Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

The Next Step

Posted on by

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal posted an editorial reporting that Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia has written a letter to House Speaker John Boehner requesting the creation of a bipartisan committee to investigate what actually happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. CNS News reported yesterday that 143 House Republicans are now co-sponsoring a bill that would authorize a special committee to investigate Benghazi. So why don’t we have the committee?

The article at CNS News quotes the letter from Congressman Wolf to Speaker Boehner:

“Chairman Issa’s hearing yesterday was a positive step forward in the effort to investigate the administration for its apparent cover up of key information about the nature of the attack and its response,” Wolf told Boehner.  “I appreciate your leadership and that of the committees to advance the investigation to this point.

“However, the hearing also made clear that a thorough inquiry will require witnesses from across government–including the Defense Department, State Department, Intelligence Community, Justice Department and even the White House,” said Wolf. “Only a Select Committee would be able to bring the cross-jurisdictional expertise and subpoena authority to compel answers from these agencies.”

The hearings on Wednesday featured three whistleblowers who were willing to testify before the House committee. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Admiral Mike Mullen, who chaired the State Department Accountability Review Board that conducted the administration’s internal investigation of the Benghazi attack, have refused to testify before the committee or even talk with the committee staff informally.  Unless a Select Committee is formed, the American public will never hear their side of the story.

The article in the Wall Street Journal concludes:

Mr. Boehner said on Thursday that the Administration should release its email communications on Benghazi, but it won’t do so unless they are subpoenaed. Frank Wolf, one of the House’s most senior Members, has it right. Benghazi’s explanation deserves the best effort elected officials can give it, and the right vehicle is a Select Committee with subpoena power and deposition authority.

It would be nice to live in a world where witnesses would come forward voluntarily, but right now we don’t live there. We need to take action to encourage witnesses to give their testimony publicly.

Enhanced by Zemanta

We Wouldn’t Have Needed Sequestration If The Government Had Not Done Things Like This

Posted on by

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about government funding of the Fisker Automotive‘s manufacturing of electric cars.

The article reports:

Newly obtained documents show the Obama administration was warned as early as 2010 that electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. was not meeting milestones set up for a half-billion dollar government loan, nearly a year before U.S. officials froze the loan after questions were raised about the company’s statements.

An Energy Department official said in a June 2010 email that Fisker’s bid to draw on the federal loan may be jeopardized for failure to meet goals established by the department.

Despite that warning, Fisker continued to receive money until June 2011, when the DOE halted further funding. The agency did so after Fisker presented new information that called into question whether key milestones — including the launch of the company’s signature, $100,000 Karma hybrid — had been achieved, according to a credit report prepared by the Energy Department.

This is a familiar story in the Obama Administration. Solyndra was also going bankrupt as the government was funding the company. In 2009 Vice-President Biden stated that Fisker was planning to buy a shuttered General Motors plant in Delaware to produce hybrid cars. The plant was never opened and no cars were ever produced.

The Wall Street Journal also reported on the Karma, a luxury car produced by Fisker that has a sticker price of over $100,000:

Mr. Simon says his car broke down four times over the span of a few months. Each time, Fisker Automotive Inc. picked it up and sent it by trailer from his home in Omaha, Neb., to a dealer in Minneapolis.

The Karma was “so vulnerable to software errors, and the parts used were of such poor quality that eventually I insisted they take the car back and return my purchase price, which they did,” he says. “It’s a real shame, the car itself was beautiful.” …

Troubles with suppliers and regulatory requirements added months to the Karma’s release. Its engineers expressed concerns that the software that ran the Karma’s display screens and phone connections wasn’t ready, people familiar with the situation say. Still, the Karma went out to customers. The company said that its problems were expected of any new model. …

Fisker stopped production of the Karma at a factory in Finland in July 2012 in an attempt to negotiate a cost-saving contract. The following month, Fisker recalled its cars for a second time to fix a cooling system flaw that was linked to battery fires.

It hasn’t built a car since.

American tax dollars at work. I would strongly recommend that after the Obama Administration leaves office none of its members become stockbrokers.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Another Temper Tantrum By A President Who Does Not Put America First

Posted on by

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal posted a story about the flight delays that occurred in some major American airports yesterday.

The article reports:

This week the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began furloughing each of its air-traffic controllers for one day out of every 10 to achieve roughly $600 million in savings this fiscal year. The White House dubiously claims that the furloughs are required by the sequester spending cuts enacted in 2011.

Capitol Hill Republicans say the White House is free to make other cuts instead. House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster suggests the FAA first take a whack at the $500 million it’s spending on consultants, or perhaps the $325 million it blows on supplies and travel.

The FAA is under the Department of Transportation (DOT). To illustrate what is going on here, the article points out that while airport travelers were being delayed at the airports due to sequestration budget cuts, the DOT website announced a $474 million grant program that promises to “make communities more livable and sustainable.”

It is becoming increasingly obvious that our current leaders do not know how to manage money. At some point in the near future, we need to replace the spendaholics with responsible adults–our survival as a country depends on it.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Congress Is Preparing To Make Another Mess

Posted on by

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted a story on Congress‘ latest attempt to grab more of your hard-earned money. That’s not really anything new, but every now and then their chutzpah amazes me. Last Tuesday a bill was introduced that would impose a sales tax on the Internet. It may be voted on as early as tomorrow. I am sure all of the people voting on it have read and understood it, right?????

