Monday, November 11, 2013

Obamacare!

Another example, millions and billions that there are, how central planning does not work.

Feeble minds our Liberals are, they will never understand how a free people, making their own choice will always arrive at the best economic decision. 

Obamacare is....we will establish exchanges which work better than the free economy in allocating health care.  Ignoring the pertinent point...the distortion is caused by government...but anyway...

In no other endeavor is there the rational thought that removing the customer from financial decisions results in better financial decisions.


So the web site does not work, a portion of the population is having their insurance cancelled due to the increased requirements of offering individual insurance.  Temporary! they say... one might assume they will work the issues out (stupid that they think they can't solve this but can manage the whole)...but even giving their doubtful short term success...a long term solution...no!

They, our formerly (for me) beloved government, cannot manage a business...they will FIU.


The Liberals should have taken the Reps offer.



Thursday, September 12, 2013

Do we really careif PUTIN has the lead?

Everyone is all bunched up in their panties, that Russia is going to lead the charge to get rid of Syria's chemical weapons. Sounds like a bunch of school boys saying only us we are the leaders, well that is exactly what Putin is saying about the arrogance of America.
 Yes isn't a good thing Syria finally admitted they had chemical weapons and isn't it a good thing he is going to destroy them, who cares who gets credit? Some great business books say don';t worry about who gets credit just get it done
. We are still destroying our chemical weapons ( yes we have them too) and I just read this was decided during the Nixon years.
 So it will take a lot of time, let's see Nixon was when? Anyway it is really simple math again 6,000 dead Americans and 150,000 dead Iraq's under an invasion plan, and this plan has ZERO deaths. I say give Putin credit who cares, I know there is some mothers and fathers that will still have their children to hug and kiss goodnight.
 These war mongers like McCain, Cheney, and Rumsfield, are all too anxious to send our children to fight for their glory. Bush and Cheney and Shock and Awe, have taught us a lesson Senior Bush new a long time ago.
 Don't stick your hand in a hornet's nest.

This is a smackdown...bitch....this is what happens when Liberal Doves rule the day

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?src=twr&_r=3

If the link does not work, it is Putin's op-ed in the NYT


Actually some of what he says is true, but more true is he is calling out America...

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

If your going to use Chemical.....go big says Obama.....(who thinks.....its Bush's fault)

If a President runs into a crisis, those who lead address the issues but no...the man of diversity harkens to his best days...criticizing the past war...before starting his own.

Now...granted tough situation.  But as Hags noted, he drew the RED LINE, no one else.

So American policy is no use of chemical weapons...OK...good idea...so if you use them let's make you pay...great...let's go!...but wait!  NO!...no...let's go with just a limited strike...huh?  Either we go to war or we don't, we don't do "limited" to satisfy the liberal base which will never agree to anything "war".   So we are going to do what Baxter and Crazy Rich?  We are going to send a few bombs, mess up some stuff...probably kill some civilians...and then what?


Now the really incoherent part of our Presidents speech tonight...


LET THE RUSSIANS HANDLE IT!

So, let me see if I understand our Presidents reasoning...don't use chemical weapons dammit...look I drew a RED LINE!...cuz if you do we are going to bomb...something to be determined...not you...just something... but look if you do use chemical weapons and then we find out...we are going to be really mad...I mean it, really we are...but here is the real deal...


If you use the Chemical stuff...just once...after I drew the RED LINE!...OK, not great but...just call the Russians and offer to turn everything over and....then...OK...promise not any more...just that one time...really I mean it.  Don't do it again, I will be really mad.


And besides....IT'S BUSH'S FAULT!

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Assad has to go, says Obama, and then lifts not a finger for two years. Obama lays down a red line, and then ignores it. Shamed finally by a massive poison-gas attack, he sends Kerry to make an impassioned case for righteous and urgent retaliation — and the very next day, Obama undermines everything by declaring an indefinite timeout to seek congressional approval.
Each month the consultants at Sentier analyze the numbers from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and estimate the trend in median annual household income adjusted for inflation. On Aug. 21, Sentier released "Household Income on the Fourth Anniversary of the Economic Recovery: June 2009 to June 2013." The finding that grabbed headlines was that real median household income "has fallen by 4.4 percent since the 'economic recovery' began in June 2009." In dollar terms, median household income fell to $52,098 from $54,478, a loss of $2,380.

