As much as it pains OffHisMeds to speak of the odious Teddy Kennedy, his death must be remarked upon, if for no other reason than to put the passing of "the Lion of the Senate" in perspective. As tributes cascade over the airwaves, and prominent Conservatives line up to offer their (hopefully) qualified tributes, let us remember the real Teddy, the Hyper-partisan Hack who defined everything that is wrong with American politics in general, and the Democrat Party in particular. Reaching back for just a tiny bit of perspective, we recall that there were many Teddy Kennedy's, and not a one of them was worth a damn:
- The NIMBY Teddy, who fought tooth and nail against the building of a Wind Farm off the coast of Hyannisport. Never mind that the turbines would not be visible from the lawn of the "Kennedy Compound", it was enough simply that they would be there, detracting from the exclusivity and privilege so ingrained in Royalty - or in this case - Limousine Liberals. In this respect, Kennedy exhibited most pathologically the "Not In My Back Yard" mentality of Democrats when it comes to actually experiencing the consequences of Democrat policies.
- The Ingrate Teddy. George W. Bush should have been a Democrat's wet dream of a Republican President. Bush vetoed not a single spending bill in the first 7 years and six months of his presidency; he collaborated with Kennedy on "No child Left Behind"; he championed Medicare prescription drug benefits; he opened the spending faucets and doubled the size of the federal government. In other words, he did everything Teddy Kennedy as a Democrat could have asked of him. In return, he was the subject of Kennedy's singular vitriol, and described by him in terms that Teddy would not use to describe America's enemies.
- The Character Assassin Teddy, who described Judge Robert Bork during his nomination to the Supreme Court as a man of such evil that he would restore Jim Crow and subordinate all Black people.
- The Unilateral Surrender Teddy, who proclaimed the Iraq War "lost" in July of 2003, a mere four months after the invasion. He kept up the drum beat and eventually managed to turn his entire party from war enthusiasts to Defeatists, giving aid and comfort to Islamic terrorists the world over.
- The Tax And Spend Teddy, who more than any other politician promoted the expansion of the federal government, growing it 25 fold from $141 Billion in 1964 to over $3.5 Trillion in 2009.
- The Economics Retard Teddy, who - along with Hubert Humphrey - proclaimed in the mid-60s that Medicare spending would be a scant $20 Billion in 2010. Medicare is over $700 Billion today. Teddy also championed Social Security, as clear a Ponzi scheme as has ever been devised without somebody actually going to prison.
- The Hypocrite Teddy, who loudly and often proclaimed his devout Catholicism, notwithstanding that he drove his wife Joan to alcoholism with his serial infidelities, then divorced her in 1983, and topped it all off by using his station to have his marriage annulled, thus making bastards of all his children.
- The School Cheat Teddy, who was expelled from Harvard for having another student take his Spanish exams for him.
- The Gluttonous Teddy, so committed to the gratification of his personal needs that there was no amount of food or alcohol he would not consume, and no congressional page, barmaid, co-ed or waitress he would not force himself on. It is one thing to finally resemble Jabba The Hut, quite another to take on his persona.
And for a taste of Irony, OffHisMeds will give you one last example, wherein you will experience the man when he had occasion to speak well of the dead, and you can contrast that with the orgy of tributes Kennedy himself receives in the coming days. In this instance, it is Teddy giving a speech about Ronald Reagan upon the occasion of a tribute at the Reagan library, as clear a demonstration of OHM's axiom that Democrats are never expected to speak so well of their opponents as their opponents are expected to speak of them:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0407/3743.html
This is the key excerpt:
Apr 29, 2007 SIMI VALLEY, Calif. – Despite their many political battles in the 1980s, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy praised the late President Ronald Reagan here Saturday, particularly noting Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War, describing it as "a bipartisan enterprise by Republican and Democratic Congresses and administrations from the first moment to the last.”
The entire article is worth a read, because with this so-called "tribute", Kennedy spun a web of mendacity and revisionism that came to him as naturally as breathing. The single virtue he found in Reagan's character seems to be the extent to which he collaborated with Democrats; He distracts from the tribute to Reagan by speaking of others, not surprisingly, Democrats; He totally ignores Reagan's domestic accomplishments, "damning him with faint praise", as it were.
And in claiming that Reagan's Cold War fight was "a bipartisan enterprise by Republican and Democratic Congresses and administrations from the first moment to the last", he scored a three-fer, perpetuating a revisionist lie portraying Democrats as Cold Warriors, attempting to clothe himself and his party in Reagan's virtue, and absolving Democrats of their complicity in actually extending the Cold War.
In truth, for Kennedy's entire career the Democrat Party (with a very few notable exceptions) mostly gave comfort and support to pro-Soviet operatives and initiatives. Prominent Democrats including Kennedy himself threw up obstacles at every turn, including misrepresenting the U.S. role in Viet Nam, decimating our Intelligence services in the 70s, consistently understating the Soviet threat, opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative which broke the Soviet's back, and constantly portraying Republicans - and particularly Reagan - as dangerous provocateurs in relations with the Soviet Union.
That mendacity is what makes this speech classic Teddy Kennedy, dancing on another's grave so as to elevate himself, albeit rhetorically in this instance. The dancing was not so rhetorical back in 1969, though, when he cravenly left Mary Jo Kopechne in a pond to drown, lied about it, and got away with it. OffHisMeds hopes Teddy enjoyed all his earthly pleasures and privileges, because when he stands before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, this single event will net him something less in the Afterlife than what he's used to, and nowhere near what his Apologists think he's entitled to as "The Lion Of The Senate".
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
LTE: A different view
Martin Crutsinger goes to great lengths to put a happy face on news that wholesale prices were down a record setting 6.8 percent over the past year, and continued to plummet in July at an annualized rate of 10.8 percent (See “Report eases inflation fears/Energy costs drive a decline in wholesale prices,” Wednesday). Crutsinger claims economists view this as a good thing, since “inflation will stay away ... giving the Federal Reserve room to keep invigorating the economy with record-low interest rates.”
So that was their takeaway. Thank goodness. I thought they might interpret the biggest drop in wholesale prices “in 62 years” followed by the Fed offering interest rates as low as 0 percent as signs of a tanking economy, runaway deflation and a panicky government flooding the markets with greenbacks in a attempt to stem the tide.
— Pete Smith, Cypress
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Liquidity Swaps - Another Way Democrats Rip You Off
Watch this video and you'll understand why President Obama is so popular in Europe. You'll also understand why Democrat Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida is OffHisMed's new hero. Watch him as he laughs at one of his own: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ECLxK2YTs.
Regarding the transaction Grayson discusses with the Dark Prince, Democrat Ben Bernanke, a couple month's back the Fed loaned European banks $500 billion in dollars and took Euros in return. European banks used the greenbacks to improve their own balance sheets, then used them to snap up U.S. stocks at bargain basement prices, or loan them to those who would. Meanwhile, $500 billion of Euros molder in our vaults, useless for any purpose, and eventually to be returned to the Europeans banks after they have paid an infinitesimally small interest payment to the Fed, but only after the world economy had been restored to health.
In essence, a group of very bad actors (the Fed) in collusion with the Democrat Party gave your tax dollars to a bunch of Euro Bankers and got nothing in return, so those same Europeans could feast on your recently devalued 401K. And this is but one transfer of wealth to foreigners, the others being hundreds of billions of TARP funds (mostly unaccounted for), the wholesale printing of Trillions of greenbacks, Trillions more in bonds sold to foreign governments and banks, and let us not forget: Cash For Clunkers, which overwhelmingly benefitted Japanese and Korean auto manufacturers.
Not coincidentally, only a few month's after the orgy of giveaways began, Europe declared itself out of the recession, their banks and investment community flush with U.S. cash and U.S. assets. The U.S., meanwhile, remains crippled.
