An amusing little parody of the era of Big Government in Obamaland from the Sam Adams Alliance.
Socialism
Revenue Neutral? Hardly!
-By Warner Todd Huston
A couple of stories have recently come out that really put the lie to President Obama’s claims that “his” healthcare bill is revenue neutral. These on top of the original plan-killing news that came out of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in July. In July the CBO said that Obama’s plan was clocking in at over a trillion dollars and said there would be no savings despite the rosy picture that the administration tried to paint for it all.
Early in September, the CBO dealt Obamacre yet another body blow to its claims of fiscal savings. CNSNews reports that the current House health bill will hike Medicare drug coverage premiums twenty percent forcing seniors to pay more for the same coverage they currently have.
“Overall, CBO estimates that enacting the proposed changes would lead to an average increase in premiums for Part D beneficiaries, above those under current law, of about 5 percent by 2011,” CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said to Camp in a letter. “That effect would rise over time and reach about 20 percent in 2019.”
So much for “helping” Seniors save costs!
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Revenue Neutral? Hardly!”
Obama’s Newest Healthcare Sales Pitch: Lies and Damned Lies… I Mean HIS!
-By Warner Todd Huston
The snake-oil salesman in chief offered “his” healthcare prescriptions this Wednesday night. What he’s been selling the last 5 months is anyone’s guess, but be that as it may, here are my reactions to tonight’s message written as I listened (a sort of delayed live blog, as it were).
First of all let’s be honest. Anything the President said tonight really isn’t very meaningful. After all, the bills have already been written and are out of committee. No rewrites will be in the offing because of what Obama said tonight. But the fact that he assembled this joint session is evidence that he knows he is in trouble with his healthcare ideas. This was a Hail Mary pass, for sure.
Obama started with his assessment of the economy since when he spoke to Congress last. “A full and vibrant economy is still many months away,” he told us. Naturally he claimed that his “bold and decisive” actions pulled us back from the brink. This is a tad hard to believe as we are still seeing deep job losses.
Obama opened his healthcare discussion by saying he is “determined to be the last” president to discuss healthcare. This is a bit odd since he is proposing that government take over our healthcare system. Realizing that federalizing our healthcare system certainly means that every president from this point forward will have to deal with healthcare. If “his” plan gets through he most assuredly won’t be the “last” president to talk about healthcare. Many, many more presidents will have this mess to deal with.
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Obama’s Newest Healthcare Sales Pitch: Lies and Damned Lies… I Mean HIS!”
23 Dems Say They’ll Vote No on Healthcare
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Hill is reporting that 23 House Democrats are vowing to vote no on H.R. 3200 as the bill now stands.
Speaker Pelosi, however, can afford to lose 38 of her fellow Democrats and still pass the bill, according to reports.
One of the standout quotes from The Hill’s coverage is a Pelosi spokesman’s reply to reporters about the bill:
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23 Dems Say They’ll Vote No on Healthcare”
Are Voters Fed Up at Last? Ohio Congressman Turner Gets Slammed for Earmarks
-By Warner Todd Huston
Much to his dismay, Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio’s 3rd District has just discovered a new attitude from his voters. Unfortunately, it’s a lesson that congress isn’t likely to learn too quickly. But let’s see if Congressman Turner will.
Until now there has been an averting of the eyes at the overspending of “my” congressman. The individual voters have for decades been willing to excuse their own congressman for bringing home the pork even as they complain at the wild over spending by congress as a whole.
For a very long time the voters have been upset at spending by congress, but they’ve completely ignored the excesses of their own congressman because, after all, his wild spending came home to them. Voters have been willing to overlook their own pork if it’s their pork.
But if a recent tea party rally in Ohio is any indication, this permissive attitude so long exhibited by voters might finally be about to change.
