When Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, it was considered a work of science fiction. The theme of “Atlas Shrugged”, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence." The book explores a number of themes that Rand would subsequently develop into the philosophy of Objectivism. She was sharply criticized for her ideas and her philosophy of “Objectivism” was denigrated as selfish and regressive in the light of the needs of the general public.
Despite these charges, “Atlas Shrugged” achieved enduring popularity and has maintained consistent sales in the following decades. In the wake of the late 2000s recession, sales of Atlas Shrugged have sharply increased, according to The Economist magazine and The New York Times. The Economist reported that the fifty-two-year-old novel ranked #33 among Amazon's top-selling books on January 13, 2009.
What is the new-found interest in this book? “Atlas Shrugged”, originally called “The Strike” by its working title, portrays an America much like we see today. Overbearing government regulations, distributive policies and a generally accepted point of view held by public officials that radical progressive action must be taken for the good of all and anyone opposed to those policies are disgraced and openly chastised.
In the book, one by one, leaders of industry were disappearing, leaving their businesses deserted and their workers displaced. The book does take an odd turn when those business owners begin to reappear as Objectivist pirates seeking to topple the existing system to establish a new government that promotes the virtues self-reliance for the good of their progeny.
No one really believes that pirates will begin raiding the United States in retaliation for government intervention and oppressive taxation but Atlas is apparently beginning to shrug. New York and California have been seeing a trend of wealthy citizens fleeing the latest round of taxes that have been unfairly levied on them. The computer age no longer necessitates that these people congregate in major centers of commerce since the internet itself, has become the lifeline. The point is, there is no longer any status associated with a Park Avenue address, particularly if that address comes with a personal income tax rate of nearly 60%, now that Healthcare Reform has actually passed. Is it really that bad? Well, the latest figures show that out of eight and a half million people in New York City, a little over forty-three thousand pay more than forty percent of the City's tax revenues. That is obscene by anyone's standards.
The tax exodus not a new trend; in 2006, the rate at which college graduates were escaping New York had risen 127% and the same problems plague California as job prospects evaporate and taxes climb skyward. The real problem for these two bastions of liberal politics and “social responsibility” is that the vacuum created by those that are leaving is being filled by people that do not possess the same earning power so state and city tax revenues have been steadily falling as well. Heaven forbid these states would re-evaluate their commitment to redistributive policy. No, they would prefer to find new revenue sources to fill the void.
The next tax adding to the burden is the so-called “millionaires tax” to fund part of the healthcare reform bill. The truth is the millionaires tax kicks in at income levels well below a million dollars and when combined with the existing tax burden experienced by New York residents, the top marginal rate will effectively be 57%. Since the exodus has begun, New York Governor David Patterson has been insistent that New York must adopt a tax system that is at least competitive with neighboring states and in fact, should consider tax incentives that encourage businesses to relocate to New York, not flee in fear. These ideas have not met with much favor among the more liberal members of the elected elite in New York and in fact, have cost Patterson his position as Governor of New York as the power brokers in NY politics pushed him out of the race.
Anyone looking at the unemployment figures knows that the stimulus plan hasn’t produced the economic results the government had hoped for. The first mistake was the stimulus money was doled out to recipients that understand job creation as poorly as the Federal government does; the Cities and States. It was spent in the worst possible ways with New York again, leading the pack. When comparing the number of jobs that were claimed to have been created directly through stimulus expenditures against the amount of money that was spent, the national average was seventy-three thousand dollars per job with New York reportedly spending nine million per job. As with any short term infusion of capital, the results are bound to be short term as well so we can imagine that those extraordinarily expensive jobs will disappear when the money does.
So why has the stimulus plan failed to deliver? Once again, Atlas is shrugging. Business owners are cringing as they look at the antics and bribes used in Washington to pass healthcare that are now being dusted off to pass the climate bill. Back door meetings and massive spending bills with threats of more taxes, penalties and mandates do not encourage small business to expand, let alone re-hire those that were laid off in last year’s economic downturn. Additionally, if the mandate for private business participation under the current healthcare proposal is fifty employees, how many companies with forty-nine employees will resist expansion and stay right where they are? How many companies with fifty-two employees will downsize to escape the mandates and worse yet, how many will decide that the benefits of operating a business in America just don’t make sense anymore?
The stock market hasn’t rallied yet either. Not only have the threats of increased capital gains taxes dissuaded participation, with the Federal Reserve running the printing presses on overtime, not even Treasury Bills look safe anymore. We also have a new ominous specter; the threat of direct government interference in business. 60% of General Motors is now owned by the Federal government, which should make any advocate of capitalism nervous. There have been executive salary caps placed on banks that received Tarp money and while the legality of that was still under debate, the government announced its plan to cap the executive salaries of all financial institutions since they fall under the regulatory jurisdiction of the Federal government. Following that logic, who is safe? After all, don’t all corporations fall under the regulatory jurisdiction of the Federal government at one level or another?
So what happens if Atlas truly does shrug? What would happen if owning a business became a liability as the Federal government placed more of the burden of America’s social programs on their shoulders in the form of new mandates? What happens if the wealthy decide that leaving New York or California doesn’t offer enough protection against confiscatory taxes? Will they leave the country? The “top one percent” that the Obama regime keeps targeting certainly has the means to do just that. In fact, many have the resources to pull out of the game entirely and live quite comfortably for the rest of their lives on what they have already accumulated. What would happen to the great plans of progressive politics if the top one percent stopped earning a taxable income and just started living? What would happen if the “top one percent” suddenly became people with incomes of one-hundred thousand dollars, eighty-thousand dollars or maybe fifty-thousand dollars when the real wealth in America decides they are not playing anymore?
Some argue that Europe has had massive social programs and progressive taxes for years and business still thrives there. Really? Greece is now on fire because the bills have finally come due and the rest of Europe is now teetering on the brink of fiscal disaster since all of their economies are tied together. The only real advantages Europe has is that European trade agreements favor those at home as does their patent process. Also true is that much of the European infrastructure is fairly new when compared to America’s. Don’t forget that much of Europe was destroyed and rebuilt after World War II. We don’t have that luxury and our older industrial centers find it continually harder to compete with our modernized competitors. Most of Europe has never embarked on the self destructive path of paying its people to stay home that began with Johnson’s “Great Society”.
We have created a new class of subsidized dependents. These are people that have been subjugated by an unfair social services system that demands that you either collect all from the government or get nothing. Fear of losing housing, healthcare and a meager cash allowance keeps them neatly enrolled in the system and insures that they will continue to vote for the people that promise the money will keep coming. After all, when you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul’s support. As unemployment increases and the wealthy “shrug”, who will keep these programs in place? We cannot print much more money or the world financial institutions will lock American currency out of the global economy. What will we do if Atlas does shrug?
Paul
Showing posts with label Cap and Trade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cap and Trade. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
The Green Movement - Eco Terror or Socialist Plot?
Out of all the nooks and crannies that socialists have infiltrated in our society, the environmental movement has proven the most productive. It has everything they need. Armies of passionate followers that can be easily swayed by tainted studies laced with falsified data as well as the urgency of crisis they need to force entire nations headlong into self-destructive legislation and international pacts under the guise of saving the planet Neither of which are acts that are designed to save the planet. It wasn’t always that way. Many environmental groups began life to protect endangered species, prevent deforestation and to insure our air and water were free of dangerous chemicals and poisons. It was only in the last 30 years that the “green” movement added political activism into their repertoire.
The groups that were formed around the environmental movement are now funded in large part by the same people and organizations that fund socialist efforts as well as the extreme left of the Democrat party and other progressive movements. One of the more notable “contributors’ is our old friend, George Soros. It seems that wherever there is a movement to defeat Capitalism in general and American Capitalism in particular, you always seem to find George and his check book. Another familiar donor to anti-American / anti-Capitalist environmental organizations is the Tides Foundation.
Established in 1976 by California-based activist Drummond Pike, the Tides Foundation was set up as a public charity that receives money from donors and then funnels it to the recipients of their choice. Because many of these recipient groups are quite radical, the donors often prefer not to have their names publicly linked with the recipients. By letting the Tides Foundation, in effect, "launder" the money for them and pass it along to the intended beneficiaries, donors can avoid leaving a "paper trail." Such contributions are called "donor-advised," or donor-directed, funds.
In 1996 the Tides Foundation created, with a $9 million seed grant, a separate but closely related entity called the Tides Center, also headed by Drummond Pike. The Tides Center functions as a legal firewall insulating the Tides Foundation from potential lawsuits filed by people whose livelihoods or well-being may be harmed by Foundation-funded projects. (Such as farmers or loggers who are put out of business by Tides-backed environmentalist groups.) In theory the Foundation's activities are restricted to fundraising and grant-making, while the Center focuses on managing projects and organizations; in practice, however, both entities do essentially the same thing.
The Tides Center's Board Chairman is Wade Rathke. Wade is also a member of the Tides Foundation Board. If you recall, Wade Rathke was a protégé of the late George Wiley, founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and a devout follower of Cloward and Piven. Maya Wiley, daughter of George Wiley, currently sits on the Tides Center's Board of Directors. In addition to his work with the Tides center, Rathke also serves as President of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and is also the founder and chief organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Isn’t funny how the same names keep popping up when the discussion is radical socialism?
One particularly notable donor to the Tides entities is Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Senator John Kerry. From 1994 to 2004, the Heinz Endowments, which Mrs. Kerry heads, gave the Tides Foundation and Center approximately $8.1 million in grants. Until February 2001, Mrs. Kerry also served as a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which also gave Tides numerous six-figure grants. I case you haven’t guessed; George Soros also infuses money into the Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation funnels money into hundreds of projects for the radical left including several dozen for the stated purpose of environmental sustainability. All of this draws Senator Kerry’s involvement with environmental legislation into serious question. With that kind of money changing hands, there must be a trade off. Has Kerry been promised a “soft landing” when the eco-activists finish tearing our Constitution and economy to shreds? Will these deals leave the Heinz-Kerry fortune one of the fortunate “untouchables” in a post-America, Socialist elite club with George Soros, Maurice Strong and Al Gore?
Getting into the groups themselves, Greenpeace must top the list. Founded in 1970 as a loose assortment of Canadian anti-nuclear agitators, American expatriates, and underground journalists calling themselves the "Don't Make a Wave Committee", Greenpeace, is today, the most influential group of the environmental Left. Its stated mission is to "use non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and force solutions for a green and peaceful future." After a schism in the late 1970s, the various organizations originally comprising Greenpeace have today united into 41 affiliates and two main branches, Greenpeace USA and the Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International.
One of the founders of Greenpeace was Irving Stowe (1915-1974) who was also on the executive board of Canada’s New Democratic Party. The New Democratic Party are Democratic Socialists that advocate many radical ideals including the abolition of the Canadian Senate. While they have never attained power over the Canadian Federal Government, they have had sufficient success in several provinces to be able to exert considerable political pressure.
Another of Greenpeace’s founders, Patrick Moore, left Greenpeace in 1986 after what he saw was a shift to a radical political ideology. He said in a statement that “Greenpeace today is motivated by politics rather than science and that none of his "fellow directors had any formal science education". In the 2007 film “The Great Global Warming Swindle, Moore commented: "See, I don't even like to call it the environmental movement anymore, because really it is a political activist movement, and they have become hugely influential at a global level.”
A prime example of socialists that discovered the environmental movement as a vehicle for their agenda is the group “Socialist Action”. Socialist Action is a nation-wide group of revolutionary socialists. In their own words: “We fight for a society organized to satisfy human needs, rather than corporate greed. We seek to revitalize the anti-war, labor, student and other social movements, and to bring activists together from different backgrounds into a revolutionary party that can successfully challenge the wealthy elite. As socialists we seek to understand the theory of Marxism, but as an activist group, we also seek to put those ideas into practice. Join us in the struggle to make a better world!”
Christine Frank of Socialist Action says: “We need to build a powerful and uncompromising environmental movement led by working people in alliance with other oppressed groups in society. In addition, we must infuse this new movement with eco-socialist principles that go beyond the maintenance of capitalism and its suicidal and genocidal policies and advance toward a zero-waste, democratically planned socialist economy that is green and sustainable and puts planetary and human needs before profits.”
Elmar Altvater is another Marxist that discovered the environmental movement could be used to further socialist policies. Mr. Altvater gained fame as one of Germany's most important Marxist philosophers, who strongly influenced the political and economic theory of the 1968 generation of radicals and is a renowned critic of "political economy" and author of numerous writings on his desire for globalization and his disgust of the free market. He suggests that there is only one “realistic alternative to oil imperialism; a shift from dependence on renewable energy sources, on the radiation energy released by the sun (and its derivatives such as photovoltaic, water, wave and biotic energy etc.), or on volcanic and geothermal energy”. He argues that “A society based on renewable instead of fossil energy sources must develop adequate technologies and above all social forms beyond capitalism.”
The Bullitt Foundation was established in 1952 by Dorothy S. Bullitt, who also created the King Broadcasting Company in Seattle. Denis Hayes, who was the national coordinator for the first Earth Day in 1970, is currently the Foundation's President. Hayes is a strong supporter of leftist political candidates, groups, and causes.The Bullitt Foundation, whose stated mission is "to protect, restore, and maintain the natural physical environment of the Pacific Northwest for present and future generations", directs its grants almost exclusively to radical environmental organizations whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner explains, is "not clean air and clean water, rather . . . the demolition of technological/industrial civilization." This philosophy is certainly aimed at using the environmental movement to further the group’s advocacy of destroying capitalist industry in favor of the establishment of socialism in the western nations.
Take your pick. When you research environmental groups, 90% are considered political activists and obtain funding from the same “progressive” sources. All have left-wing policies and many believe that only socialism will give society the tools it needs to stave off environmental disaster. The fact is that the United States has meaningful tools in place to prevent the irresponsible release in pollutants coupled with crippling fines and criminal prosecution for violators. In a socialist society, these safeguards would disappear as productivity drops, industries are lost and revenues to fund enforcement and remediation dwindle.
You must remember that wherever environmentalists have won the day, economic disaster followed closely. The logging industry in the Pacific Northwest was decimated in the 1990’s by the environmental campaign to preserve the spotted owl. Even though logging was banned in vast areas of the Pacific Northwest because this was purported to be the spotted owls “critical habitat”, in February 2008, a federal judge reinforced a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to designate 8,600,000 acres in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico as critical habitat for the owl as well. It just so happens that is prime cattle grazing area so is this just a move to cripple yet another U.S. industry to drive us deeper into financial crisis a la Cloward-Pivens?
Last summer, half a million acres of fertile California farmland in the San Joaquin Valley have turned to dust after the water used for irrigation was reduced by 90% to save the endangered “Delta Smelt”. The smelt was not being further endangered by falling water levels, but because they were being drawn into the pumps. All technical suggestions to alleviate that from happening were dismissed in favor of denying water to the farms. These are the same farms that provide 15% of all the produce consumed in the United States. These examples, as with so-called “global warming”, display that only one conclusion can be reached and that is, the “real inconvenient truth” is that this is not about the environment at all but about progressive socialism, political power and who will ultimately wield much of the power in the “New World Order".
The groups that were formed around the environmental movement are now funded in large part by the same people and organizations that fund socialist efforts as well as the extreme left of the Democrat party and other progressive movements. One of the more notable “contributors’ is our old friend, George Soros. It seems that wherever there is a movement to defeat Capitalism in general and American Capitalism in particular, you always seem to find George and his check book. Another familiar donor to anti-American / anti-Capitalist environmental organizations is the Tides Foundation.
Established in 1976 by California-based activist Drummond Pike, the Tides Foundation was set up as a public charity that receives money from donors and then funnels it to the recipients of their choice. Because many of these recipient groups are quite radical, the donors often prefer not to have their names publicly linked with the recipients. By letting the Tides Foundation, in effect, "launder" the money for them and pass it along to the intended beneficiaries, donors can avoid leaving a "paper trail." Such contributions are called "donor-advised," or donor-directed, funds.
In 1996 the Tides Foundation created, with a $9 million seed grant, a separate but closely related entity called the Tides Center, also headed by Drummond Pike. The Tides Center functions as a legal firewall insulating the Tides Foundation from potential lawsuits filed by people whose livelihoods or well-being may be harmed by Foundation-funded projects. (Such as farmers or loggers who are put out of business by Tides-backed environmentalist groups.) In theory the Foundation's activities are restricted to fundraising and grant-making, while the Center focuses on managing projects and organizations; in practice, however, both entities do essentially the same thing.
The Tides Center's Board Chairman is Wade Rathke. Wade is also a member of the Tides Foundation Board. If you recall, Wade Rathke was a protégé of the late George Wiley, founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and a devout follower of Cloward and Piven. Maya Wiley, daughter of George Wiley, currently sits on the Tides Center's Board of Directors. In addition to his work with the Tides center, Rathke also serves as President of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and is also the founder and chief organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Isn’t funny how the same names keep popping up when the discussion is radical socialism?
