Socialism and the End of the American Dream

Excellent discussion about the difference between Health Care and Health Benefits, and who is covered by which. excerpt:  Except of course, for the fundamental difference, which remains the same -- Republicans want to reform and improve health care without destroying its free-enterprise base, while Democrats would be very happy to see the entire thing absorbed into a government-controlled system, as half of it has been already through the extension of Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs. What became most outstanding is that President Obama and his teammates still do not have any real understanding of how the current system works..... Only 6 percent of the population actually buys their own insurance. (And for this, we are painting the insurance companies as the villains of this melodrama?) Fourteen percent of the population is on Medicare, 14 percent on Medicaid. The other 66 percent do not have insurance but health benefits¸, which is not the same thing. Nine percent gets its benefits from government employment, 4 percent from the military and the remaining 43 percent get their benefits from private employment. The last 15 percent (there is some overlap) has no coverage at all. President Obama kept talking about how it is these "large pools" in big companies that make insurance cheap, but that is not true. Large pools are only part of the equation. Equally important is that these employees are getting their benefits tax-free. This is a huge advantage not available to the uninsured population. Because the government is not getting its cut, employers are also eager to convey benefits to their employees instead of wage increases because they have more value. This is why, for many people, health benefits constitute the major reason for employment. Wages transfer easily from job to job but benefits do not. Yet another advantage of company-run health benefits programs is that they are exempt from state regulations. ....... 

Wow.  If you only have five minutes to spend towards understanding the health care debate and what governemnt take over health care would mean, this is what you need to listen to.  Excellent summation.

Incredible must read for all Americans. excerpt: By the end of March, Barack Obama's administration will face its destiny, its Brutus a pawn of the fates. In Jimmy Carter's presidency, the Wall Street Journal editorialized about "Ratcheting to Ruin." The title derived from the fact that each cycle high in unemployment was higher than previous ones, and each cycle high in inflation was also. "Stagflation" was the neologism coined to describe what up until then was believed to be impossible in the Keynesian world. This period ushered in a new era in both politics and economics. Carter was replaced by Reagan, and Keynes was replaced by Friedman. Thirty years later, Keynes is back in vogue, Obama has ascended to the White House, and times are reminiscent of the Carter era. The economy is awful. Fear and dissatisfaction prevail. Politicians are held in contempt. There is one major difference -- Carter did not face an "ides of March" event. ..... The problem is bigger than the numbers above might suggest. Budget forecasts show that the problem increases over time. In addition, 40% of existing debt matures in the next year. That means $2.8 trillion of debt has to be refinanced. The Treasury must sell on average $90 billion of debt a week! In five weeks, we need to sell $450 billion. That is equal to the largest full-year deficit in history, at least until Obama's first year. There are no plans to curb spending or cut deficits. President Obama just increased the debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion. To outsiders, we appear like a banana republic with ICBMs. Does anyone seriously believe that funding based on "the kindness of strangers" is workable much longer? ..... If Bernanke stops QE, he fulfills his role as an independent central banker. Presumably, that action stops the decline in the dollar and reduces the risk of future inflation. It was the course that Paul Volcker chose in the late 1970s. Volcker's action was bold, highly controversial, and highly criticized. Vol

I don't usually read the NY Times because i don't trust them.  They were discredited long ago.  This article however is just excellent.  I wonder how it got through the editorial slant maker?  5 pages.  Good story line. The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival, as it was in the Massachusetts Senate election, or for division. But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny. These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.

A new Rasmussen poll finds: The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. *** Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.That helps explain why 75% of voters are angry at the policies of the federal government, and 63% say it would be better for the country if most members of Congress are defeated this November… In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, Scott Rasmussen observes that the American people are "united in the belief that our political system is broken, that politicians are corrupt, and that neither major political party has the answers." He adds that "the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and the politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century." *** Sixty percent (60%) of voters think that neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today. Thirty-five percent (35%) say Republicans and Democrats are so much alike that an entirely new political party is needed to represent the American people. Nearly half of all voters believe that people randomly selected from the phone book could do as good a job as the current Congress.