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Are Voters Fed Up at Last? Ohio Congressman Turner Gets Slammed for Earmarks”
Are CCL Holders Dangerous? Columnist Thinks So
-By Warner Todd Huston
A blogger for the Roanoke Times wrote a recent blog post breathlessly informing his readers that contrary to “false claims” concealed carry permit holders have, indeed, been responsible for acts of murder and mayhem. Dan Casey presents the report issued by what he claims is the “nonpartisan” Violence Policy Center.
That report finds that seven policemen and forty-three civilians have been killed by concealed carry license holders. This is a horrible body count and no one can say otherwise.
Casey, for his part, is crowing about the “lies” of the “gun zealots” and seems quite pleased to find proof of this body count, however.
It’s gripping reading for anyone who cares about the truth. And it proves the falsity of gun zealots’ claim that nobody, nowhere, can ever point to an unjustified killing by a permit holder. It also undermines the notion that every CC permit holder is responsible and law-abiding.
So, let us review.
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Are CCL Holders Dangerous? Columnist Thinks So”
The Truth About the Balanced Budget
Truth In Accounting had an incredibly important 50 state study that needs to be broadcast far and wide. It shows the mess that every state in the union is in with the budget.
When the Institute for Truth in Accounting (the IFTA) began to design “The Truth about Balanced Budgets—A Fifty State Study” (the Study) in early 2008 our purpose was to widely examine the effect accounting principles and policies have on states’ budgeting and financial reporting practices. Experience in Illinois indicated to the IFTA that this state’s budgeting process used unsound accounting principles and evaded the intent of balanced budgets mandated by its constitutional and statutory requirements.
Now complete, the Study discovered that the budgeting and accounting problems first identified in Illinois are rampant in other states. The IFTA’s findings include:
- Most state annual reports indicate their budgets are not balanced;
- Despite this fact, states perpetuate the myth that their budgets are balanced;
- Governors and legislatures intentionally circumvent balanced budget requirements for their own political expediency, endangering fiscal sustainability and evading public scrutiny;
- Billions of dollars in retirement costs are incurred each year but not provided for in state budgets;
- Information required to assess the long-term consequences of current policy decisions is not available;
- Surpluses reported on state financial statements do not report true financial results; and
- Many state annual reports are not published on time, resulting in legislators entering budget negotiations completely unaware on how the state performed in the previous fiscal year.
Back in early 2008 no one foresaw the financial distress that was to develop during the second half of the year. Since then, news of developing fiscal difficulties in several states shows why the creative accounting they use is not useful to understand their financial condition or to predict the future financial crisis. These developments concretely prove the IFTA’s finding that a complete overhaul of the budgetary requirements governing the states is critically needed. It is also time to improve the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles used by state and local governments, so pension and healthcare obligations are included as liabilities on the governments’ balance sheets.
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The Truth About the Balanced Budget”
Labor Day: A Tribute To Highway Robbers
-By Thomas E. Brewton
Labor Unions are a throwback to the days of travel by horseback, when highwaymen fell upon lone travelers, beating them and robbing them of their possessions. Unions still have the ambivalent status of thugs, to their victims, and Robin Hoods, to their supporters.
Crafts labor unions evolved out of the medieval system of crafts guilds, which used an apprenticeship system to restrict the number of craftsmen in every skilled trade and thereby to set prices and limit competition. After the start of the industrial revolution in the early 1800s, the crafts guilds morphed into unions of skilled workers, such as carpenters, electrical workers, metal workers, etc.
Today’s industrial unions of unskilled workers such as the United Auto Workers, longshoremen, and steelworkers have a somewhat different provenance. Their inspiration was Karl Marx’s several Socialist Internationals, which in different incarnations were headquartered in Europe and in the United States. Marx envisioned cooperation among all workers – the employed and unemployed – in labor unions as the means to destroy what he called the despotism of capitalism. It is such unions that bankrupted the automobile and big steel producers in the United States and reduced the port of New York to secondary status. (See Labor Unions: Socialism’s Shock Troops)
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Labor Day: A Tribute To Highway Robbers”
Is Obama’s Commie ‘Green Czar’ A Quitter… Just Like Palin?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Obama made a huge mistake thinking that everyone in America hates their own country just like Reverend Wright, the killer Ayers, and now green czar Van Jones.
