DIVIDED GOVERNMENT IS A SOLUTION, NOT A PROBLEM

A new kind of check and balance, in the opinion of Ronald Brownstein, writing for National Journal Magazine:

"To the Constitution's enumerated checks and balances we have informally added our own by habitually dividing power between the parties. . . . The public's default switch may have flipped from centralizing authority in one party to fragmenting it."

Read the whole piece, here.

BUSH SUBSIDIZED THE POOREST AMERICANS AND CUT THEIR TAXES 33%

Because George Bush was a flaming socialist. The left hated him as they did not because of the Iraq war but because he out-performed them as a liberal. And if Obama lets the Bush tax cuts expire, the poorest Americans will lose their subsidies and their taxes will go up 50%, and Obama will become a conservative and all will be well with the world!

In 2000, the top 60 percent of taxpayers paid 100 percent of all income taxes.

The bottom 40 percent collectively paid no income taxes.

Lawmakers writing the 2001 tax cuts faced quite a challenge in giving the bulk of the income tax savings to a population that was already paying no income taxes.

Rather than exclude these Americans, lawmakers used the tax code to subsidize them. (Some economists would say this made that group's collective tax burden negative.)

First, lawmakers lowered the initial tax brackets from 15 percent to 10 percent and then expanded the refundable child tax credit, which, along with the refundable earned income tax credit (EITC), reduced the typical low-income tax burden to well below zero.

As a result, the US Treasury now mails tax "refunds" to a large proportion of these Americans that exceed the amounts of tax that they actually paid.

All in all, the number of tax filers with zero or negative income tax liability rose from 30 million to 40 million, or about 30 percent of all tax filers.

The remaining 70 percent of tax filers received lower income tax rates, lower investment taxes, and lower estate taxes from the 2001 legislation.

Consequently, from 2000 to 2004, the share of all individual income taxes paid by the bottom 40 percent dropped from zero percent to minus 4 percent, meaning that the average family in those quintiles received a subsidy from the IRS.

By contrast, the share paid by the top quintile of households (by income) increased from 81 percent to 85 percent.

Expanding the data to include all federal taxes, the share paid by the top quintile edged up from 66.6 percent in 2000 to 67.1 percent in 2004, while the bottom 40 percent's share dipped from 5.9 percent to 5.4 percent.

Clearly, the tax cuts have led to the rich shouldering more of the income tax burden and the poor shouldering less.


Read the rest from Brian Riedl, here.

MAKING AFGHANISTAN SAFE FOR THE OPIUM TRADE

Not that long ago, going to war meant destroying the enemy's ability to make it on you.

That quaint idea has been replaced by the asshats' better idea of "winning hearts and minds."

In Afghanistan we're trying to do that with electricity, which the Taliban in turn steals in areas it controls and "sells" to the locals, who use it to power irrigation pumps which help the opium poppies grow. Like good organized criminals, the Taliban then also skims the drug trade pipeline to Iran to fund its insurgency.

The electricity skimming operation nets the Taliban about $4 million annually, according to this report in The Wall Street Journal. But the drug skimming must net them far more. The United Nations estimates the export value of Afghanistan's opium production at $4 billion annually, only a quarter of which may actually go to the growers.

You'd think "shoot 'em all, let God sort 'em out" would be the appropriate response to this situation, if it were a real war. But then you would be wrong. Instead, America is making Afghanistan safe for the Taliban gangsters and for the world's primary source of heroin.

So far the Kajaki hydroelectric power plant in the south has gotten $100 million in upgrades from the US. $400 million more is being requested for 2011, some of which will go to fund electricity generation also in the southern city of Kandahar.

In a real war the dams and power plants would be targets. That we can't even imagine the necessity of destroying them explains why there's not going to be a victory in Afghanistan for the US.

CONSERVATIVE PLEBEIANS

"While we will continue to strive to eliminate expletives from live broadcasts, the inherent challenges broadcasters face with live television, coupled with the human element required for monitoring, must allow for the unfortunate isolated instances where inappropriate language slips through," Fox said in a statement.

