"Keep the people poor!"
"The guards of a tyrant are foreigners!"
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
S&P500 Milestone: Closes today above all-time inflation-adjusted high set in August 2000
The all-time inflation-adjusted high occurred way back in August 2000 at 2046.21. Today's close was 2051.80.
Yippee, the bear market is officially . . . dead for a day.
Some Adviser Gruber who Obama said "never worked on our staff" visited White House and Obama 21 times since 2009
The Hill, here, placing Gruber multiple times at the scene of the crime:
MIT professor Jonathan Gruber held a series of high-level meetings with administration officials beginning in 2009 and extending through June of this year.
During the height of 2009’s ObamaCare debate, Gruber met repeatedly with former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, and Jeanne Lambrew, the deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform, among other officials. He also participated in a meeting of economists with President Obama.
In subsequent trips, Gruber received tours of the West Wing and the residence, and had breakfast at the White House mess, an exclusive West Wing cafeteria. He also met with Jason Furman, who now chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House's point person on ObamaCare’s implementation.
The visitor logs, which are publicly available but were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, show Gruber has visited the White House 21 times during the Obama presidency. Some of the records are incomplete — missing details about when Gruber entered or exited the complex — so it’s possible that some of those visits did not occur.
Liberal contributor from The New Republic advocates for tyranny as all Lincoln lovers must
Here:
[T]here will be situations in which the common good demands and requires that the executive go beyond the letter and even the spirit of the law. In these extreme or emergency situations — situations in which an existential threat poses a grave danger, with the survival of the political community itself at stake — the executive's extralegal decisions effectively become the community's higher law.
Probably the clearest example from American history is Abraham Lincoln's 1861 suspension of habeas corpus, defiance of the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (who denounced Lincoln's actions as unconstitutional), and subsequent arrest (without charge) of pro-secessionist Maryland state legislators who appeared poised to condemn the suspension and vote to join the Confederacy.
Was Lincoln acting like a tyrant, as Maryland native John Wilkes Booth and many other critics of the time contended? You bet he was. And it's a good thing, too. Had Maryland seceded, Washington would have been surrounded by enemy armies and the South almost certainly would have won the Civil War quickly and decisively. Extralegal action was required to keep that from happening.
Obama throws Jonathan Gruber under the bus in 2014 after stealing liberally from his ideas in 2006
Twitchy is all over it, with video of Obama proudly naming Jon Gruber as one of the academics from whom he has "stolen ideas liberally". Jon Gruber is now just "some adviser who never worked on our staff".
Sunday, November 16, 2014
J. Bradford DeLong says Jonathan Gruber is a pioneering intellectual and empiricist
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| UC Berkeley Professor DeLong served under Summers at Treasury |
Seen here:
"[P]eople like ... Jon Gruber ... are not ideologues. They are not only at the top of the profession. These are pioneers in the fields of public finance and health services research who in many ways provided the intellectual groundwork and the empirical research on which current health policy debate is based."
There's the poverty level, and then there's "the working poor": United Way releases ALICE data
Key to ALICE calculations is assessing when more than a third of income goes to rent/housing, which usually happens when a good job goes away and is replaced by a lower-paying one, making the mortgage or the rent suddenly unaffordable. Rents have risen and become less affordable at the same time as the housing market has recovered from the 2011 lows. In the summer it was reported here that 52% of Americans have had trouble in the last three years covering either the rent or the mortgage.
The Florida data is discussed here, where fully 45% of the households are in rough shape:
While 15 percent of Florida households are below the poverty level, another 30 percent are financially insecure — a figure that also applies to Sarasota and Manatee counties — based on a new measurement developed by the United Way. ... Florida's large number of financially fragile households is rooted in a number of economic trends, including housing affordability and other cost-of-living concerns. But the main driver is the dearth of middle-class jobs.
The Connecticut data is discussed here, where 35% of the households are struggling:
In Connecticut, the new report said, 10 percent of all households fall under the poverty level, and 25 percent are between the poverty level and the ALICE [asset-limited, income-constrained, employed] threshold. ... Similar ALICE reports have been done in a limited number of other states by their United Way organizations. Northern New Jersey was the first to shine a light on the ALICE population, and this year, for the first time, Connecticut, California, Florida, Indiana and Michigan United Ways have commissioned their own studies. Connecticut has the lowest proportion of residents below the federal poverty level and the lowest combined total in the ALICE category and below the poverty line of any of the states.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Jonathan Gruber exposed in a sixth video, touting how he deliberately designed ObamaCare to mislead
Jake Tapper for CNN here:
In previously posted but only recently noticed speeches, Gruber discusses how those pushing the bill took part in an "exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter," taking advantage of voters' "stupidity" to create a law that would ultimately be good for them.