But Obama was wrong. Some Americans still actually love their country.
So, now that Van Jones’ apostasies have been revealed and he’s quit his president appointed position, I have a few questions:
What was it that the left castigated Governor Palin for? Wasn’t it that she was a “quitter”? Didn’t they chortle and guffaw that Palin quit her position as governor? Wasn’t it the worst thing they ever heard of at the time?
We all know that the left was all frothed up over Palin’s resignation, of course.
So, I am sure that now the entire left will rise up in unison to attack Van Jones for being a quitter… right?
After all, the left is full of integrity, right?
Right?
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Is Obama’s Commie ‘Green Czar’ A Quitter… Just Like Palin?”
Missing the Larger Point on the Public Option
-By Frank Salvato
As Congress prepares to return to work – now there’s an oxymoron – the subject of healthcare is weighing heavy in the air. The August recess provided the American people with contentious town hall meetings where We the People were described by opportunistic, power-hungry politicians as “astroturfers,” “un-American” and “terrorists.” It also saw the Progressive Liberal machine dispatch their minions – special interest group contingents from ACORN, MoveOn.org, SEIU, etc. – to the citizenry in an effort to silence the dissent about government-run healthcare and provide a cheery backdrop for Progressives and President Obama as they “met” with the unwashed masses. But in the debate over healthcare and the public option everyone, sans a very few, missed a constitutional point of order.
The Declaration of Independence, the first of our Charters of Freedom, states:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Framers, acknowledging the philosophy of Natural Law, made it quite clear that we, as an American people, believe in and accept that the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is unalienable. By establishing these “unalienable rights,” the Framers meant to ensure that government would refrain from legislating laws that would encroach upon or deny these natural rights – these unalienable rights – to every American citizen.
Missing the Larger Point on the Public Option”
Governator Vetoes Union Bill Again
-By Warner Todd Huston
The United Farm Workers union wants to enshrine in law a new way for potential members to vote in representation. For years now, the UFW has tried to push Sacramento to OK a plan to allow potential union members to cast their vote away from their workplace.
The union claims that if union representatives can visit possible members at their homes to gather their vote it will prevent farm owners from “intimidating” their workers out of casting a yes vote.
But, the truth is that this will give the union representatives full reign to themselves be the intimidators. Not only that, but if union reps can go to voter’s homes to gather votes there won’t be anyone to guarantee whether those union reps were intimidating the voters or not. It’ll just be the worker and the union rep who will know for sure. Not only that but this bill will effectually eliminate the worker’s secret ballot and voter privacy.
Fortunately for the integrity of workers Governor Schwarzenegger has vetoed this abomination… again.
Good for the Governator.
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Governator Vetoes Union Bill Again”
Revised apathey to dependence
-By Vince Johnson
There is an interesting opinion making the rounds that I believe precisely describes the realities of the current state of affairs. There is an issue as to who wrote it and when it was written but there is no doubt in my mind that these words accurately describe what is happening in America today
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
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Revised apathey to dependence”
Healthcare Trickery & Scottish Wimpery: Headline Potpourri #6
-By Frederick Meekins
With Obama seeming to withdraw the so-called “public option” from the healthcare reforms being considered by Congress, many will assume that the battle is now over. However, things may be more dangerous than ever before.
Up for consideration are so-called “healthcare cooperatives” that will attempt to blend aspects of public and private systems, no doubt with the care and responsiveness that homeowner associations have become renowned for. What is to prevent companies from eliminating their insurance programs and pushing their employees into these?
This is what Walmart-types are drooling for in the propaganda where they say they won’t be happy until everyone is insured. What they are really hoping for is the opportunity to drop the coverage of their own employees.
The Libyan responsible for the bombing of PAN AM Flight 103 has been set free. Since the terrorist is dieing of cancer, Scottish officials claim that he was released in compliance with the nation’s values.