What was largely overlooked, however, is that those who were most likely to vote for Barack Obama in 2012 were members of demographic groups most likely to have suffered the steepest income declines. Mr. Obama was re-elected with 51% of the vote. Five demographic groups were crucial to his victory: young voters, single women, those with only a high-school diploma or less, blacks and Hispanics. He cleaned up with 60% of the youth vote, 67% of single women, 93% of blacks, 71% of Hispanics, and 64% of those without a high-school diploma, according to exit polls.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

A Boy in a Man's Game

Boy: a male child or young man.
ladschoolboy, male child, youthyoung manladdiestripling

I start with the definition so I don't have to hear any BS about racism.

We and our allies about about to pay the price for having an inexperienced yet egotistical amateur at the head of our government.  His casual remarks at a press conference a year ago are coming back to haunt us all.

Assad should be deposed.  He is evil.  But Syria is complex and the stakes are high.  Read "Obama's Bread and Circuses" by Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post in Real Clear Politics.  It is incisive and somber.  This link may work:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/01/obamas_bread_and_circuses_119793.html


Obama has done real harm to us and our allies.  Now that evil people recognize him for the buffoon he is, real trouble will follow.

If you need more convincing, read "A Case Study in How Not to Conduct Foreign Policy" by Fareed Zakaria of CNN.  Neither Mr. Zakaria nor CNN is know for leaning to the right. The article is also available at Real Clear Politics.  Try this link:
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/01/obama-team-has-mishandled-syria/?hpt=hp_t4
The article is also available on CNN, which may be more comfortable for those with a leftward tilt.

Buckle your chin straps.  Things are going to get worse.

All the best,

Hags

BIG TALKERS NOW YOU HAVE TO MAN UP

 President Barack Obama is going to see what the most gutless two bodies in the history of organized democracy -- The U.S. House Of Representatives and the U.S. Senate -- have to say about going to "war" in Syria.
And that's awesome, because it technically is their effing job to decide that stuff, a practice we've gotten away from, and which has greatly benefitted Congress, who rarely have to nut up and do anything anymore.
 But since society frowns on us just dropping the big one on Syria, they get to take a vote on it.
 Especially all those BIG TALKERS who claimed to want to take a vote, most of whom were lying when they said this. Now " can't wait to start a war " MaCain might vote no. What else from the man who chose Palin to be a heart beat away from the Presidency. Of course now they will criticize him for not being a leader.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

When do think skulls understand?

The education proposal reflects the Obama modus operandi. First, identify an American industry that long ago made a Faustian bargain for federal support, such as hospitals and housing. Then describe the subsidy-dependent industry's inevitable bloat and inefficiency in images so stark no reasonable person could disagree. "Burdened with tens of thousands of dollars" in student debt, Mr. Obama said at Binghamton University in New York, "they have to put off buying a home, or starting a business, or starting a family." [Footnote: That was federal student debt.] Then after getting buy-in from the mortified industry, he imposes the solution—on his terms.

First government aids an industry (Retirement, health care, education, energy) then it is over subsidized then it fails and must be rescued by those who messed it up.

Time and time again.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Ted Cruz and his Tea Party Supporters

I have been relishing a Ted Cruz run for the White House as it will put the hypocrisy of the right wing in full relief. Cruz is a Tea Party favorite, which is to say that many/most of his supporters wanted to overturn the will of the American people as expressed in a presidential election and throw President Obama out of office for allegedly being foreign born (to an American mother and foreign father). That isn't preventing them from supporting a Canadian born candidate (to an American mother), whose father was Cuban.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/19/ted_cruz_canada_calgary_born_texas_republican_has_dual_us_canadian_citizenship.html

How many of these folks will send an apology to our president? Will Donald Trump make a definitive statement or continue to dodge the question? This isn't a minor matter. The fact that some Americans wanted to President Obama out of office on this basis yet support Senator Cruz shows just how the Nazis were able to take power in Germany. Otherwise ordinary people were choosing a fascist path at the expense of democracy and why?

Conservative David Horowitz put it best in December of 2008, "It is sore loserism and quite radical in its intent. Respect for election results is one of the most durable bulwarks of our unity as a nation. Conservatives need to accept the fact that we lost the election, and get over it; and get on with the important business of reviving our country’s economy and defending its citizens, and — by the way — its Constitution."

By the way, it is rather clear to me that Ted Cruz is a natural born American who is eligible to hold the presidency, just as the American born Obama is, even if he had been born in Kenya.