Nails it.  This is exactly what is happening in my neighborhood.  And i'm at the epicenter of Silicon Valley;  about as liberal, far-left, marxist-statist-socialist as it gets.  Yet here we are.  As Lady Thatcher famously once said, " 'The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money".  "Eventually" has arrived.   excerpt:  America is on the verge of something unprecedented in history: the peaceful, constitutional replacement of our country's entire political establishment. This is what lies behind the decisions of so many elected officials, at every level, to step aside rather than fight for reelection. And it explains how the Tea Party movement can exert so much political leverage without nominating its own candidates or even without formally choosing its own leaders. Most of the time, we Americans don't pay much attention to politics. We focus all of our energy on our jobs, our families, and our faith. We work hard, play by the rules, and wish only to be left alone. We love our country, consider ourselves blessed to be living here, and ask little from the men and women we elect except to keep from screwing things up. But in just the last decade, Americans were shocked by two catastrophes we hadn't imagined our political establishment would allow to happen. The first was 9-11, when nineteen terrorists successfully attacked our homeland, and by doing so revealed that for years, al-Qaeda and its allies had been waging holy war against us. The second was the 2008 financial crash, which revealed that our economy is a house of cards built on a pile of debt so high we cannot possibly repay it.

Anyone who isn't welded to the Obama-Pelosi-Reid ball and chain has their campaign issue for November's election and 2012: spending. Republicans, Lieberman-Bayh Democrats, tea partiers, it doesn't matter. Spending, spending, spending. This is bigger than drill, drill, drill. Way bigger. Finally, after a nonstop, nearly 80-year upward climb, government spending has hit a wall. It didn't seem possible but this is a big wall. It's the American voter. This has been an unforgettable year in the history of American spending. It began with an eye-popping $800 billion stimulus bill that came from nowhere and went to nowhere. Done with that, the Washington Democrats turned to President Obama's health-care reform, which looked big at first, but turned out to be bigger. A well-publicized June estimate of the Senate bill's cost by the Congressional Budget Office put the 10-year price tag at $1.6 trillion. So $800 billion, then a trillion. Dollar signs rocketed into the sky all year: hundreds of billions on various TARP salvage projects, much drawn from some magic stash held by the Federal Reserve. The Obama cap-and-trade bill was going to use an auction to siphon $3.3 trillion from various states to Washington over 40 years. Oh, almost forgot-an FY 2011 $3.8 trillion budget. Some of this was spending, some taxes, some fees. It's all spending. A tax or fee is just a sluice gate that separates private income from the public-spending lake. And in 2009 it was beginning to look as if the politicians were going to blow the dam. California and New York, the nation's first and third most populous states, were in fiscal collapse, with the whole nation watching as once-mighty California (which looks like Greece cubed) actually issued IOUs. On April 15, the tea parties achieved critical mass, then built into a political phenomenon. The New York Times this week gave two full pages to cataloguing tea partier grievances in a way meant to convey the paranoid style in American politi

On Wednesday, February 17, more than 80 conservative thinkers and organization heads came together to ratify a joint manifesto. Dubbed The Mount Vernon Statement, its goal is to unite the right -- economic, social, and national security conservatives -- under a set of shared principles. The Mount Vernon Statement is not geared to any election or candidate or specific piece of legislation; it is a statement of timeless principles as old as the Republic, and will be as relevant years from now as it is today.

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs. These weren't the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.

