displays present:

Your objections focus on freedom of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and that the nativity scene somehow was a violation of that constitutional right because [it] favors one religion over another. I vehemently disagree with your objection[.]  The city of Warren in no way whatsoever shows any favoritism to any religion. All religions are welcome to celebrate their religious seasons with a display in city hall[.]

Indeed, the 1st Amendment says this about the government’s role vis-à-vis religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Eliding the reference to Congress, notice carefully that the clause discusses religion, and only religion; it makes no mention of atheism.  By Marshall’s own statement (see below), his view, and by extension atheism generally, is not a religion, and so his complaint is outside the scope of the Constitution: he has no constitutionally protected freedom of religion right to present his atheism in the public square (he certainly does have a freedom of speech right to do so, but this he seems not to assert).

This is, to some extent though, a sophistry.  Readers of my blog know that I’m as in favor of the free competition of ideas as I am of the free competition of a market place.  This is the sign that Marshall wishes to place next to the Nativity:

At this season of the Winter Solstice, let reason prevail.  There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.  There is only our natural world.  Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Hmm….

Let him put up his sign.  Let the free competition of ideas play out.  The good people of Warren will see the right of this.

Obamacare’s Year in Review

Posted on by
Reply

The Daily Caller had a summary of the wonderful year that Obamacare had in 2011.  Here are some…highlights…of that year.

Jan. 26: Pharmaceutical company Abbott Labs cuts 1,900 jobs “in response to changes in the health-care industry, including U.S. health-care reform and the challenging regulatory environment.”

Feb. 16: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifies before the Senate Finance Committee and admits that the CLASS Act, a key portion of the law that was touted as a $70 billion savings, is “totally unsustainable.” Sebelius says her department has the authority to rework the legislation to make CLASS tenable.

Hold that thought.

March 23: [T]he House Committee on Energy and Commerce finds that the temporary Early Retirement Reinsurance Program will spend its allotted $5 billion far earlier than its 1 Jan 2014 expiration date.

March 30: The CBO estimates that health care reform will cost $1.1 trillion, an increase of $90 billion from its February estimate.

May 17: The Daily Caller reports that 20 percent of new waivers from Obamacare have gone to gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, and fancy hotels in former House Speaker and current House Minority Leader (D, CA) Nancy Pelosi’s district.  These waivers are to a provision of Obamacare that requires companies annually to increase the amount of coverage they provide their employees.

Hold that thought, too.

June 8: A McKinsey & Company survey of over 1,300 private sector employers found that 30 per cent of them definitely or probably would stop offering insurance to their employees after the law is implemented in 2014.

June 18: HHS decides that it will accept no more new or renewal waiver applications (for those exemptions from requirements annually to increase the amount of coverage provided) after Sep 22 of this year.

So much for the Pelosi Preferred waivers.

June 21: Middle-class Americans eligible for subsidized health care allegedly intended for poor people, a feature discovered after Obama signed Obamacare into law.  Medicare’s chief actuary says the policy “doesn’t make sense.”

Well, NSS.  On the other hand, no one needed to know about this before the bill was passed.

July 18: An Employment Policies Institute report finds that the Affordable Care Act would incentivize employees to switch to a government-subsidized insurance exchange even if employers were to continue their health care coverage, costing taxpayers “significant[ly].”

Oct. 13: A federal inspector general finds that the IRS is having trouble collecting the 10-percent federal tanning tax established by the law.

Oct. 14: HHS completes its review of the CLASS Act, determining that “we do not have a path to move forward,” Sebelius says.  CLASS remains on the books, but the administration essentially gives up on it.

So much for “rework the legislation to make CLASS tenable.”

Nov. 9: The National Federation of Independent Business releases a report saying that in 2012 the law’s new health insurance tax will reduce private sector jobs by between 125,000 and 249,000.

Nov. 14: The Supreme Court agrees to hear arguments on the Affordable Care Act.

Dec. 18: Health care experts doubt that the federal insurance exchange program will be fully operational by the Jan. 1, 2014 deadline, since many states have refused to implement the state exchange program, the Washington Post reports.

This was the bill that was so wonderful that all of us—including our representatives who were hell-bent on passing it—could simply wait until it was passed before we found out what was in it.