Go here for more on News Corp.'s suit against the FCC in defense of your First Amendment right to hear the language of the gutter on television.

"THE MOST DANGEROUS AND INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WE HAVE EVER HAD"

Not my words, but those of the Jewish atheist Nat Hentoff:

July 12, 2010

Health Care Rationing Obama Believes In

By Nat Hentoff

As a reporter, I do not use euphemisms - such as calling murderous terrorists "militants" or "activists." And as an American, I can exercise my First Amendment right to say plainly that President Obama is a liar with regard to our new health-care law, often referred to as Obamacare.

When a number of critics of Obamacare, including myself, warned that it would bring the rationing of treatments, medications and research into new procedures, the president said to the American Medical Association (June 15, 2009) that this rationing charge was a "fear tactic."

The next month, he said flat out: "I don't believe that government can or should run health care" (firstthings.com, May 31, 2010).

But in May of this year, the president nominated Dr. Donald Berwick, a professor at Harvard Medical School, to head Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) - the most powerful health-care position. As Hal Scherz underlines (RealClearPolitics.com, May 26): "CMS covers over 100 million Americans, has an annual $800 billion budget that is larger than the Defense Department's and is the second-largest insurance company in the world."

Unlike Obama, Berwick is enthusiastically, openly candid in his support of Britain's socialistic National Health Service. In a 2008 speech to British physicians, our new health czar said: "I am romantic about National Health Service. I love it (because it is) 'generous, hopeful, confident, joyous and just.'"

That "just" National Health Care Service decides which care can be too costly for the government to pay. Its real-time decider of life-or-death outcomes is the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Here is how "nicely" it works, described by Michael Tanner, senior fellow and health-care expert at the Cato Institute (where I, too, am a senior fellow):

"It acts as a comparative-effectiveness tool for the National Health Care Service, comparing various treatments and determining whether the benefits the patients receives - SUCH AS PROLONGED LIFE - are cost-efficient for the government" (lifenews.com, May 27).

So listen to our very own decider of how the Obama administration will lower our national debt by cutting inefficient health-care costs. After declaring his ardent romantic attachment to the British system, Berwick said: "All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country." He will, of course, be too busy to attend the funerals of the sacrificial Americans whose lives - not only those of the elderly - may thereby be cut short.

Tanner makes a grim point as Berwick rediscovers the romance of government cost-effectiveness: "Recent reports suggest that the recently passed health-care bill will be far more expensive than originally projected. As it becomes apparent that Obamacare is unsustainable, the calls for controlling its costs through rationing will grow louder. With Donald Berwick running the government's health-care efforts, those voices have a ready ear" (dailycaller.com, May 27).

By then, Berwick will be involved in the government-controlled health of more than 100 million Americans and - notes Michael Tanner - "Maybe those worries about death panels weren't so crazy after all."

Keep in mind that already, in May, "the Congressional Budget Office updated its cost projections (of Obamacare). It found that the new health legislation would cost $115 billion more than estimated when it was enacted ("ObamaCare's Ever-Rising Price Tag," Wall Street Journal, June 3).

How soon will the romantic rhythms of health rationing follow?

Wesley Smith, an invaluable investigative reporter on the dangers of government-controlled health care, describes the consequences if Obamacare is not repealed by the next Congress after the midterm elections:

"Once the centralized planning of medical delivery is complete - with cost-containment boards controlling the standards of care and the extent of coverage for both the private and public sectors - insurance companies, HMOs and the government will be able to legally discriminate against the sickest, most disabled and most elderly in our country. In other words, those whose care is most expensive."

For what to watch for during the reign of Berwick, whom Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius recently glorified as "absolutely the right leader for this time" (CNSNews.com, May 26), I bring back Michael Tanner:

In the British Health Service Berwick loves, "750,000 patients are awaiting admission to NHS hospitals. ...The latest estimates suggest that for most specialties, only 30 to 50 percent of patients are treated within 18 weeks. For trauma and orthopedic patients, the figure is only 20 percent. ... Every year 50,000 surgeries are canceled because patients become too sick on the waiting list to proceed."