I've been reading John Mauldin's newsletter for some time now.  The guy is so grounded, and his writing style is fluid.  Mostly though i appreciate the depth of background information that surrounds the simplicity of his explanations.  Note his connections to George Friedman, Niall Ferguson David Rosenberg, Lacy Hunt and Gary Shilling.  Quite a murders row of economic thinking.  anyway, John's newsletter has become the bottom line of my economic thinking. excerpt:     "Our immersion in the details of crises that have arisen over the past eight centuries and in data on them has led us to conclude that the most commonly repeated and most expensive investment advice ever given in the boom just before a financial crisis stems from the perception that 'this time is different.' That advice, that the old rules of valuation no longer apply, is usually followed up with vigor. Financial professionals and, all too often, government leaders explain that we are doing things better than before, we are smarter, and we have learned from past mistakes. Each time, society convinces itself that the current boom, unlike the many booms that preceded catastrophic collapses in the past, is built on sound fundamentals, structural reforms, technological innovation, and good policy." - This Time is Different (Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff) When does a potential crisis become an actual crisis, and how and why does it happen? Why did most everyone believe there were no problems in the US (or Japanese or European or British) economies in 2006? Yet now we are mired in a very difficult situation. "The subprime problem will be contained," said now controversially confirmed Fed Chairman Bernanke, just months before the implosion and significant Fed intervention. I have just returned from Europe, and the discussion often turned to the potential of a crisis in the Eurozone if Greece defaults. Plus, we take a look at the very positive US GDP numbers released this morning. Are we final

But as the nearby chart shows, Mr. Obama's major contribution to deficits has been a record spending spree. In 2007, before the recession, federal expenditures reached $2.73 trillion. By 2009 expenditures had climbed to $3.52 trillion. In 2009 alone, overall federal spending rose 18%, or $536 billion. Throw in a $65 billion reduction in debt service costs due to low interest rates, and the overall spending increase was 22%. In one year. CBO confirms that Democrats have taken federal spending to a new and higher plateau: 24.7% of GDP in 2009, 24.1% this year, and back to an estimated 24.3% in 2011. The modern historical average is about 20.5%, and less than that if you exclude the Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s that helped to win the Cold War and let Bill Clinton reduce defense spending to 3% of GDP in the 1990s. This means that one of every four dollars produced by the sweat of American private labor is now taxed and redistributed by 535 men and women in Congress.

America needs an alternative. For that reason, I have reintroduced my plan to tackle our nation's most pressing domestic challenges-updated to reflect the dramatic decline in our economic and fiscal condition. The plan, called A Road Map for America's Future and first introduced in 2008, is a comprehensive proposal to ensure health and retirement security for all Americans, to lift the debt burdens that are mounting every day because of Washington's reckless spending, and to promote jobs and competitiveness in the 21st century global economy. The difference between the Road Map and the Democrats' approach could not be more clear. From the enactment of a $1 trillion "stimulus" last February to the current pass-at-all costs government takeover of health care, the Democratic leadership has followed a "progressive" strategy that will take us closer to a tipping point past which most Americans receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes-a European-style welfare state where double-digit unemployment becomes a way of life. Americans don't have to settle for this path of decline. There's still time to choose a different future. That is what the Road Map offers. It is based on a fundamentally different vision from the one now prevailing in Washington. It focuses the government on its proper role. It restrains government spending, and hence limits the size of government itself. It rejuvenates the vibrant market economy that made America the envy of the world. And it restores an American character rooted in individual initiative, entrepreneurship and opportunity. Here are the principal elements:

What follows are my suggestions for what a 21st century compact might look like. Call it the GOP Contract with America, version 2.0. -- call it whatever you want. It would not be a "purity test," but instead a promise from the party leadership to the American people that if Republicans are given control of the Congress, the following acts will be brought to a vote in the 112th Congress: ..The American Health Care Act:  ..The e-Congress Act: ..The Limited Government and Transparency Act: ..The Energy Independence Now Act: ..The Strong National Defense Act ..Secure Our Borders Act: ..The Free Campaign Speech and Workplace Act: ..The Science and Final Frontiers Act: ..The Savings for the Future Act : ..The Educate America Act