One particularly notable donor to the Tides entities is Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Senator John Kerry. From 1994 to 2004, the Heinz Endowments, which Mrs. Kerry heads, gave the Tides Foundation and Center approximately $8.1 million in grants. Until February 2001, Mrs. Kerry also served as a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which also gave Tides numerous six-figure grants. I case you haven’t guessed; George Soros also infuses money into the Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation funnels money into hundreds of projects for the radical left including several dozen for the stated purpose of environmental sustainability. All of this draws Senator Kerry’s involvement with environmental legislation into serious question. With that kind of money changing hands, there must be a trade off. Has Kerry been promised a “soft landing” when the eco-activists finish tearing our Constitution and economy to shreds? Will these deals leave the Heinz-Kerry fortune one of the fortunate “untouchables” in a post-America, Socialist elite club with George Soros, Maurice Strong and Al Gore?
Getting into the groups themselves, Greenpeace must top the list. Founded in 1970 as a loose assortment of Canadian anti-nuclear agitators, American expatriates, and underground journalists calling themselves the "Don't Make a Wave Committee", Greenpeace, is today, the most influential group of the environmental Left. Its stated mission is to "use non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and force solutions for a green and peaceful future." After a schism in the late 1970s, the various organizations originally comprising Greenpeace have today united into 41 affiliates and two main branches, Greenpeace USA and the Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International.
One of the founders of Greenpeace was Irving Stowe (1915-1974) who was also on the executive board of Canada’s New Democratic Party. The New Democratic Party are Democratic Socialists that advocate many radical ideals including the abolition of the Canadian Senate. While they have never attained power over the Canadian Federal Government, they have had sufficient success in several provinces to be able to exert considerable political pressure.
Another of Greenpeace’s founders, Patrick Moore, left Greenpeace in 1986 after what he saw was a shift to a radical political ideology. He said in a statement that “Greenpeace today is motivated by politics rather than science and that none of his "fellow directors had any formal science education". In the 2007 film “The Great Global Warming Swindle, Moore commented: "See, I don't even like to call it the environmental movement anymore, because really it is a political activist movement, and they have become hugely influential at a global level.”
A prime example of socialists that discovered the environmental movement as a vehicle for their agenda is the group “Socialist Action”. Socialist Action is a nation-wide group of revolutionary socialists. In their own words: “We fight for a society organized to satisfy human needs, rather than corporate greed. We seek to revitalize the anti-war, labor, student and other social movements, and to bring activists together from different backgrounds into a revolutionary party that can successfully challenge the wealthy elite. As socialists we seek to understand the theory of Marxism, but as an activist group, we also seek to put those ideas into practice. Join us in the struggle to make a better world!”
Christine Frank of Socialist Action says: “We need to build a powerful and uncompromising environmental movement led by working people in alliance with other oppressed groups in society. In addition, we must infuse this new movement with eco-socialist principles that go beyond the maintenance of capitalism and its suicidal and genocidal policies and advance toward a zero-waste, democratically planned socialist economy that is green and sustainable and puts planetary and human needs before profits.”
Elmar Altvater is another Marxist that discovered the environmental movement could be used to further socialist policies. Mr. Altvater gained fame as one of Germany's most important Marxist philosophers, who strongly influenced the political and economic theory of the 1968 generation of radicals and is a renowned critic of "political economy" and author of numerous writings on his desire for globalization and his disgust of the free market. He suggests that there is only one “realistic alternative to oil imperialism; a shift from dependence on renewable energy sources, on the radiation energy released by the sun (and its derivatives such as photovoltaic, water, wave and biotic energy etc.), or on volcanic and geothermal energy”. He argues that “A society based on renewable instead of fossil energy sources must develop adequate technologies and above all social forms beyond capitalism.”
The Bullitt Foundation was established in 1952 by Dorothy S. Bullitt, who also created the King Broadcasting Company in Seattle. Denis Hayes, who was the national coordinator for the first Earth Day in 1970, is currently the Foundation's President. Hayes is a strong supporter of leftist political candidates, groups, and causes.The Bullitt Foundation, whose stated mission is "to protect, restore, and maintain the natural physical environment of the Pacific Northwest for present and future generations", directs its grants almost exclusively to radical environmental organizations whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner explains, is "not clean air and clean water, rather . . . the demolition of technological/industrial civilization." This philosophy is certainly aimed at using the environmental movement to further the group’s advocacy of destroying capitalist industry in favor of the establishment of socialism in the western nations.
Take your pick. When you research environmental groups, 90% are considered political activists and obtain funding from the same “progressive” sources. All have left-wing policies and many believe that only socialism will give society the tools it needs to stave off environmental disaster. The fact is that the United States has meaningful tools in place to prevent the irresponsible release in pollutants coupled with crippling fines and criminal prosecution for violators. In a socialist society, these safeguards would disappear as productivity drops, industries are lost and revenues to fund enforcement and remediation dwindle.
You must remember that wherever environmentalists have won the day, economic disaster followed closely. The logging industry in the Pacific Northwest was decimated in the 1990’s by the environmental campaign to preserve the spotted owl. Even though logging was banned in vast areas of the Pacific Northwest because this was purported to be the spotted owls “critical habitat”, in February 2008, a federal judge reinforced a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to designate 8,600,000 acres in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico as critical habitat for the owl as well. It just so happens that is prime cattle grazing area so is this just a move to cripple yet another U.S. industry to drive us deeper into financial crisis a la Cloward-Pivens?
Last summer, half a million acres of fertile California farmland in the San Joaquin Valley have turned to dust after the water used for irrigation was reduced by 90% to save the endangered “Delta Smelt”. The smelt was not being further endangered by falling water levels, but because they were being drawn into the pumps. All technical suggestions to alleviate that from happening were dismissed in favor of denying water to the farms. These are the same farms that provide 15% of all the produce consumed in the United States. These examples, as with so-called “global warming”, display that only one conclusion can be reached and that is, the “real inconvenient truth” is that this is not about the environment at all but about progressive socialism, political power and who will ultimately wield much of the power in the “New World Order".
Paul
Thursday, May 13, 2010
No Climate Change? Rename the Climate Bill - The American Power Act
I have often said that the environmental movement is the new home for socialists and radicals that seek to bring us to a one world, socialist government. It used to be that the environmentalists were concerned with preserving the environment and protecting wildlife. Now radical social engineers have seized the movement and have laced these efforts with programs designed to hack away at the structure of capitalism while funneling money and industry out of the US and into the third world. To make the case, I will begin with the familiar faces in all of this; the Obama administration Czars and Al Gore and eventually move on to the organizations that are being used to promote this on a grand scale. Yes, they are being used. Even Lenin called leftist journalists and Marxists in the Western nations “Useful Idiots” because they were so willing and yet, had no idea of what they would eventually be doing to themselves.
The argument for global warming has a number of critics that have apparently been shut out of the debates. No less than 30,000 scientists have claimed that their work has been summarily dismissed and their data and findings have been refused entry into discussions and debates on the subject. It seems that anything or anyone that does not support the race to enact sweeping climate legislation is being swept aside. This is not isolated to the work of independent researchers. Several scientists working directly for the EPA were driven out of the agency for insisting that this data be seriously reviewed.
The Data suggesting that global warming is not a man-made effect, but rather, a natural phenomenon is starting gain traction and in fact, the real data suggests that the trend in rising global temperatures already peaked in 1989 and is subsiding, lending even more credence to the natural phenomenon theories. But the race goes on. After the news broke about manipulated data and damaging e-mails surrounding the so-called “climate researchers”, the sinister powers behind this scam have simply renamed the Climate Bill “The American Power Act” to hide the connection between the people that will gain from this and the crippled global warming argument. The name change is being attempted to try and fool people into believing that this is about revitalizing our power systems instead of admitting it is about the power that will be stolen from the American people. This legislation will damage industry in the U.S., strain our already challenged economy and remove your basic freedom to decide how much power you will personally use by making it too expensive to purchase. It isn’t all bad though…some people are positioned to make enormous amounts of money because they are strategically invested to gain from the Climate Bill or the America Power Act, as it is now being called.
Al Gore received much notoriety over his film “An Inconvenient Truth” but the real inconvenience is that a number of his facts were improperly arrived at and there are some serious flaws with the claims this film has made and in the data used to formulate those claims. Even though the UK Supreme court decided that the flaws in the film are significant enough to require schools in Great Britain that wish to show the film pass out an accompanying list of corrections, Mr. Gore feels no compelling reason to answer questions about those inconsistencies. The sad fact is that Mr. Gore has already made millions from that film and has made technology investments that will net him billions if the U.S. Climate Bill passes into law. He is now making sizable investments with the money he earned through his film to fund activist groups that favor the American Power Act. Now isn’t that curious?
Then there is Carol Browner, the White House "Climate Czar". She headed the EPA during both terms of the Clinton presidency, making her the longest-serving Administrator in the agency's history. Carol Browner received her education in the University of Florida. Coincidentally, that is the same school that N. David Cook attended. You remember Dr. Cook. He is the man that started the hate rhetoric about Christopher Columbus and the evil European explorers the infected the new world.
On Browner’s final day as Clinton EPA chief in 2001, she ordered a computer technician to delete all her computer files, in direct violation of a federal judge's order requiring the agency to preserve those files. When questioned about her actions, Browner claimed that her computer had contained no work-related material, and that she had merely purged the hard drive of such innocuous items as computer games as a courtesy to incoming staffers of the Bush administration. It was later learned that three additional high-ranking EPA officials had also violated the court order and erased their hard drives as well. Because of this, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth held the EPA in contempt of court. Were all the high ranking officials of the Clinton era EPA playing games on their office computers or was there something that had to be deleted? Remember the Coward-Piven Strategy can only be successful if its use remains secret.
Of course an almost manic desire for secrecy is nothing new for Carol Browner or for that matter, the Obama administration. In recent meetings Browner had with U.S. Auto manufacturers regarding the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards, it was disclosed by a participant in those meetings that Ms. Browner ordered that no notes were to be taken and none of the meeting issues were to be discussed outside of the meeting. This is a very troubling revelation when we are discussion an appointee that promised his administration would finally offer the American people transparency in their government. We thought he meant openness but apparently his interpretation of transparency has more to do with invisibility.
Browner is a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS), which is a formal organ of Socialist International. Oddly enough, the group's web site was recently scrubbed to remove Browner's picture and biography, but her name is still listed next to the photo-biographies of her 14 colleagues on the commission. Socialist International (SI), the umbrella group for 170 "social democratic, socialist and labor parties" in 55 countries. SI's "organizing document" cites capitalism as the cause of "devastating crises," "mass unemployment," "imperialist expansion," and "colonial exploitation" worldwide. The Commission for a Sustainable World Society, with which Browner worked, contends that "the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”
There’s another one of those curious little points. Only the “developed world” would be required by the U.N.’s climate initiatives to “reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions." Even though developing nation’s manufacturing and industrial centers use fuels and manufacturing processes that are far more damaging to the ecology than developed nations, they would be exempt. Instead of a comprehensive climate program to reduce harmful emissions, that sounds more like a social program designed to shift industrial growth from Western Democracies to the third world. It also sounds incredibly similar to the mission statement from Carol Browner’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society.
Well what do you know? Just when we needed proof that Ms. Browner’s agenda has more to do with changing the United States economic system than it does with changing the climate, along comes Cass Sunstein the White House “Regulatory Czar”. Mr. Sunstein penned a 2007 University of Chicago Law School paper with fellow attorney Eric A. Posner, in which he debated whether America should pay "justice" to the world by entering into a compensation agreement that would be a net financial loss for the U.S. He argues it is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth to poorer nations.
Throughout Sunstein's paper, entitled "Climate Change Justice", he maintains U.S. wealth should be redistributed to poorer nations. The paper makes references to terms such as "distributive justice" several times throughout the 39 page document. In the paper Sunstein says: "It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid," He adds: "We agree that if the United States does spend a great deal on emissions reductions as part of an international agreement, and if the agreement does give particular help to disadvantaged people, considerations of distributive justice support its action, even if better redistributive mechanisms are imaginable.”
Sunstein also suggests "If the United States agrees to participate in a climate change agreement on terms that are not in the nation's interest, but that help the world as a whole, there would be no reason for complaint, certainly if such participation is more helpful to poor nations than conventional foreign-aid alternatives". He also maintains: "If we care about social welfare, we should approve of a situation in which a wealthy nation is willing to engage in a degree of self-sacrifice when the world benefits more than that nation loses.”
Of course, if I am going to post quotes from the Obama administration how could I possibly forget Obama’s former green jobs Czar, Van Jones. He may be gone, but he is definitely not forgotten. Mr. Jones is an invaluable addition to this collection because he cared so little about what he said out loud. His quotes and video statements can still be easily found on the internet, mostly because there is no longer a need to hide them. In the end, it was not his racist statements that white businesses were steering pollution into minority neighborhoods, nor his open admission that he was a communist that forced his resignation from the White House. It wasn’t even unceasing rhetoric about how they would use the farce of “green jobs” to steer billions of dollars to ease, what he considered, racial injustices. He was forced to resign because he was one of the radical fools that signed a petition demanding the Bush administration admit their guilt in concocting the 9/11 attacks so they could launch a war on Islam.
The only reason I feel compelled to mention his quotes now, is because after researching Carol Browner and Cass Sunstein, it is clear that he was not bubbling over with his own idea of what should be. His statements are directly in line with too many of Obama’s other special advisors not to be bullet points in their plan to reshape global politics. For instance, Van Jones said: “The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.”
He also said: “All the big ideas for getting us onto a lower carbon trajectory involve a lot of people doing a lot of work, and that's been missing from the conversation. This is a great time to go to the next step and ask, well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to invest in the new technologies? What are ways to get communities wealth, improved health, and expanded job opportunities out of this improved transition?” Both of those quotes sound a lot like Sunstein’s proposals on redistribution and a plan to correct some of the ills that Browner blames on capitalism.
Some may say that wanting to put people to work and provide healthcare might be social programs, but is Mr. Jones really suggesting socialism? Well, read on because he also said "…But, inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1964 to 1968 complete revolution was on the table for this country. And, I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps and stages. Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we're not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that's a process and I think that's what's great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.”
So there it is in his own words. A green movement should pursue the same steps and stages as the radical movement that nearly brought us to revolution in the mid ‘60s? A green movement that they will push and push, not to transform the energy economy as we were told, but to transform the “whole society”? The idea that this is all being brought about by a multitude of converging crisis’s to force us into drastic action also sounds way too much like Cloward and Piven to be a coincidence.
Neither the Climate Bill, Cap and Trade, the UN accords on Climate Change nor the “green movement” has anything to do with greenhouse gasses or global warming. They have everything to do with seeing America surrender its wealth and production capabilities to give some of those poor, struggling third world nations a chance to grow. This is simply a tool for the transfer of American power, money and industries abroad; to strengthen the UN and other “world governance organizations and prepare the US citizenry for a life securely bound in the Marxist yoke.
The argument for global warming has a number of critics that have apparently been shut out of the debates. No less than 30,000 scientists have claimed that their work has been summarily dismissed and their data and findings have been refused entry into discussions and debates on the subject. It seems that anything or anyone that does not support the race to enact sweeping climate legislation is being swept aside. This is not isolated to the work of independent researchers. Several scientists working directly for the EPA were driven out of the agency for insisting that this data be seriously reviewed.
The Data suggesting that global warming is not a man-made effect, but rather, a natural phenomenon is starting gain traction and in fact, the real data suggests that the trend in rising global temperatures already peaked in 1989 and is subsiding, lending even more credence to the natural phenomenon theories. But the race goes on. After the news broke about manipulated data and damaging e-mails surrounding the so-called “climate researchers”, the sinister powers behind this scam have simply renamed the Climate Bill “The American Power Act” to hide the connection between the people that will gain from this and the crippled global warming argument. The name change is being attempted to try and fool people into believing that this is about revitalizing our power systems instead of admitting it is about the power that will be stolen from the American people. This legislation will damage industry in the U.S., strain our already challenged economy and remove your basic freedom to decide how much power you will personally use by making it too expensive to purchase. It isn’t all bad though…some people are positioned to make enormous amounts of money because they are strategically invested to gain from the Climate Bill or the America Power Act, as it is now being called.
Al Gore received much notoriety over his film “An Inconvenient Truth” but the real inconvenience is that a number of his facts were improperly arrived at and there are some serious flaws with the claims this film has made and in the data used to formulate those claims. Even though the UK Supreme court decided that the flaws in the film are significant enough to require schools in Great Britain that wish to show the film pass out an accompanying list of corrections, Mr. Gore feels no compelling reason to answer questions about those inconsistencies. The sad fact is that Mr. Gore has already made millions from that film and has made technology investments that will net him billions if the U.S. Climate Bill passes into law. He is now making sizable investments with the money he earned through his film to fund activist groups that favor the American Power Act. Now isn’t that curious?
Then there is Carol Browner, the White House "Climate Czar". She headed the EPA during both terms of the Clinton presidency, making her the longest-serving Administrator in the agency's history. Carol Browner received her education in the University of Florida. Coincidentally, that is the same school that N. David Cook attended. You remember Dr. Cook. He is the man that started the hate rhetoric about Christopher Columbus and the evil European explorers the infected the new world.