There was an all-too-real example of this malfeasance in the paper yesterday. Guaranty Bank in Texas went bust on Friday, and the FDIC immediately sold them to a Spanish Bank, BBVA. What was interesting were the terms:
- BBVA bought only $12 billion of the $13 billion in loans, which of course means that the U.S. taxpayer gets the $1 billion worth of loans sure to default.
- They took over $11.5 Billion in deposits, meaning they had almost a dollar-for-dollar cash reserve to back the loans on the books.
- Of the remaining $12 billion in loans, the FDIC will cover 80% of all loan losses on the first $2.3 billion, and 95% of the losses on the other $9.7 billion. Essentially, BBVA is on the hook for less than $1 billion of the portfolio.
- Per the FDIC, total losses by taxpayers are estimated at $3 Billion.
So in other words, not only is the Obama Administration loaning tax dollars to foreigners to buy our assets, they're subsidizing virtually all of their losses on their investments until the entire portfolio of loans are paid off and the bank is completely stabilized.
Is there no end to the insanity of Democrats? The net of all of this is that a government-caused recession has been used to destroy thousands of American-owned banks and businesses. The US government responded by giving interest free loans to the rest of the world to get themselves right AND buy America's remaining factories, land, mortgages and whatever other assets remain on the cheap, all courtesy of future generations of American taxpayers.
That said, I am torn as to which is worse, these giveaways to a bunch of foreigners or the giveaway of GM and Chrysler to the U.A.W.
One final note: The original stockholders in the bank were wiped out with this seizure. Why is it, do you suppose, that our government couldn't have offered this sweet deal to them instead of a foreign bank?
But then, that's a rhetorical question. As was proven with the government takeover of the auto companies, American stockholders are not only not a constituency of the Democrat Party, they are the enemy.
Regarding the transaction Grayson discusses with the Dark Prince, Democrat Ben Bernanke, a couple month's back the Fed loaned European banks $500 billion in dollars and took Euros in return. European banks used the greenbacks to improve their own balance sheets, then used them to snap up U.S. stocks at bargain basement prices, or loan them to those who would. Meanwhile, $500 billion of Euros molder in our vaults, useless for any purpose, and eventually to be returned to the Europeans banks after they have paid an infinitesimally small interest payment to the Fed, but only after the world economy had been restored to health.
In essence, a group of very bad actors (the Fed) in collusion with the Democrat Party gave your tax dollars to a bunch of Euro Bankers and got nothing in return, so those same Europeans could feast on your recently devalued 401K. And this is but one transfer of wealth to foreigners, the others being hundreds of billions of TARP funds (mostly unaccounted for), the wholesale printing of Trillions of greenbacks, Trillions more in bonds sold to foreign governments and banks, and let us not forget: Cash For Clunkers, which overwhelmingly benefitted Japanese and Korean auto manufacturers.
Not coincidentally, only a few month's after the orgy of giveaways began, Europe declared itself out of the recession, their banks and investment community flush with U.S. cash and U.S. assets. The U.S., meanwhile, remains crippled.
There was an all-too-real example of this malfeasance in the paper yesterday. Guaranty Bank in Texas went bust on Friday, and the FDIC immediately sold them to a Spanish Bank, BBVA. What was interesting were the terms:
- BBVA bought only $12 billion of the $13 billion in loans, which of course means that the U.S. taxpayer gets the $1 billion worth of loans sure to default.
- They took over $11.5 Billion in deposits, meaning they had almost a dollar-for-dollar cash reserve to back the loans on the books.
- Of the remaining $12 billion in loans, the FDIC will cover 80% of all loan losses on the first $2.3 billion, and 95% of the losses on the other $9.7 billion. Essentially, BBVA is on the hook for less than $1 billion of the portfolio.
- Per the FDIC, total losses by taxpayers are estimated at $3 Billion.
So in other words, not only is the Obama Administration loaning tax dollars to foreigners to buy our assets, they're subsidizing virtually all of their losses on their investments until the entire portfolio of loans are paid off and the bank is completely stabilized.
Is there no end to the insanity of Democrats? The net of all of this is that a government-caused recession has been used to destroy thousands of American-owned banks and businesses. The US government responded by giving interest free loans to the rest of the world to get themselves right AND buy America's remaining factories, land, mortgages and whatever other assets remain on the cheap, all courtesy of future generations of American taxpayers.
That said, I am torn as to which is worse, these giveaways to a bunch of foreigners or the giveaway of GM and Chrysler to the U.A.W.
One final note: The original stockholders in the bank were wiped out with this seizure. Why is it, do you suppose, that our government couldn't have offered this sweet deal to them instead of a foreign bank?
But then, that's a rhetorical question. As was proven with the government takeover of the auto companies, American stockholders are not only not a constituency of the Democrat Party, they are the enemy.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Bush Derangement Syndrome?
How, oh how OffHisMeds wishes Bill O'Reilly and other Conservative commentators would shut their pieholes and stop giving Democrats a Hall Pass by explaining away their current-day depredations as being some latent manifestation of their hatred of George W. Bush, what Charles Krauthammer so unfortunately described as "Bush Derangement Syndrome". In this scenario, Republicans attempt to explain away the excesses of the Democrat Party by waxing regretful that the Dems are so unhinged by their eight years' of hatred for Bush that they are forced to adopt the extreme positions that they do.
Case in point: The controversy over the "torture" of Guantanamo detainees. O'Reilly recently discussed the story of Nancy Pelosi and whether she did or did not lie about knowing of Waterboarding back in 2002. He then segued into the recent efforts by Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Charles Schumer and the Obama Administration to prosecute and persecute former Bush officials for either enabling, ordering or participating in so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques. The list of targets for reprisals included a) government lawyers rendering a legal opinion of the legitimacy of Waterboarding, b) the Operatives who administered the Waterboarding, c) their superiors who ordered it, and d) the Bush Administration officials up to and including the President who authorized it.
In other words, everybody and anybody they could destroy simply because they worked in a Republican administration. It was a smorgasbord of targets, so cynically constructed that only a Fool could fail to see the classic Democrat scorched-earth policies used so successfully over the decades to criminalize their political opposition.
Enter Bill O'Reilly.
For the umpteenth time in the past few years, O'Reilly speculated that the "over-reaction" by high-ranking Democrats was "Bush Derangement Syndrome". He's not alone. Numerous other sensible commentators have trotted out this phrase with regularity, and in so doing, they give Democrats a much undeserved two-fer:
1) They excuse Democrats serial and unending manipulations of government to criminalize politics.
2) They allow Democrats to be seen in a favorable light they do not deserve as people otherwise capable of moral behavior, just as soon as they get George W. Bush out of their systems.
Are O'Reilly and his media pals incapable of understanding that the Democrats have pursued this strategy for years, simply because they see the opportunity to paralyze their political opponents? Have they totally missed the point that Dems have been pursuing criminal prosecutions against Republicans on political matters for decades now?
Did O'Reilly sleep through the entirety of the Scooter Libby Affair, when the real criminals turned out to be a bunch of Democrat Partisans? Was he on vacation as Senator Ted Stevens was prosecuted out of office on bogus charges, and his Senate seat turned over to a Democrat? Was he medicated through the entirety of the electoral jihad against Tom Delay, which five year's later has resulted in no criminal trial? Was he distracted as the Democrats used trumped-up and near incomprehensible charges to destroy Newt Gingrich?
O'Reilly needs to wake up, as does America. The Democrat Party is the Party of corruption and the subornation of the Justice Department to their political advantage. They are the Party that has demonstrated time and again that they will do anything necessary to win, the Party that has demonstrated no integrity since the days of Hubert Humphrey.
Ironically, the fruits of O'Reilly's and Krauthammer's efforts to explain why Democrats have abandoned polite society is the creation of a whole new Derangement, one you're going to be seeing more of in the years to come: Palin Derangement Syndrome. It would be comical to watch the Dems and their partisans in the Media dismantle themselves with their over-the-top vilification of Palin, but for the moral cover provided by the Bush Derangement Excusers. And if Sarah Palin withdraws from public life and say, Mike Pence takes her place, look for an outbreak of Pence Derangement Syndrome.