And, again unlike the president, Berwick tells it like it frighteningly is in a June 2009 interview for the magazine, Biotechnology Healthcare:

"It's not a question of whether we will ration health care. It is whether we will ration with our eyes open."

There are many reasons why it is vital for Americans to vote in the midterm elections - and, of course, in 2012, to prevent a second term for the most dangerous and incompetent president we have ever had - but for many Americans, it is particularly important this year to vote against supporters of Obamacare. The question for many voters should be whether, in the years ahead, they will be in condition to vote if they are on waiting lists for government-controlled health care.

More of us are learning that during the Obama administration, it is essential to continually keep our eyes open on all it does.

Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. He is a member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the libertarian Cato Institute, where he is a senior fellow.

This piece appeared here.

THE RESPONSIBLES VS. THE DEADBEATS

Mark Gimein writes here that the Tea Party Movement has more to do with responsible people's anger over government handouts to irresponsible people, and institutions, than anything else. His essay is well worth reading at TheBigMoney.com.

TWO PROCLAMATIONS TOO POOFY

Just in case you thought the second one was, er, well, anomalous (as in deviant):

Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by two parents, a single mother, two mothers, a step-mom, a grandmother, or a guardian.

 -- Barack Obama, Mother's Day Proclamation, May 7, 2010 (available here)

Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian.

 -- Barack Obama, Father's Day Proclamation, June 18, 2010 (available here)

OBAMA EMBRACES STALIN'S UNIQUE DESCRIPTION OF WWII

Finally, I would simply add that the new partnership between our people spans the spectrum, from space to science to sports. I think, President, you're aware that recently I welcomed to the White House a group of young Russian basketball players -- both boys and girls -- who were visiting the United States. We went on the White House basketball court, and I have to admit some of them out-shot me. (Laughter.) They represented the hope for the future that brings our countries together.

Those were the same hopes of another generation of Americans and Russians -- the generation that stood together as allies in the Second World War -- the Great Patriotic War in which the Russian people suffered and sacrificed so much. We recently marked the 65th anniversary of our shared victory in that war, including that historic moment when American and Soviet troops came together in friendship at the Elbe River in Germany.

 -- Barack Obama, June 24, 2010 (transcript here)

"The term is not generally used outside the former Soviet Union" (Wikipedia, here), except, apparently, by aficionados.

GDP REVISED DOWN FOR Q1 2010 TO 2.7% FROM 3.0%

According to The Associated Press:

Gross domestic product rose by an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the January-to-March period, the Commerce Department said Friday. That was less than the 3 percent estimate for the quarter that the government released last month. It was also much slower than the 5.6 percent pace in the previous quarter.

ON TRADITION

"The development of a tradition is as unthinkable without some initial innovation as the progress of an innovation is apart from its regularization in one."
      -- Imam John

THE LEADERSHIP WE DESERVE

CONGRESS OF IDIOTS BAILS OUT THE STUPID

My favorite line from the following is "but it will help keep . . . I slightly above poverty level." Just how people who talk that way end up accumulating such large sums is something of a puzzle.

From "Retroactive Nonsense" by Thomas Brown, here:

[S]ometimes a proposal is so idiotic, so misconceived, and so harebrained that it’s impossible to ignore. In Washington yesterday, House and Senate conferees on the financial regulation bill agreed on one such nutty item, when they voted to make retroactive the increase in the FDIC’s insurance limit, to $250,000 from $100,000, back to January of 2008. . . .