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Healthcare Trickery & Scottish Wimpery: Headline Potpourri #6″
Dear Leader Chairman MauObama Addresses School Children
-By Warner Todd Huston
We’ve been fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy of The One’s address to the nation’s children and have been authorized by the fairness Czar to reproduce it here.
Hello my little children.
Welcome to your first day of school, and for those of you that already started, I welcome you, as well.
In this historic address to all our precious children, I have decided to offer a new tone, a tone unlike what I was left with by the former president. I think we need to get beyond politics. You great kids aren’t interested in all that anyway, right?
I do, though, want to urge you all to study hard, do your homework, and strive always to do the right thing. We all must work hard to overcome the mess left us by others, of course. And to do that we all need to pay close attention to the world around us.
For instance, if you hear someone dissing your school, making fun of education, or telling you to just forget all that hard work, well you tell them I said forget that noise. If they keep it up, you tell your teacher about it.
And if you hear someone making fun of your leaders, why call me up and tell me about it. Even if it happens to be your friends or your family, call 1-800-tellObama, or go on the web and email me at fishy@whitehosue.gov.
Once you identify all these nasty people and tell me about it, I’ll send someone around to straighten them out.
And while you are at it, go home and tell your parents to help us pass healthcare reform. We want all you kids to be happy and healthy but some people want to kill you. Tell me about them, too.
Remember, do as I tell you and all will be happy and good. If you don’t you might die horribly.
That is all, Children. Remember to OBEY.
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Dear Leader Chairman MauObama Addresses School Children”
Illinois Business Groups Schedule Anti-Cap and Trade Rally, Sept. 1st
-By Warner Todd Huston
A group called Energy Citizens made up of 23 Illinois business associations have scheduled a September 1st rally in order to protest the seriously damaging policies of the Cap and Trade bill. The rally will be held near the State Capitol in Springfield.
The event will start a noon and will be held at Crowne Plaza Hotel, 3000 Dirksen Parkway, Springfield, Illinois.
A notice was posted at the Illinois Farm Bureau website.
A lunch will follow the roughly 45-minute event, one of 22 rallies nationwide sponsored by the group Energy Citizens to oppose House-approved legislation. IFB members are encouraged to attend, and may contact their county Farm Bureau for additional details.
The Illinois members of Energy Citizens includes the Southwestern Illinois Employers Association and Wayne-White Counties Electric Cooperative, the Illinois Association of Convenience Stores, Associated Builder and Contractors of Illinois (ABC), Illinois Petroleum Marketers Association, Grain & Feed Association of Illinois, Growmark, Home Builders Association of Illinois, Illinois Association of Aggregate Producers, Illinois Coal Associations, Illinois Energy Forum, Illinois Farm Bureau, Illinois manufacturers Association, Illinois Petroleum Council, Illinois Pork Producers, Illinois Retail Merchants Association, Illinois Trucking Association, MidAmerica Energy, Mid-West Truckers Association, Illinois Oil & Gas Association, National Federation of Independent Business, Rural Electric Convenience Cooperative and the Illinois Fertilizer & Chemical Association.
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Illinois Business Groups Schedule Anti-Cap and Trade Rally, Sept. 1st”
U.S. Government Killing Dialysis Patients
-By Warner Todd Huston
Want an example of why government healthcare in the U.S. is a dangerous proposition? USA Today has a lengthy story on kidney dialysis and how new research is showing that having dialysis treatments more often seems to be keeping patients alive and healthy longer than the traditional thrice weekly treatments. The piece also sadly shows that the U.S. has higher rates of early death of dialysis patients than other western nations.
Why is that, you might wonder? It’s because Medicare won’t pay for more than three treatments a week so the national standard has become thrice weekly because that is what government will pay for. Not only that but government won’t pay for medical services ancillary to dialysis causing patients to succumb to other problems that often accompany or presage kidney failure.