Monday, August 19, 2013

Let's just say it, we would do better if we taxed Gates, Jobs, and Buffett less than everyone else

One of the signature themes of the Obama administration is that the American dream is under attack due to "income disparity." The words divide the country into haves and have-nots, suggesting a national condition that needs to be corrected—presumably by "progressive" taxation as a mechanism for income redistribution. The American dream has traditionally been one of individual success that is rewarded and admired. But we are now urged to become a zero-sum society in which those achieving the American dream are envied and even resented.

The American dream is not politically affiliated. The last time it was alive and well was the period from Ronald Reagan's second term in office through Bill Clinton's second term in office. In those 16 years, we enjoyed continuous low taxes, low government spending and economic prosperity.

Since 2000, the economy has staggered under the record government spending and deficits of two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The result of that spending spree has been lower real wages and higher and more-persistent unemployment. The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates to near-zero, and, for the first time ever in the U.S., that Depression-era medicine has not worked—a scary situation reminiscent of Japan's decade-plus economic demise.

According to the latest 2012 IRS income-tax data, the top 1% of American taxpayers earned 20% of all income and paid 36% of all taxes. The top 5% earned 36% of all income and paid 58% of all taxes. Will even higher taxes help the economy? My experience in Silicon Valley tells me that high and so-called progressive taxes are a major cause of the country's current economic problems, not the solution.

In Silicon Valley, the rich commonly reinvest their wealth close to home. For example, I have reinvested most of my net worth in 8.5% of the shares of my own company.

Since its 1982 founding, Cypress Semiconductor has been a net creator of jobs and wealth. We have returned $2.2 billion more to the economy through stock buybacks, share dividends and spinouts than we have taken out in total lifetime investments. That figure doesn't count the $4 billion in wages the company has paid or the taxes paid on those wages. Currently, my investment helps maintain 3,479 permanent, high-paying jobs with good health-care benefits that are now threatened by more taxes.

A couple of years ago, I decided to invest in my hometown of Oshkosh, Wis., by building a $1.2 million lakefront restaurant. That restaurant now permanently employs 65 people at an investment of $18,000 per job, a figure consistent with U.S. small businesses. If progressive taxation in the name of "fairness" had taken my "extra" $1.2 million and spent it on a government stimulus program, would 65 jobs have been created?

According to recent Congressional Budget Office statistics on the Obama administration's 2009 stimulus program, each job created has cost between $500,000 and $4 million. Thus, my $1.2 million, taxed and respent on a government project of uncertain duration, would have created about one job, possibly two, and not the 65 sustainable jobs that my private investment did.

On the other end of the capital-intensity scale, Cypress Semiconductor required huge investments to create jobs in its chip-manufacturing plants. Between 1983 and 2003, those investments totaled $797 million and led to the creation of 4,033 jobs at an investment of $198,000 per job created. Thus, my own experience on the cost of job creation ranges from $18,000 to $198,000 per job, compared with $500,000 to $4 million per job created by the Obama stimulus program.

This data squares with the broad numbers showing that private investment is more efficient than government spending in creating jobs. In other words: Every dollar that is taxed away from private investment and spent by government produces fewer jobs than the jobs destroyed by the loss of private investment.

Yet the politics of envy, promoted most notably by President Obama himself, continuously stokes the idea that the wealthy are not paying their "fair share." This injured sense of unjust rewards was summed up on a radio show I heard the other day, when a caller said of the rich: "How much more do they need?"

How much more do I need? How many more jobs do you want?

Even European socialist democracies are starting to understand that tax-and-spend policies kill jobs. For example, both Italy and Spain have repealed their incentive programs for solar energy (along with their "green jobs") because the countries have calculated that for every job created by government investment in green energy, somewhere between 4.8 jobs (Italy) and 2.2 jobs (Spain) are lost because of the reciprocal cuts in private investment. I am aware of these figures because from 2002-11 I was a major investor in and chairman of SunPower, the world's second-largest solar-energy company, also based in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley is today's brightest example of the traditional American dream still at work. The investments for most startup companies must come from individuals who can wait 10 years to get a return on investment. Only very wealthy Americans can afford that.

Like many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, I have reinvested in the next generation of entrepreneurs, in my case via the Sequoia Fund and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, two venture-capital firms that gave me a shot at the American dream. I also serve as a board member of their portfolio companies.

