Showing posts with label Heritage Foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heritage Foundation. Show all posts

Monday, July 29, 2019

Obama stole neo-liberal healthcare mandate from Hillary, who stole it from "conservative" Heritage Foundation

There is no difference between forcing you to buy health insurance and taking your money to pay for Medicaid and Medicare.

Everyone is for tyranny.

Monday, May 22, 2017

Ann Coulter's excellent rant against Heritage Foundation

We can bring Ann up to speed on the Germans later.

Best one: Burke said Americans were descendants of Englishmen, and Protestant.

Heritage should sell everything and donate it to the Center for American Progress. They're already doing their work anyway:

"champion the common good over narrow self-interest, and harness the strength of our diversity."

The Heritage Foundation are lunaticks, as the King James Version of the Bible would put it

They are oft cast into the sea in danger of drowning, or into the fire in danger of burns, were it not for the common sense of Americans who have been repelled by their passions, for health care mandates for example.

For a think tank they really should get some thinkers over there one of these days.



Which is why they kept slaves, and required presidents to be born here of American citizens?



Friday, August 26, 2016

Hard libertarian billionaire daughter Rebekah Mercer is behind Trump's shift to Bannon and Conway, away from deportation

The price of consensus for Mercer's "help" in retrospect was obviously that Trump soften his deportation stance. Bloomberg's story here in June completely misses the signficance of the Mercers' libertarianism.

The Hill had the story already on August 17, here, the day Trump shook up his campaign by hiring Stephen Bannon as CEO and Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, detailing Mercer's links to Stanford, the Heritage Foundation, BREITBART, the Ted Cruz campaign and libertarian think tank CATO:

“The Mercers basically own this campaign,” said a source who has worked with Rebekah Mercer in her political activities. “They have installed their people. ... And now they’ve got their data firm in there.” ... Little has been written about the Mercers because they avoid the public spotlight, but conservative sources who know the family, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described them as “kind, civic-minded people and consensus-builders.” ... But that source, who has worked with Mercer in some of her other political ventures, said it was a surprise to some people that the Mercers had swung so forcefully behind Trump, given her ideological bent. “She identifies as a libertarian. At least she always did,” the source said, adding that Mercer was a big supporter of libertarian think tanks like the Goldwater Institute and Cato. “With Bekah you always had to prove your libertarian racing stripes,” the source added. “This seems really strange.”

Friday, November 6, 2015

Commentary Magazine's Jonathan Tobin doesn't even read what he cites, making a hash of Obamacare story

Jonathan Tobin here:

"This is something of a misnomer because, as the Heritage Institute pointed out in a paper published last month, almost all of these people were simply added to the rolls of those receiving Medicare. If you only count those who are actually receiving insurance outside of Medicare, the net increase of those with coverage (the number of those buying these policies is offset by an almost equal reduction in the number of customers who have employer-based plans) is only 260,000 people."

Ah, no.

First of all the paper was from the "Heritage Foundation", not the "Heritage Institute". Perhaps he's heard of it? It's only been a Washington fixture since like the Reagan Administration. He does remember Reagan, right? Well, he is a neoconservative.

And it was the rolls of Medicaid which were expanded, not Medicare. What kind of a dummy gets that wrong? Medicare is for older Americans. Medicare is supposed to be paid for through payroll taxes, and it's blowing up as we speak, but that's another story. Medicaid used to be health coverage for the poor and the indigent, provided by the States. Leave it to Obama to expand it from DC and call it insurance.

The middle class of this country will end up poor and indigent and on Medicaid, too, if someone doesn't put a stop to this train wreck called Obamacare and soon.

Middle class people have just had their taxes raised dramatically to provide coverage and subsidies to pay for that coverage to about 9 million people who didn't have it before or didn't have what they're getting now. Middle class taxes went up in the form of health insurance premium increases, raised deductibles and skyrocketing pharmaceutical price increases. Middle class people buying the cheapest of plans now can expect to shell out over $13,000 in premiums and deductibles before their plans pay out one red cent of a big healthcare bill. The incentive for them is to avoid care even when they need it in order to save money.  

All Tobin had to do to get the article moving in the right direction was to actually read the title of the Heritage paper and the accompanying abstract, but apparently he didn't do even that. One wonders if he even wrote the story himself. He is Commentary's "editor" after all.

What a putz. 