Barry Straube, chief medical officer at the federal Centers for Medicare & Medcaid Services, says 25 million Americans have kidney disease, but Medicare benefits don’t kick in until patients are at the most advanced stage. Many patients with earlier-stage kidney disease aren’t treated for high blood pressure or diabetes, which cause two-thirds of kidney failures.
In other words, medical care is rationed by government to keep down costs based on a one-size-fits-all system. This rationing kills patients sooner than necessary and stifles life-saving innovation in treatment.
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U.S. Government Killing Dialysis Patients”
Protest Representative Melissa Bean
-By Warner Todd Huston
(Illinois Representative Melissa Bean scheduled an appearance at the Lake Zurich Chamber of Commerce breakfast on Sept. 2. Unfortunately for her constituents this townhall meeting is not open to the public unless a $25 fee is paid for a ticket. The Tea Party Patriots in her district have scheduled a protest to impress upon this elected official that she should meet with her constituents without charging admission!)
Come out and join the protest of Melissa Bean this Wednesday. Rep. Bean is again selectively ducking her constituents. This healthcare event is by paid fee only in front of the Lake Zurich Area Chamber of Commerce.
She did finally schedule a tele-townhall but that also was a failure. It appeared she again selectively chose who she called and who got to ask a question. Why is Melissa Bean continuing to not talk to all the citizens of the 8th district.
Wednesday, September 2nd
Lake Zurich Chamber of Commerce Breakfast
Outside Concorde Banquets
20922 Rand Road
Kildeer, IL
7:00 AM – 9:30 AM
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Protest Representative Melissa Bean”
Top Ten Pitfalls of Wireless Innovation Regulation
-By Scott Cleland
Analysis of the potential pitfalls of wireless innovation regulation is a necessary complement to the FCC’s upcoming Notice of Inquiries into wireless competition/innovation and the DOJ’s review of wireless competition in order to ensure policymakers get a balanced view of the big picture.
What are the Top 10 Pitfalls of Wireless Innovation Regulation?
#1 Pitfall: Losing focus on universal broadband access
“Wireless innovation” appears to be the latest rebranding iteration of “net neutrality” and “open Internet” as the net neutrality movement searches for more mainstream support of their views.
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Top Ten Pitfalls of Wireless Innovation Regulation”
A Christian Analysis Of Atheism, Part 1
-By Frederick Meekins
If the Middle Ages are to stand in history books as the Age of Faith, it could be equally asserted that the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries will no doubt be remembered as the Era of Unbelief. Whereas unbelievers in the Middle Ages were careful in how they expressed their theological doubts for fear of befalling persecution, theists (be they Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox Jew) have today learned selectivity in how they go about expressing challenges to the prevailing lack of belief impacting fundamental cultural institutions such as government, academia, and the scientific establishment. And like the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, the atheistic establishment of today seeks to foster a worldview influencing all aspects of society and binds all individuals whether they wish to be or not. Such an assertion will become more obvious in the following analysis which identifies significant atheistic thinkers, clarifies why some chose to adhere to this particular belief system, and critiques this worldview and contrasts it with Christian monotheism.
As an intellectual tradition, atheism has captured the minds of some of history’s most formidable thinkers. Creation science apologist Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis has astutely pointed out that social issues and public policies rest upon a foundation of thought and belief. Keeping with this analogy, atheism proceeds from a theoretical base up through a practical program designed to influence various spheres of culture such as politics and education with prominent luminaries within the movement solidifying this mental edifice along the way.
As stated elsewhere within these introductory comments, atheism did not suddenly appear on the doorstep of the twentieth and twenty-first century fully formed demanding things like the removal of school prayer and the enshrinement of evolution as biological dogma. Rather like a weed strangling the other plants around it, today’s culture of unbelief sprang from the soil in which it was planted. While atheism can trace its pedigree back throughout much of human history, a number of modern thinkers have ensured this system a place of prominence within the cultural consciousness.