What can these people be thinking? Congress’s move yesterday—which essentially bails out 8,700 ex-IndyMac depositors who were stupid enough to have more than the then-FDIC limit on deposit there—aren’t poor downtrodden souls who’ve been screwed by the system. They’re rich. Each has more than $100,000! Some of them, a lot more! They’re so wealthy, in fact, they could afford to let that much money languish earning passbook rates. In the long and unseemly line of bailouts that have happened as the credit crunch has progressed, these are the last people—the very last people—who should be granted a special, surprise place at the federal trough.

But instead, our idiot representatives feel sorry for them. Is there no minimum level of personal responsibility Congress won’t insist that people, or at least wealthy people, accept?

Apparently not. Meanwhile, if the group the Los Angeles Times talked to yesterday is any indication, the beneficiaries of this new windfall are a bunch of pathetic fools.  “It’s nothing to the government,” one of them, a retiree name[d] Craig Phinney, rationalises, “but it will help keep my wife and I slightly above poverty level for a couple of more years.” Uh-huh. Actually, the move will cost the Deposit Insurance Fund around $200 million. And Mr. Phinney, if you’re really so concerned about staying above the poverty line, why not take a moment (and it won’t take much more than a moment) to learn about how federal deposit insurance actually works? It’s pretty common knowledge that there are limits to coverage. Nor was it any secret that IndyMac was a shaky institution before it was finally seized. If you’re so close to the poverty line, why did you have so much money at IndyMac in the first place?

In the meantime, the moral hazard that Congress’s move yesterday creates is not unsubstantial. I can’t imagine why large depositors won’t be more willing now to shop for yield at institutions they know are less than completely sound. Then, when one fails, depositors will point to the precedent set yesterday and demand that they, too, be made whole. So at the margin, the conferees’ vote yesterday will make the financial system less strong rather than more so. This is reform?

You’re thinking that I’m being too tough on Congress and the hapless depositors it’s helping. No. The government has bailed out the automakers. It’s bailed out big banks. It’s shoveling stimulus money in order to bail out the states. Now it wants to bail out people who have so much money already that their bank balances exceeded FDIC limits? It’s insane.

WHERE BANKS' BAD PAPER GOES TO DIE

The taxpayer-backstopped Fanny and Freddie, of course:

The Obama administration is continuing one of the more horrific policies of the Bush administration: Using the GSEs as a back door bailout for the rest of the banking sector: These banks are selling their garbage to the GSEs — and according to some anecdotal evidence, are getting pretty close to full boat (100 cents on the dollar) for these bad loans.

Hence, Fannie and Freddie have become a dumping ground for all manner of bad bank loans.

The GSEs have had their own problems over the years — accounting fraud, recklessly chasing market share, lowering loan quality, etc. — but they have now become . . . the last stop for every crappy mortgage ever written.

Ritholtz has more here, on the story from Bloomberg.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: "OBAMA . . . IS DOING WORSE THAN BUSH"

From the takes one to know one department, 79 year old Daniel Ellsberg is saying Obama is deceiving the public.

After the 89 year old Helen Thomas caused a kerphuffle just days ago with some choice words for the Jews, it's starting to look like Demented Geezer Eruption Week. Trouble is, Ellsberg is on to something: the dissimulation that lies at the heart of everything about this president.

From Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about Afghanistan? Isn't that a justifiable war?

Ellsberg: I think that there's an inexcusable escalation in both countries. Thousands of US officials know that bases and large numbers of troops will remain in Iraq and that troop levels and bases in Afghanistan will rise far above what Obama is now projecting. But Obama counts on them to keep their silence as he deceives the public on these devastating, costly, reckless ventures.

Read the rest, here.

HOW TO PLUG THE OIL LEAK IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

H/T Theo

GDP FOR Q1 2010 REVISED DOWN TO 3.0% FROM 3.2%

For the story, go here. An additional and final revision is still forthcoming.

Growth of 2.5% is necessary, according to widely reported statements by the Federal Reserve chairman and others, to maintain the status quo in employment and absorb the new workers who are added to the population every year.

In other words, there is no growth engine presently at work effectively providing jobs for 8.5 million people sidelined by the recession, not to mention millions more involuntarily part-timed by the downturn. 