The article reports:

For Senators curious about what they’re voting on, it is the same flawed proposal that Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) introduced in February. It has been repackaged to qualify for a Senate rule that allows Majority Leader Harry Reid to bypass committee debate and bring it straight to the floor.

Mr. Enzi’s Marketplace Fairness Act discriminates against Internet-based businesses by imposing burdens that it does not apply to brick-and-mortar companies. For the first time, online merchants would be forced to collect sales taxes for all of America’s estimated 9,600 state and local taxing authorities.

New Hampshire, for example, has no sales tax, but a Granite State Web merchant would be forced to collect and remit sales taxes to all the governments that do. Small online sellers will therefore have to comply with tax laws created by distant governments in which they have no representation, and in places where they consume no local services.

I thought we settled this ‘taxation without representation’ thing a few hundred years ago.

The article continues:

Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s brick-and-mortar retailers will bear no such burden. They will not be required to collect taxes on the many customers who drive across the Maine and Massachusetts borders to shop in New Hampshire. Bill sponsors say it would be too big a hassle to force traditional retailers to ask every walk-in customer where they live, but these Senators are happy to impose new obligations online.

This has the potential of being a worse mess than ObamaCare. Let’s remember who votes for this and vote them out of office next year.

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Temper Tantrum In The Rose Garden

Posted on by

Sometimes it is more difficult than others to be kind to people when they act like spoiled brats. President Obama lined up all the people he could find to use as props as he blamed the gun lobby for the fact that Congress upheld the Second Amendment. Thank God for the gun lobby. At some point, the President and all his allies in this need to realize that the problem is not guns–it’s the people who illegally use them. There was not one thing in the legislation that was proposed that would have prevented what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Unfortunately, criminals and mentally disturbed people do not tend to obey gun laws.

The Wall Street Journal posted an article yesterday reminding us where the anti-gun legislation failed–in the Democrat Senate–not the Republican House of Representatives.  The article also mentions the four Democrat Senators who voted against expanded background checks–Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.).

The article concludes:

The rout also vindicates Republicans who wanted the Senate to vote on the gun bill as opposed to the Rand Paul-Ted Cruz faction who sought a filibuster. For once Democrats had to declare themselves in public and couldn’t hide behind shouts of “Republican obstructionism.”

So much for the first big liberal hope of Mr. Obama’s second term. Maybe he should consider a centrist strategy from now on.

Don’t hold your breath.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Using News Stories To Shape Public Opinion

Posted on by

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an editorial that clearly shows how the major news media uses the way they report (or not report) stories to shape public opinion.

On Friday it was discovered that an old Exxon Mobil pipeline near Mayflower, Arkansas, was leaking. No one said exactly how much oil had leaked, but Exxon responded with enough people and equipment to handle as much as 10,000 barrels and had the flow stopped and cleanup begun by early Saturday. This event made the headlines–the major media used the leak as an example of the tragedy that would occur if the Keystone Pipeline were built. Well, wait a minute.

Last week a Canadian Pacific Railway train derailed in western Minnesota. The train was carrying crude oil and spilled up to 30,000 gallons. The spill was larger than the leak in Arkansas and took place near a town. The media somehow didn’t bother to cover the story.

The Wall Street Journal goes on to say that in 2008 U. S. railways transported 9,500 carloads of oil. In 2012 that number jumped to 233,811. There were 112 railroad oil spills from 2010 to 2012. From 2006 to 2009, there were 10 oil spills. Pipelines have fewer incidents per mile than rail cars.

Two of the things to keep in mind as the Keystone Pipeline remains in limbo are the fact that the Canadian oil is going to be shipped somewhere–either to America or China and that the person who is profiting by not building the pipeline is Warren Buffett (see rightwinggranny.com). One of the railroads that is in boom times because there is no Keystone Pipeline is Burlington Northern Santa Fe, owned by Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. As usual, the discussion of the Keystone Pipeline is not really about the environment–it is about the money.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Received In My Email Today

Posted on by

March 27,2013

By Len Mead

Get most of your information from local newspaper front pages?  From TV news?  You may be a “Low Information Voter!”  You’re not stupid. You’re just not well informed.

Fortunately, as your conservative watch-dog and friend,  I’m here to help.  So brace yourself.  Here comes the ugly truth you don’t get from the “main street” media.    The average “family” on welfare takes home about  $61,000 a year compared to the working stiff median family income after taxes of about $48,000 (from a December, 2012 report of the Weekly Standard.)   Wonder why welfare recipients aren’t anxious to work?

This tragedy began in the 1950s.  That’s when misguided Democrat welfare programs started paying fornicating teenagers money for bearing illegitimate children.  Teens qualified under “Aid to Families with Dependent Children” if there was no father or husband around!  Go figure.

After 50 plus years,  the American Family with a loving father and mother has been destroyed by these welfare incentives.  Dear Reader, 40% of today’s births are to single mothers with no acknowledged father.  A population of 315 million today has only 113 million American taxpayers but 100 million on welfare (excluding social security and Medicare), 47 million on food stamps, and 23 million desperate Americans who can’t find work.