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A Christian Analysis Of Atheism, Part 1″
A Patriot’s Reply to a Pro-Government Takeover of Healthcare Supporter’s Video
-By Warner Todd Huston
This is a fantastic video. Some half-informed, leftist made a video in support of Obama’s socialist takeover of our healthcare system and a great patriot found it and then took the time to reply point for point against this fool’s anti-capitalist, un-American talking points.
The original video was made by Andy Lubershane and called “Why We Need Government-Run Universal Socialized Health Insurance.” But patriot and smart guy Lee Doren saw it too and he felt that the lies, misconceptions, and half-truths were so thick that he just had to respond.
I only wish that the Patriot’s voice was a bit more distinguishable from the left-wit’s voice. The two fellows have a similar timer to their voices which makes it a tad confusing at times. If you aren’t listening closely, there are times when you miss the fact that one guy stopped talking and the next started. But, that is a mere quibble. This video does a great job to show why the healthcare socialist is basically lying with every one of his talking points.
In any case, Mr. Doren does a great job showing that the rhetoric used by the leftist is misleading and full of false dichotomies and misdirection. This video should be passed around.
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A Patriot’s Reply to a Pro-Government Takeover of Healthcare Supporter’s Video”
Feingold: About That Bill, Did I Say It’s Doomed? On Second Thought…
-By Warner Todd Huston
Last week Senator Russ Feingold was heard to lament that there would be no Obamacare bill to vote on before Christmas. The liberal Feingold even said he wondered if there would ever be a bill at all because the divisions were so deep.
Well, only six days later, Senator Feingold is playing a different tune. Suddenly he’s quite upbeat and jubilant about the bill saying how he’ll work hard to get Obamacare passed and that he’s sure it’s all just over the horizon. Gone is the gloomy guss of a week ago and in is the happy Russ for this week. Suddenly the “no bill before Christmas, if ever” Russ is saying he’s sure it’ll come just before Christmas.
Check out these two quotes back-to-back:
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Feingold: About That Bill, Did I Say It’s Doomed? On Second Thought…”
Challenging the Status Quo
-By Frank Salvato
With the death of US Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) the Democrats lose their sixty-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. This will make the passing of Obama agenda legislation – specifically healthcare – more difficult until Massachusetts seats its next Junior Senator, who promises to be a Democrat. The loss of even one Democrat in the Senate is cause for concern for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) because he has a rogue element within his Democrat caucus, the Blue Dog Democrats. In Washington, it is all about counting the votes at any given moment on any piece of legislation. As they say, politics makes for strange bedfellows.
In the US House of Representatives the Democrats have a lock on the majority. According to the Office of the Clerk of the US House of Representatives, the congressional profile stands at: 256 Democrats, 178 Republicans, 0 Independents and 1 Vacancy. These numbers give the Democrats, as a party, a 78 vote majority in the House.
In the Senate, Democrats have a lock on a majority as well: Democrats number 57, Republicans have 40 seats, and Independents and Independent Democrats have one seat each.
In addition to the fact that it matters which party is in the majority, in both chambers of Congress, it also matters who the parties elect as their leaders.
Challenging the Status Quo”
A Warning For Obama: President Hoover’s Fealty to Unions Worsened Great Depression
-By Warner Todd Huston
An economist is saying that President Hoover set the stage to worsen The Great Depression because of his pro-labor union stance.
Pro-labor policies pushed by President Herbert Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation’s gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what might otherwise have been a bad recession to slip into the Great Depression, a UCLA economist concludes in a new study.
Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA professor of economics, lays the worst of the Depression at the feet of Hoover who, in his opinion, made the recession “three times worse” by keeping industrial wages too high which “sharply depressed employment.”
Ohanian’s study is being published by the peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Theory in December and was also posted at www.nber.org, the site of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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A Warning For Obama: President Hoover’s Fealty to Unions Worsened Great Depression”
California’s Free Cash For Illegals, Coddling Lawbreakers
-By Warner Todd Huston
Here is just another example of why the State of California is in a budget crisis: The Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI).