The issue at hand in this sixth video is known as the "Cadillac tax," which was represented as a tax on employers' expensive health insurance plans. While employers do not currently have to pay taxes on health insurance plans they provide employees, starting in 2018, companies that provide health insurance that costs more than $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family will have to pay a 40 percent tax. ...
"It turns out politically it's really hard to get rid of," Gruber said. "And the only way we could get rid of it was first by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people when we all know it's a tax on people who hold those insurance plans." ...
The second way was have the tax kick in "late, starting in 2018. But by starting it late, we were able to tie the cap for Cadillac Tax to CPI, not medical inflation," Gruber said. CPI is the consumer price index, which is lower than medical inflation.
Gruber explains that by drafting the bill this way, they were able to pass something that would initially only impact some employer plans though it would eventually hit almost every employer plan. And by that time, those who object to the tax will be obligated to figure out how to come up with the money that repealing the tax will take from the treasury, or risk significantly adding to the national debt.
Friday, November 14, 2014
Republican Senator-elect Cory Gardner of Colorado is a total moron
"I support immigration reform, making sure that we start where American people want to it start, border security. Build a strong smart guest worker program because that has to be part and parcel of border security. But to simply say no, I believe is unacceptable. Just to say no to everything is unacceptable. That's the message that American people sent on Tuesday night."
-- quoted here
Reminds me of the now-defunct Senator Scott Brown, lately of Massachusetts and not-so-lately of New Hampshire, who also said No to the Republican leadership shortly after taking Senator Ted Kennedy's seat in the US Senate. That worked out great, didn't it, Senator Elizabeth Warren?
Hm. Just what is it that it is acceptable to say No to, Mr. Gardner?
"You shall have no other gods before me?"
"You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth?"
"You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name?"
"You shall not murder?"
"You shall not commit adultery?"
"You shall not steal?"
"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor?"
"You shall not covet your neighbor's house?"
"You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor?"
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Evidently the American people are so poor under Obama that . . .
. . . they can't even pay attention.
Look who's stupid now: Neither Rush Limbaugh nor his caller remember the chronology and politics of ObamaCare
It's been only four years and already the basic facts are forgotten.
The Supreme Court didn't even take the ObamaCare case until a year after the 2010 elections, in November of 2011, and ruled the mandate a constitutional tax on June 28, 2012. The Court had simply nothing to do with the 2010 landslide victory of the Republicans, but neither Rush's caller nor Rush remember that.
From today's transcript here:
CALLER: Yes, Rush. Thank you so much for taking my call. I really appreciate it, and if you don't mind me taking the liberty, I'd like to give a shout out to James Marshall Timberlake, he's my first grandson born November 2nd. But I thank you. The reason I called is that I believe there's an American who has been vilified who really is a hero concerning Obamacare, and that is Chief Justice John Roberts. Had he done what all of us expected him to do to find it unconstitutional, you would not have had the Republican landslide in 2010; you would not have had the Republican landslide in 2014; you would not be talking about Jonathan Gruber today. ...
RUSH: I want to know where it started that the way we win is to have liberalism implemented so that everybody can learn how rotten it is. When did that start? "John Roberts did a great thing by letting this thing be proclaimed constitutional. That way we've exposed these people for who they really are." We didn't need this! If Roberts had found this thing unconstitutional the 2010 elections would have been the same because Obama would have stayed the same. He would have found a way to get this done some other way. He wouldn't have just taken his chips and gone home and cried about it.
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Add two to Jonathan Gruber's pile of stupid American voters.
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.
So far ObamaCare's Jonathan Gruber from MIT has called us stupid "off the cuff" THREE TIMES, but you forget he wrote the (comic) book
After the first tape surfaced -- prompting Republican outrage -- Gruber went on MSNBC to express regret. On Tuesday, he said: "I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments."
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As I recall, not a single Republican in either chamber in 2010 was stupid enough to vote for ObamaCare, but every Democrat was.
Nevertheless liberal condescension was palpable from the beginning, and Gruber actually memorialized it with his comic book about ObamaCare early in 2012. The American people reelected Obama anyway, which must in Gruber's mind vindicate his low estimation of the people's intelligence to this day.
Well . . .
You were warned.
Well . . .
You were warned.
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