You’re told that your government will take care for you — that you’re a victim— that the rich aren’t paying enough taxes.  That too many guns, not untreated mental illness threatens schoolchildren.   You’re told cutting our military won’t threaten your safety while Iran proclaims it is now a nuclear power with its first stated goal to launch a bomb wiping out Israel.

While millions of illegals invade our country you’re told these criminals are just “undocumented.”   Your healthcare – once the best in the world — is collapsing with  higher rates, bureaucracy, mandated fines and jail if you don’t buy Obamacare insurance.  Lastly, you’re told that when the current Democrat regime in DC spends $1.40 for each $1.00 they collect,  this is not a problem.  $17 trillion in US debt now and trillions of overspending each year as far as the eye can see – no problem?  Click on the US Debt Clock.

Getting the picture?  See –  you are getting “low information” news.  Daily front page and TV “reporting” of these problems is non-existent and actually suppressed.  Why?  Because struggling regional publications don’t have the resources to have reporters in DC or around the world.  So they meekly claim they must depend on national wire services such as the Associated Press (AP) for national stories.

But AP “news” stories preach that all goodness comes from government, that self-reliance is foolish, that limited constitutional government is passé,  that whatever Obama does must be celebrated and mistakes protected!  (Criticism is racist!)  Continually ingesting this hogwash has produced generations of “low information voters” who now vote foolishly for “more government” against their own best interests.  Regional TV and newspapers’ professional role demand that they actually verify what they print or show.  Most don’t.  And those that don’t shouldn’t be bought, viewed, or used by advertisers.

So what now?  Re-read our Declaration of Independence and Constitution so you re-learn that our rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come from our creator – GOD – not from government.  Discover that our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms exists NOT so we can shoot squirrels but so we can shoot government tyrants as we did fighting off King George’s troops.

Friends, start getting  your information from internet news sources – the Drudge Report, Yahoo News, Google News,  talk radio, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine and Fox News.  Acknowledge that the lies and deceptions  from the Associated Press or wire service broadcasts boil down to: life on “government” welfare is better than success on your own. 

Our great wealth and freedom has come from low taxes, limited government, self-reliance, freedom, a strong military and a strong private system of charity through neighbors and faith organizations.  Becoming a “High Information Voter” means you will start returning to elected office individuals who agree with these principals.

What’s a great first political step?  Demand that your taxes stop going to new pregnant teenagers for each new illegitimate birth.  This will finally stop the cancer of welfare which is destroying the traditional family– the building block of any society.   Continue in the low information mode,  and your future and that of your children will be dismal at best – serfs to the cruelest of masters – entrenched government.

Len Mead is a Tea Party Activist, past “Citizen of the Year” award winner from Citizens for Limited Taxation and can be reached anytime at mead1720@gmail.com

Enhanced by Zemanta

Unions And Obamacare

Posted on by

There have been a lot of problems with Obamacare that have recently come to light–increased veterinarian bills, more part-time workers, not being able to keep your current health insurance, higher health insurance premiums, etc, and the Republicans have put repealing Obamacare into their latest budget proposal. However, the one thing that may actually cause a problem for Obamacare is the lack of support from unions as they realize the negative impact it will have on them and their members.

The March 25th Weekly Standard contains an article by Mark Hemingway that reports on some of the criticism of Obamacare coming from union leaders.

The article reports:

“I heard [Obama] say, ‘If you like your health plan, you can keep it,’ ” John Wilhelm, chairman of Unite Here Health, representing 260,000 union workers, recently told the Wall Street Journal. “If I’m wrong, and the president does not intend to keep his word, I would have severe second thoughts about the law.” Besides Wilhelm, some of the nation’s largest union bosses have taken to publicly criticizing the Affordable Care Act.

In actuality, current figures estimate that approximately 7 million Americans will lose their current health care policies by 2022.because of Obamacare. When the law was passed, the unions, because they are such a powerful political force, were supposed to be exempt from much of Obamacare. They are now finding out that those exemptions may have an expiration date.

The article points out:

The Obama administration has thus far issued waivers from Obama-care’s onerous requirements to unions representing 543,812 workers. By contrast, the administration has issued waivers for only 69,813 nonunion workers. While these waivers are a significant benefit, they accrue to a small fraction of the nation’s 14 million union workers. Further, many of the waivers have been granted on an annual basis, and no waiver has been granted for longer than two-and-a-half years. Eventually even union health plans are going to have to comply with Obama-care regulations.

The article also reports that the tax Obamacare places on what the law refers to as Cadillac health plans may begin to affect even average plans–another unforeseen problem.

The article concludes:

Beyond the specifics, what union leaders are really saying is that they have no confidence Obama-care will live up to its central promise​—​that the government can provide millions of uninsured Americans with health care coverage that both is affordable and meets their needs.

Surely organized labor must realize that Obama-care has only begun to be implemented. If the Democrats’ most ardent constituency and most prolific fundraisers are already having second thoughts about Obama-care​—​fearful that besides being expensive and unworkable, the law will make unions less attractive to workers and undermine collective bargaining​—​the law may be less secure than its apologists assume.

Obamacare is bad law and needs to be repealed. It will be interesting to see what happens as the politically powerful special interest groups in the Democrat Party begin to realize this.