On Browner’s final day as Clinton EPA chief in 2001, she ordered a computer technician to delete all her computer files, in direct violation of a federal judge's order requiring the agency to preserve those files. When questioned about her actions, Browner claimed that her computer had contained no work-related material, and that she had merely purged the hard drive of such innocuous items as computer games as a courtesy to incoming staffers of the Bush administration. It was later learned that three additional high-ranking EPA officials had also violated the court order and erased their hard drives as well. Because of this, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth held the EPA in contempt of court. Were all the high ranking officials of the Clinton era EPA playing games on their office computers or was there something that had to be deleted? Remember the Coward-Piven Strategy can only be successful if its use remains secret.
Of course an almost manic desire for secrecy is nothing new for Carol Browner or for that matter, the Obama administration. In recent meetings Browner had with U.S. Auto manufacturers regarding the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards, it was disclosed by a participant in those meetings that Ms. Browner ordered that no notes were to be taken and none of the meeting issues were to be discussed outside of the meeting. This is a very troubling revelation when we are discussion an appointee that promised his administration would finally offer the American people transparency in their government. We thought he meant openness but apparently his interpretation of transparency has more to do with invisibility.
Browner is a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS), which is a formal organ of Socialist International. Oddly enough, the group's web site was recently scrubbed to remove Browner's picture and biography, but her name is still listed next to the photo-biographies of her 14 colleagues on the commission. Socialist International (SI), the umbrella group for 170 "social democratic, socialist and labor parties" in 55 countries. SI's "organizing document" cites capitalism as the cause of "devastating crises," "mass unemployment," "imperialist expansion," and "colonial exploitation" worldwide. The Commission for a Sustainable World Society, with which Browner worked, contends that "the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”
There’s another one of those curious little points. Only the “developed world” would be required by the U.N.’s climate initiatives to “reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions." Even though developing nation’s manufacturing and industrial centers use fuels and manufacturing processes that are far more damaging to the ecology than developed nations, they would be exempt. Instead of a comprehensive climate program to reduce harmful emissions, that sounds more like a social program designed to shift industrial growth from Western Democracies to the third world. It also sounds incredibly similar to the mission statement from Carol Browner’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society.
Well what do you know? Just when we needed proof that Ms. Browner’s agenda has more to do with changing the United States economic system than it does with changing the climate, along comes Cass Sunstein the White House “Regulatory Czar”. Mr. Sunstein penned a 2007 University of Chicago Law School paper with fellow attorney Eric A. Posner, in which he debated whether America should pay "justice" to the world by entering into a compensation agreement that would be a net financial loss for the U.S. He argues it is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth to poorer nations.
Throughout Sunstein's paper, entitled "Climate Change Justice", he maintains U.S. wealth should be redistributed to poorer nations. The paper makes references to terms such as "distributive justice" several times throughout the 39 page document. In the paper Sunstein says: "It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid," He adds: "We agree that if the United States does spend a great deal on emissions reductions as part of an international agreement, and if the agreement does give particular help to disadvantaged people, considerations of distributive justice support its action, even if better redistributive mechanisms are imaginable.”
Sunstein also suggests "If the United States agrees to participate in a climate change agreement on terms that are not in the nation's interest, but that help the world as a whole, there would be no reason for complaint, certainly if such participation is more helpful to poor nations than conventional foreign-aid alternatives". He also maintains: "If we care about social welfare, we should approve of a situation in which a wealthy nation is willing to engage in a degree of self-sacrifice when the world benefits more than that nation loses.”
Of course, if I am going to post quotes from the Obama administration how could I possibly forget Obama’s former green jobs Czar, Van Jones. He may be gone, but he is definitely not forgotten. Mr. Jones is an invaluable addition to this collection because he cared so little about what he said out loud. His quotes and video statements can still be easily found on the internet, mostly because there is no longer a need to hide them. In the end, it was not his racist statements that white businesses were steering pollution into minority neighborhoods, nor his open admission that he was a communist that forced his resignation from the White House. It wasn’t even unceasing rhetoric about how they would use the farce of “green jobs” to steer billions of dollars to ease, what he considered, racial injustices. He was forced to resign because he was one of the radical fools that signed a petition demanding the Bush administration admit their guilt in concocting the 9/11 attacks so they could launch a war on Islam.
The only reason I feel compelled to mention his quotes now, is because after researching Carol Browner and Cass Sunstein, it is clear that he was not bubbling over with his own idea of what should be. His statements are directly in line with too many of Obama’s other special advisors not to be bullet points in their plan to reshape global politics. For instance, Van Jones said: “The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.”
He also said: “All the big ideas for getting us onto a lower carbon trajectory involve a lot of people doing a lot of work, and that's been missing from the conversation. This is a great time to go to the next step and ask, well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to invest in the new technologies? What are ways to get communities wealth, improved health, and expanded job opportunities out of this improved transition?” Both of those quotes sound a lot like Sunstein’s proposals on redistribution and a plan to correct some of the ills that Browner blames on capitalism.
Some may say that wanting to put people to work and provide healthcare might be social programs, but is Mr. Jones really suggesting socialism? Well, read on because he also said "…But, inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1964 to 1968 complete revolution was on the table for this country. And, I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps and stages. Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we're not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that's a process and I think that's what's great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.”
So there it is in his own words. A green movement should pursue the same steps and stages as the radical movement that nearly brought us to revolution in the mid ‘60s? A green movement that they will push and push, not to transform the energy economy as we were told, but to transform the “whole society”? The idea that this is all being brought about by a multitude of converging crisis’s to force us into drastic action also sounds way too much like Cloward and Piven to be a coincidence.
Neither the Climate Bill, Cap and Trade, the UN accords on Climate Change nor the “green movement” has anything to do with greenhouse gasses or global warming. They have everything to do with seeing America surrender its wealth and production capabilities to give some of those poor, struggling third world nations a chance to grow. This is simply a tool for the transfer of American power, money and industries abroad; to strengthen the UN and other “world governance organizations and prepare the US citizenry for a life securely bound in the Marxist yoke.
Paul
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The Obama Plan: Plenty of Change But Little Hope
As if the Obama administration wanted to help me make the point I was illustrating in yesterday’s article, a new flurry of regulatory threats are now emanating from the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Apparently the government is taking its stance on healthcare very seriously now that they have made themselves a fixture in your health insurance and by virtue of that, a fixture in your health care decisions. In addition to everything we have already heard in the healthcare bill, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now posturing itself to regulate the amount of salt in your foods. This is changing the focus of the agency from protecting you against tainted or diseased foods and assuming the role of deciding what you should eat because a bureaucrat can now decide it is not good for you.
Food without salt through government edict? Somehow I just don’t think that Washington is listening to us. We want government out of our lives; not taking control of our most basic choices. The people that should not have added salt in their foods because of a medical condition already know what they can and cannot have and have been making those decisions for themselves ever since doctors made the link between food and health. Necessarily, the regulation of salt would put some foods normally high in this once crucial condiment on the chopping block. I’m not sure you can even make bacon without salt and even if you could, would it be worth eating? Can you imagine a pretzel that didn’t have a healthy sprinkling of course salt or the summertime favorite, margaritas by the pool without salt encrusting the rim of the glass? New York is already going down this road and it is driving chefs crazy in the Big Apple. Professional cooks know there is nothing more basic to great tasting foods than the salt that enhances the natural flavor of nearly everything it touches.
Unfortunately, we now have a slew of radical advisors in positions of power within the White House and administrative agencies. Some, like Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory Czar that also has a keen interest in animal rights, would prefer to see America abstain from eating meats as well. If we allow the FDA to pick our seasonings; can a government selection of our main course be that far behind? Sunstein’s beliefs are centered on government control of the masses, he also recognizes that direct regulatory actions can at times, be counter productive. Rather than risking confrontation with the people, Sunstein prefers a clandestine approach that would guide the actions of Americans while giving people the illusion of free choice. This would be accomplished by broadening government regulatory authority to limit the range of options people would be offered. Of course, those regulations would be imposed on manufacturers and industries so the resulting limits placed on American citizens would not be such an obvious intrusion of government.
In a 2008 book he co-authored with Richard Thaler titled: “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Sunstein speculates that we should maintain an illusion of liberty where personal decisions are concerned by having the government “nudge” people to make better decisions. Obviously Mr. Sunstein believes that the learned scholars of his alma mater, Harvard, or the Washington agencies chock full of “deep thinkers” are in a far better position to make those critical choices for you. Sunstein’s book is not ashamed to mention that the regulatory power of government and a liberal application of the tax structure could easily be used to nudge people to make “correct” decisions based on the government definition of correct. Just the idea that he thinks that this coercion process is acceptable in a free society protected by unalienable rights deeply concerns me. Our freedoms and rights would have to be, at the very least, “trimmed” before any nudging could lawfully take place. Of course, if the nudge was gentle and hidden under the guise of the “regulation of commerce”, the question of government interference with personal liberties may never actually make headlines.
Even more insidious are the recent actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). EPA chief Lisa Jackson, recently declared an endangerment finding against Carbon Dioxide and several other so-called “greenhouse gases”. The finding allows the agency broad powers to regulate these gases under the existing authority granted to the agency under the Clean Air Act; avoiding the need for Congressional action all together. The purpose is clear. The President wants his Energy Bill (Cap and Trade) passed because of the enormous tax revenues that will be collected under the false premise of protecting the environment. Many in Congress recognize the dangers of this bill and the damage it will do to our economy so the passage of this bill is in question. Much of the resistance is due to the fact that the President’s Energy Bill offers absolutely no benefit to the environment. The general knowledge that the science behind global warming and climate change has been tainted with news of corrupt data and a concerted effort to silence dissent and debate has further complicated passage of the bill.
In the face of the uncertain future of the Energy Bill, the EPA has threatened to use their endangerment finding to impose regulatory sanctions on Carbon emissions in an attempt to blackmail Congress. Jackson argues that regulatory sanctions would be far more damaging to the US economy than the Cap and Trade Bill; in essence, telling Congress they must now pick the lesser of two evils but is climate change what this is really about? China, the world’s largest producer of CO2 and India, another mass producer of the questionable gas, have already said they will not sign an agreement to reduce their Carbon emissions. Best estimates say that the Carbon reduction proposed in the US energy bill will reduce global temperatures by a mere one tenth of one degree Celsius by the year 2050 and the cost factors to achieve this inconsequential reduction stagger the mind.
The implementation of the President’s Energy Bill may show a net decrease in the Carbon emission produced by US industries but the reality is that these Carbon emissions will only have been transferred to foreign nations that have not burdened themselves with self destructive legislative agreements to reduce their Carbon output. This will place the US at a disadvantage as business weighs the cost of these new regulations and that cost difference will drive manufacturers to nations where profitability is still possible. Curiously, this crucial Energy Bill does not place punitive taxes on goods coming from nations that have not agreed to reduce their Carbon output so how serious are we about actually reducing Carbon emissions to “save” the planet? This bill will only allow foreign nations to steal our few remaining industries, forcing millions more into unemployment while facing exponentially rising costs for electricity and fuels right here at home.
Lisa Jackson said something else in a recent speech that is crucial to deciphering the President’s interest in Cap and Trade. Radical Communist Van Jones, former Green Jobs Czar for the Obama administration, had once accused “white polluters” of intentionally steering poisons into minority communities; leaving many of us scratching our heads and wondering what the hell he was talking about. Now Lisa Jackson says that instances of pollution and environmental degradation are disproportionately higher in low income and minority communities across America and to combat this, the EPA is building up their “environmental justice” team. The United States Congress had passed the Clean Air Act in 1963 with major amendments added to strengthen it in 1970 and again, in 1990. Congress followed that with the Clean Water Act in 1972 which was also amended and strengthened in 1977 and 1987. Since we have already entrusted the government with monitoring pollution and gave them the teeth to aggressively fine violators of these comprehensive environmental laws how can there be such an alarming pollution problem in America, let alone a disparity in the distribution of that pollution if the EPA and other Federal agencies were actually doing their jobs?
If the legislation was impotent after two or more amendments or the EPA was disinterested or incapable of performing their duties with the strength of the legislation already at their disposal, then why should we believe that a multi-trillion dollar energy bill will make them any better at what they do? Secondly, if there is irrefutable evidence that there is a disproportionate amount of pollution being steered into low income and minority communities, then a hate crime has been committed and the Justice Department has also fallen down on the job as well. Since Lisa Jackson has been with the EPA for twenty years now….what is her part in this conspiracy? Carol Browner, Obama’s Climate Czar, was the head of the EPA under Bill Clinton so what did she know; when did she know it and does that mean indictments are on the way?
The truth is there is no conspiracy; there is no alarming disparity in the level of pollution by community and there is no climate change that isn’t a natural process of a dynamic earth. This is another attempt at the enactment of this administration’s redistributive wish list because, as Barack Obama said, “I don’t believe in reparations (for slavery) because reparations don’t go far enough.” This is not a redistribution of wealth to level some imaginary Progressive playing field. This is a massive redistribution scheme designed to overturn the entire wealth structure of the United States and any policy instituted by government that seeks to pit one segment of the populace against another, must be by its intent, unconstitutional.
Paul
Food without salt through government edict? Somehow I just don’t think that Washington is listening to us. We want government out of our lives; not taking control of our most basic choices. The people that should not have added salt in their foods because of a medical condition already know what they can and cannot have and have been making those decisions for themselves ever since doctors made the link between food and health. Necessarily, the regulation of salt would put some foods normally high in this once crucial condiment on the chopping block. I’m not sure you can even make bacon without salt and even if you could, would it be worth eating? Can you imagine a pretzel that didn’t have a healthy sprinkling of course salt or the summertime favorite, margaritas by the pool without salt encrusting the rim of the glass? New York is already going down this road and it is driving chefs crazy in the Big Apple. Professional cooks know there is nothing more basic to great tasting foods than the salt that enhances the natural flavor of nearly everything it touches.
Unfortunately, we now have a slew of radical advisors in positions of power within the White House and administrative agencies. Some, like Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory Czar that also has a keen interest in animal rights, would prefer to see America abstain from eating meats as well. If we allow the FDA to pick our seasonings; can a government selection of our main course be that far behind? Sunstein’s beliefs are centered on government control of the masses, he also recognizes that direct regulatory actions can at times, be counter productive. Rather than risking confrontation with the people, Sunstein prefers a clandestine approach that would guide the actions of Americans while giving people the illusion of free choice. This would be accomplished by broadening government regulatory authority to limit the range of options people would be offered. Of course, those regulations would be imposed on manufacturers and industries so the resulting limits placed on American citizens would not be such an obvious intrusion of government.
In a 2008 book he co-authored with Richard Thaler titled: “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Sunstein speculates that we should maintain an illusion of liberty where personal decisions are concerned by having the government “nudge” people to make better decisions. Obviously Mr. Sunstein believes that the learned scholars of his alma mater, Harvard, or the Washington agencies chock full of “deep thinkers” are in a far better position to make those critical choices for you. Sunstein’s book is not ashamed to mention that the regulatory power of government and a liberal application of the tax structure could easily be used to nudge people to make “correct” decisions based on the government definition of correct. Just the idea that he thinks that this coercion process is acceptable in a free society protected by unalienable rights deeply concerns me. Our freedoms and rights would have to be, at the very least, “trimmed” before any nudging could lawfully take place. Of course, if the nudge was gentle and hidden under the guise of the “regulation of commerce”, the question of government interference with personal liberties may never actually make headlines.
Even more insidious are the recent actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). EPA chief Lisa Jackson, recently declared an endangerment finding against Carbon Dioxide and several other so-called “greenhouse gases”. The finding allows the agency broad powers to regulate these gases under the existing authority granted to the agency under the Clean Air Act; avoiding the need for Congressional action all together. The purpose is clear. The President wants his Energy Bill (Cap and Trade) passed because of the enormous tax revenues that will be collected under the false premise of protecting the environment. Many in Congress recognize the dangers of this bill and the damage it will do to our economy so the passage of this bill is in question. Much of the resistance is due to the fact that the President’s Energy Bill offers absolutely no benefit to the environment. The general knowledge that the science behind global warming and climate change has been tainted with news of corrupt data and a concerted effort to silence dissent and debate has further complicated passage of the bill.
In the face of the uncertain future of the Energy Bill, the EPA has threatened to use their endangerment finding to impose regulatory sanctions on Carbon emissions in an attempt to blackmail Congress. Jackson argues that regulatory sanctions would be far more damaging to the US economy than the Cap and Trade Bill; in essence, telling Congress they must now pick the lesser of two evils but is climate change what this is really about? China, the world’s largest producer of CO2 and India, another mass producer of the questionable gas, have already said they will not sign an agreement to reduce their Carbon emissions. Best estimates say that the Carbon reduction proposed in the US energy bill will reduce global temperatures by a mere one tenth of one degree Celsius by the year 2050 and the cost factors to achieve this inconsequential reduction stagger the mind.
The implementation of the President’s Energy Bill may show a net decrease in the Carbon emission produced by US industries but the reality is that these Carbon emissions will only have been transferred to foreign nations that have not burdened themselves with self destructive legislative agreements to reduce their Carbon output. This will place the US at a disadvantage as business weighs the cost of these new regulations and that cost difference will drive manufacturers to nations where profitability is still possible. Curiously, this crucial Energy Bill does not place punitive taxes on goods coming from nations that have not agreed to reduce their Carbon output so how serious are we about actually reducing Carbon emissions to “save” the planet? This bill will only allow foreign nations to steal our few remaining industries, forcing millions more into unemployment while facing exponentially rising costs for electricity and fuels right here at home.