What is this program, who qualifies? Well, it does no less than give free government money to any illegal immigrant that is either over 65 years of age or is disabled or blind and does not qualify for Supplemental Security Income (Social Security) due to their immigration status.
Why is California just giving money away to elderly illegals?
Your guess is as good as mine.
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California’s Free Cash For Illegals, Coddling Lawbreakers”
Obama Administration Announces Not Enforcing Union Reporting Laws
-By Warner Todd Huston
Are you a union member trying to find out information of the criminal actions and shady financial dealings of your union? Well don’t expect Obama and his toady in the Labor Secretary’s office, Hilda Solis, to help you uncover any illegalities perpetrated by your union bosses.
Solis’ department has just announced that it is suspending the stringent reporting requirements that labor unions must by law satisfy to assure that their financial dealings are legal and above-board. That’s right, unions have just been given a free pass for criminal actions by this president.
This is proof that political donations are the key to get away with crime. So, yes Virginia, crime does pay… at least in Obama’s Washington.
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Obama Administration Announces Not Enforcing Union Reporting Laws”
Government Stimulus Spending: Differing Perspectives
-By Thomas E. Brewton
President Franklin Roosevelt, speaking of the intractable Depression, sourly admitted that Keynesian fiscal policy, in theory, was the simplest thing in the world, but in practice, a disaster.
A thoughtful reader, who generally disagrees with me, posted the following as part of his comment responding to The Bigger the Government, the Harder the Economic Fall:
I must confess that I find your “mysticism” explanation of how business cycles occur somewhat baffling, but knowing your anti-Keynesian viewpoint, I should not be surprised that you view any governmental pump priming with suspicion.
According to the butterfly effect, any seemingly insignificant action will have a cascading effect and invariably lead to a chain of events elsewhere. How much more telling would the expenditure (whether you approve or not) of billions of dollars be to the economy than the flutter of the wing of a moth?
My response:
I can’t presume to speak for the reader’s views, but liberal-progressives on balance advocate the Keynesian macro-economic approach, a variety of chaos-theory, butterfly effect, which appears to me to be simplistic.
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Government Stimulus Spending: Differing Perspectives”
Beware of Bitter, Old, Lefty, White Women With Dreadlocks
-By Warner Todd Huston
I haven’t seen so many lies, misconstructions, affectations, and guffaw-invoking absurdities in a single editorial in a major American newspaper for a very long time. In fact I thought it wasn’t possible to see so much foolishness in such a small space without satire being the ultimate goal. In the L.A. Times, however, Anne Lamott has succeeded in making a bigger fool of herself in one editorial than Maureen Dowd could hope to have achieved in a whole year’s worth of blather.
Lamott, an aging novelist that churns out those woefully indulgent tomes that forces readers to endure her darkest feelings and imagines that all of us are on the edge of our seats as she chronicles raising her child, fancies herself an expert on faith and grace. She seems to imagine that she defines it, what ever it is. Of course she was one of the most infested with Bush Derangement Syndrome and was quick to warm to her ersatz religious leader, Barack Hussein Obama. It seems to me that she’s spent her life looking for meaning anywhere and she thought she finally found paydirt with The One. She likes to use words like “grace” and “belief” a lot in her writing but like a true newagie, leftist she rarely talks about any actual religion except in the vaguest of terms. It does appear, though, that she had found a new religion in The One.
And now, with her piece in the Times, it seems she is on the verge of losing her religion… again.
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Beware of Bitter, Old, Lefty, White Women With Dreadlocks”
$15 Million Stimulus Spent for 1,095 Canadian Tourists in Montana
-By Warner Todd Huston
What is the cost of three Canadian visitors a day? Fifteen million dollars in Obamabucks, apparently. Worse, this waste of money wasn’t something the president of “transparency” seemed disposed to let us easily discover. Still, the Boston Globe reports that $15 mil is the amount of so-called stimulus money that Obama allowed to be spent by the state of Montana on a tiny border check-point facility that sees about three visitors a day — that’s $14,000,000 per tourist for the year.