Either way, OffHisMeds predicts that by 2012 there will be a new Republican target, and the Usual Suspects - O'Reilly included - will be explaining it away, providing Democrats yet another excuse to be the vile, self-serving partisans they've been for the past 45 years. You might as well just call the phenomenon Republican Derangement Syndrome, since it clearly has nothing to do with any kind of emotional response to an individual, and everything to do with cold calculated political maneuvers.
And if I was O'Reilly, I wouldn't expect the Democrats to ever get over it.
Case in point: The controversy over the "torture" of Guantanamo detainees. O'Reilly recently discussed the story of Nancy Pelosi and whether she did or did not lie about knowing of Waterboarding back in 2002. He then segued into the recent efforts by Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Charles Schumer and the Obama Administration to prosecute and persecute former Bush officials for either enabling, ordering or participating in so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques. The list of targets for reprisals included a) government lawyers rendering a legal opinion of the legitimacy of Waterboarding, b) the Operatives who administered the Waterboarding, c) their superiors who ordered it, and d) the Bush Administration officials up to and including the President who authorized it.
In other words, everybody and anybody they could destroy simply because they worked in a Republican administration. It was a smorgasbord of targets, so cynically constructed that only a Fool could fail to see the classic Democrat scorched-earth policies used so successfully over the decades to criminalize their political opposition.
Enter Bill O'Reilly.
For the umpteenth time in the past few years, O'Reilly speculated that the "over-reaction" by high-ranking Democrats was "Bush Derangement Syndrome". He's not alone. Numerous other sensible commentators have trotted out this phrase with regularity, and in so doing, they give Democrats a much undeserved two-fer:
1) They excuse Democrats serial and unending manipulations of government to criminalize politics.
2) They allow Democrats to be seen in a favorable light they do not deserve as people otherwise capable of moral behavior, just as soon as they get George W. Bush out of their systems.
Are O'Reilly and his media pals incapable of understanding that the Democrats have pursued this strategy for years, simply because they see the opportunity to paralyze their political opponents? Have they totally missed the point that Dems have been pursuing criminal prosecutions against Republicans on political matters for decades now?
Did O'Reilly sleep through the entirety of the Scooter Libby Affair, when the real criminals turned out to be a bunch of Democrat Partisans? Was he on vacation as Senator Ted Stevens was prosecuted out of office on bogus charges, and his Senate seat turned over to a Democrat? Was he medicated through the entirety of the electoral jihad against Tom Delay, which five year's later has resulted in no criminal trial? Was he distracted as the Democrats used trumped-up and near incomprehensible charges to destroy Newt Gingrich?
O'Reilly needs to wake up, as does America. The Democrat Party is the Party of corruption and the subornation of the Justice Department to their political advantage. They are the Party that has demonstrated time and again that they will do anything necessary to win, the Party that has demonstrated no integrity since the days of Hubert Humphrey.
Ironically, the fruits of O'Reilly's and Krauthammer's efforts to explain why Democrats have abandoned polite society is the creation of a whole new Derangement, one you're going to be seeing more of in the years to come: Palin Derangement Syndrome. It would be comical to watch the Dems and their partisans in the Media dismantle themselves with their over-the-top vilification of Palin, but for the moral cover provided by the Bush Derangement Excusers. And if Sarah Palin withdraws from public life and say, Mike Pence takes her place, look for an outbreak of Pence Derangement Syndrome.
Either way, OffHisMeds predicts that by 2012 there will be a new Republican target, and the Usual Suspects - O'Reilly included - will be explaining it away, providing Democrats yet another excuse to be the vile, self-serving partisans they've been for the past 45 years. You might as well just call the phenomenon Republican Derangement Syndrome, since it clearly has nothing to do with any kind of emotional response to an individual, and everything to do with cold calculated political maneuvers.
And if I was O'Reilly, I wouldn't expect the Democrats to ever get over it.
Monday, August 17, 2009
The Medical Cartels Get Religion
What do you know, Big Pharma, the Hospitals (many nefariously doctor-owned) and the AMA are all in sync with Obama's "Health Care Plan" to "control costs". Even the Insurance companies are on board. Call OffHisMeds a cynic, but has this Band of Thieves just had the proverbial foxhole conversion?
Confronted with the reality of Socialized medicine, they have rightly concluded that with just the right amount of cooperation with the Democrats, our Medical Cartels will be able to preserve the 18% of GDP that they have carved out for themselves, up from 6% as of 1971. And that's 18% of a $14 Trillion dollar GDP today vs. 6% of a $1 Trillion GDP in 1971.
That is why Obama's projected "savings" of $1 Trillion over ten years with his Health Plan was so laughable. With true reform, we could cut the cost of medical expenditures at least in half, which would result in savings of $1.2 Trillion per year. This would still leave inflation adjusted health care spending at more than triple what it was in 1971.
But that is not where this story is headed. No, the inevitable outcome - now that Obama and the Democrats have shot themselves in the foot by attempting to cram through Nationalized Health Care - is the perpetuation of the current system, as idiotic a system as could be conceived, and nothing like the "Private Sector" option portrayed by Democrats and strangely enough, Republicans as well. Folks, there is no private health care in America. Instead, we have a quasi-socialist blob that is only portrayed as private because a bunch of politicians and their cronies say so. Just think of all the ways that our current Health Care system is different from true free-market businesses:
1) The government mandates who finances health care insurance, and alone in the industrialized world, they have mandated that large American corporations do so. The result has been the decimation of America's industrial base.
2) Government strictly regulates the available supply of doctors, specialists, equipment, procedures, supplies and drugs. This is the very definition of a Cartel.
3) The government sets prices for virtually all medical procedures and tests - over 12,000 of them - the very definition of a Monopoly.
4) There is no true competition between U.S. providers, and there is virtually no foreign competition, with the exception of Medical Tourism. With consumers almost completely detached from price-shopping for their health care needs, providers have no incentive whatsoever to compete, innovate, or lower their prices.
5) The current system - controlled by the Government - not only protects consumers from the consequences of their unhealthy lifestyles, it actually incents bad behavior. Epidemics relating to overeating, laziness, alcohol abuse and drug abuse are all treated as diseases that must be fixed, rather than lifestyle choices. Consumers that are protected from these consequences are thus enabled to continue abusing their bodies further, with healthy people forced to pay for those consequences.
OffHisMeds will expound on each of these in turn, but he wanted to get this post out so that he could make a prediction now and thus be declared a "seer by the end of this year":
- If any version of Health Care Reform is passed in 2009, it is going to look exactly like Medicare, with gigantic increases in spending, massive fraud and zero accountability.
- It will address none of the issues above that have caused the problems, most notably government interference.
- There will be no meaningful free market reforms in the package.
- Health Care will continue to balloon as a percentage of GDP.
- All of the monied interests will preserve their stake. The Medical Cartels will have prevailed.
- The economy will continue to tank.
This will only happen, by the way, if Republicans can be intimidated into signing on, giving Democrats the political cover they need. Look for Obama to throw them some small bones in the form of a modest expansion of Medical Savings Accounts or somesuch, just as the Dems did when they allowed some tiny pilot programs for school vouchers in the 90s.
Repubs need to resist the temptation. Unless they can preserve this as an issue until the 2010 election season - a mere five months away, the Dem's version of Health Care will pass, and Republicans will have consigned themselves to the political wilderness for at least another election cycle, and likely for a decade.
Meanwhile, any Health Care reform under Democrats will have the Medical Cartels rolling out the champagne and caviar. They will have sanctified 40 years of ill-gotten gains, the common folk and deficits be damned, and they'll defend the status quo, right up until the time our Chinese Lenders tell us the Tab is due.
Confronted with the reality of Socialized medicine, they have rightly concluded that with just the right amount of cooperation with the Democrats, our Medical Cartels will be able to preserve the 18% of GDP that they have carved out for themselves, up from 6% as of 1971. And that's 18% of a $14 Trillion dollar GDP today vs. 6% of a $1 Trillion GDP in 1971.
