Tag Archives: government

Progressives and the Republican VP Choice

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The immediate, and so far sole, response to the Republicans’ selection of Congressman Paul Ryan (R, WI) as their Vice Presidential Candidate has been to attack the man and the man’s budget—which one branch of Congress thought well enough of to pass twice, and from which the Do-Nothing Democrat-controlled Senate has run screaming, not even allowing a debate of it.

Here’s a sampling of the Progressives’ response.

  • A claim that the Ryan budget (summarized nearby) would increase taxes on the middle class so millionaires can continue to get tax cuts.  Their position is, then, that reducing the existing 6 tax brackets to two—10% and 25%—is a tax increase.
  • Obama Campaign Manager, Jim Messina:
    • [the Ryan budget will] end Medicare as we know it and slash the investments we need to keep our economy growing the all while cutting taxes for those at the very top [and]
    • doubled down on his commitment to take our country back to the failed policies of the past
    • Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy
  • Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid echoed Messina’s claim:
    • doubled down on his commitment to gut Social Security and end Medicare as we know it
  • Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D), continuing the Medicare theme:
    • a strong commitment to end Medicare as we know it

What are the Progressives’ alternatives?  Raise taxes on a group of Americans whom they routinely vilify.  Block all efforts to reform, and so save, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security (and yes, the reform will change these programs “as we know it;” that’s kind of the nature of reform.  Without reform, though, these programs will be bankrupt in 10-20 years).  Otherwise, the Progressives’ alternatives—since they decry earlier policies—seems to be to continue their current, destructive policies; policies that over the last three years have exploded our deficit, exploded our debt and earned our nation its first credit rating downgrade, suppressed an economic cycle recovery and held us in a post-recession recession with 8.1+% unemployment the entire three years, stalled GDP at 1.5%-1.8% growth that doesn’t even keep up with population growth,….

In the end, by focusing on attacking the Republican ticket and the only budget passed by one house of Congress, without offering any meaningful alternatives, the Progressives are simply confessing that they have no alternatives.  That they have no idea at all about how to fix our country’s ills.  That they have no clue about how to put Americans back to work in a burgeoning, free economy.

The New Jim Crow?

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I’ve written about racism and religious bigotry here, here, and here.

Now I want to take a broader view.  We’ve had, in quick succession in the last very few years, the following.

President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandates that businesses and insurers to provide, at no cost to the insurees, health insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients, without regard for the religious beliefs of the businesses or insurers.  This mandate also requires Americans to buy such health insurance coverage (even though these added items are to be provided at no additional cost), regardless of the religious beliefs of these individual Americans—or to accept the coverage from their employers.  There is an “exemption” that allows businesses to put this off onto their insurers, but this cynically ignores, among others, those entities who self-insure.

Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas (D), says that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is appealing to racists who do not want a black man in the White House.

I absolutely believe it’s all about race, and for the first time in my life I’ve been able to convince my children, finally, that racism is alive and well[.]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) suggesting that Republicans are simply manipulating American Jews for political gain.

HUNT: That’s why some of the Republican Jewish supporters are really active.

PELOSI: Well, that’s how they’re being exploited. And they’re smart people. They follow these issues.

Unions, in one overt case, are attempting to keep black children down on the plantation, at least in Louisiana.

[L]awyers for the Louisiana Association of Educators, one of the state’s two major teachers unions, threatened private and parochial schools with lawsuits if the schools accept students participating in a new school choice initiative that starts this year.

The Maryland State Board of Education has established a policy of race-based discipline, regardless of the nature of the misbehavior.

President Obama’s Department of Justice, shortly after Obama took office, dismissed a civil case against New Black Panther members, accused of voter intimidation against white voters, after the case had been won by default through the non-appearance of the defendants.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is threatening Steubenville, OH, with civil suit if the city doesn’t remove a cross from the city’s logo—a logo that

includes several local landmarks, including the Franciscan University’s Christ the King Chapel

which, oh by the way, has a cross on it.

The ACLU has been attacking America’s fallen soldiers and their families for years, using, for instance, the Mt Soledad Veterans Memorial Cross as a vehicle.  The ACLU wants the military decoration—the cross—removed.  Worse, the Obama administration now is attempting to “negotiate” a settlement with the ACLU without including the central party to the controversy, the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, in the talks.

US District Judge Fred Biery, in response to a complaint from a single family, blocked a Texas school district’s “invocation” and “benediction” and banned any prayer at the ceremony altogether, even threatening the valedictorian with jail if she mentioned God in her speech.

The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs  demanded that the pastor presiding over a private funeral at the Houston National Cemetery not make religious references in his prayers at the soldier’s burial.

Progressive leaders also attack conservative women.  Bill Maher said this of Governor Sarah Palin:

Did you hear this—Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you—

And we get this about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R, MN):

Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public.  But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense.

The list goes on.  Are we seeing, now, a resurgence of the attitudes of Jim Crow, but with a different, broader, more unfocused set of bigotries?