Lisa Jackson said something else in a recent speech that is crucial to deciphering the President’s interest in Cap and Trade. Radical Communist Van Jones, former Green Jobs Czar for the Obama administration, had once accused “white polluters” of intentionally steering poisons into minority communities; leaving many of us scratching our heads and wondering what the hell he was talking about. Now Lisa Jackson says that instances of pollution and environmental degradation are disproportionately higher in low income and minority communities across America and to combat this, the EPA is building up their “environmental justice” team. The United States Congress had passed the Clean Air Act in 1963 with major amendments added to strengthen it in 1970 and again, in 1990. Congress followed that with the Clean Water Act in 1972 which was also amended and strengthened in 1977 and 1987. Since we have already entrusted the government with monitoring pollution and gave them the teeth to aggressively fine violators of these comprehensive environmental laws how can there be such an alarming pollution problem in America, let alone a disparity in the distribution of that pollution if the EPA and other Federal agencies were actually doing their jobs?
If the legislation was impotent after two or more amendments or the EPA was disinterested or incapable of performing their duties with the strength of the legislation already at their disposal, then why should we believe that a multi-trillion dollar energy bill will make them any better at what they do? Secondly, if there is irrefutable evidence that there is a disproportionate amount of pollution being steered into low income and minority communities, then a hate crime has been committed and the Justice Department has also fallen down on the job as well. Since Lisa Jackson has been with the EPA for twenty years now….what is her part in this conspiracy? Carol Browner, Obama’s Climate Czar, was the head of the EPA under Bill Clinton so what did she know; when did she know it and does that mean indictments are on the way?
The truth is there is no conspiracy; there is no alarming disparity in the level of pollution by community and there is no climate change that isn’t a natural process of a dynamic earth. This is another attempt at the enactment of this administration’s redistributive wish list because, as Barack Obama said, “I don’t believe in reparations (for slavery) because reparations don’t go far enough.” This is not a redistribution of wealth to level some imaginary Progressive playing field. This is a massive redistribution scheme designed to overturn the entire wealth structure of the United States and any policy instituted by government that seeks to pit one segment of the populace against another, must be by its intent, unconstitutional.
Paul
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
More Tax and Spend But Where Are The Jobs?
So the news these days is that the stock market is rallying after the passage of healthcare and the stimulus bill is finally bringing us out of the recession. Newsweek (or is it News Weak? I never can remember) ran a story recently that America is back; claiming the recession is over. Well, if we are actually recovering from the recession, where are the jobs? The increase we see in the Dow has nothing to do with the stimulus bill and while it is on the rise, it is not because companies are hopeful about healthcare savings but because they are trying to mitigate the negative effects the tax increases will bring in the future.
There are massive new taxes on the way because of the healthcare bill in addition to the increases business will see after the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. Corporations operate under different tax rules than private citizens and are able to shift their losses around to offset earnings where it will provide the most benefit. In fact, corporations can amend previous returns and move losses back three years or use them as far as twenty years into the future to offset future income. That is what we are seeing this year in the Dow. Companies know their taxes will be substantially higher in 2011 and are posting their income in 2010 when the taxes aren’t great, but they aren’t as insane as they will be next year. Once the tax cuts disappear and the new tax impositions from the healthcare bill are in place, the losses and expenses from this year will be used to offset the tax liabilities in 2011 and that will have a drastic effect on the Dow Jones.
Reagan made the same mistake when he took office. He promised tax cuts to rouse the economy but rather than make them immediate, he phased the cuts in, which allowed companies to post losses during the years of higher taxes; biding their time until the tax cuts took affect. Once the tax cuts were in place, the economy soared, ushering in one of the largest peace-time expansions of the GDP in history but before those cuts were actually made, the economy lagged and jobs suffered. Conversely, businesses are now taking advantage of the temporarily lower tax rates knowing that those rates are guaranteed to rise sharply in 2011. Furthermore, business is counting on the November 2010 elections to restore some sanity to government. While the Republicans cannot secure enough seats to repeal healthcare, they can certainly block the funding needed to implement it; stalling the healthcare legislation until 2012 can bring in a new Congress and a new President.
The President can try to put a happy face on the prospects Democrats are facing this election but he knows that a vote for the healthcare bill was a vote for their own retirement. Going into the healthcare vote, Republicans were no more liked than Democrats were but the scandalous way this legislation was forced through Congress against the will of the people has severely damaged the Democrats. While people are not quite sure they can trust Republicans right now, Republicans do have the distinct advantage in not being Democrats. The President has been trying to label Republicans as “the Party of no” but the Democrats have labeled themselves “the Party of sit down and be quiet you silly people”. In the whole grand scheme of things there is an awful lot you can do to Americans before they get truly angry but ignoring them just isn’t an option.
The frightening part about the President’s predicament is that it has fostered another sense of urgency in the White House and now every program and policy the President really wants is going to be desperately rushed in much the same way that TARP, the Stimulus and Healthcare was. Don’t forget that TARP had to be done right then and there or banks were going to fail, throwing America into a new depression. Well, TARP passed and Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and the President claimed credit for averting financial disaster but isn’t it funny that as soon as executive salaries were capped in the companies that accepted TARP money, those silly companies discovered that they actually did have liquidity and paid the TARP money back as fast as humanly possible. Well, most of them did. Curiously, the only ones that couldn’t pay the taxpayers back, and in fact, still needed more money, were the government’s own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Imagine that!
Then there was the Stimulus Bill. We had to pass that one without thinking about it because joblessness was on the rise and without this critical infusion of money, the unemployment rate would get as high as 8%. Well, we passed that without thinking about it and unemployment climbed above 10% before stagnating at a miserable 9.7%. Recovery.gov still has no idea how much of your money was wasted on frivolous projects like amphibian underpasses so that frogs and salamanders can safely cross the road or funding studies about the drinking habits of Indonesian transgender prostitutes. Billions are listed as being given to Congressional districts that do not exist and since the government cannot say with any accuracy how many (if any) jobs were actually created, the White House has had to claim that the Stimulus Bill saved two million jobs knowing full well there is no way to substantiate a “saved job”.
With the Healthcare Bill we all watched in horror as the legislative process was subverted into a corrupt and underhanded push to pass something nobody wanted. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama all blamed the Republicans for trying to stonewall the legislation when the bare fact is that the resistance that nearly derailed the bill was entirely on the other side of the aisle. Reluctant Democrats had to be bullied, threatened and bought off just to get the votes they needed to push this through. Once Scott Brown had been elected to the Senate, it was thought that the bill would finally die the death it deserved but the Senate Bill was taken behind closed doors once more where Pelosi and Obama abused House Democrats. They would use the same tactics Harry Reid used, forcing them to vote for the Senate Bill so they could ram it through under reconciliation; requiring only a simple majority in the Senate, effectively negating Scott Brown’s vote.
Now that the healthcare bill has passed all the nasty little details are emerging. The Medicare cuts, the tax increases and the admission by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, that the healthcare bill is designed to “correct a mal-distribution” of wealth in America. For those of us that warned about the redistributive goals of the bill, a healthy “told you so” might certainly be warranted but what good would that do now? Then there are the unintended consequences to deal with. America’s largest corporations are reporting that they will loose hundreds of millions in profits because of the healthcare bill; something that Henry Waxman fumed over, demanding that these companies appear before his committee and explain themselves. Waxman claimed that a report prepared prior to the passage of the bill said these companies would see a decrease in healthcare costs amounting to roughly three-thousand dollars per employee and he insisted upon knowing why they were not taking those savings into consideration. As it turns out, the report to which Henry Waxman was referring had nothing to do with the Senate healthcare bill and was based on a limited and incremental approach to healthcare reform similar to what the Republicans had proposed.
I suppose the funniest story came out last week when the Congress found out that the healthcare bill they all told us they read contained a little secret none of them knew about. Unless they act to correct the bill, Congress and their staff members are all going to lose their health insurance and will be forced into the exchange market. The only problem for them is that the way the law is written, they must lose the insurance now and the market they have to purchase from won’t even exist until 2014.
Despite the President’s promise that jobs are going to be his priority in the coming year his next race to get something past the Senate is on the financial reform bill. This bill places drastic and dangerous limits on American financial institutions placing them at a severe disadvantage when competing against foreign banks that are curiously not mentioned in this “much needed” reform bill. Even though Harry Reid said it may not be possible in an election year, the President insists that immigration reform is right behind his Financial Reform Bill. Also tucking into the White House fast track to destroy the country is the infamous Cap and Trade massive energy tax. The Senate is threatening to unveil their copy of that scam as early as the end of next week. So I have to ask the same question I started this article with….Where are the jobs?
Paul
There are massive new taxes on the way because of the healthcare bill in addition to the increases business will see after the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. Corporations operate under different tax rules than private citizens and are able to shift their losses around to offset earnings where it will provide the most benefit. In fact, corporations can amend previous returns and move losses back three years or use them as far as twenty years into the future to offset future income. That is what we are seeing this year in the Dow. Companies know their taxes will be substantially higher in 2011 and are posting their income in 2010 when the taxes aren’t great, but they aren’t as insane as they will be next year. Once the tax cuts disappear and the new tax impositions from the healthcare bill are in place, the losses and expenses from this year will be used to offset the tax liabilities in 2011 and that will have a drastic effect on the Dow Jones.
Reagan made the same mistake when he took office. He promised tax cuts to rouse the economy but rather than make them immediate, he phased the cuts in, which allowed companies to post losses during the years of higher taxes; biding their time until the tax cuts took affect. Once the tax cuts were in place, the economy soared, ushering in one of the largest peace-time expansions of the GDP in history but before those cuts were actually made, the economy lagged and jobs suffered. Conversely, businesses are now taking advantage of the temporarily lower tax rates knowing that those rates are guaranteed to rise sharply in 2011. Furthermore, business is counting on the November 2010 elections to restore some sanity to government. While the Republicans cannot secure enough seats to repeal healthcare, they can certainly block the funding needed to implement it; stalling the healthcare legislation until 2012 can bring in a new Congress and a new President.
The President can try to put a happy face on the prospects Democrats are facing this election but he knows that a vote for the healthcare bill was a vote for their own retirement. Going into the healthcare vote, Republicans were no more liked than Democrats were but the scandalous way this legislation was forced through Congress against the will of the people has severely damaged the Democrats. While people are not quite sure they can trust Republicans right now, Republicans do have the distinct advantage in not being Democrats. The President has been trying to label Republicans as “the Party of no” but the Democrats have labeled themselves “the Party of sit down and be quiet you silly people”. In the whole grand scheme of things there is an awful lot you can do to Americans before they get truly angry but ignoring them just isn’t an option.
The frightening part about the President’s predicament is that it has fostered another sense of urgency in the White House and now every program and policy the President really wants is going to be desperately rushed in much the same way that TARP, the Stimulus and Healthcare was. Don’t forget that TARP had to be done right then and there or banks were going to fail, throwing America into a new depression. Well, TARP passed and Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and the President claimed credit for averting financial disaster but isn’t it funny that as soon as executive salaries were capped in the companies that accepted TARP money, those silly companies discovered that they actually did have liquidity and paid the TARP money back as fast as humanly possible. Well, most of them did. Curiously, the only ones that couldn’t pay the taxpayers back, and in fact, still needed more money, were the government’s own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Imagine that!
Then there was the Stimulus Bill. We had to pass that one without thinking about it because joblessness was on the rise and without this critical infusion of money, the unemployment rate would get as high as 8%. Well, we passed that without thinking about it and unemployment climbed above 10% before stagnating at a miserable 9.7%. Recovery.gov still has no idea how much of your money was wasted on frivolous projects like amphibian underpasses so that frogs and salamanders can safely cross the road or funding studies about the drinking habits of Indonesian transgender prostitutes. Billions are listed as being given to Congressional districts that do not exist and since the government cannot say with any accuracy how many (if any) jobs were actually created, the White House has had to claim that the Stimulus Bill saved two million jobs knowing full well there is no way to substantiate a “saved job”.
With the Healthcare Bill we all watched in horror as the legislative process was subverted into a corrupt and underhanded push to pass something nobody wanted. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama all blamed the Republicans for trying to stonewall the legislation when the bare fact is that the resistance that nearly derailed the bill was entirely on the other side of the aisle. Reluctant Democrats had to be bullied, threatened and bought off just to get the votes they needed to push this through. Once Scott Brown had been elected to the Senate, it was thought that the bill would finally die the death it deserved but the Senate Bill was taken behind closed doors once more where Pelosi and Obama abused House Democrats. They would use the same tactics Harry Reid used, forcing them to vote for the Senate Bill so they could ram it through under reconciliation; requiring only a simple majority in the Senate, effectively negating Scott Brown’s vote.
Now that the healthcare bill has passed all the nasty little details are emerging. The Medicare cuts, the tax increases and the admission by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, that the healthcare bill is designed to “correct a mal-distribution” of wealth in America. For those of us that warned about the redistributive goals of the bill, a healthy “told you so” might certainly be warranted but what good would that do now? Then there are the unintended consequences to deal with. America’s largest corporations are reporting that they will loose hundreds of millions in profits because of the healthcare bill; something that Henry Waxman fumed over, demanding that these companies appear before his committee and explain themselves. Waxman claimed that a report prepared prior to the passage of the bill said these companies would see a decrease in healthcare costs amounting to roughly three-thousand dollars per employee and he insisted upon knowing why they were not taking those savings into consideration. As it turns out, the report to which Henry Waxman was referring had nothing to do with the Senate healthcare bill and was based on a limited and incremental approach to healthcare reform similar to what the Republicans had proposed.
I suppose the funniest story came out last week when the Congress found out that the healthcare bill they all told us they read contained a little secret none of them knew about. Unless they act to correct the bill, Congress and their staff members are all going to lose their health insurance and will be forced into the exchange market. The only problem for them is that the way the law is written, they must lose the insurance now and the market they have to purchase from won’t even exist until 2014.
Despite the President’s promise that jobs are going to be his priority in the coming year his next race to get something past the Senate is on the financial reform bill. This bill places drastic and dangerous limits on American financial institutions placing them at a severe disadvantage when competing against foreign banks that are curiously not mentioned in this “much needed” reform bill. Even though Harry Reid said it may not be possible in an election year, the President insists that immigration reform is right behind his Financial Reform Bill. Also tucking into the White House fast track to destroy the country is the infamous Cap and Trade massive energy tax. The Senate is threatening to unveil their copy of that scam as early as the end of next week. So I have to ask the same question I started this article with….Where are the jobs?
Paul
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Off Shore Exploration or a Prelude to Cap and Trade?
Yesterday, the President announced plans to open certain off-shore areas on the East Coast and Alaska for oil exploration. While that may sound like Mr. Obama is finally coming to his senses regarding energy independence, the actuality is that this is just another red herring to promote cap and trade. The plan would limit exploration for new sources of domestic oil to the East Coast in an area that spans from just south of New Jersey to the northern limits of Florida and in limited portions of the Alaskan coastline. This plan excludes the entire Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico where we know oil actually exists in qualities that make extraction financially viable. Additionally, only a few leases for drilling will actually be allowed under Obama’s plan and the bulk of his plan is limited to convincing oil companies to launch new exploration in permissible areas on a hope and promise that after spending millions to map the area for potential that they will actually be allowed to drill there when the dust settles.
We need to find new sources of fuel if we are ever going to marginalize the stranglehold that the oil producing Middle East nations and Venezuela have on us. If I thought the President were serious about exploiting the domestic reserves of oil and natural gas I would applaud Wednesday’s announcement, but he is not. This is merely a clever two pronged strategy to cultivate support for his energy bill otherwise known as cap and trade. He as much as admitted that by invoking the need for his comprehensive energy plan in the same speech that spoke of this new exploration initiative. The opening of these areas for exploration is meant to silence his critics by giving the media something with which they can counter the claims that Obama will cripple the domestic production of energy resources through his energy bill. After all, if he intended to shut down that entire industry why would he allow exploration?
Well, exploration is not development and actual development except for a very small area, is not in Obama’s plan. His intentions have been made very clear in the fourteen months since his inauguration and include massive taxes on energy and new restrictions on oil and coal development. The Obama administration recently nationalized another thirteen million acres of American land by Executive Order under the guise of a national monument imitative. Curiously, much of that land was in areas that are known or are suspected to be rich in oil shale and coal and would prevent the development of those resources for all time. This is on the heels of a push by Federal Wildlife officials to designate more than two-hundred additional species of minor fish, rodents and other worthless pests as endangered in a move to protect their habitats; habitats which also happen to be in areas that are potentially rich sources of fuel and coal. Does anyone see a pattern here?
Since the “comprehensive” Energy Bill the President is now aiming for would cripple industry by mandating caps on CO2 production unless costly CO2 credits are purchased, it is clear there will be no need to drill for any of that oil because America will no longer be able to afford to use it once the bill is passed into law. The Energy Bill does not just affect business but penalizes each and every household by exponentially raising home energy costs. A major component of the cap and trade initiative is the so-called “smart grid” and equally nefarious “smart meter”. For the first time in American history, a consumer will have no idea what the cost of something is before they purchase it. The meters can instantaneously report area usage and raise the cost of energy based on demand. There will be no more pre-determined peak and off-peak hours to base your home consumption of electricity on.