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Impact Of Obamacare On Your Doctor

Posted on by

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal posted an article by Scott Gottlieb discussing the impact of Obamacare on doctors. The article points out that the regulations in Obamacare will move doctors toward being 40-hour week employees rather than being in charge of their own offices.

The article reports:

…Because when doctors practice in small offices, it is hard for Washington to regulate what they do. There are too many of them, and the government is too remote. It is far easier for federal agencies to regulate physicians if they work for big hospitals. So ObamaCare shifts money to favor the delivery of outpatient care through hospital-owned networks.

The irony is that in the name of lowering costs, ObamaCare will almost certainly make the practice of medicine more expensive. It turns out that when doctors become salaried hospital employees, their overall productivity falls.

This is another result of government by special interest groups. In this particular case, the special interest group is the unions.

The article explains:

All of this reduced productivity translates into the loss of what should be a critical factor in the effort to offer more health care while containing costs. Yet hospitals aren’t buying doctors’ practices because they want to reform the delivery of medical care. They are making these purchases to gain local market share and develop monopolies. They are also exploiting an arbitrage opportunity presented by Medicare‘s billing schemes, which pay more for many services when they are delivered at a hospital instead of an outpatient doctor’s office.

This billing structure exists because hospitals are politically favored in Washington. Their mostly unionized workforces give them political power, as does their status as big employers in congressional districts.

This is another example of a law regulating health care that was written without concern for the impact it would have on medical care for individuals in this country. The law was written with special interest groups and government control in mind. It needs to be repealed and rewritten with the needs of American citizens in mind.

Enhanced by Zemanta

When Green Isn’t Green

Posted on by

On Monday the Wall Street Journal posted an article by Bjorn Lomborg,  director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Washington, D.C., is the author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (Cambridge Press, 2001) and “Cool It” (Knopf, 2007). The article explores the idea that electric cars actually have a smaller carbon footprint than regular cars.

The article reports:

A 2012 comprehensive life-cycle analysis in Journal of Industrial Ecology shows that almost half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car come from the energy used to produce the car, especially the battery. The mining of lithium, for instance, is a less than green activity. By contrast, the manufacture of a gas-powered car accounts for 17% of its lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions. When an electric car rolls off the production line, it has already been responsible for 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car: 14,000 pounds.

…If a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime, the huge initial emissions from its manufacture means the car will actually have put more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere than a similar-size gasoline-powered car driven the same number of miles. Similarly, if the energy used to recharge the electric car comes mostly from coal-fired power plants, it will be responsible for the emission of almost 15 ounces of carbon-dioxide for every one of the 50,000 miles it is driven—three ounces more than a similar gas-powered car.

Mr. Lomborg states that he is not opposed to electric cars–he believes that eventually we will find a way to design and manufacture them to be environmentally friendly. Unfortunately, right now we are spending money subsidizing the industry and the people who purchase electric cars rather than putting the money into research. It is quite possible that at some point in the future we will have an electric car that makes sense environmentally, but right now all we have is symbolism over substance.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Finally–Someone With Some Common Sense

Posted on by

Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling has blocked Mayor Bloomberg‘s ban on the sale of sugary drinks.

The article reports:

In his ruling, Judge Tingling found the Board of Health‘s mission is to protect New Yorkers by providing regulations that protect against diseases. Those powers, he argued, don’t include the authority to “limit or ban a legal item under the guise of ‘controlling chronic disease.’ “

The board may supervise and regulate the city’s food supply when it affects public health, but the City Charter clearly outlines when such steps may be taken: According to Judge Tingling, the city must face imminent danger due to disease.

“That has not been demonstrated,” he wrote.

The ban on sugary drinks over 16 ounces was to take effect tomorrow. Thank God for a judge with some common sense!Enhanced by Zemanta

The Law Of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again

Posted on by

The Wall Street Journal posted an editorial today entitled, “ObamaCare and the ’29ers.’” When I first looked at the title, I thought it was about the unemployment rate of the twenty-something generation. It’s not. It’s about how ObamaCare is affecting the number of hours employers allow their employees to work.

The article reports:

The law (ObamaCare) requires firms with 50 or more “full-time equivalent workers” to offer health plans to employees who work more than 30 hours a week. (The law says “equivalent” because two 15 hour a week workers equal one full-time worker.) Employers that pass the 50-employee threshold and don’t offer insurance face a $2,000 penalty for each uncovered worker beyond 30 employees. So by hiring the 50th worker, the firm pays a penalty on the previous 20 as well.

Is Washington capable of making anything simple?

The article explains how the mathematics of employing people under ObamaCare work:

The savings from restricting hours worked can be enormous. If a company with 50 employees hires a new worker for $12 an hour for 29 hours a week, there is no health insurance requirement. But suppose that worker moves to 30 hours a week. This triggers the $2,000 federal penalty. So to get 50 more hours of work a year from that employee, the extra cost to the employer rises to about $52 an hour—the $12 salary and the ObamaCare tax of what works out to be $40 an hour.

This chart from the article shows the number of people currently working part-time:

image

It’s time to repeal ObamaCare, replace it with something that has actually been thought through, and get the American economy working again.