Does anybody really believe that moving investment decisions from Silicon Valley to Washington by raising taxes on venture capitalists and their investors would make Silicon Valley more productive? Consider the Solyndra debacle: It was obvious to most of us here that the solar-energy company had zero chance of survival. That's why the company had to be government-funded near the end; no real investors were willing to step up.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama insulted America's entrepreneurs by telling them: "You didn't build that." Progressive taxation is just another tool used by government to take over an ever-larger part of the U.S. economy. The horrible irony is that the government keeps telling the very people whose jobs it destroys that if we only tax the rich more, everything will be better

Thursday, August 15, 2013

How the rich companies create jobs

Cisco To Cut 4,000 Jobs Despite Earning $2.27 Billion In 3 Months

Friday, August 9, 2013

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Obama wants to cut corporate tax and the Republican Party says NO !!!

Obama wants to cut coporate tax rate from 35% to 28% and the Republican Party wants to stop this. At what point do you guys need to see the Tea Party and right wing republicans are really all about getting re elected and not about working for the general good of Americans.
 This corporate tax cut has been the cornerstone of your party (too high a corporate tax) and you still want to say no.
 I'm just sick of this anti Obama crap, get over it compromise is what democracy is all about. You don't get your way, thats why you work together.
 The Republican party will be in the dustbin of history if you don't get some level headed people at the leadership.
My man Riegel says the Republicans will never win another election, I'm starting to believe him!

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Warren Buffett's Son Peter. The Charitable Industrial Complex

Op-Ed Contributor

The Charitable-Industrial Complex

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I HAD spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006. That year, my father, Warren Buffett, made good on his commitment to give nearly all of his accumulated wealth back to society. In addition to making several large donations, he added generously to the three foundations that my parents had created years earlier, one for each of their children to run.
Open, N.Y.


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Early on in our philanthropic journey, my wife and I became aware of something I started to call Philanthropic Colonialism. I noticed that a donor had the urge to “save the day” in some fashion. People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem. Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms.
Often the results of our decisions had unintended consequences; distributing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a brothel area ended up creating a higher price for unprotected sex.
But now I think something even more damaging is going on.
Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in. Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left. There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising. At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed.
Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups.
As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.
But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.
And with more business-minded folks getting into the act, business principles are trumpeted as an important element to add to the philanthropic sector. I now hear people ask, “what’s the R.O.I.?” when it comes to alleviating human suffering, as if return on investment were the only measure of success. Microlending and financial literacy (now I’m going to upset people who are wonderful folks and a few dear friends) — what is this really about? People will certainly learn how to integrate into our system of debt and repayment with interest. People will rise above making $2 a day to enter our world of goods and services so they can buy more. But doesn’t all this just feed the beast?
I’m really not calling for an end to capitalism; I’m calling for humanism.
Often I hear people say, “if only they had what we have” (clean water, access to health products and free markets, better education, safer living conditions). Yes, these are all important. But no “charitable” (I hate that word) intervention can solve any of these issues. It can only kick the can down the road.
My wife and I know we don’t have the answers, but we do know how to listen. As we learn, we will continue to support conditions for systemic change.
It’s time for a new operating system. Not a 2.0 or a 3.0, but something built from the ground up. New code.
What we have is a crisis of imagination. Albert Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set that created it. Foundation dollars should be the best “risk capital” out there.
There are people working hard at showing examples of other ways to live in a functioning society that truly creates greater prosperity for all (and I don’t mean more people getting to have more stuff).
Money should be spent trying out concepts that shatter current structures and systems that have turned much of the world into one vast market. Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine.
It’s an old story; we really need a new one.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