Don’t believe me? Well, certain areas of California have already installed these “smart” meters in a pilot program and residents were shocked by an immediate increase in energy costs of up to 25%. Let’s not forget that Obama had already admitted during the campaign that “electric prices would necessarily have to skyrocket under his energy proposal”. The President’s energy plans are about denial and not development. They are about directing consumption through punitive taxation and not at all about expanding the availability of low cost fuels and energy. They will force people to reduce the CO2 generated by electrical power plants by forcing a reduction in energy consumption. People will see a net increase in their electric bills of up to 65% nearly immediately and of more than 100% by 2015. That coupled with the damages wrought by our new healthcare legislation will spell a loss of no less than five million additional jobs in the United States as people scale back the purchase of their few remaining comfort items just to keep the lights and refrigerator on and as US industries scale back in kind.
So how can we predict a rise in household energy costs of 65% if the pilot program in California only showed a 25% rise? Simple, the pilot program was to test meter and smart grid technology and that test resulted in a 25% increase. It will not be until cap and trade passes before the effects of having to purchase carbon credits are added to the bill as well. One that has happened….Viola! 65%!
Don’t forget that these are the same people that recently announced that $7.00 a gallon gasoline prices would be a good thing for the country. Of course that was the recent finding of a Harvard University study and I am sure I don’t have to remind you that Harvard is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts; an area well serviced by mass transit. Cambridge is a far cry from the rural areas and industries that would be hit hardest by such a short sighted call for an energy policy based on forced conservation. Of course the government loves the idea because the revenues that could be collected under such a policy are just the sort of things that attracts the attention of Progressive ideologues bent on pursuing the Socialist platform of wealth redistribution.
Max Baucus waited until the Senate passed the Healthcare Reconciliation Act before admitting that a large portion of the Healthcare bill was designed to correct what he called the “maldistribution” of wealth that he claims has become problematic over the past few years. Simply, the “maldistribution” of wealth simply means that the people that actually earn money in this country have been allowed to keep way too much of it. It is the intention of every Progressive to introduce America to the Soviet Constitution piece by piece until they can arrive at a state of pure Socialism.
Progressives fought hard for the Healthcare Bill claiming that Healthcare was a right. Under our Constitution, the Federal government is merely shackled by the law to prevent it from interfering in the individual’s pursuit of their God given rights. The government can neither deny a citizen their rights nor can they create them. On the other hand, the Soviet Constitution clearly enunciates a right to healthcare, education, housing, a job, etc. Does that sound familiar? Of course what proponents of this “Nanny” State have failed to realize over the past hundred years is that government cannot provide anything for you unless you are willing to relinquish your right to make those choices for yourself. Where do you think the mandate to purchase healthcare came from? As part of the cost of the government provision of healthcare you are required to surrender your right to choose not to purchase health insurance.
The President’s energy proposal (cap and trade – cap and tax) is rife with additional redistributive programs that will take your money in the form of energy taxes and hand them out to their favorite group of domestic indigents. If you are already one of the bona-fide American welfare recipients, there is a program to help you offset any increase you may see in your energy costs. Of course, that doesn’t apply to the rest of us but hey, if you make more than the Federal poverty level you have plenty of money – right? There is also a “cash for clunkers” program for manufactured homes. If one of the qualified poor lives in a manufactured home built before 1976 they have a provision in the bill to use American tax dollars to help them trade up to a new “energy efficient” manufactured home! Nope, we don’t get that either.
This is not an Energy plan. This is a Federal mugging; the theft of even more of your hard earned dollars to keep as many people locked into Federal aid programs as possible. For now, it is merely aimed at keeping those “recipients” loyal to the Democratic Party. You know, the Party of “Here have some more….it’s free!” The problem is that it really isn’t free; it’s actually stolen property. These are dangerous years because 47% of America are either exempt from taxation or actually receive aid from the government already. Once the scales tip past 50%, there will never be another honest election in this country. There is no limit to the greed of the people that collect your money and that greed will have no boundaries once they represent the majority of the electorate.
Paul
We need to find new sources of fuel if we are ever going to marginalize the stranglehold that the oil producing Middle East nations and Venezuela have on us. If I thought the President were serious about exploiting the domestic reserves of oil and natural gas I would applaud Wednesday’s announcement, but he is not. This is merely a clever two pronged strategy to cultivate support for his energy bill otherwise known as cap and trade. He as much as admitted that by invoking the need for his comprehensive energy plan in the same speech that spoke of this new exploration initiative. The opening of these areas for exploration is meant to silence his critics by giving the media something with which they can counter the claims that Obama will cripple the domestic production of energy resources through his energy bill. After all, if he intended to shut down that entire industry why would he allow exploration?
Well, exploration is not development and actual development except for a very small area, is not in Obama’s plan. His intentions have been made very clear in the fourteen months since his inauguration and include massive taxes on energy and new restrictions on oil and coal development. The Obama administration recently nationalized another thirteen million acres of American land by Executive Order under the guise of a national monument imitative. Curiously, much of that land was in areas that are known or are suspected to be rich in oil shale and coal and would prevent the development of those resources for all time. This is on the heels of a push by Federal Wildlife officials to designate more than two-hundred additional species of minor fish, rodents and other worthless pests as endangered in a move to protect their habitats; habitats which also happen to be in areas that are potentially rich sources of fuel and coal. Does anyone see a pattern here?
Since the “comprehensive” Energy Bill the President is now aiming for would cripple industry by mandating caps on CO2 production unless costly CO2 credits are purchased, it is clear there will be no need to drill for any of that oil because America will no longer be able to afford to use it once the bill is passed into law. The Energy Bill does not just affect business but penalizes each and every household by exponentially raising home energy costs. A major component of the cap and trade initiative is the so-called “smart grid” and equally nefarious “smart meter”. For the first time in American history, a consumer will have no idea what the cost of something is before they purchase it. The meters can instantaneously report area usage and raise the cost of energy based on demand. There will be no more pre-determined peak and off-peak hours to base your home consumption of electricity on.
Don’t believe me? Well, certain areas of California have already installed these “smart” meters in a pilot program and residents were shocked by an immediate increase in energy costs of up to 25%. Let’s not forget that Obama had already admitted during the campaign that “electric prices would necessarily have to skyrocket under his energy proposal”. The President’s energy plans are about denial and not development. They are about directing consumption through punitive taxation and not at all about expanding the availability of low cost fuels and energy. They will force people to reduce the CO2 generated by electrical power plants by forcing a reduction in energy consumption. People will see a net increase in their electric bills of up to 65% nearly immediately and of more than 100% by 2015. That coupled with the damages wrought by our new healthcare legislation will spell a loss of no less than five million additional jobs in the United States as people scale back the purchase of their few remaining comfort items just to keep the lights and refrigerator on and as US industries scale back in kind.
So how can we predict a rise in household energy costs of 65% if the pilot program in California only showed a 25% rise? Simple, the pilot program was to test meter and smart grid technology and that test resulted in a 25% increase. It will not be until cap and trade passes before the effects of having to purchase carbon credits are added to the bill as well. One that has happened….Viola! 65%!
Don’t forget that these are the same people that recently announced that $7.00 a gallon gasoline prices would be a good thing for the country. Of course that was the recent finding of a Harvard University study and I am sure I don’t have to remind you that Harvard is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts; an area well serviced by mass transit. Cambridge is a far cry from the rural areas and industries that would be hit hardest by such a short sighted call for an energy policy based on forced conservation. Of course the government loves the idea because the revenues that could be collected under such a policy are just the sort of things that attracts the attention of Progressive ideologues bent on pursuing the Socialist platform of wealth redistribution.
Max Baucus waited until the Senate passed the Healthcare Reconciliation Act before admitting that a large portion of the Healthcare bill was designed to correct what he called the “maldistribution” of wealth that he claims has become problematic over the past few years. Simply, the “maldistribution” of wealth simply means that the people that actually earn money in this country have been allowed to keep way too much of it. It is the intention of every Progressive to introduce America to the Soviet Constitution piece by piece until they can arrive at a state of pure Socialism.
Progressives fought hard for the Healthcare Bill claiming that Healthcare was a right. Under our Constitution, the Federal government is merely shackled by the law to prevent it from interfering in the individual’s pursuit of their God given rights. The government can neither deny a citizen their rights nor can they create them. On the other hand, the Soviet Constitution clearly enunciates a right to healthcare, education, housing, a job, etc. Does that sound familiar? Of course what proponents of this “Nanny” State have failed to realize over the past hundred years is that government cannot provide anything for you unless you are willing to relinquish your right to make those choices for yourself. Where do you think the mandate to purchase healthcare came from? As part of the cost of the government provision of healthcare you are required to surrender your right to choose not to purchase health insurance.
The President’s energy proposal (cap and trade – cap and tax) is rife with additional redistributive programs that will take your money in the form of energy taxes and hand them out to their favorite group of domestic indigents. If you are already one of the bona-fide American welfare recipients, there is a program to help you offset any increase you may see in your energy costs. Of course, that doesn’t apply to the rest of us but hey, if you make more than the Federal poverty level you have plenty of money – right? There is also a “cash for clunkers” program for manufactured homes. If one of the qualified poor lives in a manufactured home built before 1976 they have a provision in the bill to use American tax dollars to help them trade up to a new “energy efficient” manufactured home! Nope, we don’t get that either.
This is not an Energy plan. This is a Federal mugging; the theft of even more of your hard earned dollars to keep as many people locked into Federal aid programs as possible. For now, it is merely aimed at keeping those “recipients” loyal to the Democratic Party. You know, the Party of “Here have some more….it’s free!” The problem is that it really isn’t free; it’s actually stolen property. These are dangerous years because 47% of America are either exempt from taxation or actually receive aid from the government already. Once the scales tip past 50%, there will never be another honest election in this country. There is no limit to the greed of the people that collect your money and that greed will have no boundaries once they represent the majority of the electorate.
Paul
Friday, February 19, 2010
The Man of Change?
Well here we are just six days away from the much publicized summit on healthcare reform the President announced during the State of the Union Address. Some foolishly believed that his invitation to ranking Republican’s signaled his understanding of the message voters had sent in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections and finally, the Massachusetts special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Apparently that assumption was premature and the election of Republicans to all three of these vital races is being dismissed as easily as the town hall meetings and Tea Parties have been.
It is bizarre that the Democrats can be this blatant as to their intentions. Behind the scenes work to reconcile the Healthcare Bill is still progressing even as the President continues to at least say, that he wants the best ideas from both Parties. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have both signaled their intention to “go nuclear” and rely on a reconciliation tactic to pass the bill with a simple majority, causing reasonable people to ask what kind of summit can this be if these negotiation are till taking place in secret and these kind of plans are being made before Congressional Republicans are even given the opportunity to present their ideas and compromises?
Scott Brown was not simply a message for the Democrats. His campaign was centered on the promise that he would be the 41st vote that would stop the race to pass a healthcare reform bill that the majority of American’s do not want. As support for the President wanes, the trust the American people have in the Democrat’s healthcare plan evaporates at an astounding rate. In recent polls, most Americans would prefer that the plan be scrapped and that the government turn its attention to the economy and the faltering job market.
Regardless of the loud and clear voice of the people, Congressional Democrats are standing firm because their President said they must move forward and also because the Progressive movement has been holding the Democratic Party hostage for decades. That is why Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh decided to throw in the towel and refuse to run for another term. He was bitter in his statements about the ineffectiveness of Congress and said that he could accomplish more as a private citizen than he ever could as a member of the Senate. Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith recently switched Parties for much the same reason. He joined the Republican Party because the Democrats under the Progressive assault had lost their way. They were no longer the Party of the people but some weird group of far left elitists that no longer cared to hear the people. That is why the President’s agenda is being propelled forward as the economy continues to crumble; they have been in effect, deafened by their own rhetoric.
To continue their push for healthcare reform and cap and trade they must convince you that the economy is already in recovery. As the President and the DNC struggle to convince people that the Recovery Act (Stimulus Bill) is working fine and has “saved or created” two million jobs, the U.S. Department of Labor’s own website says the job loss average for the past month has been 467,500 jobs lost in each of the last four weeks. Of course “saved jobs” is the new catch phrase since it is as impossible to disprove as it is to quantify. You know, that we might have even begun to believe some of that if Joe Biden hadn’t spilled the beans in an interview on Wednesday. As he spouted the administration line of “saved jobs” he added that the Recovery Act is a two phase program with the money for actual job creation loaded in the second half of the program. He explained that most of the funds spent in phase one had been targeted to offset the cost of State unemployment benefits and to provide tax relief.
Ok, I admit I’m a little confused here. The job creation funds have not been disbursed yet but the Recovery Act has already saved or created two million jobs? “Most of the funds spent in phase one were to offset the cost of State unemployment benefits and to provide tax relief” but the Recovery Act has already saved or created two million jobs? Is Vice President Biden saying that the act of collecting unemployment insurance is now considered a job? If so, is it a created job or a saved job? Maybe it’s both. If you had already been collecting benefits and are now drawing on an emergency extension then it is clearly a saved job but if you are one of the unfortunate 467,500 that are still losing their jobs every week; well, then that must be a created job.
All of this nonsense of saved jobs and created jobs flies in the face of the statements made by White House Economic Advisor Christina Romer in a Congressional hearing in October of 2009. Romer testified “Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009 and by mid-2010 fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to further growth.” Of course when the economy did not respond as hoped, Romer was obviously asked by the White House to revise her assessment. While recently appearing on the February 17th edition of Good Morning America, Romer said in response to questions about the economy that the greatest effects of the Stimulus Bill have yet to be realized.
The inconsistencies aren’t something shocking. In fact, this administration is amazingly consistent in its inconsistency. If you speak with five different people in this administration you will get five different numbers of the jobs the stimulus bill has “saved or created”. What doesn’t change is the mindless defense of the actions they have already taken or are hell bent on passing into law. Regardless of every possible economic index you can look at, the stimulus bill is not only a failure but has resulted in a “job deficit” as the economy fails to respond. What they absolutely refuse to see is that they can have another five stimulus bills of equal amount and still not create lasting private sector employment. Business is not responding because as this administration continues to apply its short term fiscal Band-Aid, the threat of future tax hikes and new regulations are still part of the overall plan.
The Healthcare Bill is just one of those black holes that are making businesses apprehensive. We still don’t know what is being crafted in the dark up on Capitol Hill. What will the tax liability be? At what income level does it begin? How many employees can I have before the mandate to provide coverage hits me? Will the plan I already provide have an additional tax levied against it? How can responsible business owners make a decision to hire additional employees until they know if they can even remain profitable after the Bush tax cuts expire and the capital gains tax go up in 2011?
Cap and trade, if passed, will increase energy costs by 65% in the first few years and more that 100% by 2015. The only thing that has allowed American businesses to remain even marginally competitive against nations that pay their employees five dollars a day is affordable and abundant energy. Proponents of cap and trade claim the difference is pennies a day but California has already installed Smart Meters, a major component of Smart Grid, the key to cap and trade. California energy costs to PS&G customers have skyrocketed and they are ready to revolt at the increases they are experiencing. Bear in mind that the cost of purchasing carbon credits to produce their electricity aren’t even part of that increase yet. That is where the real kick in the pants will come from. There are estimates that claim cap and trade will cost America five million jobs or two jobs for every so-called “green job” it creates. Looking at Spain, I think that estimate is conservative if not overly optimistic. Spain was suckered into the whole plan of creating a green economy that Obama is trying to sell us and unemployment in Spain has already passed 19%.
So where is the change? The actions of this administration are bordering on criminal; there is no transparency other than a few carefully orchestrated photo ops and the President has broken every promise he made during his campaign. The legislative process itself has been hijacked by Progressive radicals and special interests and even Obama’s friends in the Community Organizing business have been writing key parts of costly legislation that Congress won’t bother to read before passing. If Progressive Democrats continue to ignore the impact their plans are having on the economy and force healthcare through while unemployment is still close to 10%, the backlash will cost them both the House and the Senate in 2010. The damage they are doing now has already insured a long and hard road to recovery and the measures that will have to be taken to right the wrongs will be painful and unpopular. I can only hope that the American people will wean themselves from the public teat so we can actually address the spending problems in Congress before the world economy forces even more drastic change against our will.
Paul
It is bizarre that the Democrats can be this blatant as to their intentions. Behind the scenes work to reconcile the Healthcare Bill is still progressing even as the President continues to at least say, that he wants the best ideas from both Parties. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have both signaled their intention to “go nuclear” and rely on a reconciliation tactic to pass the bill with a simple majority, causing reasonable people to ask what kind of summit can this be if these negotiation are till taking place in secret and these kind of plans are being made before Congressional Republicans are even given the opportunity to present their ideas and compromises?
Scott Brown was not simply a message for the Democrats. His campaign was centered on the promise that he would be the 41st vote that would stop the race to pass a healthcare reform bill that the majority of American’s do not want. As support for the President wanes, the trust the American people have in the Democrat’s healthcare plan evaporates at an astounding rate. In recent polls, most Americans would prefer that the plan be scrapped and that the government turn its attention to the economy and the faltering job market.