Enhanced by Zemanta

What Americans Will Really Pay For Obamacare

Posted on by

This article is based on three stories–one at Hot Air posted yesterday, one at the Wall Street Journal posted Thursday, and one posted at CNS News on Thursday. The bottom line on the Hot Air and CNS News stories is that the cheapest health care plan for a family under Obamacare will cost $20,000 per year. The bottom line on the Wall Street Journal story is that everything we were told about Obamacare by President Obama has turned out to be not true.

The Wall Street Journal article lists four major promises that have been broken in Obamacare:

1. Lower health-care costs

2. Smaller deficits

3. Preservation of existing insurance

4. Increased productivity

Please follow the link to the Wall Street Journal article to see the details of each broken promise.

The Obamacare insurance has different levels of plans. CNS News reports on the bronze plan–the lowest level. The article reports:

The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a bronze plan.

“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says.

Bronze will be the lowest tier health-insurance plan available under Obamacare–after Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Under the law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is supposed to be capped at either the annual average Bronze premium, 2.5 percent of taxable income, or $2,085.00 per family in 2016.

The article at Hot Air points out:

Using the conditions laid out in the regulations, the IRS calculates that a family earning $120,000 per year that did not buy insurance would need to pay a “penalty” (a word the IRS still uses despite the Supreme Court ruling that it is in fact a “tax”) of $2,400 in 2016.

The best that we can hope for is that Obamacare will collapse under its own weight and we can find a better way to help everyone get health insurance.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Some Of Many Reasons The Damage From Hurricane Sandy Has Not Been Repaired

Posted on by

On Monday the Wall Street Journal posted an article telling the story of one homeowner‘s struggle to rebuild her damaged home in Connecticut.

The article relates the homeowner’s story:

Our first exposure to the town zoning authorities came a couple of weeks after Sandy. We’d met with insurance adjusters, contractors and “remediation experts.” We’d had about a foot of Long Island Sound sloshing around the ground floor of our house in Connecticut, and everyone had the same advice: Rip up the floors and subfloors, and tear out anything—wiring, plumbing, insulation, drywall, kitchen cabinets, bookcases—touched by salt water. All of it had to go, and pronto, too, lest mold set in.

Yet it wasn’t until the workmen we hired had ripped apart most of the first floor that the phrase “building permit” first wafted past us. Turns out we needed one. “What, to repair our own house we need a building permit?”

Of course.

Before you could get a building permit, however, you had to be approved by the Zoning Authority. And Zoning—citing FEMA regulations—would force you to bring the house “up to code,” which in many cases meant elevating the house by several feet. Now, elevating your house is very expensive and time consuming—not because of the actual raising, which takes just a day or two, but because of the required permits.

The article further explains that there is also a zoning limit on how high your house can be–so if you meet the requirement to raise it, you have to make sure you don’t raise it too much.. The homeowner goes on to detail the maze of government gobbledygook encountered in trying to repair and re-occupy his home.

The article concludes:

We’ve spent a few thousand dollars on a lawyer to appeal to Zoning, many thousands in rent, and hundreds getting a fresh appraisal of our house. The latest from our lawyer: Because of our new appraisal, we may be able to “apply for a zoning permit.” “Apply,” mind you.

I used to think that our house was, you know, our house. The bureaucrats have taught me otherwise. But then I also used to think that Franz Kafka wrote a species of dark fantasy. I know now that he was turning out nonfiction.

Our problem is not the lack of money to repair the damage from Hurricane Sandy–it is the government bureaucracy that is hindering the homeowners from getting back into their own homes.

Enhanced by Zemanta

About Those Fiscal Cliff Negotiations…

Posted on by

Friday’s Wall Street Journal posted some of the details of the negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker Boehner.

The article reports:

Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn’t reach agreement, he would use his inaugural address and his State of the Union speech to tell the country the Republicans were at fault.

Blaming may work politically up to a point, but I honestly don’t see it as a way to move the discussion forward.

The article cites some of the actual negotiations:

At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”

“You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”

Good grief!

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article on Friday about the negotiations on the fiscal cliff. In the article he quoted Senator Jeff Sessions:

President Obama today gave yet another speech about the fiscal cliff. No plan, nothing that can be scored or analyzed, just another speech. If President Obama wishes to avoid the fiscal cliff then he, with all the power and influence he holds as the leader of this nation, must submit to Congress – in legislative form – a plan that he believes can pass both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support. No more secret meetings and pointless press conferences. Certainly this is not too much to ask. So we await his action: will he move from an unscorable speech to scorable legislation? If he is unwilling to submit such a plan then we may be left with only one persuasive conclusion: that he has used two years of secret meetings with Republican leaders not as an opportunity to achieve fiscal reform, but as a political exercise to defeat his opposition and preserve the expansion of federal spending.

There are a number of ideas as to what President Obama is doing. Two of them are very interesting. Rush Limbaugh believes that this exercise is an attempt to divide and destroy the Republican Party by getting them to admit that tax hikes on the rich are necessary. Dick Morris believes that the current negotiations are an effort to change to discussion from excessive spending to the idea that we need more revenue. Each is plausible. Meanwhile, the American economy sits in limbo waiting to see what happens next. We need some grown-ups in Washington. Let’s elect some in 2014.