That is why Obama's projected "savings" of $1 Trillion over ten years with his Health Plan was so laughable. With true reform, we could cut the cost of medical expenditures at least in half, which would result in savings of $1.2 Trillion per year. This would still leave inflation adjusted health care spending at more than triple what it was in 1971.
But that is not where this story is headed. No, the inevitable outcome - now that Obama and the Democrats have shot themselves in the foot by attempting to cram through Nationalized Health Care - is the perpetuation of the current system, as idiotic a system as could be conceived, and nothing like the "Private Sector" option portrayed by Democrats and strangely enough, Republicans as well. Folks, there is no private health care in America. Instead, we have a quasi-socialist blob that is only portrayed as private because a bunch of politicians and their cronies say so. Just think of all the ways that our current Health Care system is different from true free-market businesses:
1) The government mandates who finances health care insurance, and alone in the industrialized world, they have mandated that large American corporations do so. The result has been the decimation of America's industrial base.
2) Government strictly regulates the available supply of doctors, specialists, equipment, procedures, supplies and drugs. This is the very definition of a Cartel.
3) The government sets prices for virtually all medical procedures and tests - over 12,000 of them - the very definition of a Monopoly.
4) There is no true competition between U.S. providers, and there is virtually no foreign competition, with the exception of Medical Tourism. With consumers almost completely detached from price-shopping for their health care needs, providers have no incentive whatsoever to compete, innovate, or lower their prices.
5) The current system - controlled by the Government - not only protects consumers from the consequences of their unhealthy lifestyles, it actually incents bad behavior. Epidemics relating to overeating, laziness, alcohol abuse and drug abuse are all treated as diseases that must be fixed, rather than lifestyle choices. Consumers that are protected from these consequences are thus enabled to continue abusing their bodies further, with healthy people forced to pay for those consequences.
OffHisMeds will expound on each of these in turn, but he wanted to get this post out so that he could make a prediction now and thus be declared a "seer by the end of this year":
- If any version of Health Care Reform is passed in 2009, it is going to look exactly like Medicare, with gigantic increases in spending, massive fraud and zero accountability.
- It will address none of the issues above that have caused the problems, most notably government interference.
- There will be no meaningful free market reforms in the package.
- Health Care will continue to balloon as a percentage of GDP.
- All of the monied interests will preserve their stake. The Medical Cartels will have prevailed.
- The economy will continue to tank.
This will only happen, by the way, if Republicans can be intimidated into signing on, giving Democrats the political cover they need. Look for Obama to throw them some small bones in the form of a modest expansion of Medical Savings Accounts or somesuch, just as the Dems did when they allowed some tiny pilot programs for school vouchers in the 90s.
Repubs need to resist the temptation. Unless they can preserve this as an issue until the 2010 election season - a mere five months away, the Dem's version of Health Care will pass, and Republicans will have consigned themselves to the political wilderness for at least another election cycle, and likely for a decade.
Meanwhile, any Health Care reform under Democrats will have the Medical Cartels rolling out the champagne and caviar. They will have sanctified 40 years of ill-gotten gains, the common folk and deficits be damned, and they'll defend the status quo, right up until the time our Chinese Lenders tell us the Tab is due.
Public Transit - Peek Inside A Democrat's Skull
So Bill King thinks it would be a great idea to elevate the Houston light rail system currently traversing the Medical Center ("Let's raise the rail in Medical Center", Outlook, Sunday, Aug 16th). So do I. Unfortunately, King is a day late and a couple hundred million dollars short. The former mayor of Kemah calls the current system "a driver's nightmare", and documents the threats to pedestrians and the "leaking electric current" from the current system that is "corroding nearby piping and surrounding infrastructures". Then he gets to the pricetag, proudly proclaiming that, although it would cost "$200 million to $300 million", a "Federal Transit Authority" program will pay for "as much as 80% of the costs".
Let's set aside for the moment the irony of proponents of the street-based boondoggle known as MetroRail now acknowledging what OffHisMeds and many others predicted before it was built: that it is a collosal failure, and dangerous to boot. What is truly amazing is the casual tossing about of such numbers to "fix" it. Do Mass Transit proponents such as Mr. King even think about how insane it is to spend as much as $150 million per mile - $14,200 per linear foot - to elevate the system? For the money he proposes to spend to elevate two thin rails of steel on concrete pillars for two miles, you could build two miles of 2700 sq. ft. three story luxury condos 30 feet wide - including all appliances and furniture - and still have about $50 million left over. Who knew concrete and rebar could be so expensive?
Besides the fact that such pricing reeks of corruption, is it lost on the Bill Kings of the world that if a city as rich as Houston in a county as rich as Harris can't afford to elevate its own rail system, the United States government certainly can't afford to do so? Those federal funds he proposes to use come from somewhere, and that somewhere is other taxpayers. Why would he have the federal government incur additional debt on behalf of all of us for a project that Houstonians did not have the political will to do for themselves?
Here we have the perfect storm of public sector greed, corruption and incompetence, spending hundreds of millions to build a MetroRail system that was overpriced to begin with, nearly useless, an impediment to traffic, a danger to pedestrians and a threat to other infrastructure; then proposing to spend hundreds of millions more to "fix" it a mere five year's later, using other people's money.
And the problem is compounded many times over because there are thousands of Bill Kings all across the country, enthusiastically touting the use of unlimited Federal funds for their pet projects, and oblivious to the consequences of spending money like drunken sailors on things that they themselves refuse to fund.
But hey, it's Federal dollars we would be spending, not our own. I guess that makes it alright.
Let's set aside for the moment the irony of proponents of the street-based boondoggle known as MetroRail now acknowledging what OffHisMeds and many others predicted before it was built: that it is a collosal failure, and dangerous to boot. What is truly amazing is the casual tossing about of such numbers to "fix" it. Do Mass Transit proponents such as Mr. King even think about how insane it is to spend as much as $150 million per mile - $14,200 per linear foot - to elevate the system? For the money he proposes to spend to elevate two thin rails of steel on concrete pillars for two miles, you could build two miles of 2700 sq. ft. three story luxury condos 30 feet wide - including all appliances and furniture - and still have about $50 million left over. Who knew concrete and rebar could be so expensive?
Besides the fact that such pricing reeks of corruption, is it lost on the Bill Kings of the world that if a city as rich as Houston in a county as rich as Harris can't afford to elevate its own rail system, the United States government certainly can't afford to do so? Those federal funds he proposes to use come from somewhere, and that somewhere is other taxpayers. Why would he have the federal government incur additional debt on behalf of all of us for a project that Houstonians did not have the political will to do for themselves?
Here we have the perfect storm of public sector greed, corruption and incompetence, spending hundreds of millions to build a MetroRail system that was overpriced to begin with, nearly useless, an impediment to traffic, a danger to pedestrians and a threat to other infrastructure; then proposing to spend hundreds of millions more to "fix" it a mere five year's later, using other people's money.
And the problem is compounded many times over because there are thousands of Bill Kings all across the country, enthusiastically touting the use of unlimited Federal funds for their pet projects, and oblivious to the consequences of spending money like drunken sailors on things that they themselves refuse to fund.
But hey, it's Federal dollars we would be spending, not our own. I guess that makes it alright.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Obama And Hugo Chavez, Two Peas In A Pod
So, what do Barack Obama, the charismatic leader of the U.S., and Hugo Chavez, the charismatic leader of Venezuela, have in common? Many things, it turns out:
- Both have a most agreeable and telegenic demeanor.
- Both are on television repeatedly and relentlessly, as inescapable as Reality TV show commercials.
- Both of them use the power of government to squelch dissent and remake society into a Socialist paradise.
- Both apparently believe that the United States is evil.
- Neither of them trusts their citizenry.