Regardless of the loud and clear voice of the people, Congressional Democrats are standing firm because their President said they must move forward and also because the Progressive movement has been holding the Democratic Party hostage for decades. That is why Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh decided to throw in the towel and refuse to run for another term. He was bitter in his statements about the ineffectiveness of Congress and said that he could accomplish more as a private citizen than he ever could as a member of the Senate. Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith recently switched Parties for much the same reason. He joined the Republican Party because the Democrats under the Progressive assault had lost their way. They were no longer the Party of the people but some weird group of far left elitists that no longer cared to hear the people. That is why the President’s agenda is being propelled forward as the economy continues to crumble; they have been in effect, deafened by their own rhetoric.
To continue their push for healthcare reform and cap and trade they must convince you that the economy is already in recovery. As the President and the DNC struggle to convince people that the Recovery Act (Stimulus Bill) is working fine and has “saved or created” two million jobs, the U.S. Department of Labor’s own website says the job loss average for the past month has been 467,500 jobs lost in each of the last four weeks. Of course “saved jobs” is the new catch phrase since it is as impossible to disprove as it is to quantify. You know, that we might have even begun to believe some of that if Joe Biden hadn’t spilled the beans in an interview on Wednesday. As he spouted the administration line of “saved jobs” he added that the Recovery Act is a two phase program with the money for actual job creation loaded in the second half of the program. He explained that most of the funds spent in phase one had been targeted to offset the cost of State unemployment benefits and to provide tax relief.
Ok, I admit I’m a little confused here. The job creation funds have not been disbursed yet but the Recovery Act has already saved or created two million jobs? “Most of the funds spent in phase one were to offset the cost of State unemployment benefits and to provide tax relief” but the Recovery Act has already saved or created two million jobs? Is Vice President Biden saying that the act of collecting unemployment insurance is now considered a job? If so, is it a created job or a saved job? Maybe it’s both. If you had already been collecting benefits and are now drawing on an emergency extension then it is clearly a saved job but if you are one of the unfortunate 467,500 that are still losing their jobs every week; well, then that must be a created job.
All of this nonsense of saved jobs and created jobs flies in the face of the statements made by White House Economic Advisor Christina Romer in a Congressional hearing in October of 2009. Romer testified “Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009 and by mid-2010 fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to further growth.” Of course when the economy did not respond as hoped, Romer was obviously asked by the White House to revise her assessment. While recently appearing on the February 17th edition of Good Morning America, Romer said in response to questions about the economy that the greatest effects of the Stimulus Bill have yet to be realized.
The inconsistencies aren’t something shocking. In fact, this administration is amazingly consistent in its inconsistency. If you speak with five different people in this administration you will get five different numbers of the jobs the stimulus bill has “saved or created”. What doesn’t change is the mindless defense of the actions they have already taken or are hell bent on passing into law. Regardless of every possible economic index you can look at, the stimulus bill is not only a failure but has resulted in a “job deficit” as the economy fails to respond. What they absolutely refuse to see is that they can have another five stimulus bills of equal amount and still not create lasting private sector employment. Business is not responding because as this administration continues to apply its short term fiscal Band-Aid, the threat of future tax hikes and new regulations are still part of the overall plan.
The Healthcare Bill is just one of those black holes that are making businesses apprehensive. We still don’t know what is being crafted in the dark up on Capitol Hill. What will the tax liability be? At what income level does it begin? How many employees can I have before the mandate to provide coverage hits me? Will the plan I already provide have an additional tax levied against it? How can responsible business owners make a decision to hire additional employees until they know if they can even remain profitable after the Bush tax cuts expire and the capital gains tax go up in 2011?
Cap and trade, if passed, will increase energy costs by 65% in the first few years and more that 100% by 2015. The only thing that has allowed American businesses to remain even marginally competitive against nations that pay their employees five dollars a day is affordable and abundant energy. Proponents of cap and trade claim the difference is pennies a day but California has already installed Smart Meters, a major component of Smart Grid, the key to cap and trade. California energy costs to PS&G customers have skyrocketed and they are ready to revolt at the increases they are experiencing. Bear in mind that the cost of purchasing carbon credits to produce their electricity aren’t even part of that increase yet. That is where the real kick in the pants will come from. There are estimates that claim cap and trade will cost America five million jobs or two jobs for every so-called “green job” it creates. Looking at Spain, I think that estimate is conservative if not overly optimistic. Spain was suckered into the whole plan of creating a green economy that Obama is trying to sell us and unemployment in Spain has already passed 19%.
So where is the change? The actions of this administration are bordering on criminal; there is no transparency other than a few carefully orchestrated photo ops and the President has broken every promise he made during his campaign. The legislative process itself has been hijacked by Progressive radicals and special interests and even Obama’s friends in the Community Organizing business have been writing key parts of costly legislation that Congress won’t bother to read before passing. If Progressive Democrats continue to ignore the impact their plans are having on the economy and force healthcare through while unemployment is still close to 10%, the backlash will cost them both the House and the Senate in 2010. The damage they are doing now has already insured a long and hard road to recovery and the measures that will have to be taken to right the wrongs will be painful and unpopular. I can only hope that the American people will wean themselves from the public teat so we can actually address the spending problems in Congress before the world economy forces even more drastic change against our will.
Paul
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Obama's Recession
Any discussion about who is ultimately responsible for the recession would not be complete without a clear definition what a recession is. In economics, a recession is a business cycle featuring a general slowdown in economic activity over a period of time; usually two fiscal quarters or longer. The other criterion for identifying a recession is an increase in unemployment of greater than 1.5%. It is clear based on the generally accepted criteria that the recession began under George Bush with the third quarter of 2008 showing a 2.7% decrease in GDP and the decline jumping to 5.7% in the forth quarter of 2008 and a corresponding increase in unemployment from 5.8% to 7.2% over the same period.
Except for the last two quarters of 2008, unemployment during the Bush administration had cyclically fluctuated between four and six percent just as it had during most of the Clinton administration. Clinton stepped into office with unemployment at 7.3%; remaining at or near that level until October of 1993. Of course the banking system was still generally believed to be in good shape then and since we found out that most of the deregulation that nearly collapsed the system had not occurred yet, it probably was. I find in curious that the real reduction in unemployment during the Clinton years did not take place until he abandoned his plans for healthcare reform. Apparently, the business community had the same reservations about the future of their profitability with Clinton-care as they do with Obama-care. While Clinton did not lower taxes, his advisors did convince him to reduce the capital gains tax and that made the risk of investment more palatable.
Obama has not enjoyed a reprieve from high unemployment because the threat of his agenda has kept the business community from investing in labor or expansion. The measly incentives he proposed to help small business during his State of the Union Address lost weight and credibility when juxtaposed against his assertions in the same speech that he intended to follow through with healthcare, cap and trade and the hair-brained scheme of debt forgiveness for student loans for anyone that could avoid paying them for twenty years (ten, if you were employed in the service of the government).
There is nothing in the President’s agenda that does not take from those that earn wealth only to be given to those that don’t and that is what is killing new job creation. In fact, it took all eight years of the Bush administration for unemployment to rise 3%; Obama nearly achieved that in his first year in office. The President may have inherited a large national debt, high unemployment and a sagging economy; but he did not inherit the agenda proposals that have made all of these indexes far worse. That agenda is all his (or at least, it belongs to whoever is pulling his strings).
For all the damage that his proposals have wrought on the economy and no matter how many people tell him that this is what has stalled business, he still intends to follow through. I haven’t decided if that is just stubbornness on his part or if these are the marching orders from his number one White House visitor, Andy Stern. I think it is fair to question his motives and when you follow the money and the intent of the people that are pressing heavily for these socialist programs like Andy Stern, some interesting things happen.
Obama has recently made some very impassioned speeches where he says that he promised healthcare would pass and that is exactly what he is going to do. Well, he promised to close Guantanamo Bay in the first year and it is still open. He promised transparency in his administration; that healthcare debates and meetings would take place on C-Span. Not only have the meetings on healthcare barred C-Span coverage but congressional Republicans have been barred as well. He said there would be no more back room deals and then offered $300 million to Mary Landrieu for her vote and only God knows how much for Ben Nelson. Bernie Sanders got billions for community health services but in all fairness, that was to expand national programs and not just those in Vermont. All of that money and more had been handed out in closed door, back room deals.
Obama also said there would be no middle class tax increases. Those of us that watch this nonsense knew that was a lie of semantics from the start. His plans and programs, not to mention the FY2011 budget, call for a whole host of new taxes on goods and services; taxes that will be passed on to you by the businesses they affect. He could stand firm on his promise of not taxing you directly while taking it from business knowing they were taking it from you. Now apparently he is going to make the same mistake George H.W. Bush made. Remember “Read my lips – no new taxes”? Bush reneged on that and Clinton never let you forget it during the campaign.
Now that Obama has blown through four years worth of Bush deficit spending in his first year in office, the nation is crying for fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism for most of us in this country means cutting spending to live within our means. For a tax and spend Progressive, fiscal conservatism means making sure you have enough tax revenue to cover your planned spending. It was announced this week that the President is considering a middle class tax increase now that the Congress has passed “Paygo”. Paygo simply means Pay as you go; a mandate that Federal spending increases have to be offset by a decrease in spending elsewhere or an increase in taxes. So now, in a recession, the President wants to tax the middle class twice; once directly and then again by turning overtaxed businesses into tax collection middlemen. That is why they are trying to sell us on the notion that the recession is finally easing.
There was a modest gain in GDP and a slight easing of unemployment last month. Both of which are easily explained by the billions spent in stimulus money and the increase in government employment as they ramp up for the 2010 census. Neither of these small increases are the result of real economic growth and neither will be lasting. So now that he is planning to raise taxes to show his fiscal conservatism, where are the corresponding spending cuts? Well, the President of semantics has the answer to that too. He increased discretionary spending 25% in 2009 and will add another 20% in 2010 but he promises to freeze discretionary spending in FY2011. Mr. President that is not a spending cut; that is freezing your insane increases so they can’t be cut.
Early in the Twentieth Century, America had a similar crisis. After World War I, America was faced with a deep recession brought on mostly by huge increases in the personal income taxes imposed to pay for the war. By 1920 we had slipped into depression and unemployment had topped 12% but unlike this President, the drastic steps that were needed were actually taken. Congress halved government expenditures and slashed taxes to nurture the economy. The result was a period of unprecedented growth not seen since the creation of America and that brought the country out of depression within two years when unemployment had dropped to just over 3%.
Until there is a recognition that government is the problem and not the solution there will be no meaningful progress in spending cuts, debt reduction or economic development. If there is ever going to be an epiphany in Washington on this, it certainly will not begin with this President. If America can elect a Congress this November that can put an end to Obama’s agenda that will be a good start. They might even be coerced by an active and involved electorate to propose legislation to finally restrain the wasteful ways of Washington. The bad news is that unless those daring individuals are elected in numbers sufficient to override a Presidential Veto; that new legislation will have to wait until a responsible President can be elected in 2012.
None of this would be needed if Washington actually obeyed the Constitution and had not ignored the Tenth Amendment for the past hundred years. Tomorrow, we will discuss what our government would look like if we had a Federal Government that actually resembled the intentions of the founding fathers.
Paul
Except for the last two quarters of 2008, unemployment during the Bush administration had cyclically fluctuated between four and six percent just as it had during most of the Clinton administration. Clinton stepped into office with unemployment at 7.3%; remaining at or near that level until October of 1993. Of course the banking system was still generally believed to be in good shape then and since we found out that most of the deregulation that nearly collapsed the system had not occurred yet, it probably was. I find in curious that the real reduction in unemployment during the Clinton years did not take place until he abandoned his plans for healthcare reform. Apparently, the business community had the same reservations about the future of their profitability with Clinton-care as they do with Obama-care. While Clinton did not lower taxes, his advisors did convince him to reduce the capital gains tax and that made the risk of investment more palatable.
Obama has not enjoyed a reprieve from high unemployment because the threat of his agenda has kept the business community from investing in labor or expansion. The measly incentives he proposed to help small business during his State of the Union Address lost weight and credibility when juxtaposed against his assertions in the same speech that he intended to follow through with healthcare, cap and trade and the hair-brained scheme of debt forgiveness for student loans for anyone that could avoid paying them for twenty years (ten, if you were employed in the service of the government).
There is nothing in the President’s agenda that does not take from those that earn wealth only to be given to those that don’t and that is what is killing new job creation. In fact, it took all eight years of the Bush administration for unemployment to rise 3%; Obama nearly achieved that in his first year in office. The President may have inherited a large national debt, high unemployment and a sagging economy; but he did not inherit the agenda proposals that have made all of these indexes far worse. That agenda is all his (or at least, it belongs to whoever is pulling his strings).
For all the damage that his proposals have wrought on the economy and no matter how many people tell him that this is what has stalled business, he still intends to follow through. I haven’t decided if that is just stubbornness on his part or if these are the marching orders from his number one White House visitor, Andy Stern. I think it is fair to question his motives and when you follow the money and the intent of the people that are pressing heavily for these socialist programs like Andy Stern, some interesting things happen.
Obama has recently made some very impassioned speeches where he says that he promised healthcare would pass and that is exactly what he is going to do. Well, he promised to close Guantanamo Bay in the first year and it is still open. He promised transparency in his administration; that healthcare debates and meetings would take place on C-Span. Not only have the meetings on healthcare barred C-Span coverage but congressional Republicans have been barred as well. He said there would be no more back room deals and then offered $300 million to Mary Landrieu for her vote and only God knows how much for Ben Nelson. Bernie Sanders got billions for community health services but in all fairness, that was to expand national programs and not just those in Vermont. All of that money and more had been handed out in closed door, back room deals.
Obama also said there would be no middle class tax increases. Those of us that watch this nonsense knew that was a lie of semantics from the start. His plans and programs, not to mention the FY2011 budget, call for a whole host of new taxes on goods and services; taxes that will be passed on to you by the businesses they affect. He could stand firm on his promise of not taxing you directly while taking it from business knowing they were taking it from you. Now apparently he is going to make the same mistake George H.W. Bush made. Remember “Read my lips – no new taxes”? Bush reneged on that and Clinton never let you forget it during the campaign.
Now that Obama has blown through four years worth of Bush deficit spending in his first year in office, the nation is crying for fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism for most of us in this country means cutting spending to live within our means. For a tax and spend Progressive, fiscal conservatism means making sure you have enough tax revenue to cover your planned spending. It was announced this week that the President is considering a middle class tax increase now that the Congress has passed “Paygo”. Paygo simply means Pay as you go; a mandate that Federal spending increases have to be offset by a decrease in spending elsewhere or an increase in taxes. So now, in a recession, the President wants to tax the middle class twice; once directly and then again by turning overtaxed businesses into tax collection middlemen. That is why they are trying to sell us on the notion that the recession is finally easing.
There was a modest gain in GDP and a slight easing of unemployment last month. Both of which are easily explained by the billions spent in stimulus money and the increase in government employment as they ramp up for the 2010 census. Neither of these small increases are the result of real economic growth and neither will be lasting. So now that he is planning to raise taxes to show his fiscal conservatism, where are the corresponding spending cuts? Well, the President of semantics has the answer to that too. He increased discretionary spending 25% in 2009 and will add another 20% in 2010 but he promises to freeze discretionary spending in FY2011. Mr. President that is not a spending cut; that is freezing your insane increases so they can’t be cut.
Early in the Twentieth Century, America had a similar crisis. After World War I, America was faced with a deep recession brought on mostly by huge increases in the personal income taxes imposed to pay for the war. By 1920 we had slipped into depression and unemployment had topped 12% but unlike this President, the drastic steps that were needed were actually taken. Congress halved government expenditures and slashed taxes to nurture the economy. The result was a period of unprecedented growth not seen since the creation of America and that brought the country out of depression within two years when unemployment had dropped to just over 3%.
Until there is a recognition that government is the problem and not the solution there will be no meaningful progress in spending cuts, debt reduction or economic development. If there is ever going to be an epiphany in Washington on this, it certainly will not begin with this President. If America can elect a Congress this November that can put an end to Obama’s agenda that will be a good start. They might even be coerced by an active and involved electorate to propose legislation to finally restrain the wasteful ways of Washington. The bad news is that unless those daring individuals are elected in numbers sufficient to override a Presidential Veto; that new legislation will have to wait until a responsible President can be elected in 2012.
None of this would be needed if Washington actually obeyed the Constitution and had not ignored the Tenth Amendment for the past hundred years. Tomorrow, we will discuss what our government would look like if we had a Federal Government that actually resembled the intentions of the founding fathers.
Paul
Friday, February 5, 2010
Scott Brown verus the Progressive Agenda
Democrats are struggling to regain their composure after the loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to Republican Scott Brown. The infighting began nearly immediately as the moderates recognized the danger signs issued by an aware and angry public and many have begun to walk and talk “moderate”. Of course the Progressive left, including the President, have attempted to counter that by claiming that loss was simply the people’s Pavlovian response to unemployment and the faltering economy. In fact, many Progressives and their lap-dogs in the Liberal Press are trying to convince Democrats in volatile States that it was Congress’s inability to pass sweeping healthcare reform legislation containing a strong public option that has angered America and that their seats are only in danger if they don’t press on and get the job done.