Enhanced by Zemanta

One Of The Problems In Reforming The Tax Code

Posted on by

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal posted a story which might explain some of the difficulties Congress and the President are having in reaching a budget agreement before going over the fiscal cliff. The current American tax code is currently approximately 6,000 pages and 500 words. To say that it is difficult to navigate is a serious understatement.

One of Speaker of the House John Boehner‘s suggestions has been a limit on annual deductions. During the election campaign, Mitt Romney suggested a deduction cap somewhere between $17,000 and $50,000 a year.  Many liberal pundits supported the idea as representing equity. However, now that the election is over and the idea is examined more closely, there are serious consequences to this change–many of those consequences are political.

The article reports:

…For example, 44% of Connecticut filers itemize their deductions, but only some 21% of North and South Dakota residents do.

One tax writeoff in particular illustrates the point: the deduction for state and local income taxes. This allows a high-income tax filer who pays, say, $20,000 in state and local income taxes to deduct those payments from his federal taxable income.

Because the highest federal tax rate is 35%, the value of the state and local deduction is enormous for high-tax states. If President Obama succeeds in raising the federal tax rate to 39.6%, the value of those deductions rises to nearly 40 cents on the dollar. This deduction certainly eases the pain of New Jersey‘s 8.97% top tax rate, or Hawaii’s 11%.

The article explains that five states accounted for nearly half the tax revenue lost because of the state and local tax deduction–California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Massachusetts. California accounted for $51 billion of the writeoff due to state and local tax deductions. All of those five states can be found in the Democrat column during national elections.

The article explains:

To put it another way, when Californians voted to raise their top rate to 13.3% last month, they were voting to reduce revenue for the federal Treasury and thus increase the political pressure to raise tax rates on all Americans. The state and local tax loophole helps disperse and disguise the real cost of big government. As Mr. Obama likes to say, this is reverse Robin Hood.

The article concludes:

Mr. Obama wants to raise tax rates, rather than eliminate deductions, so his fellow Democrats can keep raising state and local taxes without bearing the full economic and political cost. Tax equity and economic growth are the big losers.

Because the current tax code is so politically loaded, I really don’t see Congress and the President agreeing to change it significantly. Unfortunately, it needs to be changed significantly.

Enhanced by Zemanta

An Interesting Perspective On America’s Economic Future

Posted on by

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal posted an article about the role of hydrocarbons in the American economy in the future.

The article states:

Since becoming president, Mr. Obama has treated hydrocarbon production like an infectious disease to be eradicated. His administration had to commission a study to learn, as announced last week, that allowing American companies to export liquefied natural gas would be beneficial to the U.S. economy. Still, the Department of Energy says it can’t make “final determinations” on export applications until it hears from those who object. So much for property rights.

America currently has the fastest rate of growth in production of oil and gas in the world. This is happening at a time when the demand for energy in America is slowing.  However, the worldwide demand for energy is increasing, creating a market for American energy exports.

The article goes on to describe energy developments in America, Canada, and Mexico:

Three democracies, sitting on vast resources, each have their own comparative advantages to offer an integrated continental market that could lead the world. Greater North American energy supplies imply millions of new jobs, higher tax revenues, plentiful energy for continental manufacturing and the end of reliance on hostile producers like Venezuela. But to reach optimum potential, investors need the freedom to explore, exploit and refine hydrocarbons and move output at every stage of production throughout the continent. In other words, governments need to get out of the way.

We can find our way out of the economic mess we are currently in–we just need to use the resources we have.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Why Taxing The Rich At Even A Hundred Percent Doesn’t Increase Revenue

Posted on by

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported that Jim Sinegal, head of CostCo and one of President Obama’s strongest supporters during the 2012 election, has taken steps to avoid the coming taxes that will impact the ‘rich.’

The article reports:

Specifically, the giant retailer announced Wednesday that the company will pay a special dividend of $7 a share this month. That’s a $3 billion Christmas gift for shareholders that will let them be taxed at the current dividend rate of 15%, rather than next year’s rate of up to 43.4%—an increase to 39.6% as the Bush-era rates expire plus another 3.8% from the new ObamaCare surcharge.

More striking is that Costco also announced that it will borrow $3.5 billion to finance the special payout. Dividends are typically paid out of earnings, either current or accumulated. But so eager are the Costco executives to get out ahead of the tax man that they’re taking on debt to do so.

Like it or not, this is a sound business decision. It is also representative of what companies around the country are doing as this year comes to a close.

The article concludes:

As it happens, one of those new stores opened Thursday in Washington, D.C., and no less a political star than Joe Biden stopped by to join Mr. Sinegal and pose for photos as he did some Christmas shopping. It’s nice to have friends in high places. We don’t know if Mr. Biden is a Costco shareholder, but if he wants to get in on the special dividend there’s still time before his confiscatory tax policy hits. The dividend is payable on December 18 to holders of record on December 10.

To sum up: Here we have people at the very top of the top 1% who preach about tax fairness voting to write themselves a huge dividend check to avoid the Obama tax increase they claim it is a public service to impose on middle-class Americans who work for 30 years and finally make $250,000 for a brief window in time.

If they had any shame, they’d send their entire windfall to the Treasury.

It will be the middle class that pays for President Obama’s taxes on the ‘rich.’ The rich have the accountants to avoid those taxes.