An Influence on Bank Lending

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Professor Alan Blinder, of Princeton University, has another laugher in The Wall Street Journal.  This time he wants the Fed to “encourage” private bank lending—in an environment where the intended market is vary chary of taking on debt, new or additional—but without “without interfering in private credit-allocation decisions.”

His idea is stimulated by a scheme (in both the British and American English senses) of the Bank of England’s, itself generated out of the premise that UK banks aren’t lending enough to suit the government suits.  Essentially, Blinder wants to ape the BoE scheme of giving private lenders preferential rates on central bank lending according to how much lending the private lenders are doing.

Hmm….

First, Blinder operates from a false premise.  It’s impossible for government to “encourage” without “interfering in private decisions.”  The whole point of government encouragement to execute exactly that interference.  To claim that compliance is voluntary and so not interference is disingenuous sophistry.  Banks are out to make money for their owners, just as any business must—its fiduciary duty drives it to—make money for its owners.  The offer of a goodie for doing what government wants is no less a cudgel than providing a penalty for not doing.

Second, Blinder gives his game away in the penultimate paragraph of his piece:

Last, but certainly not least, there is the crucial question of what types of bank lending to subsidize.

Of course, the sole purpose of a subsidy is to drive the recipient to a government-desired behavior.  The whole point of government encouragement to execute exactly that interference.

The Obama Debt Plan

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John Hinderaker, of Power Line, commented on President Obama’s plan to pay down the national debt, as demonstrated by Obama’s mid-year budget plan update.  Obama also is campaigning on his plan to “pay down the debt in a balanced way.”

Here’s what his “balanced plan” does to our national debt, illustrated by the following graph from Power Line, and The Washington Times.

That’s a rather startling increase in the size of this paid-down debt.  “But wait,” some of you might object.  “What about the debt as a per cent of our GDP, a perhaps better way to assess the size of our debt?”

Our 2011 GDP was some $15 trillion, and it’s projected to be in the neighborhood of $24 trillion by 2021 (my calculation based on data in Table 1-6 of the CBO’s report “Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2011 to 2021.”

That makes our national debt 98.7% of GDP in 2011, and 105.8% of GDP by 2021.  This is how Obama intends to “pay down the debt in a balanced way” via Obamanomics’ New Math.

He Built This

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…and it’s not pretty.  The costs of Obamacare are starting to come home to roost, now that its various mandates are starting to take effect.  Gerri Willis has a listing; this is a brief summary.

The requirement that lets grown adultschildren stay on mummy and popsy’s health insurance policy until they’re 26 will cost $3,400 per grown adultchild per year.  But there’s an additional cost: employers are beginning to not include such policies at all in their benefits package; they’re too expensive.  There’s yet another cost: colleges where Buffy or Junior might go—and might have gotten coverage as students—are beginning to drop the policies: they’re too expensive.

But wait.  There’s still the little 26-year-old tyke’s pre-existing condition that’s required to be covered.  Except that coverage still is hard to find.  Willis writes

Insurers in 20 states have given up offering child-only insurance plans.

Those child-only plans matter because that’s all that’s left after those other policies have been withdrawn from the market.  RTWT.

There’s more, though.  Medical equipment manufacturers are being forced to cancel plans for medical equipment manufacturing in the US.  Cook Medical, the US’ largest privately held maker of medical devices, with annual revenue of more than $1.8 billion and employment of around 4,000 people in the Bloomington, IN, area and 10,000 worldwide, is an example.

Cook says it will have to cancel plans to build an additional five manufacturing plants, each employing 300 people when those plants were scheduled to open.  The medical device tax that’s another important part of Obamacare, will cost Cook Medical $20 million this year alone—that’s the price of one of those additional manufacturing plants.

It gets worse—or better, if you like the Obamacare move.  Follow the Fox News link to the larger article and video at Indianapolis Business Journal.  Executive Vice President of Strategic Business Units at Cook Medical, Pete Yonkman, described one of those unintended consequences that are so monstrous and so ubiquitous in Obama’s centerpiece.  With this medical device tax, Cook can’t economically bring a new technology to patients and hospitals in the US; Cook instead is looking to Asia.  Moreover, as this technology is developed in Asia, that’s where the expertise will be developed.  As a consequence of that, that’s where the engineering, and then manufacturing, jobs will appear:

It’s important to have that [engineering and scientific expertise] around your manufacturing base[.]

And this: Yonkman noted that

One of the fastest growing areas in our company every year is always our regulatory team having to deal with the increased burden coming from…increased regulation….

A medical device manufacturer’ fastest growing area has nothing to do with its device manufacturing or sales.

And finally this: Obamacare’s medical device tax is a 2.3% tax on medical devices; however, the impact is greater than just this immediate 2.3%.  Yonkman said the impact on actual earnings is another 15%.

He’ll stop that from being built.