Backgrounder #3062 on Health Care

October 15, 2015

2014 Health Insurance Enrollment: Increase Due Almost Entirely to Medicaid Expansion
By Edmund F. Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski

Abstract

Health insurance enrollment data for 2014 shows that the number of Americans with health insurance increased by 9.25 million during the year. However, the vast majority of the increase was the result of 8.99 million individuals being added to the Medicaid rolls. While enrollment in private individual-market plans increased by almost 4.79 million, most of that gain was offset by a reduction of 4.53 million in the number of people with employment-based group coverage. Thus, the net increase in private health insurance in 2014 was just 260,000 people.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Stephen Moore tells some whoppers: Income was FALLING long before the 2013 increase in the capital gains tax rate

From Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, here:

"When Mr. Obama entered office the capital gains and dividend tax was 15 percent. Then he raised it to 20 percent and then he added a 3.8 percent investment surtax, bringing the rate to 23.8 percent. The tax rose by more than 50 percent. ...

"Wages have stagnated under Mr. Obama as taxes have risen on capital."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nice try at hiding the chronology, Moore, but no cigar.

Real median household income and real gross private domestic investment crashed in tandem and in concert with the 2007 recession. The investment side rebounded quickly, but real household income did not, and still hasn't. What's more, the whole phenomenon preceded any increase in the capital gains tax rate, which didn't pass until January 2013, with Republican support by the way. 

And it won't do to talk about wages stagnating, either. Real incomes have actually fallen, and fallen big. Employers figured out that the 2008 crisis gave them the cover they needed, their golden opportunity, to shed millions of expensive workers and rehire younger, cheaper ones. It's the biggest scandal in recent history, much bigger than the lies about ObamaCare, but no one is going to talk about it, least of all libertarians who are happy that the business inputs cost less.

The incredible rebound in investment is on the backs of all this labor shed in the crisis, helped along by rock bottom interest rates for those who are first in line for the money: bankers and businesses.

So-called conservatism never looked so bad.  

Thursday, December 11, 2014

The Heritage Foundation didn't repudiate the individual mandate until long after the Tea Party did

Ramesh Ponnuru here in March 2012 in the wake of both Romney and Gingrich putting the finger on Heritage for the individual mandate in October 2011:

"So yes, conservative opinion on the mandate has changed. But I don’t think it’s right to suggest that most conservative voters or conservative policy thinkers ever supported it. I think what happened is that as soon as grassroots conservatives focused on the mandate, they hated it—and they were right to hate it, in my view–and both the politicians and that one outlier think tank responded to their sentiment."

Timothy Noah pointed out here in 2013 that it wasn't until 2011 that Heritage formally opposed its own idea, meaning it took Heritage two years to join the Tea Party in opposing ObamaCare:

'Heritage, in a 2011 amicus curiae brief submitted in support of the legal challenge to Obamacare, stated, “Heritage has stopped supporting any insurance mandate.” Heritage also said it had come to believe the individual mandate was unconstitutional—an interpretation later rejected, of course, by the Supreme Court.'

Flashback to October 2011: Romney and Gingrich agree ObamaCare's individual mandate idea came from the Heritage Foundation

From the Western Republican Leadership Conference Presidential Debate interchange in October 2011 between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich about the individual mandate (see it here starting at the 29:00 minute mark):

ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask, have you supported in the past an individual mandate?

GINGRICH: I absolutely did with the Heritage Foundation against Hillarycare.

ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?

ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That’s what I’m saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.

GINGRICH: OK. A little broader.

ROMNEY: OK.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Rush Limbaugh keeps trying to expunge Heritage Foundation's guilt for ObamaCare mandate

In the first hour today, after which the first caller of the day almost hit the third rail when he pointed out that Jonathan Gruber may have his "stupid voters" but Rush Limbaugh has his "low information voters".

Nevermind the two leading Republican candidates for president in October 2011 agreed they got the idea from Heritage (transcript here).

ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.

GINGRICH: That’s not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.

ROMNEY: Yes, we got it from you, and you got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.

GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true. You did not get that from me. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.

ROMNEY: And you never supported them?

GINGRICH: I agree with them, but I’m just saying, what you said to this audience just now plain wasn’t true.

(CROSSTALK)

ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask, have you supported in the past an individual mandate?

GINGRICH: I absolutely did with the Heritage Foundation against Hillarycare.

ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?

ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That’s what I’m saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.

GINGRICH: OK. A little broader.

ROMNEY: OK.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Heritage Foundation's Stuart Butler of ObamaCare mandate fame decides he's more comfortable at the liberal Brookings Institution

Conservatives seeking institutionalization. No wonder Robin Williams committed suicide.