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Unmentioned Voter Bloc

Posted on by

Yesterday Dan Henninger at the Wall Street Journal posted an article about an often overlooked voting bloc–the evangelical vote.

The article reports:

When Mitt Romney‘s 2012 candidacy was gaining traction in the primaries, the conventional wisdom instantly conveyed that the evangelical vote, skeptical of Mormonism, would sink him.

What if in Ohio next week the opposite is true? There and in other swing states—Wisconsin, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida—the evangelical vote is flying beneath the media’s radar. It’s a lot of voters not to notice. In the 2008 presidential vote, they were 30% of the vote in Ohio, 31% in Iowa and 26% in Wisconsin.

Back in April, the policy director of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land, predicted that evangelicals in time would coalesce behind Mitt Romney. Yesterday he endorsed Mr. Romney, the first time he has done so for any presidential candidate.

It is also interesting that the Reverend Billy Graham has endorsed Governor Romney and is actively supporting him.

As someone who shares the values of the evangelicals, I cannot understand how anyone who considers themselves an evangelical could vote for Barack Obama. President Obama has made his stand on life issues abundantly clear–he supports federally funded abortion, partial birth abortion, and forcing religious organizations to violate their consciences in order to fund his anti-life platform.

It will be interesting to see if the evangelical voters will bring their values into the voting booth.

Enhanced by Zemanta

One Possible Reason The Presidential Race Is Still Close

Posted on by

Hot Air posted an article yesterday stating that 58 percent of registered voters were unfamiliar with Solyndra.

The article reports:

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 58 percent of registered voters are unaware or unsure of the company, which went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving an Energy Department loan guarantee in 2009 to manufacture advanced solar panels.

Twenty-five percent of respondents had a negative view of Solyndra, 15 percent were neutral and just 2 percent held a positive view on the subect, according to the survey conducted in late September. …

The company’s collapse in late August of 2011, which put more than 1,000 people out of work, was an embarrassment for the White House. Obama had personally visited Solyndra in 2010 to cast it as an example of the emerging green economy.

Attempts to make green energy practical have cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Someone needs to launch an advertising campaign explaining how many government-financed companies related to green energy have been forced to lay off workers or have gone bankrupt. Meanwhile, it would help the Romney campaign to make sure everyone was aware of how much money has been wasted on Solyndra and other green energy companies.

Enhanced by Zemanta

A Case Of Misplaced Priorities

Posted on by

The Obama Administration has become more concerned with its image in America’s liberal media that it is with doing its job.

The Hill reported today that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal got more complete briefings from Hillary Clinton on the attack that killed U.S. envoy Christopher Stephens in Libya than Senate Republicans received.

The article reports:

“I was very disappointed in the briefing yesterday, too. The bottom line is, we asked questions like, ‘How many people were at the Benghazi consulate?’ You pick up The New York Times and you get a blow-by-blow description of what supposedly went on,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Times published a timeline of the attacks chronicling militants gaining access to the U.S. compound after 9:35 pm on Sept. 11, American security forces attempting to retake it at 10:45 pm and American and Libyan forces regaining control of the main compound around 11:20 pm, before evacuating.

The article further states:

“We were told nothing. We were told absolutely nothing,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ranking Republican on the Armed Services Panel.

McCain said the details lawmakers sought were in The Times and The Journal.

“If that isn’t an incredible disrespect to the members of the United States Senate, I don’t know what is,” he said. “It’s an example of the disdain with which this body is held by the administration, including, I’m sorry to say, the secretary of state.”

“She didn’t talk about anything,” McCain said of Clinton in a subsequent interview.

Senators asked Clinton about the sequence of events during the Benghazi attack. She and other officials declined to provide any specifics, citing an ongoing investigation.

If Washington is broken, part of the reason may be the fact that in an important national security matter, the Obama Administration chose to brief the friendly media rather than Congress.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Can American Aid Buy Peace ?

Posted on by

Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the American State Department is working out a deal with the new Egyptian government to give them $1 billion in debt relief. Aside from the fact that America faces its own debt problems, what in the world are we supporting? This is obviously an effort by the State Department to encourage Egypt to keep the peace treaty it signed with Israel that returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Unfortunately, that peace is danger due to the actions of the new Egyptian government.

On August 6, the Los Angeles Times reported that Islamic militants have increased their presence in the Sinai Peninsula since the revolution in Egypt. We need to understand the the new government of Egypt will align itself with Iran and is fundamentally opposed to the existence of Israel.

The article in the Wall Street Journal reports:

But the election in June of Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, Mohammed Morsi, has called the strength of the old alliance into question. Mr. Morsi selected Beijing last week for his first official trip outside the Middle East, followed by a trip to Iran—moves some observers saw as a deliberate snub to Egypt’s traditional Western backers.

The arrival of an Islamist government followed by political upheaval and disconcerting moves on the international stage fueled questions over the reliability of Mr. Morsi as a U.S. ally. But his efforts at internal stability and his public criticism of Syria’s regime while visiting Tehran last week, which angered his hosts, have helped balance U.S. views of the new Egyptian leader.

At the present moment, America is dealing with record budget deficits and facing drastic cuts to our military. I realize that I am only an ordinary citizen, but it makes absolutely no sense to me to give $1 billion to a country that is in the process of aligning itself with countries that do not wish us well.