Despite Obama’s promises that the stimulus plan would be transparent and free of politics, the government is handing out $720 million for border upgrades under a process that is both secretive and susceptible to political influence. This allowed low-priority projects such as the checkpoint in Whitetail, Mont., to skip ahead of more pressing concerns, according to documents revealed to the Associated Press.
Obama claimed he’d be “different,” though. Remember that he was supposed to be the serious president that only did the right thing? Yet, he’s turned his back on any sort of effort to hold stimulus spending to account. Projects all across the country are being given to less needy government facilities instead of going where need is greatest because of the influence brought to bear on distribution of funds by powerful politicians.
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$15 Million Stimulus Spent for 1,095 Canadian Tourists in Montana”
King Daley Apologizes for his Meter Mess
-By Warner Todd Huston
Tuesday, Mayor “King” Daley apologized for the mess he and his buddies made of the sale of Chicago’s parking meters to a private company.
As the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
“I’ll be the first to admit that we totally screwed up the way it was implemented. I want us to do better — and we will,” Daley plans to tell the crowd at the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. Shore Dr., according to a copy of his speech obtained by the Sun-Times.
No issue in recent memory — not even the Hired Truck scandal or Daley’s notorious midnight destruction of Meigs Field — has resonated more with voters than the 75-year, $1.15 billion parking meter lease tied to a steep schedule of rate hikes.
An apology is pretty meaningless when Daley is already walking around with the cash merrily jingling in his pocket and no real changes are being offered. After all, even as he was to “apologize” Daley planned to go on to say that the whole episode was still the best of ideas.
So, it’s really just more empty words from Mayor Daley.
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King Daley Apologizes for his Meter Mess”
The Kennedy Irony
-By Dan Scott
In a desperate bid to legitimize a government take over of the health care industry; Democrats now are seeking to gain political cover and traction with the recent death of Senator Ted Kennedy. Senator Kennedy died of brain cancer this week, a condition that on average had a 33% survival rate over 5 years. To say the least, his condition was one no one would wish upon another human being. So it is interesting that Democrats wanting to use Senator Kennedy’s death from this horrible disease fail to recognize the irony of their shallow maneuver. Given the life years and the efficacy requirements that would judge the cost effectiveness of a treatment, in all likelihood, Senator Kennedy at age 77, would have been denied treatment or even worse under a government run system rationing the dollars allocated to health care would not be attempting improve the efficacy of such treatments.
As more information comes to light regarding what is in HR 3200, the public is increasingly opposing the bill and seeing the disconnect between what President Obama says the bill will do versus what is actually written in it. This disconnect is highlighted by the faulty premise that underlies the idea of government run health care. Even if a quote single payer system is not implemented, health care will still be government run by the virtue of the fact Congress has usurped authority to be calling the shots via legislation imposing rules and regulations that are contrary to free market principles.
The premise of government run health care is to limit the total dollar amount spent for the population as a whole due to an individual’s ability to pay under the guise of providing equal access to everyone. Whereas, under the current free market system there is no such limitation due to overall cost. Otherwise why are they wanting to eliminate a successful program like Medicare Advantage for seniors to obtain more money for uninsured people? The only limitation is the individual’s ability to pay for any particular medical procedure. Does it not occur to Democrats and liberals that those who are financially well off provide the seed money for new treatments that will in the long run SAVE money on a per treatment basis because medical providers are taking the risk to find ever more effective means to offer these treatments to a greater number of people? The profit premise that modern capitalism operates under is sales volume. Yes, the total spent on health care is more under the current system than in a government run system such as Canada or England. Why? Because medical providers in our current free market system are continually developing more treatments for the purpose of making a significant profit from customers who have the ability to pay. So whose money is it to spend in the first place?
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The Kennedy Irony”