Let’s take President Obama for starters. Three different efforts by the Obama Administration to invade your privacy and intimidate you into silence have surfaced in recent days. Taken together, they are creeping OffHisMeds out, and have the potential to be the most Stalinesque abrogation of individual freedoms in the short history of our Republic. All are targeted at ordinary citizens, and collectively they do away with all or portions of the 4th, 5th and 9th Amendments in the Bill of Rights.
But hey, you don't need to take my word for it; not when you can rely on Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Senator John Cornyn, and well, the Obama Administration. Strange bedfellows indeed:
1) You may already have seen the Glenn Beck video on Youtube documenting the attempt by your government to steal your identity via government websites. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAOBlqUqUZ8
The jist is that if you log onto cars.gov to inquire about the “Cash For Clunkers” program, the Feds will claim your computer and all its contents as government property. Strangest of all, it’s not a Presidential declaration, it’s not an act of Congress, and it sure as hell isn't a decision by the Supreme Court; in fact, it was not presented to get any public scrutiny at all. No, it’s an addendum tucked away on an obscure page of a government website having nothing whatsoever to do with Constitutional matters.
Take away Beck's enjoyable hype and partisanship, though, and you find that absolutely nothing at all changes about the content of the story. Straight up reportage, made all the more poignant by the fact that the Mainstream Media ignored it.
2) That's just the tip of the Obama Big Brother iceberg, though. The Administration is also maneuvering for permanent warrantless wiretaps on virtually all computer users in the U.S.A. Check out this article from 8-11-09:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/6567904.html
This article details attempts by the Feds to cancel a holdover exemption from the Bush Administration that prevents them from keeping a history of all of your visits to government websites. It goes beyond that, though. The Feds are also angling to have access to any and all information recorded by ISPs (Internet Service Providers). The Obama Administration has specifically partnered with Google, who already keeps an 18 month record of your every Internet transaction, including all websites visited and the nature of the Searches you've done; and remember, Google also keeps an archive of all of your G-Mail, even if you delete it.
This story comes right from the Washington Post. Try as I might, I couldn't find a Republican with any fingerprints on this story. But I did try.
3) The latest is a direct effort to intimidate citizens and stifle free speech by implementing a "Snitch" program. Linda Douglass, communications director for Obama’s Office of Health Reform, is quoted as saying “If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.” Read Newt Gingrich's article and John Cornyn's letter to Obama:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6572050.html
The attempt to commission private citizens to snitch out their fellow citizens will no doubt be spun by Obamites as harmless, but that's going to be a hard sell seeing as how they've spent the last few weeks demonizing these same protesters. The Snitch program appears to be the natural progression of their attempts to stifle debate, especially considering that their original objective was to pass Health Care reform before their could be any. The Protesters crammed Obama's fast-track plan down his throat. Snitch@whitehouse.gov looks like payback.
It also recalls the worst practices of petty dictators like Hugo Chavez, Omar Torrijos and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
All of these Big Brother maneuvers by Obama are breath-taking not only because they are coordinated, but because each is so pervasive as well. After all, it's near-impossible these days to avoid government websites, and it's impossible to avoid ISPs such as Google unless you simply don't want to use the Internet. Couple these two initiatives with a Snitch program, and you've got the makings of a Police State.
Most compelling of all, there is no plausible reason to enact such programs for the good of the people. Collecting this data would serve the government for one purpose, and one purpose only: to develop a security dossier on each and every web-crawling citizen in the United States. It's kind of ironic that Obama only finds this offensive when it comes to foreign terrorists, isn't it?
These programs are trial balloons, of course. In classic Democrat weasel fashion, each action can be made to appear to be less than what it is, and if there's no uproar over wholesale Identity Theft by the Democrat Party now, they'll be able to refer back to this period a year from now and legitimately claim: "hey, where was the outrage in 2009 when these steps were first taken?” Of course, a compliant Mainstream Media, by failing to give the stories their due, helps ensure that they slip under the radar, just as did the theft of thousands of FBI files on prominent Republicans by the Clinton Administration in the 90s.
After that, these programs will become the norm, and as is the case with so many other Democrat outrages that get a franchise (Social Security comes to mind), they'll be protected by the Bureaucracy that really runs this country, 90% of which are Democrats.
Speaking of which, isn't it amazing that the reaction of this same Mainstream Media - who would have called for impeachment had Bush done a fraction of these things - has been to yawn, roll over and continue to spoon with Obama, with nary a discouraging word? Thank God for the Pajamahadeen. The tireless Conservative blogging community is keeping track of this stuff, and giving these stories the circulation necessary to undo their evil.
Our President has much in common with Hugo Chavez. In addition to the police state tactics against individuals, there's the nationalization of key industries, the co-opting and intimidation of independent media outlets, the gargantuan and unsustainable spending programs, the outright hostility to Capitalism, and a foreign policy whose sole purpose seems to be the demonization of the United States. And while Chavez is well along with his plans for a secret police to further squelch dissent, Obama has taken only the initial steps with these three programs, no doubt the precursors to the "national police force" he promised during the presidential campaign.
All that said, I'm OK with Obama continuing to emulate Hugo Chavez, I really am, even up to and including scheduling himself for five hours of primetime television each week with a show along the lines of Chavez's "Hello President". With every totalitarian impulse, our Blunderer-In-Chief reveals not only himself to the American people, but the Democrat Party as well.
And the picture ain't pretty.
- Both have a most agreeable and telegenic demeanor.
- Both are on television repeatedly and relentlessly, as inescapable as Reality TV show commercials.
- Both of them use the power of government to squelch dissent and remake society into a Socialist paradise.
- Both apparently believe that the United States is evil.
- Neither of them trusts their citizenry.
Let’s take President Obama for starters. Three different efforts by the Obama Administration to invade your privacy and intimidate you into silence have surfaced in recent days. Taken together, they are creeping OffHisMeds out, and have the potential to be the most Stalinesque abrogation of individual freedoms in the short history of our Republic. All are targeted at ordinary citizens, and collectively they do away with all or portions of the 4th, 5th and 9th Amendments in the Bill of Rights.
But hey, you don't need to take my word for it; not when you can rely on Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Senator John Cornyn, and well, the Obama Administration. Strange bedfellows indeed:
1) You may already have seen the Glenn Beck video on Youtube documenting the attempt by your government to steal your identity via government websites. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAOBlqUqUZ8
The jist is that if you log onto cars.gov to inquire about the “Cash For Clunkers” program, the Feds will claim your computer and all its contents as government property. Strangest of all, it’s not a Presidential declaration, it’s not an act of Congress, and it sure as hell isn't a decision by the Supreme Court; in fact, it was not presented to get any public scrutiny at all. No, it’s an addendum tucked away on an obscure page of a government website having nothing whatsoever to do with Constitutional matters.
Take away Beck's enjoyable hype and partisanship, though, and you find that absolutely nothing at all changes about the content of the story. Straight up reportage, made all the more poignant by the fact that the Mainstream Media ignored it.
2) That's just the tip of the Obama Big Brother iceberg, though. The Administration is also maneuvering for permanent warrantless wiretaps on virtually all computer users in the U.S.A. Check out this article from 8-11-09:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/6567904.html
This article details attempts by the Feds to cancel a holdover exemption from the Bush Administration that prevents them from keeping a history of all of your visits to government websites. It goes beyond that, though. The Feds are also angling to have access to any and all information recorded by ISPs (Internet Service Providers). The Obama Administration has specifically partnered with Google, who already keeps an 18 month record of your every Internet transaction, including all websites visited and the nature of the Searches you've done; and remember, Google also keeps an archive of all of your G-Mail, even if you delete it.
This story comes right from the Washington Post. Try as I might, I couldn't find a Republican with any fingerprints on this story. But I did try.