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Impact Of High Taxes On Athletic Competition

Posted on by

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal posted an article about the impact of Britain’s tax policies on athletic competition in that country.

The article reports:

…After Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt won his third gold in London last week, reporters asked him why he doesn’t compete in the U.K. more often. “As soon as the law changes I’ll be here all the time,” he said.

What aspect of British tax policy causes this sort or reaction?

The article explains:

The British government has granted an exemption to income linked to Olympic and Paralympic competition. But normally Britain takes a cut of an athlete’s worldwide endorsement earnings—that means overseas sponsors in addition to those in the U.K.—proportional to the time spent in Britain. By comparison, the U.S. only taxes nonresident athletes on endorsement fees paid by American sponsors. France does the same.

The article explains that since Mr. Bolt‘s contract with Puma is worth $9 million, any time spent competing in Britain could cost Mr. Bolt a very large sum of money. Because of these tax laws, many top athletes simply do not compete in Britain.

For example:

…Rafael Nadal excused himself from this year’s Aegon Championships, the traditional warm-up to Wimbledon, on fiscal grounds: “I am playing in the U.K. and losing money. I did a lot more for the last four years, but it is more and more difficult to play in the U.K.” Mr. Nadal competed in the Gerry Weber Open in Germany instead.

Because of the tax policies, the quality of athletic competition has suffered in Britain, the fans are less likely to attend, and there is less economic activity in the area of sports competition for the country to tax. Everybody loses.

Pay attention, American Congress!

Enhanced by Zemanta

Coming Soon To A Hospital Or Doctor Near You

Posted on by

On Sunday The Wall Street Journal posted an article detailing what has happened in Massachusetts since the legislature reformed health care in 2006. It isn’t a pretty picture.

I don’t know if Obamacare was based on what was done in Massachusetts or not, but I do know that what was done in Massachusetts would have been considerably worse if Mitt Romney had not been Governor. Although he was not successful is stopping all of the policies that were put in place, he did stop some of the more drastic ideas. Governor Patrick has worked with the legislature to make things worse.

The article reports:

The claim then, as with the Affordable Care Act, was that health care would be less expensive if everyone had insurance. Soon Massachusetts Democrats leaked that their political strategy all along was to expand coverage only, because had RomneyCare seriously squeezed providers it never would have overcome industry opposition. “Bending the curve” on costs could be saved for another day, once a vast new government liability was locked in.

RomneyCare has increased state health spending in real terms by 59%.

The article also reports:

…79% of the newly insured are on public programs. Health costs—Medicaid, RomneyCare’s subsidies, public-employee compensation—will consume some 54% of the state budget in 2012, up from about 24% in 2001.

Spending on heath care in Massachusetts has increased dramatically since RomneyCare. Heath care costs are 27% higher than the national average–15% higher when adjusted for the states wage scale and academic medical centers and specialists.

Governor Patrick’s latest reforms are aimed at keeping costs down. The article reports:

But Massachusetts takes 360-degree surveillance and converts it into a panopticon prison. An 11-member board known as the Health Policy Commission will use the data to set and enforce rules to ensure that total Massachusetts health spending, public and private, grows no more than projected gross state product through 2017, and 0.5 percentage points lower thereafter. (And Paul Ryan‘s Medicare projections are unrealistic?)

This is the Massachusetts ‘death panel.’

Electing Mitt Romney as President won’t solve the health care problems in Massachusetts (currently being made worse by Governor Patrick), but it will end ObamaCare.

 

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

A Chart That Tells It All

Posted on by

The chart below was posted in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

image

The chart is based on numbers from the International Monetary Fund. The chart is contained in an article by Arthur Laffer about the impact of government stimulus spending.

In the article Mr. Laffer points out:

The four nations—Estonia, Ireland, the Slovak Republic and Finland—with the biggest stimulus programs had the steepest declines in growth. The United States was no different, with greater spending (up 7.3%) followed by far lower growth rates (down 8.4%).

These numbers are particularly relevant as countries around the world are debating whether or not another round of stimulus spending is the answer to the current recession.

Mr. Laffer states:

Still, the debate rages between those who espouse stimulus spending as a remedy for our weak economy and those who argue it is the cause of our current malaise. The numbers at stake aren’t small. Federal government spending as a share of GDP rose to a high of 27.3% in 2009 from 21.4% in late 2007. This increase is virtually all stimulus spending, including add-ons to the agricultural and housing bills in 2007, the $600 per capita tax rebate in 2008, the TARP and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts, “cash for clunkers,” additional mortgage relief subsidies and, of course, President Obama’s $860 billion stimulus plan that promised to deliver unemployment rates below 6% by now. Stimulus spending over the past five years totaled more than $4 trillion.

If you believe, as I do, that the macro economy is the sum total of all of its micro parts, then stimulus spending really doesn’t make much sense. In essence, it’s when government takes additional resources beyond what it would otherwise take from one group of people (usually the people who produced the resources) and then gives those resources to another group of people (often to non-workers and non-producers).

If the government wants the producers in our society to continue producing, it needs to understand how human nature and incentives work. If I can make more money by not working than I can for working, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I am less likely to work.

I think Mr. Laffer is on to something. Please read the entire article at the Wall Street Journal for more information on the impact of government stimulus programs.

Enhanced by Zemanta