The President knows this isn’t true and even though he is still pressing for the passage of his full agenda, he realizes that it means the loss of the Democratic majority in November’s elections. To Obama, the loss of the majority means little as long as the Progressive agenda is put into play because he knows once it is enacted, it can not be rescinded; that America will be saddled with these new programs for all of eternity, that is, until the real Progressive goal post is reached….the collapse of Capitalism.
Progressives have had a grand strategy for decades to slowly infiltrate society so that they can frame the arguments and create the conditions that will forward their agenda. If you read my article on Saul Alinsky that was posted to this blog yesterday, you can see that strategy enunciated in his own words; words that Barack Obama taught to unsuspecting students at The University of Chicago Law School; words that Obama put into practice in the streets of Chicago as a community organizer. I know that the media denigrates anyone that tries to make the Obama – Alinsky connection or questions the President’s motives as being anything more that just run-of-the-mill liberalism but this President’s career and first term in office have been a carbon copy of Alinsky’s game plan and can be followed line by line in Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals”.
The President ran a campaign based on the need for change. He made the case based on the nation’s anger with George Bush’s policies and the out of control spending policies of a partisan Congress that what we needed was a “fundamental transformation” of America. He stood on a platform of hope and spoke to the best ideals of the American people.
Well, Alinsky’s strategy begins with the notion that radicals should not wear fatigues and shout obscenities; they should wear suits and “speak the language of middle America”. He also believed that organizers, when properly trained, could create anger in the poor communities and that these angry citizens would then become the “foot soldiers of change”. Alinsky believed that organizers must infiltrate churches, schools, organizations and yes, even politics, so that they then would be in a position to steer the national conversation to Progressive matters. He felt that if you were in a position to frame the questions that you could illicit the answers you want and make you believe it was your idea; that false support for a coerced agenda would make people feel that they were finally making a difference; that it was their hopes that were shaping policy and be blinded to the truth that the organizers were shaping them. He truly believed that the Progressive revolution was a revolution of small steps and that by achieving these small goals, the ultimate goal could eventually be reached; the demise of Capitalism.
So now we have Obama, the champion of change, the organizer that speaks the language of Middle America. He has capitalized on a healthcare crisis created in Congress and now has us all discussing the changes that must take place to correct the problem. Just to refresh the facts, the healthcare system would be fine if Congress hadn’t assumed the responsibility for 50% of all healthcare expenditures in the United States through Medicare and Medicaid. They not only spend half the health dollars in America but are in fact, the most corrupt of all insurers, routinely short paying doctors and hospitals for their services. That is why private insurance has skyrocketed. Hospitals must shift the portion of the bill that Congress won’t pay to someone who will. Since they can’t charge Medicare and Medicaid more, they charge you.
Private insurance can’t ignore 40% of the bill the way the Federal government does so it must raise what it charges you. Alinsky said organizers must frame the questions to get the answers they want and President Obama has done just that, forcing all of America to argue over what industry reforms are needed rather than whether reforms would be needed at all if it were not for an irresponsible government.
Obama taught Alinsky theory in college and after a brief three years as the Junior Senator from Illinois, the Progressive machine grouped behind him and he was elected President. If that is not a classic example of the infiltration of the political process that Alinsky inspired, I don’t know what is. Obama has his foot soldiers too…the poor communities that he inspired through his organizing efforts. The ACCORNs and other Cloward-Pivens type organizations that were also founded to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Obama has also tried to infiltrate the schools several times; the latest attempt is through his website, “Organizing for America”. They have an intern program for high school student to teach them….well, organizing and wouldn’t you know, one of the books on the suggested reading list is “Rules for Radical” by Saul Alinsky. How much more of this needs to be seen before we stop asking how people can claim that Obama is a radical socialist and start asking how did we not see this before?
Of course the President cannot do this alone and that is where the Progressive movement comes in. Congress already has 80+ openly Progressive members that regularly attend meetings in the Congressional Progressive Caucus and there are more in the shadows. To tell you the truth…I would like to see C-Span cameras in those meetings more than I would in the healthcare debate. If we could see the real intent of those minions of Marx, the healthcare reform and cap and trade (energy bill) agenda would be exposed for what it is and would be rejected without adieu.
There are Democrats, there are Republicans and there are Progressives. Progressive is not a nice word at all. It was founded during an age when the enlightened (the old Progressives of the Progressive Era) believed in eugenics; that you could breed a perfect human being. Having perfect human beings would give you the right to eliminate “less than perfect” human beings and many in the Progressive movement of the 20’s and 30’s believed just that.
No, the Modern Progressives don’t believe in breeding perfect humans or the notion exterminating the rest but they do believe in educating an elite class of rulers that will shepherd the masses because the non-educated and politically ignorant “peasant class” cannot possible be capable of making those decisions for themselves. That is why they are crafting legislation that will allow the government to make your must fundamental choices for you; what kind of healthcare you will receive, how much energy you will consume and even what kind of foods you will eat. There will be no mandates to enforce these things; those will come after the collapse of Capitalism. All of this will be achieved through the liberal use of the existing tax structure that will force you to make the choices they deem are good by making bad choices beyond your ability to afford. They already know they can because we sat still for the myriad of “sin” taxes they have already put in place on tobacco and alcohol. Why should cheeseburgers, gasoline and electricity be any different?
The one thing Progressives cannot do is carry out their agenda in public. Every time the Progressive agenda was made public in the past, it drove them underground until the political climate changed again. To be victorious, they must keep their real goals secret. I challenge you to read Alinsky and study Cloward and Piven. You will be as shocked as I was to see the parallels between the President, our most liberal members of Congress and the strategies laid out by Saul Alinsky. It’s time to turn the flood lights on the Progressive agenda so the American people can assume their rightful place as the leaders of our nation again. The intent of the founders was a citizen legislature that bowed to the will of the people; not the creation of a ruling class of elitist socialists.
Paul
The President knows this isn’t true and even though he is still pressing for the passage of his full agenda, he realizes that it means the loss of the Democratic majority in November’s elections. To Obama, the loss of the majority means little as long as the Progressive agenda is put into play because he knows once it is enacted, it can not be rescinded; that America will be saddled with these new programs for all of eternity, that is, until the real Progressive goal post is reached….the collapse of Capitalism.
Progressives have had a grand strategy for decades to slowly infiltrate society so that they can frame the arguments and create the conditions that will forward their agenda. If you read my article on Saul Alinsky that was posted to this blog yesterday, you can see that strategy enunciated in his own words; words that Barack Obama taught to unsuspecting students at The University of Chicago Law School; words that Obama put into practice in the streets of Chicago as a community organizer. I know that the media denigrates anyone that tries to make the Obama – Alinsky connection or questions the President’s motives as being anything more that just run-of-the-mill liberalism but this President’s career and first term in office have been a carbon copy of Alinsky’s game plan and can be followed line by line in Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals”.
The President ran a campaign based on the need for change. He made the case based on the nation’s anger with George Bush’s policies and the out of control spending policies of a partisan Congress that what we needed was a “fundamental transformation” of America. He stood on a platform of hope and spoke to the best ideals of the American people.
Well, Alinsky’s strategy begins with the notion that radicals should not wear fatigues and shout obscenities; they should wear suits and “speak the language of middle America”. He also believed that organizers, when properly trained, could create anger in the poor communities and that these angry citizens would then become the “foot soldiers of change”. Alinsky believed that organizers must infiltrate churches, schools, organizations and yes, even politics, so that they then would be in a position to steer the national conversation to Progressive matters. He felt that if you were in a position to frame the questions that you could illicit the answers you want and make you believe it was your idea; that false support for a coerced agenda would make people feel that they were finally making a difference; that it was their hopes that were shaping policy and be blinded to the truth that the organizers were shaping them. He truly believed that the Progressive revolution was a revolution of small steps and that by achieving these small goals, the ultimate goal could eventually be reached; the demise of Capitalism.
So now we have Obama, the champion of change, the organizer that speaks the language of Middle America. He has capitalized on a healthcare crisis created in Congress and now has us all discussing the changes that must take place to correct the problem. Just to refresh the facts, the healthcare system would be fine if Congress hadn’t assumed the responsibility for 50% of all healthcare expenditures in the United States through Medicare and Medicaid. They not only spend half the health dollars in America but are in fact, the most corrupt of all insurers, routinely short paying doctors and hospitals for their services. That is why private insurance has skyrocketed. Hospitals must shift the portion of the bill that Congress won’t pay to someone who will. Since they can’t charge Medicare and Medicaid more, they charge you.
Private insurance can’t ignore 40% of the bill the way the Federal government does so it must raise what it charges you. Alinsky said organizers must frame the questions to get the answers they want and President Obama has done just that, forcing all of America to argue over what industry reforms are needed rather than whether reforms would be needed at all if it were not for an irresponsible government.
Obama taught Alinsky theory in college and after a brief three years as the Junior Senator from Illinois, the Progressive machine grouped behind him and he was elected President. If that is not a classic example of the infiltration of the political process that Alinsky inspired, I don’t know what is. Obama has his foot soldiers too…the poor communities that he inspired through his organizing efforts. The ACCORNs and other Cloward-Pivens type organizations that were also founded to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Obama has also tried to infiltrate the schools several times; the latest attempt is through his website, “Organizing for America”. They have an intern program for high school student to teach them….well, organizing and wouldn’t you know, one of the books on the suggested reading list is “Rules for Radical” by Saul Alinsky. How much more of this needs to be seen before we stop asking how people can claim that Obama is a radical socialist and start asking how did we not see this before?
Of course the President cannot do this alone and that is where the Progressive movement comes in. Congress already has 80+ openly Progressive members that regularly attend meetings in the Congressional Progressive Caucus and there are more in the shadows. To tell you the truth…I would like to see C-Span cameras in those meetings more than I would in the healthcare debate. If we could see the real intent of those minions of Marx, the healthcare reform and cap and trade (energy bill) agenda would be exposed for what it is and would be rejected without adieu.
There are Democrats, there are Republicans and there are Progressives. Progressive is not a nice word at all. It was founded during an age when the enlightened (the old Progressives of the Progressive Era) believed in eugenics; that you could breed a perfect human being. Having perfect human beings would give you the right to eliminate “less than perfect” human beings and many in the Progressive movement of the 20’s and 30’s believed just that.
No, the Modern Progressives don’t believe in breeding perfect humans or the notion exterminating the rest but they do believe in educating an elite class of rulers that will shepherd the masses because the non-educated and politically ignorant “peasant class” cannot possible be capable of making those decisions for themselves. That is why they are crafting legislation that will allow the government to make your must fundamental choices for you; what kind of healthcare you will receive, how much energy you will consume and even what kind of foods you will eat. There will be no mandates to enforce these things; those will come after the collapse of Capitalism. All of this will be achieved through the liberal use of the existing tax structure that will force you to make the choices they deem are good by making bad choices beyond your ability to afford. They already know they can because we sat still for the myriad of “sin” taxes they have already put in place on tobacco and alcohol. Why should cheeseburgers, gasoline and electricity be any different?
The one thing Progressives cannot do is carry out their agenda in public. Every time the Progressive agenda was made public in the past, it drove them underground until the political climate changed again. To be victorious, they must keep their real goals secret. I challenge you to read Alinsky and study Cloward and Piven. You will be as shocked as I was to see the parallels between the President, our most liberal members of Congress and the strategies laid out by Saul Alinsky. It’s time to turn the flood lights on the Progressive agenda so the American people can assume their rightful place as the leaders of our nation again. The intent of the founders was a citizen legislature that bowed to the will of the people; not the creation of a ruling class of elitist socialists.
Paul
Monday, February 1, 2010
New Budget - Same Old Story
One would have thought that after the recent Democratic losses in three States, two of which were staunch Democratic areas, that the President would have heard the message from the voters loud and clear. Well, apparently they still can’t hear you. Glenn Beck warned on one of his shows after the Massachusetts victory for Republican Scott Brown that one of two Presidents would emerge from the ashes. Either we would see a politician that would move to the center as Bill Clinton did after his 1994 midterm thrashing or we would see Obama the ideologue stomping on the gas to force his agenda through. For those that didn’t see a glimpse of the ideologue during the State of the Union address we have additional proof today in the President’s budget proposals for 2011.
The budget for FY 2011 announced today will top $3.8 trillion dollars and add another $1.56 trillion dollars to the national debt….if we are lucky. White House Budget Director Peter “Loverboy” Orszag claims that the President’s plans will trim over $1 trillion dollars from the Federal Budget within the next ten years but that is one of the oldest tricks in the books. All the President has to do to achieve that is to announce that they didn’t spend money they were planning to and Viola! $1 trillion dollars has been trimmed from the Federal Budget. It is a phantom trillion, a savings that is as hard to prove as all of the “jobs saved” under the last stimulus bill. Before the President could be able to claim such a savings with authority, he would have to be believable and that is equally as laughable.
President Obama's budget plans project $5.08 trillion in deficit spending over the next five years -- a 35 percent increase over what the administration projected a year ago. Even the current budget deficit is suspect as the revenue figures include income from Cap and Trade; a bill that has not yet passed Congress and if economic conditions do not vastly improve, will never pass. Just in case you have lost track of Cap and Trade, the administration is now trying to sell this massive energy tax under the heading of a “comprehensive energy bill”. Similar to the renaming of global warming to climate change now that the planet appears to be cooling….it still stinks no matter what it is calls.
To spite the President’s call for development of American domestic energy resources during the State of the Union Address, including oil, coal and nuclear power, this budget cuts subsidies for fossil fuels netting a reduction of $31.5 trillion dollars over ten years. That will raise costs for American energy consumers, only adding to the additional costs for energy promised if the President’s energy bill is passed. Pass out the candles folks…the lights are going out if Obama get’s his way. The fact is that either we develop domestic resources as politician Obama promised during his speech or we tax the hell out of them as ideologue Obama promises in his budget. If I had to guess which one to bet on, all I have to do is look at his track record. His speeches have so far, meant nothing while the black and white, tax and spend ink on the pages of his budgets have seized the day. Perhaps I should have said red and white, tax and spend ink?
So where is the attention to the plight of unemployed Americans? Certainly, you won’t find it in this budget proposal. Ever since the inception of the personal income tax under Woodrow Wilson, the historical evidence proves over and over that increases in taxes reduce overall revenue to the treasury because of the negative effect they have on business. Even Obama said that small business provides more than half the jobs in the United States. Whether or not he actually believes that is up for debate but he did say it. They why does every major initiative the President is trying to get passed into law contain oppressive new regulations and massive new taxes that will strangle the number one job creator in the United States?
While the White House happily announces that the mediocre growth of the economy in the last quarter is proof that the recession is easing, much of that growth was brought on by government spending on pet projects that provided little or no relief to the unemployed. The hopeless ideologue and his “progressive friends” in Congress (his words, not mine) still fail to see that government does not create jobs. Only the private sector can create real and lasting employment and only during those odd years when government stops meddling in their affairs. Government can create jobs within their own bloated bureaucracies but those “support” jobs still rely on collecting taxes from income generated by real companies that pay real wages to real employees.
In a quick summary taken from business 101, companies basically have two kinds of employees beyond the owners; sales people that generate revenue for the company and support people that use a portion of that revenue to provide support for the sales people. When times are lean and cuts must be made, the first positions any company will eliminate are support staff because it makes no fiscal sense to eliminate the people that actually earn money for the company. What ideologues and Congressional Progressives still fail to understand is that the Federal government, in its entirety, is the support staff for the American people. We are the revenue generators and there isn’t a nickel they spend that does not come directly from our earnings. Contrary to every known law of fiscal responsibility, the Federal government under the Progressive banner is expanding the support staff of the nation at the expense of the people that actually earn the money. It cannot work.
Every time that the Federal government has cut taxes it has led directly to an expansion of the economy and to the growth of revenues to the treasury. The increases in debt have always come from a spendthrift Congress and their history is to spend every penny they can get their hands on, and more. The best possible ratio of taxes to GDP is 20%. That is when you can afford a reasonable level of government and still maintain decent measure of economic growth. Of course that has to be the real GDP; not one that has been inflated by the influence of government stimulus spending. The other segue is that the taxes collected cannot exclusively be taken from those that are the investors and creators of the businesses that actually create jobs. Only the demented views of the radical left see wealth as an evil worthy of punishment; the rest of us see it as a statement of opportunity and the rewards of hard work. The truth is that I don’t believe they really think wealth is evil. Most of them are wealthy in their own right. They do use the evil rich argument as a tool to gain the support of the average American when they pass tax plans that confiscate unconscionable amounts of that wealth.
There appears to be no recognition in Washington that we are in serious economic trouble and no one but the government has ever proposed that they can spend themselves out of debt. Just a few short years ago, China was purchasing 50% of the notes that fund our annual deficit. Now that the dollar has shrunk thanks to the runaway printing of money at the Federal Reserve, China has lost billions as the interest we paid them to service the debt has diminished over 17% this year alone. The net result is that China only purchased 4% of our deficit spending in 2009 and that is just a portend of things to come.