3) The latest is a direct effort to intimidate citizens and stifle free speech by implementing a "Snitch" program. Linda Douglass, communications director for Obama’s Office of Health Reform, is quoted as saying “If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.” Read Newt Gingrich's article and John Cornyn's letter to Obama:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6572050.html
The attempt to commission private citizens to snitch out their fellow citizens will no doubt be spun by Obamites as harmless, but that's going to be a hard sell seeing as how they've spent the last few weeks demonizing these same protesters. The Snitch program appears to be the natural progression of their attempts to stifle debate, especially considering that their original objective was to pass Health Care reform before their could be any. The Protesters crammed Obama's fast-track plan down his throat. Snitch@whitehouse.gov looks like payback.
It also recalls the worst practices of petty dictators like Hugo Chavez, Omar Torrijos and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
All of these Big Brother maneuvers by Obama are breath-taking not only because they are coordinated, but because each is so pervasive as well. After all, it's near-impossible these days to avoid government websites, and it's impossible to avoid ISPs such as Google unless you simply don't want to use the Internet. Couple these two initiatives with a Snitch program, and you've got the makings of a Police State.
Most compelling of all, there is no plausible reason to enact such programs for the good of the people. Collecting this data would serve the government for one purpose, and one purpose only: to develop a security dossier on each and every web-crawling citizen in the United States. It's kind of ironic that Obama only finds this offensive when it comes to foreign terrorists, isn't it?
These programs are trial balloons, of course. In classic Democrat weasel fashion, each action can be made to appear to be less than what it is, and if there's no uproar over wholesale Identity Theft by the Democrat Party now, they'll be able to refer back to this period a year from now and legitimately claim: "hey, where was the outrage in 2009 when these steps were first taken?” Of course, a compliant Mainstream Media, by failing to give the stories their due, helps ensure that they slip under the radar, just as did the theft of thousands of FBI files on prominent Republicans by the Clinton Administration in the 90s.
After that, these programs will become the norm, and as is the case with so many other Democrat outrages that get a franchise (Social Security comes to mind), they'll be protected by the Bureaucracy that really runs this country, 90% of which are Democrats.
Speaking of which, isn't it amazing that the reaction of this same Mainstream Media - who would have called for impeachment had Bush done a fraction of these things - has been to yawn, roll over and continue to spoon with Obama, with nary a discouraging word? Thank God for the Pajamahadeen. The tireless Conservative blogging community is keeping track of this stuff, and giving these stories the circulation necessary to undo their evil.
Our President has much in common with Hugo Chavez. In addition to the police state tactics against individuals, there's the nationalization of key industries, the co-opting and intimidation of independent media outlets, the gargantuan and unsustainable spending programs, the outright hostility to Capitalism, and a foreign policy whose sole purpose seems to be the demonization of the United States. And while Chavez is well along with his plans for a secret police to further squelch dissent, Obama has taken only the initial steps with these three programs, no doubt the precursors to the "national police force" he promised during the presidential campaign.
All that said, I'm OK with Obama continuing to emulate Hugo Chavez, I really am, even up to and including scheduling himself for five hours of primetime television each week with a show along the lines of Chavez's "Hello President". With every totalitarian impulse, our Blunderer-In-Chief reveals not only himself to the American people, but the Democrat Party as well.
And the picture ain't pretty.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Democrat's Health Care Scare
There have been numerous contrasting articles about the health care debate in the papers in the past couple weeks. The first type, virtually all from Media Types sympathetic to Nationalized Health Care, portrays those in opposition to government run health care as cynical tools of conservative lobbyists. The other type - and increasingly more common - presents in more measured and factual terms those same protesters as righteously angry free agents.
The latter is interesting in that they rebut the cheerleaders of Obamacare in rather stark terms. They also offer a much more realistic assessment of who is actually being rude in this debate: the politicians promoting Obamacare. Events of the past few weeks have revealed numerous examples of true "rudeness", and it's not the protesters:
- President Obama and congressional Democrats attempting to ram health care reform through Congress before the August recess without any opportunity for lawmakers and citizens to read the bill, much less allow time for public debate. They did the same thing with the Stimulus Package and Cap & Trade.
- Prominent Democrats - including President Obama - vilifying protesters for using the very organizational tactics that have been used for decades by Democrat interest groups, and particularly the President himself as a Community Organizer.
- Time and time again misportraying health care protestors at town hall meetings as "outsiders" intent on squashing reasoned debate. Numerous Democrats have gone so far as to proclaim that they would only allow residents from their districts to attend town halls in the future, without offering a scrap of evidence that their accusations about outsiders are true.
- Cynically concocting an eleventh hour attempt to take the heat off of themselves by casting the insurance companies as the villains. Astonishingly, a mere two week's ago the Obama Administration was portraying the insurance companies as partners in the reform process.
- Accusing their opponents of using scare tactics, when fear has been their sole justification for attempting to rush Obamacare through without debate in the first place.
- Democrat politicians stage-managing "Townhall" meetings, doing them over the telephone, providing little public notice before live events, and giving admission mostly to people that are sympathetic to their cause, as the President did with his appearance in New Hampshire, with dozens of other Democrats following suit.
- Decrying the lack of "civility" and "reasoned debate", as if they had no part in creating the firestorm of controversy in the first place.
The list goes on and on.
How much more arrogant and disrespectful can you be than to do all of these things? None of these actions, however, is an accident. These politicians tried to use disinformation and intimidation to rig the process and got called on it by the American people. The fact that their response to this widespread disapproval was to try to further rig the process with more disinformation and intimidation almost certainly dooms their efforts to nationalize health care, the outcome they most richly deserve.
The latter is interesting in that they rebut the cheerleaders of Obamacare in rather stark terms. They also offer a much more realistic assessment of who is actually being rude in this debate: the politicians promoting Obamacare. Events of the past few weeks have revealed numerous examples of true "rudeness", and it's not the protesters:
- President Obama and congressional Democrats attempting to ram health care reform through Congress before the August recess without any opportunity for lawmakers and citizens to read the bill, much less allow time for public debate. They did the same thing with the Stimulus Package and Cap & Trade.
- Prominent Democrats - including President Obama - vilifying protesters for using the very organizational tactics that have been used for decades by Democrat interest groups, and particularly the President himself as a Community Organizer.
- Time and time again misportraying health care protestors at town hall meetings as "outsiders" intent on squashing reasoned debate. Numerous Democrats have gone so far as to proclaim that they would only allow residents from their districts to attend town halls in the future, without offering a scrap of evidence that their accusations about outsiders are true.
- Cynically concocting an eleventh hour attempt to take the heat off of themselves by casting the insurance companies as the villains. Astonishingly, a mere two week's ago the Obama Administration was portraying the insurance companies as partners in the reform process.
- Accusing their opponents of using scare tactics, when fear has been their sole justification for attempting to rush Obamacare through without debate in the first place.
- Democrat politicians stage-managing "Townhall" meetings, doing them over the telephone, providing little public notice before live events, and giving admission mostly to people that are sympathetic to their cause, as the President did with his appearance in New Hampshire, with dozens of other Democrats following suit.
- Decrying the lack of "civility" and "reasoned debate", as if they had no part in creating the firestorm of controversy in the first place.
The list goes on and on.
How much more arrogant and disrespectful can you be than to do all of these things? None of these actions, however, is an accident. These politicians tried to use disinformation and intimidation to rig the process and got called on it by the American people. The fact that their response to this widespread disapproval was to try to further rig the process with more disinformation and intimidation almost certainly dooms their efforts to nationalize health care, the outcome they most richly deserve.
Friday, August 7, 2009
LTE: Taxpayers squeezed
In regard to “Tax break will cost Cy-Fair students; District will be forced to cut back bus service to reduce the deficit” (Page B1, Tuesday), it was inevitable that Superintendent David Anthony would decide to implement cuts that penalize his customers, the families whose children go to Cy-Fair schools. Proposing cuts in bus service for all students within two miles of their schools and eliminating after-hours busing for students who participate in after-hours programs is a none-too-subtle way to put the squeeze on taxpayers to surrender their property-tax exemption.