Seen here:

Mr. Butler, 67 years old, said he was attracted to Brookings by the idea of working at a place that is not monolithic in its approach to public policy.

“Brookings is a different kind of institution. It’s a collection of scholars as opposed to a team-focused organization,” Mr. Butler said in an interview Thursday. “There’s an opportunity to sit around in the cafeteria to talk about all kinds of different issues from the theoretical to the practical.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stuart Butler was the author of the original healthcare mandate idea at Heritage in 1989. He's been trying to walk that back ever since 2010, but what appears to have driven him into the arms of the liberals was the ascendancy of libertarian Senator Demented Jim to head up Heritage, who subsequently brought in Club For Growth founder Steve Moore, who was The Wall Street Journal's libertarian bad boy for many years.  

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

One important reason Brian Ellis lost to Justin Amash

You don't robocall Republican-inclined voters on election eve featuring a Democrat urging Democrats to cross over and vote for Ellis in the Republican primary, and then say you paid for it.

I don't think that endeared Republican-inclined voters to Ellis, who suspected there was no there there to begin with. Offering no alternative to radical libertarianism made Brian Ellis a lousy candidate. Who wants to vote for libertarian-light when you've got the real deal in Amash?

This seems to be all too characteristic of Republicans: they frequently portray themselves as moderate liberals, whether it's being for abortion in the cases of rape, incest and life of the mother, civil unions, DADT, smarter big government, or Heritage Foundation health care mandates.

Republicans need to figure out what conservatism is and whether they ought to believe in it. Until they do they'll continue to mistake libertarianism for conservatism. Even Nancy Pelosi is for "In God We Trust". Justin Amash is not.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Justin Amash represents DC's Club For Growth, not Michigan's Third District

Justin Amash must be worried about his reelection prospects.

Amash is blanketing Michigan's 3rd Congressional District with a barage of anti-Brian Ellis radio ads and mailings even though Amash claims an overwhelming lead against his humble opponent based on his own polling data. Why waste the money if he is so far ahead? Well, maybe it's not exactly his money.

What the voters probably don't realize is how much of Amash's anti-Ellis attack is financed by the Club For Growth, a libertarian organization founded by a former editor of The Wall Street Journal who is now employed by The Heritage Foundation, one Steve Moore (Heritage, it will be remembered, gave us ObamaCare long before Obama came along, as their answer to HillaryCare). Like Heritage, Club For Growth is based in Washington, DC, not in Michigan's Third. Amash gets the benefit of their negative attack ads while being able to claim he has nothing to do with them.

So far in the campaign, Club For Growth appears to be responsible for almost $400,000 of spending in attack ads against Brian Ellis, who by contrast is in large measure underwriting his own campaign with a remarkably similar amount of his own money. It is notable that Ellis is pledging to overturn ObamaCare, which in Michigan is causing health care workers to lose their jobs, while showcasing his endorsements by Michigan Right To Life, veterans groups and other conservatives upset with Amash's failure to walk the conservative talk.

Amash has an excuse on Facebook for every vote which he has failed to deliver on behalf of social and economic conservatives in his own district, just as Obama can always point to someone or something for why he never gets anything accomplished as president.

Republicans ought to consider the similarity and ask themselves if those two aren't really just cut from the same cloth.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Deb Saunders Helpfully Assembles The Blame-Republicans-For-ObamaCare Charges Made By Democrats

Here, concluding:

Now, I won't deny that two decades ago, some conservative think tank swell came up with the term "individual mandate" -- which allowed other wonks to try to pin the tail on the elephant. But if liberals have to fish for a 1989 Heritage Foundation policy paper that had no Republican support in 2008, 2009 or 2012 to establish Republican paternity for the Affordable Care Act, that tells you one thing: They think Obamacare won't work.

----------------------

That's right. If it works it's a Democrat idea.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Face It, The Heritage Foundation Has Been And Remains Confused (By Liberalism)

As the photo at left demonstrates but conservatives want to ignore, including Erick Erickson here at Red State, a Heritage Foundation representative was present for the signing of RomneyCare in 2006 because Heritage invented the damn idea way back before HillaryCare raised its ugly head and Heritage was happy to see it made into law (so was Senator Ted Kennedy). That was just seven years ago, but now Heritage would just rather have you ignore all that.