How The Republican Party works when It Doesn't get it's way

Defunding Obamacare entirely, it is not news—it is par for the course for the take-no-prisoners extremist senator from Utah. When the Senate Republicans' No. 2 and No. 3 leaders, John Cornyn and John Thune, sign on to the blackmail plan, it is news—of the most depressing variety.
I am not the only one who has written about House and Senate Republicans' monomaniacal focus on sabotaging the implementation of Obamacare—Greg Sargent, Steve Benen, Jon Chait, Jon Bernstein, Ezra Klein, and many others have written powerful pieces. But it is now spinning out of control.
It is important to emphasize that this set of moves is simply unprecedented. The clear comparison is the Medicare prescription drug plan. When it passed Congress in 2003, Democrats had many reasons to be furious. The initial partnership between President Bush and Sen. Edward Kennedy had resulted in an admirably bipartisan bill—it passed the Senate with 74 votes. Republicans then pulled a bait and switch, taking out all of the provisions that Kennedy had put in to bring along Senate Democrats, jamming the resulting bill through the House in a three-hour late-night vote marathon that blatantly violated House rules and included something close to outright bribery on the House floor, and then passing the bill through the Senate with just 54 votes—while along the way excluding the duly elected conferees, Tom Daschle (the Democratic leader!) and Jay Rockefeller, from the conference committee deliberations.
The implementation of that bill was a huge challenge, and had many rocky moments. It required educating millions of seniors, most not computer-literate, about the often complicated choices they had to create or change their prescription coverage. Imagine if Democrats had gone all out to block or disrupt the implementation—using filibusters to deny funding, sending threatening letters to companies or outside interests who mobilized to educate Medicare recipients, putting on major campaigns to convince seniors that this was a plot to deny them Medicare, comparing it to the ill-fated Medicare reform plan that passed in 1989 and, after a revolt by seniors, was repealed the next year.
Almost certainly, Democrats could have tarnished one of George W. Bush's signature achievements, causing Republicans major heartburn in the 2004 presidential and congressional elections—and in the process hurting millions of Medicare recipients and their families. Instead, Democrats worked with Republicans, and with Mark McClellan, the Bush administration official in charge of implementation, to smooth out the process and make it work—and it has been a smashing success.
Contrast that with Obamacare. For three years, Republicans in the Senate refused to confirm anybody to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the post that McClellan had held in 2003-04—in order to damage the possibility of a smooth rollout of the health reform plan. Guerrilla efforts to cut off funding, dozens of votes to repeal, abusive comments by leaders, attempts to discourage states from participating in Medicaid expansion or crafting exchanges, threatening letters to associations that might publicize the availability of insurance on exchanges, and now a new set of threats—to have a government shutdown, or to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, unless the president agrees to stop all funding for implementation of the plan.
I remember being shocked when some congressional Democrats appeared to be rooting for the surge in troops in Iraq to fail—which would mean more casualties among Americans and Iraqis, but a huge embarrassment for Bush, and vindication of their skepticism. But of course they did not try to sabotage the surge by disrupting funding or interfering in the negotiations in Iraq with competing Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish power centers. To do so would have been close to treasonous.
What is going on now to sabotage Obamacare is not treasonous—just sharply beneath any reasonable standards of elected officials with the fiduciary responsibility of governing. A good example is the letter Senate Republican Leaders Mitch McConnell and Cornyn sent to the NFL, demanding that it not cooperate with the Obama administration in a public-education campaign to tell their fans about what benefits would be available to them and how the plan would work—a letter that clearly implied deleterious consequences if the league went ahead anyhow. McConnell and Cornyn got their desired result. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell quickly capitulated. (When I came to Washington in 1969-70, one of my great pleasures was meeting and getting to know Charles Goodell, the courageous Republican senator from New York who took on his own president on Vietnam and was quietly courageous on many other controversial issues. Roger Goodell is his son—although you would not know it from this craven action.)
When a law is enacted, representatives who opposed it have some choices (which are not mutually exclusive). They can try to repeal it, which is perfectly acceptable—unless it becomes an effort at grandstanding so overdone that it detracts from other basic responsibilities of governing. They can try to amend it to make it work better—not just perfectly acceptable but desirable, if the goal is to improve a cumbersome law to work better for the betterment of the society and its people. They can strive to make sure that the law does the most for Americans it is intended to serve, including their own constituents, while doing the least damage to the society and the economy. Or they can step aside and leave the burden of implementation to those who supported the law and got it enacted in the first place.
But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation—which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil—is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. One might expect this kind of behavior from a few grenade-throwing firebrands. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate—even if Speaker John Boehner is motivated by fear of his caucus, and McConnell and Cornyn by fear of Kentucky and Texas Republican activists—takes one's breath away.

Friday, July 26, 2013

If there’s an iron rule in economics, it is Stein’s Law (named after Herb, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers): “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Detroit, for example, can no longer go on borrowing, spending, raising taxes and dangerously cutting such essential services as street lighting and police protection. So it stops. It goes bust.
Cause of death? Corruption, both legal and illegal, plus a classic case of reactionary liberalism in which the governing Democrats — there’s been no Republican mayor in half a century — simply refused to adapt to the straitened economic circumstances that followed the post-World War II auto boom.

But Detroit is an object lesson not just for other cities. Not even the almighty federal government is immune to Stein’s Law. Reactionary liberalism simply cannot countenance serious reform of the iconic social welfare programs of the 20th century. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are pledged to their inviolability. President Obama will occasionally admit that, for example, Medicare cannot go on as is, but then reverts to crude demagoguery when Republicans propose a structural reform, such as premium support for Medicare or something as obvious as raising the retirement age to match increasing longevity

Thursday, July 25, 2013

The Social Justice President!