It's too bad Anthony doesn't live in the same world as the private sector, where survival during a recession results in massive layoffs and across-the-board cuts in pay and benefits. Only in the public sector can you overprice your product and then intimidate your customers into paying more. Real cost-cutting is never an option. It's also too bad our public-school systems have no foreign competition, as does the private sector. A little dose of reality would do them, and taxpayers, a world of good.
— Pete Smith, Cypress
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Cash For Clunkers Fraud
So, the $1 Billion Cash For Clunkers program for the U.S. government to pay auto dealers anywhere from $3,500 to $4,500 for a new car purchase is out of money after only one week. Assuming the average payout was $4,000, that would be 250,000 Clunker deals sold during that time.
There are so many things wrong with the Cash For Clunkers program. Where to begin?
- First, that it is being portrayed as an unqualified success based on the initial $1 billion having been given away in merely one week. How low can Democrats set the bar for themselves when the measure of success is their burn rate on taxpayer's hard-earned dollars? That might explain why they were all patting themselves on the back after passing the Omnibus Spending bill of $400 Billion and the Stimulus Package of $687 Billion mere days after they were introduced.
- Speaking of a low bar, a "Clunker" is any vehicle from 1984 forward that gets 18 mpg or less. It can be replaced with a pickup or SUV that gets - wait for it - 18 mpg or better. Passenger cars need get only 22 mpg, when the average Clunker passenger car already gets 18 mpg. This makes the average savings in gas per vehicle anywhere from 0 gallons to a maximum of 150 gallons per year. Assume the average savings is 75 gallons, and that's less than 20 million gallons saved per year in a nation that burns almost 400 million gallons every day.
Looking at it another way, the government is spending $1 Billion in incentives to prevent $50 million in gas purchases.
- Clunkers are by definition cars that aren't road worthy and expensive to drive, which means they weren't driven much prior to Cash For Clunkers. They will now be replaced by cars that are road worthy, thus likely increasing total miles driven by the American public. There will be no net reduction in miles driven, and thus, no positive effect on the environment.
- This constitutes corporate welfare for Japanese and Korean car companies. It's strange that the major beneficiaries of billions of American tax dollars should be the very countries that have closed their markets to American manufacturing.
- Democrats are rewarding the "winners" they picked in the Dealership sweepstakes two month's ago with tax dollars. The "losers", as has been widely reported, were Republican businessmen, displaced by the thousands when their franchises were taken away.
- Welfare for car buyers? Why not welfare for P.C. owners? Surely there are millions of power hogging older computers and monitors that could be replaced by more efficient newer models? How about welfare for home air conditioning? The possibilities are endless, yet unexploited. That's because it's a bad idea.
- Fraud, fraud and more fraud. Look for a landrush of Beaters to be rushed over the border from Mexico. And look for little or no accountability that the Scrap yards responsible for destroying these cars actually did so. By the way, did you know that only the engine need be destroyed? Look for a brisk business of dropping scrap engines into scrap cars, that are then pushed into new car dealerships in trade.
- This inspires yet another consumer debt binge. If all the buyers exploiting the Clunker's program could afford prior to this was a Clunker, what's the likelihood that they will honor the financing on the new car?
- And let us not forget the inevitable Hangover once the money is gone. Having accustomed the American consumer to massive subsidies for car purchases, who will buy a car once the program is gone?
Worst of all, this program is yet another frontal attack on the savings accounts of Middle America. It's no coincidence that Obama didn't implement such a plan when GM and Chrysler were in private hands, with huge stakes by holders of 401Ks and IRAs. No, Democrats only came up with this program once stockholders were robbed and The United Auto Workers and the U.S. government were the majority owners of both companies. Now, they're using your tax dollars to make the companies profitable.
Democrats are merely doing what Democrats do best: spend like drunken sailors so as to line their own pockets, steal Taxpayer money to do it, then stick taxpayers with the tab.
Some day the bill will come due, though. Although small, this program brings that day closer, and it's only costing us $1 Billion per week.
There are so many things wrong with the Cash For Clunkers program. Where to begin?
- First, that it is being portrayed as an unqualified success based on the initial $1 billion having been given away in merely one week. How low can Democrats set the bar for themselves when the measure of success is their burn rate on taxpayer's hard-earned dollars? That might explain why they were all patting themselves on the back after passing the Omnibus Spending bill of $400 Billion and the Stimulus Package of $687 Billion mere days after they were introduced.
- Speaking of a low bar, a "Clunker" is any vehicle from 1984 forward that gets 18 mpg or less. It can be replaced with a pickup or SUV that gets - wait for it - 18 mpg or better. Passenger cars need get only 22 mpg, when the average Clunker passenger car already gets 18 mpg. This makes the average savings in gas per vehicle anywhere from 0 gallons to a maximum of 150 gallons per year. Assume the average savings is 75 gallons, and that's less than 20 million gallons saved per year in a nation that burns almost 400 million gallons every day.
Looking at it another way, the government is spending $1 Billion in incentives to prevent $50 million in gas purchases.
- Clunkers are by definition cars that aren't road worthy and expensive to drive, which means they weren't driven much prior to Cash For Clunkers. They will now be replaced by cars that are road worthy, thus likely increasing total miles driven by the American public. There will be no net reduction in miles driven, and thus, no positive effect on the environment.
- This constitutes corporate welfare for Japanese and Korean car companies. It's strange that the major beneficiaries of billions of American tax dollars should be the very countries that have closed their markets to American manufacturing.
- Democrats are rewarding the "winners" they picked in the Dealership sweepstakes two month's ago with tax dollars. The "losers", as has been widely reported, were Republican businessmen, displaced by the thousands when their franchises were taken away.
- Welfare for car buyers? Why not welfare for P.C. owners? Surely there are millions of power hogging older computers and monitors that could be replaced by more efficient newer models? How about welfare for home air conditioning? The possibilities are endless, yet unexploited. That's because it's a bad idea.
- Fraud, fraud and more fraud. Look for a landrush of Beaters to be rushed over the border from Mexico. And look for little or no accountability that the Scrap yards responsible for destroying these cars actually did so. By the way, did you know that only the engine need be destroyed? Look for a brisk business of dropping scrap engines into scrap cars, that are then pushed into new car dealerships in trade.
- This inspires yet another consumer debt binge. If all the buyers exploiting the Clunker's program could afford prior to this was a Clunker, what's the likelihood that they will honor the financing on the new car?
- And let us not forget the inevitable Hangover once the money is gone. Having accustomed the American consumer to massive subsidies for car purchases, who will buy a car once the program is gone?
Worst of all, this program is yet another frontal attack on the savings accounts of Middle America. It's no coincidence that Obama didn't implement such a plan when GM and Chrysler were in private hands, with huge stakes by holders of 401Ks and IRAs. No, Democrats only came up with this program once stockholders were robbed and The United Auto Workers and the U.S. government were the majority owners of both companies. Now, they're using your tax dollars to make the companies profitable.
Democrats are merely doing what Democrats do best: spend like drunken sailors so as to line their own pockets, steal Taxpayer money to do it, then stick taxpayers with the tab.
Some day the bill will come due, though. Although small, this program brings that day closer, and it's only costing us $1 Billion per week.
Monday, August 3, 2009
The "Business Cycle" Myth
Economists from both sides of the political spectrum have invoked the specter of the "Business Cycle" to explain the downturns of the American economy for the past century or so. The idea is that normal economic activity leads to increased productivity and wealth until irrational investment and irrational consumption kick in, causing the economy to suffer a downturn. The markets then "correct" themselves, and the cycle starts all over again.
The Business Cycle is beloved by both Democrats and Republicans, but is primarily a creature of the Right. Republicans love it because it is the script they have been regurgitating since the early part of the 20th century. To abandon it now would be to surrender the comfortable premise that anchors their beliefs, and insulates them from the accusations of others that Capitalism is unconcerned for the poor and the downtrodden. The Business Cycle - from their perspective - is the small price society has to pay to benefit from free markets.