Forcing people to sign up for health insurance at the point of a gun has its analog, of course, in forcing people in distant lands to adopt Western-style democracy, something we heard the heir of Republican conservatism, George Bush, incessantly preach: "The long-term solution is to promote a better ideology, which is freedom. Freedom is universal." (Whether they want it or not). To this day, as Molly Ball's article in The Atlantic points out here, "universal coverage" is still Heritage's position:

In my interviews with them, Heritage officials could recite chapter and verse on why Heritage turned against the individual mandate -- a turn, they claim, that occurred before Romney or Obama adopted the idea. “We still believe universal coverage is a good idea,” [Phillip] Truluck [VP and COO] said. But none of the four Heritage officials I interviewed could tell me offhand how the foundation proposes to reform health care and cover the uninsured if Obamacare is scrapped. (Later, an assistant followed up by emailing me links to Heritage papers on “putting patients first,” regulating the health-insurance market, and Medicare reform.)

The place is universally incoherent, and always has been. It has been against Drugs for Seniors as an expansion of big government, but supported the line-item veto, thus expanding the authority of the executive part of government, even as it once used to warn about the imperial presidency. Today it is famously against the current immigration amnesty plan but was pro-immigration for the longest time. It had a founder who has moved notably left liberal, but now it has a libertarian-friendly leader in Jim DeMint. It was for ObamaCare before it was against it. Something about the Heritage Foundation is really off for it to be the home of so many contradictory currents. If conservatism is the negation of ideology, as Russell Kirk taught us, Heritage knows nothing about it.

Maybe they should just rename the place The John F. Kerry Foundation and be done with it.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Warning To Sen. Mitch McConnell: Watch Out For A Libertarian Spoiler

Incumbent Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader in the US Senate, should get ready to face both a Democrat and a libertarian spoiler in his reelection bid.

Libertarians spoiled the senate races for Mourdock in Indiana and for Rehberg in Montana in 2012. So-called Tea Party candidates, Mourdock and Rehberg lost by margins posted to the libertarians' columns in their races. In Montana the libertarian was actually funded by Democrats.

Republicans like Sen. Jim DeMint and Gov. Sarah Palin continue to think, incorrectly, that libertarians are on the Republicans' side. They are not. Gov. Palin in particular has said in the past that she believes it would be a political mistake to alienate libertarians. In saying that, she reveals that she believes Republicans cannot stand on their own. Senator DeMint has said recently that as the new head of the Heritage Foundation he believes it is time to reach out to libertarians to forge an alliance on those things about which Republicans and libertarians agree. It makes one wonder if their own minds aren't divided over whether they are conservatives or libertarians.

Politico reports on the possibility of a libertarian running against McConnell, buried on page 3 of this story about Democrats planning to back a Tea Party candidate:


Liberty for All, a super PAC that put cash behind [Rep. Thomas] Massie and other conservative Republicans, is signaling it’s prepared to spend money to boost a McConnell challenger. One of the group’s leaders, Preston Bates, is a former Democratic operative who worked for Jack Conway, the Democratic candidate who lost to Rand Paul in 2010.

Bates said he left the Democratic Party in 2010, adding that while he personally identifies more with his former party, his year-old group puts money behind viable small government and libertarian-minded conservatives.

“Generally, what we need is to stop electing Republicans that are out of touch with most general election voters,” Bates said.

Libertarians are indeed a subset of the Democrat Party, not a genuine third party. They view themselves as successful not when they stop Democrats from getting elected, but Republicans, as Bates openly states. Democrat money helped a libertarian spoil the race for a Republican challenger to Rep. Giffords in Arizona in 2010, after which she was shot by a deranged libertarian, and in 2012 the Libertarian Party viewed itself as successful because it stopped those Republican candidates for senate in Indiana and Montana.

Sen. McConnell should consider the Democrat threat to back a Tea Party candidate in the Republican primary as a fake to the right. I'd bet rather that the Democrats intend to go left and back a libertarian in the general if possible. That's been their m/o in the past, and likely will be again because it is the more natural for them. When push comes to shove, libertarians jettison economic conservatism for social liberalism, the latter's home being in the Democrat Party.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Demented Jim Isn't Going To Lead The People, He's Going To Follow Them

Jim DeMint of the Heritage Foundation announces the first phase of the new strategy, here, in The Washington Post:


We need to test the market and our message to communicate more effectively.

That’s why Heritage will start this year to help the conservative movement understand how Americans from all walks of life perceive public policy issues and how to communicate conservative ideas and solutions.

This research project into current public perceptions and how we change them will assist in the resurgence of the conservative movement in America.

That's right Jim, tell them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. It's easier to win that way.