The President summed up his economic priorities  "This growing inequality isn't just morally wrong; it's bad economics," . "When middle-class families have less to spend, businesses have fewer customers. When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy. When the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow farther apart, it undermines the very essence of this country." "That's why reversing these trends must be Washington's highest priority. It's certainly my highest priority."

Ummmm....OK....So....you have had 5 years....how is it going Mr. President?

Mr. Obama has focused his policies on reducing inequality rather than increasing growth. The predictable result has been more inequality and less growth. The rich have done well in the last few years thanks to a rising stock market, but the middle class and poor have not.  No President has done worse by the middle class in modern times.

By now the lackluster growth figures are well known. The recovery that began four years ago has been one of the weakest on record, averaging a little more than 2%. And it has not gained speed. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 was 0.4%. It rose to a still anemic 1.8% in the first quarter but most economists are predicting even slower growth in the second quarter. What has never arrived is the 3%-4% growth spurt during typical expansions.

One ponders.....does our President know how badly he has done?  Did he not know what a historic opportunity the great recession presented (as recessions do) to promote economic growth then claim the credit?   Wait!....does he really believe in this Social justice crap!?

The core problem has been Mr. Obama's focus on spreading the wealth rather than creating it. ObamaCare will soon hook more Americans on government subsidies, but its mandates and taxes have hurt job creation, especially at small businesses. Mr. Obama's record tax increases have grabbed a bigger chunk of affluent incomes, but they created uncertainty for business throughout 2012 and have dampened growth so far this year.

The food stamp and disability rolls have exploded, which reduces inequality but also reduces the incentive to work and rise on the economic ladder. This has contributed to a plunge in the share of Americans who are working—the labor participation rate—to 63.5% in June from 65.7% in June 2009. And don't forget the Fed's extraordinary monetary policy, which has done well by the rich who have assets but left the thrifty middle class and retirees earning pennies on their savings.

Its almost like...he is trying to do this.....with the support of misbegotten souls like Baxter and Terry, he has intentionally trashed the economy....with Justice for All!...to form a permanent class of perma-liberal voters!

Mr. Obama would have done far better by the poor, the middle class and the wealthy if he had focused on growing the economy first. The difference between the Obama 2% recovery and the Reagan-Clinton 3%-4% growth rates is rising incomes for nearly everybody.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

History Repeats Itself

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

 Quote by Dwight D Eisenhower

just came across this quote! interesting

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Good News on Healthcare Costs

New York is the latest state to announce health insurance rates coming down as a consequence of Obamacare. Individual rates will fall by 50%. In California, the monthly average premium on the exchange will be $321/mo (before subsidy, if any), about 40% less than forecast by the CBO. An Obama Medicare pilot program to improve care and reduce costs has done exactly that as reported today in Politico.

Gosh - just imagine if the Dow had doubled and the annual deficit had been cut in half under Obama's presidency. Then, we could honestly say that he is one of our great presidents. Principled conservatives would drop their petty partisanship and much would be accomplished these next three years by working together. If only...

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Taking Ownership


"Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. "We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves."
Not one commentator that I have heard or read has been willing to acknowledge Trayvon Martin's share of the responsibility for his death.  I think it is a shame that he was killed.  I think Zimmerman is a dope.  But engaging in a fistfight with someone you don't know in the dark and rain is dumb.  My interpretation of events is that Martin probably threw the first punch and probably was the only one to land any punches.  There wasn't a mark on him except for a mark on his knuckle, probably the consequence of punching Zimmerman. 
I have a good friend who spent more time than he should have in bars and in fights.  He warns against the practice because he said, "You never know what the other guy is carrying."  Initiating or engaging in fighting with grown men is risky.  Period.  When you do dumb things you can get bad results.

Liberal commentators have focused on the dispatcher telling Zimmerman not to get out of his truck.  I agree.  I wish he had stayed in his truck.  But getting out of his truck and following Martin did not give Martin the right to punch him out.  Getting out of the truck did not start a fight.  The first punch started the fight.  Martin had plenty of time to get home.  His father was 100 yards away.  His  girl friend told him to run.  He decided not to do so.

When liberal commentators absolve Martin of all responsibility they perpetuate the "victimology" of blacks.  Take ownership.  Recognize your share of the problem.  My same friend told me, "A problem well stated is half solved."  Denying a problem solves nothing.

Hags