Except of course, that the theory is mostly a bunch of crap.
OffHisMeds can't entirely deny the Business Cyclers their due. If we were a completely Capitalist nation, the economy likely would go through such ups-and-downs, albeit in a much milder form, since undiluted free markets automatically sniff out even the most ingenious hanky panky immediately and "correct" it automatically. But since we are only a marginally Capitalist economy, the system is gamed by the Federal government and their cronies, so what we get instead are "cycles" that are much more severe. Simply put, the primary cause of every downturn in the economy in the last century has been Government Spending.
OffHisMed's theory is straightforward: When Politicians steal most of the money and leave little for the citizenry to spend or invest, the economy tanks. This forces the federal government to borrow, yoking the collective wealth of the Private Sector to government debt. The economy only recovers once the government puts enough money back into the system to promote business activity and consumption, which it can only do by borrowing. Once Producers and Consumers are confident that there is enough money back in the system, production and spending resume. This is sustained until such time as government spending has once again sucked too much money out of the system, at which time the economy tanks again.
The evidence is everywhere. Before the Great Depression (the Mother Of All Business Cycles), Public Sector spending (government spending and government mandated insurance) consumed less than 15% of GDP. Now, Public Sector spending consumes 55% of GDP. It doesn't take a genius to understand that if you take all the wealth and plow it into things people don't want, there is nothing left to invest in, grow and consume the things that people do want.
Put up a graph comparing all the times the economy has tanked and milestones showing fresh new government spending initiatives (things like The Great Society, the prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients, or the election of a Democrat Congress) and the graph of those milestones tracks with recessions with an almost surgical precision. The New Deal begat a decade of economic turmoil, relieved only by WWII. The Great Society led us to hyper inflation and soaring interest rates in the 70s, later named "Stagflation". The Clinton years of unrestrained public spending led to the Recession that started in 1999. The unrestrained spending of Democrat Fellow Traveller George W. Bush, followed by the election of a Democrat congress in 2006 was almost immediately followed by the current mini-Depression.
Which is why Democrats love the concept of the Business Cycle, abetted by a compliant media incapable of criticizing government, and all too adept at knee-jerk reactions to economic downturns. First and foremost, they love the concept of a Business Cycle because it relieves any scrutiny on the true connection between government spending and downturns. Second, Democrats know that Republicans will reflexively invoke this phenomenon to explain a bad economy, which makes it a two-fer, inasmuch as it allows Democrats to dodge the bullet when they're running the show, and is a millstone they can tie around the necks of Republicans when they are running the show. Unmolested by reality, whenever the economy does tank, Democrats are then free to trot out the tried-and-true "lack of government regulation, capitalism run amok" cliché to further Socialize the economy.
Meanwhile, they've got Republicans being their Useful Idiots, reciting the Business Cycle mantra to the detriment of the economy, taxpayers, and ironically, the Republican Party. In case you've missed the point or recent history, clinging to this hoary cliché causes Republicans to be constantly on the Defensive, as they have been for the past generation. Meanwhile, Democrats sink their claws ever deeper into our economic life, to the point that dislodging them will cause economic catastrophe.
Milton Friedman famously declared that he was not near so worried about the current government "deficit" in spending as he was the unfunded future commitments to spend with which government had burdened society. That's already at $56 Trillion and counting. Using House money, Obama has decided to Double Down, taking the unprecedented step of borrowing and spending additional tens of Trillions at the very point that the Economy's capacity to recover is most at peril.
Will the American economy fail? No, it will not. Our new owners - Chinese warlords, Russian Mafias, Middle Eastern oil tyrants and the Belgians who own Budweiser - won't let it happen. We should not take comfort in that.
In the meantime, the concept of the Business Cycle will continue to be used to explain - but mostly mask - the transfer of all wealth in America to the forces of Darkness.
The Business Cycle is beloved by both Democrats and Republicans, but is primarily a creature of the Right. Republicans love it because it is the script they have been regurgitating since the early part of the 20th century. To abandon it now would be to surrender the comfortable premise that anchors their beliefs, and insulates them from the accusations of others that Capitalism is unconcerned for the poor and the downtrodden. The Business Cycle - from their perspective - is the small price society has to pay to benefit from free markets.
Except of course, that the theory is mostly a bunch of crap.
OffHisMeds can't entirely deny the Business Cyclers their due. If we were a completely Capitalist nation, the economy likely would go through such ups-and-downs, albeit in a much milder form, since undiluted free markets automatically sniff out even the most ingenious hanky panky immediately and "correct" it automatically. But since we are only a marginally Capitalist economy, the system is gamed by the Federal government and their cronies, so what we get instead are "cycles" that are much more severe. Simply put, the primary cause of every downturn in the economy in the last century has been Government Spending.
OffHisMed's theory is straightforward: When Politicians steal most of the money and leave little for the citizenry to spend or invest, the economy tanks. This forces the federal government to borrow, yoking the collective wealth of the Private Sector to government debt. The economy only recovers once the government puts enough money back into the system to promote business activity and consumption, which it can only do by borrowing. Once Producers and Consumers are confident that there is enough money back in the system, production and spending resume. This is sustained until such time as government spending has once again sucked too much money out of the system, at which time the economy tanks again.
The evidence is everywhere. Before the Great Depression (the Mother Of All Business Cycles), Public Sector spending (government spending and government mandated insurance) consumed less than 15% of GDP. Now, Public Sector spending consumes 55% of GDP. It doesn't take a genius to understand that if you take all the wealth and plow it into things people don't want, there is nothing left to invest in, grow and consume the things that people do want.
Put up a graph comparing all the times the economy has tanked and milestones showing fresh new government spending initiatives (things like The Great Society, the prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients, or the election of a Democrat Congress) and the graph of those milestones tracks with recessions with an almost surgical precision. The New Deal begat a decade of economic turmoil, relieved only by WWII. The Great Society led us to hyper inflation and soaring interest rates in the 70s, later named "Stagflation". The Clinton years of unrestrained public spending led to the Recession that started in 1999. The unrestrained spending of Democrat Fellow Traveller George W. Bush, followed by the election of a Democrat congress in 2006 was almost immediately followed by the current mini-Depression.
Which is why Democrats love the concept of the Business Cycle, abetted by a compliant media incapable of criticizing government, and all too adept at knee-jerk reactions to economic downturns. First and foremost, they love the concept of a Business Cycle because it relieves any scrutiny on the true connection between government spending and downturns. Second, Democrats know that Republicans will reflexively invoke this phenomenon to explain a bad economy, which makes it a two-fer, inasmuch as it allows Democrats to dodge the bullet when they're running the show, and is a millstone they can tie around the necks of Republicans when they are running the show. Unmolested by reality, whenever the economy does tank, Democrats are then free to trot out the tried-and-true "lack of government regulation, capitalism run amok" cliché to further Socialize the economy.
Meanwhile, they've got Republicans being their Useful Idiots, reciting the Business Cycle mantra to the detriment of the economy, taxpayers, and ironically, the Republican Party. In case you've missed the point or recent history, clinging to this hoary cliché causes Republicans to be constantly on the Defensive, as they have been for the past generation. Meanwhile, Democrats sink their claws ever deeper into our economic life, to the point that dislodging them will cause economic catastrophe.
Milton Friedman famously declared that he was not near so worried about the current government "deficit" in spending as he was the unfunded future commitments to spend with which government had burdened society. That's already at $56 Trillion and counting. Using House money, Obama has decided to Double Down, taking the unprecedented step of borrowing and spending additional tens of Trillions at the very point that the Economy's capacity to recover is most at peril.
Will the American economy fail? No, it will not. Our new owners - Chinese warlords, Russian Mafias, Middle Eastern oil tyrants and the Belgians who own Budweiser - won't let it happen. We should not take comfort in that.
In the meantime, the concept of the Business Cycle will continue to be used to explain - but mostly mask - the transfer of all wealth in America to the forces of Darkness.
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