The balance of our deficit had to be financed elsewhere, with the American people picking up a large part of it. Don’t kid yourself; that is not an indication that the American people have faith in the solvency of the Federal government. That really speaks about the lack of faith in the nation’s banking system. Wary investors are asking the Fed to hold their money, even at zero interest as the last safe haven before they begin dumping dollars and buying gold. When that begins to happen it will signal that events are about to enter a new and dangerous territory….a territory last visited by the Weimar Republic after World War One.
Paul
The budget for FY 2011 announced today will top $3.8 trillion dollars and add another $1.56 trillion dollars to the national debt….if we are lucky. White House Budget Director Peter “Loverboy” Orszag claims that the President’s plans will trim over $1 trillion dollars from the Federal Budget within the next ten years but that is one of the oldest tricks in the books. All the President has to do to achieve that is to announce that they didn’t spend money they were planning to and Viola! $1 trillion dollars has been trimmed from the Federal Budget. It is a phantom trillion, a savings that is as hard to prove as all of the “jobs saved” under the last stimulus bill. Before the President could be able to claim such a savings with authority, he would have to be believable and that is equally as laughable.
President Obama's budget plans project $5.08 trillion in deficit spending over the next five years -- a 35 percent increase over what the administration projected a year ago. Even the current budget deficit is suspect as the revenue figures include income from Cap and Trade; a bill that has not yet passed Congress and if economic conditions do not vastly improve, will never pass. Just in case you have lost track of Cap and Trade, the administration is now trying to sell this massive energy tax under the heading of a “comprehensive energy bill”. Similar to the renaming of global warming to climate change now that the planet appears to be cooling….it still stinks no matter what it is calls.
To spite the President’s call for development of American domestic energy resources during the State of the Union Address, including oil, coal and nuclear power, this budget cuts subsidies for fossil fuels netting a reduction of $31.5 trillion dollars over ten years. That will raise costs for American energy consumers, only adding to the additional costs for energy promised if the President’s energy bill is passed. Pass out the candles folks…the lights are going out if Obama get’s his way. The fact is that either we develop domestic resources as politician Obama promised during his speech or we tax the hell out of them as ideologue Obama promises in his budget. If I had to guess which one to bet on, all I have to do is look at his track record. His speeches have so far, meant nothing while the black and white, tax and spend ink on the pages of his budgets have seized the day. Perhaps I should have said red and white, tax and spend ink?
So where is the attention to the plight of unemployed Americans? Certainly, you won’t find it in this budget proposal. Ever since the inception of the personal income tax under Woodrow Wilson, the historical evidence proves over and over that increases in taxes reduce overall revenue to the treasury because of the negative effect they have on business. Even Obama said that small business provides more than half the jobs in the United States. Whether or not he actually believes that is up for debate but he did say it. They why does every major initiative the President is trying to get passed into law contain oppressive new regulations and massive new taxes that will strangle the number one job creator in the United States?
While the White House happily announces that the mediocre growth of the economy in the last quarter is proof that the recession is easing, much of that growth was brought on by government spending on pet projects that provided little or no relief to the unemployed. The hopeless ideologue and his “progressive friends” in Congress (his words, not mine) still fail to see that government does not create jobs. Only the private sector can create real and lasting employment and only during those odd years when government stops meddling in their affairs. Government can create jobs within their own bloated bureaucracies but those “support” jobs still rely on collecting taxes from income generated by real companies that pay real wages to real employees.
In a quick summary taken from business 101, companies basically have two kinds of employees beyond the owners; sales people that generate revenue for the company and support people that use a portion of that revenue to provide support for the sales people. When times are lean and cuts must be made, the first positions any company will eliminate are support staff because it makes no fiscal sense to eliminate the people that actually earn money for the company. What ideologues and Congressional Progressives still fail to understand is that the Federal government, in its entirety, is the support staff for the American people. We are the revenue generators and there isn’t a nickel they spend that does not come directly from our earnings. Contrary to every known law of fiscal responsibility, the Federal government under the Progressive banner is expanding the support staff of the nation at the expense of the people that actually earn the money. It cannot work.
Every time that the Federal government has cut taxes it has led directly to an expansion of the economy and to the growth of revenues to the treasury. The increases in debt have always come from a spendthrift Congress and their history is to spend every penny they can get their hands on, and more. The best possible ratio of taxes to GDP is 20%. That is when you can afford a reasonable level of government and still maintain decent measure of economic growth. Of course that has to be the real GDP; not one that has been inflated by the influence of government stimulus spending. The other segue is that the taxes collected cannot exclusively be taken from those that are the investors and creators of the businesses that actually create jobs. Only the demented views of the radical left see wealth as an evil worthy of punishment; the rest of us see it as a statement of opportunity and the rewards of hard work. The truth is that I don’t believe they really think wealth is evil. Most of them are wealthy in their own right. They do use the evil rich argument as a tool to gain the support of the average American when they pass tax plans that confiscate unconscionable amounts of that wealth.
There appears to be no recognition in Washington that we are in serious economic trouble and no one but the government has ever proposed that they can spend themselves out of debt. Just a few short years ago, China was purchasing 50% of the notes that fund our annual deficit. Now that the dollar has shrunk thanks to the runaway printing of money at the Federal Reserve, China has lost billions as the interest we paid them to service the debt has diminished over 17% this year alone. The net result is that China only purchased 4% of our deficit spending in 2009 and that is just a portend of things to come.
The balance of our deficit had to be financed elsewhere, with the American people picking up a large part of it. Don’t kid yourself; that is not an indication that the American people have faith in the solvency of the Federal government. That really speaks about the lack of faith in the nation’s banking system. Wary investors are asking the Fed to hold their money, even at zero interest as the last safe haven before they begin dumping dollars and buying gold. When that begins to happen it will signal that events are about to enter a new and dangerous territory….a territory last visited by the Weimar Republic after World War One.
Paul
Friday, January 29, 2010
What is Obama's Top Priority?
The President mentioned a whole host of non-descript people that keep saying “slow down” to which Obama commented…”How long must we wait?” So who are these mysterious voices? Republicans have been effectively locked out of the negotiations so it can’t be them. The Tea Party people have been dismissed by this administration as crazy and the polls show that Americans are already angry for being ignored so it can’t be them either. Progressive Democrats are all behind the Obama agenda and are urging immediate action so nope, not them. The moderate Democrats might feign resistance but we now know they are just looking for their buy-out so that roadblock evaporates as soon as the cash is on the table. The secret service keeps the President a comfortable distance from nearly everyone else so I thought perhaps it was the Salahi’s; but they are little more than media hounds and wouldn’t dare risk exposure by taking any side in the discussion.
If Obama weren’t a Progressive radical with a heavy Chicago political background, I might think it were his conscience speaking to him but we all know that Chicago politicians and Progressive radicals have no conscience. With all other possibilities scientifically excluded, that leaves only one voice as the possible suspect; the voice no one in Washington ever mentions….the voice of reason.
I did not find it surprising that Obama didn’t mention the multitude of voices chiding him to accelerate the process; to force legislation before the mid-term elections eliminate the dominance of Congressional Progressives. These voices want healthcare reform with a strong public option because that is the one thing that will bring about their real goal of Socialized medicine within ten years. These voices want Cap and Trade because they know what most Americans don’t. That Cap and Trade is not about saving the planet from global warming but saving the planet from Capitalism. It is a mechanism that will bridle this nation’s ability to further develop domestic energy resources and will complete the migration of manufacturing industries to countries that do not possess the same penchant for self destruction.
We have been discussing those voices for quite some time on the Vigilance Project. The United Nations; George Soros and the multitude of Marxist organizations that he funds through the Tides Foundation; ACORN; The Apollo Alliance; SEIU; G.E. and even though there are many more, let us not forget the Progressives firmly lodged in Congress. Considering the initiatives the President still claims are a priority for the nation, each and every one of these factions are more than adequately represented by this administration.
So why didn’t Obama mention these voices in the State of the Union Address? Because they mirror his own ideas of what this nation should look like before he’s through with it. It’s kind of like Karaoke….It might sound like you’re singing but if you are really quiet, you can hear the original song and artist clearly in the background. When Obama is quiet (he has to sleep sometimes) you can clearly hear the background music in the speeches and interviews of Progressive Democrats, Andy Stern, Jeff Immelt and whispered by all of those radical supporters of the Socialization of America. They are no more dragging Obama to the left than an alcoholic must be dragged to a bar.
The State of the Union Address contained as many contradictions as it did lies. Jobs creation is the administration’s number one priority but we must complete healthcare and pass a comprehensive climate bill; both of which are sited by the business community as creating a climate of uncertainly that has prevented business owners from risking any expansion. The President announced support for developing domestic energy resources in America including nuclear, coal and oil but he has already placed the right people within the EPA that will make sure that can never happen.
Every possible avenue available to the radical environmental movement has been used to indefinitely stall projects that would have developed domestic energy resources in this country. They don’t do this in other countries because we are the only idiots that give them unlimited access to our courts even when the figurehead filing the suit does not reside in the community where the project has been proposed. If the President weren’t merely playing lip service to the development of domestic energy he would be asking Congress to declare the development of these resources vital to the strategic interests on the United States and block interference from both the environmental left and the EPA.
The President announced that the Federal government will fund a high speed rail project because Europe and Japan have taken the lead in high speed rail and we cannot accept second place. Well, high speed rail makes perfect sense in Europe and Japan because they do not have vast tracts of undeveloped land not to mention that many of those nations are barely larger than the state of Texas. We also have the burden of a twelve trillion dollar national debt that White House projections claim will double by the end of his second term and those projections do no include healthcare reform or the passage of a climate bill. To be able to call high speed rail an investment you must first be able to expect a return on that investment. Short of providing a bone for his union friends and of course, GE; there is no return for this so-called investment.
Yesterday the White House announced a plan to provide small business with a five-thousand dollar tax incentive for each new job they create in 2010. In addition, they will forego any increase in the company’s payroll taxes for those new employees. Sounds good right? Not really. The minimum wage established by the Federal government is currently $7.35 per hour. Add payroll taxes and benefits, because we are going to have to provide healthcare and each new employee will cost that company a minimum of $20,000 per year and the tax incentives and relief are a one time shot. That is like saying don’t worry about whether or not you can afford the payments…go ahead and buy that new car and I’ll throw in a tank of gas. Just think how far that will get you!
President Obama has stacked the deck against the American business community and they are not responding to his jobs initiatives or to the dangling carrots of tax breaks because until they can accurately forecast their future tax liabilities, they will not expand their markets and product lines nor add new employees. Unlike the Federal government, business must first ask the question of how they will be able to pay for additional labor or new programs or they will shortly cease to exist as a business.
Curiously, the President has once again proved his arrogance while speaking at a House Republican retreat today in Baltimore. He stood before the crowd and accused Republicans of portraying health care reform as a "Bolshevik plot" and telling their constituents that he is "doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."
Er, sorry Mr. President…..that would be me, not the House Republicans. I wouldn’t be saying half of what I have been saying if your administration isn’t pocked with people with socialist and communist backgrounds and if your friends and advisors weren’t recycled 1960’s radicals.
Can you deny that you taught Alinsky in college and then applied those lessons to your community “organizing” techniques in the street of Chicago? Can you deny that your climate Czar, Carol Browner, belonged to an organization (Socialist International) that sought to unify the world under a single Socialist government or that your science Czar, John Holdren, proposed forced abortion and mandatory sterilization in his writings? Can you deny that your former green jobs Czar, Van Jones openly admitted to being a communist or that your own chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel thinks the First Amendment is overrated? I could go on and on but this is getting repetitious.
About the only thing we haven’t discussed on this subject is the purging of your administration of these pariahs only because you have thus far refused to do that. Without the dismissal of the radicals within your administration and circle of advisors, I can only conclude that your aim is to continue to foment support for a Bolshevik plot to take over the healthcare system and are indeed actively pursuing a path that will lead to the destruction of the Constitution of the United States and our Capitalist financial system.
Paul
If Obama weren’t a Progressive radical with a heavy Chicago political background, I might think it were his conscience speaking to him but we all know that Chicago politicians and Progressive radicals have no conscience. With all other possibilities scientifically excluded, that leaves only one voice as the possible suspect; the voice no one in Washington ever mentions….the voice of reason.
I did not find it surprising that Obama didn’t mention the multitude of voices chiding him to accelerate the process; to force legislation before the mid-term elections eliminate the dominance of Congressional Progressives. These voices want healthcare reform with a strong public option because that is the one thing that will bring about their real goal of Socialized medicine within ten years. These voices want Cap and Trade because they know what most Americans don’t. That Cap and Trade is not about saving the planet from global warming but saving the planet from Capitalism. It is a mechanism that will bridle this nation’s ability to further develop domestic energy resources and will complete the migration of manufacturing industries to countries that do not possess the same penchant for self destruction.
We have been discussing those voices for quite some time on the Vigilance Project. The United Nations; George Soros and the multitude of Marxist organizations that he funds through the Tides Foundation; ACORN; The Apollo Alliance; SEIU; G.E. and even though there are many more, let us not forget the Progressives firmly lodged in Congress. Considering the initiatives the President still claims are a priority for the nation, each and every one of these factions are more than adequately represented by this administration.
So why didn’t Obama mention these voices in the State of the Union Address? Because they mirror his own ideas of what this nation should look like before he’s through with it. It’s kind of like Karaoke….It might sound like you’re singing but if you are really quiet, you can hear the original song and artist clearly in the background. When Obama is quiet (he has to sleep sometimes) you can clearly hear the background music in the speeches and interviews of Progressive Democrats, Andy Stern, Jeff Immelt and whispered by all of those radical supporters of the Socialization of America. They are no more dragging Obama to the left than an alcoholic must be dragged to a bar.
The State of the Union Address contained as many contradictions as it did lies. Jobs creation is the administration’s number one priority but we must complete healthcare and pass a comprehensive climate bill; both of which are sited by the business community as creating a climate of uncertainly that has prevented business owners from risking any expansion. The President announced support for developing domestic energy resources in America including nuclear, coal and oil but he has already placed the right people within the EPA that will make sure that can never happen.
Every possible avenue available to the radical environmental movement has been used to indefinitely stall projects that would have developed domestic energy resources in this country. They don’t do this in other countries because we are the only idiots that give them unlimited access to our courts even when the figurehead filing the suit does not reside in the community where the project has been proposed. If the President weren’t merely playing lip service to the development of domestic energy he would be asking Congress to declare the development of these resources vital to the strategic interests on the United States and block interference from both the environmental left and the EPA.
The President announced that the Federal government will fund a high speed rail project because Europe and Japan have taken the lead in high speed rail and we cannot accept second place. Well, high speed rail makes perfect sense in Europe and Japan because they do not have vast tracts of undeveloped land not to mention that many of those nations are barely larger than the state of Texas. We also have the burden of a twelve trillion dollar national debt that White House projections claim will double by the end of his second term and those projections do no include healthcare reform or the passage of a climate bill. To be able to call high speed rail an investment you must first be able to expect a return on that investment. Short of providing a bone for his union friends and of course, GE; there is no return for this so-called investment.
Yesterday the White House announced a plan to provide small business with a five-thousand dollar tax incentive for each new job they create in 2010. In addition, they will forego any increase in the company’s payroll taxes for those new employees. Sounds good right? Not really. The minimum wage established by the Federal government is currently $7.35 per hour. Add payroll taxes and benefits, because we are going to have to provide healthcare and each new employee will cost that company a minimum of $20,000 per year and the tax incentives and relief are a one time shot. That is like saying don’t worry about whether or not you can afford the payments…go ahead and buy that new car and I’ll throw in a tank of gas. Just think how far that will get you!
President Obama has stacked the deck against the American business community and they are not responding to his jobs initiatives or to the dangling carrots of tax breaks because until they can accurately forecast their future tax liabilities, they will not expand their markets and product lines nor add new employees. Unlike the Federal government, business must first ask the question of how they will be able to pay for additional labor or new programs or they will shortly cease to exist as a business.
Curiously, the President has once again proved his arrogance while speaking at a House Republican retreat today in Baltimore. He stood before the crowd and accused Republicans of portraying health care reform as a "Bolshevik plot" and telling their constituents that he is "doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."
Er, sorry Mr. President…..that would be me, not the House Republicans. I wouldn’t be saying half of what I have been saying if your administration isn’t pocked with people with socialist and communist backgrounds and if your friends and advisors weren’t recycled 1960’s radicals.
Can you deny that you taught Alinsky in college and then applied those lessons to your community “organizing” techniques in the street of Chicago? Can you deny that your climate Czar, Carol Browner, belonged to an organization (Socialist International) that sought to unify the world under a single Socialist government or that your science Czar, John Holdren, proposed forced abortion and mandatory sterilization in his writings? Can you deny that your former green jobs Czar, Van Jones openly admitted to being a communist or that your own chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel thinks the First Amendment is overrated? I could go on and on but this is getting repetitious.
About the only thing we haven’t discussed on this subject is the purging of your administration of these pariahs only because you have thus far refused to do that. Without the dismissal of the radicals within your administration and circle of advisors, I can only conclude that your aim is to continue to foment support for a Bolshevik plot to take over the healthcare system and are indeed actively pursuing a path that will lead to the destruction of the Constitution of the United States and our Capitalist financial system.
Paul
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