GOLD AND THE U.S. MONETARY BASE, THEN AND NOW

Interesting stuff from Brett Arends two days ago at The Wall Street Journal:

Dylan Grice, a strategist at SG Securities in London, thinks global conditions today could unleash another gold boom like the one in the 1970s. ... Mr. Grice calculates that even at today's prices, the bullion that the U.S. government holds in places like Fort Knox is still only worth enough to back 15% of the U.S. monetary base. That is near a record low.

At the peak of the gold mania in 1979-80, gold prices rose so far that the backing exceeded 100%. How far would gold rise if that happened again? To around $6,300 an ounce, Mr. Grice says.

Read all about it, here.

OUR DISLOYAL ANTI-AMERICAN PRESIDENT

From Jared E. Peterson at The American Thinker:

Over the past week we witnessed presidential and congressional disloyalty without precedent in American history, events that should be indelibly imprinted on the American electorate's collective memory. For the first time (at least to this writer's knowledge), a foreign head of state who is promoting an ongoing, aggressive, illegal, and often violent invasion of America came to our country, met with our president, and, from the White House itself, received our president's implicit but obvious public support for that invasion; and that same foreign leader spoke to Congress and received a standing ovation from its Democrat members' for his country's war on America's borders.

Read the rest here.

UDAY AND QUSAY ARE 'BY NATURE' EADAY

Not only can no one spell in the United States, they're having trouble with the Greek Sigma in the word "by nature" from a line from Aristotle on the new glass door at the Department of Classics at the once venerable Cambridge University.

So far George Bush hasn't been blamed, but Mary Beard may yet get around to it, when she's done blogging about buggering in Catullus.

32 STATES OWE FEDS NEARLY $38 BILLION FOR UNEMPLOYMENT BORROWING

The billion dollar hitters include twelve states:

California       6.9 billion

Florida            1.6 billion

Illinois            2.2 billion

Indiana           1.7 billion

Michigan        3.9 billion

New Jersey     1.7 billion

New York        3.2 billion

N.C.                  2.1 billion

Ohio                 2.3 billion

Penn.               3.0 billion

Texas                1.0 billion

Wisconsin       1.4 billion


The data were reported here.

FEDS RELENT: HUTAREE MILITIA RELEASES BEGIN

"Three of nine members of the Lenawee County-based militia charged with attempting to overthrow the government were released yesterday from Detroit-area jails," reports The Toledo Blade today. Defense attorneys do not seem to know why the government suddenly changed its mind about the conditions of release stipulated by Judge Roberts earlier in the month.

They have to wear electronic tethers, live with relatives in a weapon and ammo-free environment, cannot get gun permits or passports, drink booze, use drugs, listen to police scanners, and can't go out except to the doctor, to church, court and law appointments, and to work, among other restrictions.

The other six remain jailed pending decision on their release, presumably until similar arrangements for them are in order.

Read all about it here, here, and here.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU SHOOT A TERRORIST?

Recoil.

"Politics Is Like A Cookbook Where The Recipe For Everything Is To Fry It"

Everyone should be so lucky to have advice from the inimitable P. J. O'Rourke. A couple of years ago he offered some of the bad kind to new graduates, which appeared in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. The excerpt on politics is rich. Well, maybe greasy is a better description:

Politicians are chefs, some good, some bad. The problem isn’t the cook. The problem is the food. Or let me restate that: The problem isn’t the cook. The problem is the cookbook. The key ingredient of politics is the belief that all of society’s ills can be cured politically. This is like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried. The soup is fried. The salad is fried. So is the ice cream and cake. The pinot noir is rolled in bread crumbs and dunked in the deep-fat fryer. This is no way to cook up public policy.

Politics is greasy. Politics is slippery. Politics can’t tell the truth. But we can’t blame the politicians for that. Because just think what the truth would sound like on the campaign stump, even a little bitty bit of truth:

“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t funding or teachers’ unions or a lack of vouchers or an absence of computer equipment in the classrooms. The problem is your kids!”