Walt has published an excellent response to an article published by suedo-scientific fascist, Richard Somerville. Walt displays some excellent writing skills and logical level-headed thinking as he rips the idiot Somerville to shreds.  Wlat also has a great line i would like to poach, with his permission of course: "they are tongue-in-groove buttlickers for the political appointees they report to" "As a public employee myself, I know how these things happen: a committee is appointed, not because of their expertise, but because they are tongue-in-groove buttlickers for the political appointees they report to. As such, their conclusions are unsurprisingly always exactly what the appointees wanted to hear." excerpt: Is This Science? Or Religion? The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has published an article entitled, "A Response to Climate Change Denialism". The article is pure politics-and-religion style campaign literature. This on a site that is paid for by Californians' taxes. It is reproduced below in its entirety, both to preserve the evidence, and to facilitate commentary.

Good stuff!  What big media used to be.

Incredible read.  62 pages behind the curtain of the financial crisis.  Extensive discussion of the banking system as broken into four primary components:  Commercial Banking, Stock Broker/Investment Banks, Commodity Brokers and Off-Shore Hedge Funds.  Armstrong then covers each banking division through the lens of Congress and the Executive Regulatory Agencies assigned to each banking group.  Lots of history and inside dope on Goldman Sachs and their relationship to Democrats, Republicans and the Federal Government, 

How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy - and How They Will Do It Again if No One Stops Them By Peter Schweizer With Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer again delivers a knockout punch of a book that is the must read of the season for conservatives and should be a main topic of conversation for conservative media. Schweizer blows the lid off the 30-year leftist war on banking standards in the name of "equality" that created the housing bubble and caused the foreclosure crisis. (Somebody get this book to Glenn Beck as he recovers from his appendectomy- it'll give him at least a week's worth of blackboard material when he returns.)

the Fed is now engaging in unlegislated, back-door fiscal policy. excerpt:  "The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency." Vladimir Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution Last week, while Congress and the nation were preoccupied with the holidays, the Treasury made a Christmas eve announcement that it would be providing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unlimited financial support for the next three years. Put simply, in a single, coordinated stroke, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have encroached on spending powers that are enumerated for the Congress alone. Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA), the Treasury has no such open-ended authority. Indeed, the applicable portion of the Act explicitly limits the total amount of mortgage principal (not losses, but total principal) as follows: .......... In a sharp break from the past, the issuance of these Treasury securities will not be accompanied by any revenue to the government for Congressionally approved programs. The Treasuries will be issued, the money will be handed over the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and those funds will go largely to the Federal Reserve and other holders of existing mortgage debt simply to replace the bad, but bailed-out agency securities with cash as they mature. The public gets nothing for something - the issuance of the Treasuries is in itself their expenditure.

This article is more than 2-1/2 months old yet this is the first I've heard of it.  Pretty frightening "end-run" the administration is trying. Obama Finds Legal Way Around The 2nd. Amendment and Uses It. http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE59E0Q920091015 On Wednesday the Obama administration took its first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States . The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments. These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The laws are designed and intended to lead to the complete ban and confiscation of all firearms.  The Obama administration is attempting to use tactics and methods of gun control that will inflict major damage to our 2nd Amendment before US citizens even understand what has happened. Obama can appear before the public and tell them that he does not intend to pursue any legislation (in the United States) that will lead to new gun control laws, while cloaked in secrecy, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is committing the US to international treaties and foreign gun control laws. Does that mean Obama is telling the truth? What it means is that there will be no publicized gun control debates in the media or votes in Congress. We will wake up one morning and find that the United States has signed a treaty that prohibits firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public. We will wake up another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that pro

This article provides the facts and figures behind the Treasury's Christmas Eve taxpayer massacre ....  lifting the $400 billion cap on potential losses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the limits on what the failed companies can borrow. The Treasury is hoping no one notices, and no wonder. Taxpayers are continuing to buy senior preferred stock in the two firms to cover their growing losses-a combined $111 billion so far. When Treasury first bailed them out in September 2008, Congress put a $200 billion limit ($100 billion each) on federal assistance. Last year, the Treasury raised the potential commitment to $400 billion. Now the limit on taxpayer exposure is, well, who knows?