Read the rest. You won't be disappointed.

Pew Poll Says Americans Overwhelmingly Support Arizona Immigration Law

A new poll from the Pew Research Center on the recently passed immigration legislation in Arizona shows that Obama and the Democrats, who vehemently oppose the law, are wildly out of step with 73% of the American people:

The public broadly supports a new Arizona law aimed at dealing with illegal immigration and the law’s provisions giving police increased powers to stop and detain people who are suspected of being in the country illegally.

Fully 73% say they approve of requiring people to produce documents verifying their legal status if police ask for them. Two-thirds (67%) approve of allowing police to detain anyone who cannot verify their legal status, while 62% approve of allowing police to question people they think may be in the country illegally.

I wonder what percentage of the American people would like Obama to produce his papers?

Beware Of Greeks Defending TARP

James Pethokoukis of Reuters actually defends the fact that American politicians have ROBBED the taxpayers, always the last in line for money, to rescue the bankers, who are always first:

Of course, voters should be skeptical of paying for other people's financial mistakes. But it seems short-sighted for them to penalize politicians when they actually do something that's unpopular but right. And the TARP bailout does seem to have been the right thing. Despite its high sticker price, the final cost to American taxpayers will likely be a fraction of that thanks to speedy bank repayment of government capital injections.

Yeah. Speedy repayments. Sort of like GM's with TARP funds. If they could do it so quickly, maybe you overestimated the gravity of the original problem, and discount now how banks' profits are made possible by capital from the taxpayers.

Maybe it's because of what Spengler has recently observed about the Greeks, James:

[C]orruption pervades Greek society to the point that to purge it would destroy the social fabric: all political and social relations are premised on corruption.

You may be willing to justify theft, but the voters in Utah don't accept accommodation with corruption, throwing out Senator Bennett in the Republican PRIMARY. And now the voters in West Virginia have joined them, throwing out Representative Mollohan in the Democrat PRIMARY. All this after Germans just voted against Angela Merkel last Sunday after agreeing to bail out the Greeks.

Do you see a trend here, James?

Better get used to it.

The Fault Is In Ourselves . . .

. . . that we are underlings.

-- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II

Joseph Addison on justice

Justice discards party, friendship, kindred,

and is always therefore represented as blind.

--  Joseph Addison

The Tyrant's Friends

When I have most need to employ a friend,

Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile,

Be he to me.

Shakespeare

[e.g. Bill Ayers, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Bart Stupak]

Alexander Pope on Slavery

First slave to words, then vassal to a name,

Then dupe to party; child and man the same.

Fools grant whate'er ambition craves,

And men, once ignorant, are slaves.

The Good Olde Days

When George W. Bush co-opted conservatism for a season,

entangled the country in costly foreign adventures,

pandered to illegal immigrants and the businesses who hired them,

expanded the welfare state to secure the votes of seniors,

exported American jobs because of his free-trade zealotry,

routinely slaughtered the English language and generally spent money like a drunken sailor,

we didn't know how good we had it.

"Menopause Was Change Enough For Me"

In "Moms to the Barricades," which appeared here, Michael Graham explores the idea that mothers' instincts to protect their children and their futures help explain the Tea Party Movement:

Moms like Karen Miner Herd, who calls herself "one of the founding mothers" of the tea party movement in Virginia.

Her favorite tea party sign? "Menopause Was Change Enough for Me." ...

Dana Loesch, talk host and co-founder of the St. Louis tea party, believes the tea party movement is the modern conservative version of "the personal is political."

"Motherhood itself has become a political act," says Ms. Loesch. "And the tea parties are an extension of our need as moms to protect the future for our children."

Keli Carender isn't a mom, but the Seattle-area 30-something is the mother of the tea party movement. She held the very first rally of the modern tea party era to protest the so-called stimulus package, days before Rick Santelli's infamous CNBC rant.

Read the full article at the link above.