Bad News For America

On Saturday, The Daily Caller reported that President Biden has agreed to having America pay climate reparations to the rest of the world. Yes, I know that’s not what they are calling it, but that’s what it is.

The article reports:

The Biden administration and nearly 200 world governments agreed on Saturday to a framework that would have richer countries compensate poorer nations for damages allegedly caused by carbon emissions at the United Nations COP27 climate conference, according to Reuters.

Wealthy nations will create a “loss and damage” fund that will provide money to countries that have suffered from climate-related “disasters” such as droughts or hurricanes, according to a draft proposal seen by Reuters. However, most of the details of the financial framework will be decided and agreed upon in 2023 at the next COP conference that will take place in Dubai.

In March 2016, I reported the following (article here):

…former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

The Biden administration is part of the move toward worldwide socialism. This latest giveaway of American taxpayer dollars is part of that effort.

The article concludes:

COP27 has been dominated by the debate surrounding a plan to compensate developing nations for climate damages, according to Reuters. The European Union said Thursday that it would support such a framework if China, the world’s chief polluter, would provide funding and if the money raised was exclusively earmarked for developing countries that are destitute to ensure that China did not benefit from the proposal, according to the WSJ.

After agreeing to the climate financing framework, the U.S. also called for the inclusion of a pledge to phase out all fossil fuels which would build on the 2021 agreement to “phase down” coal use, according to Bloomberg.

The White House and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

This is another reason we need to vote the Biden administration out of office in 2024.

The Pigford Settlement Revisited

In April 2013, Investor’s Business Daily reported the following:

Turns out conservative crusader Andrew Breitbart was correct when he exposed a multibillion-dollar redistribution scheme to African-American farmers based on largely dubious claims of discrimination.

If there’s a patron saint for government watchdogs, it’s Breitbart, who was well into exposing at the time of his early death one of the most egregious examples of wealth redistribution in the name of social justice: the Pigford case.

A handful of black farmers who arguably were discriminated against in their dealings with the Agriculture Department were exploited by a racial grievance industry empowered by a government and a president out to fundamentally transform America.

Outside Breitbart and his Big Government website, only a handful of outlets, among them IBD, pursued the story. Late to the story, but welcome, comes the New York Times with an analysis that Breitbart was right, that Pigford became not a redress of legitimate grievances but a “a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees.”

The article notes:

Based on Census data reflecting the original period in question, the USDA first estimated only 2,000 claims would be filed. But in this age of victimhood and dependency fanned by demagoguery, “more than 90,000 people have filed claims” and the “total cost could top $4.4 billion,” noted the Times.

As BigGovernment.com reported, the only “proof” required was a form stating the claimant had “attempted” to farm, perhaps planting tomatoes in the backyard, and to have a family member vouch for that assertion.

The government would then send the aggrieved “farmer” a check for as much as $50,000.

Remember Shirley Sherrod, the former USDA official whose speech before an NAACP group revealing her angst about helping a white farmer got her fired?

Time magazine reported that $330,000 was “awarded to Shirley and Charles Sherrod for mental suffering alone,” in their claim against the USDA.

On September 26, 2022, The Daily Caller reported:

The Democrats’ massive climate spending and tax bill gave the Department of Agriculture (USDA) $2.2 billion in loans to pay farmers, many of whom are black, who have previously been denied USDA loans due to discrimination.

The provision, which was backed by Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, is intended to provide financial assistance to farmers, ranchers or forest landowners that the department determines to have experienced discrimination in USDA farm lending programs before January 1. 2021, according to the bill’s text. Although the funding could go to any farmer that the government has discriminated against, such as white women or members of the LGBTQ community, the money is primarily intended to rectify the historic denial of loans to black farmers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Somehow I don’t believe that there were $2.2 billion in loans denied to black farmers (or anyone else). This is another attempt (unfortunately successful) to pay reparations and to redistribute money from people who earned it to people who didn’t.

Pay Attention To The Details

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article detailing how the tax proposals of presidential candidate Joe Biden might impact 401k plans. Many Americans put money into 401k plans to help with their tax liability and also because they don’t feel Social Security will be there when they retire. It is quite possible that in the future Social Security will only be available to people below a certain income level, so their fears may well be justified.

The article reports:

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential platform includes a tax proposal that could force some employers to abandon offering retirement options to workers, the industry is warning.

The plan would dramatically change the incentive to save for retirement by replacing the current deferral system with a tax credit.

Most retirement plans, such as 401(k) plans and IRAs, allow taxpayers to delay paying taxes on contributions to accounts until they are retired. By suspending this tax until retirement, workers have been able to grow their nest eggs beyond what they would have been if taxes were paid in the year that the money was received.

The article explains the risk in this proposal:

Biden’s plan would be advantageous for lower-income workers. For example, a taxpayer in the 12% tax bracket investing $100 in a retirement account would receive $114 after paying taxes and receiving the credit.

Some retirement industry experts think Biden’s proposal could force some companies to abandon their retirement plans.

Brian Graff, chief executive officer at the American Retirement Association, cautioned that employers, who normally pay taxes in the upper brackets, could oppose Biden’s plan because they lose much of their tax benefit.

“What we’re worried about is if you are essentially reducing the tax benefit, it’s not going to be worth it for them to keep the plan going,” he said.

Employers who make contributions to a 401(k) must offer that same benefit to their employees. However, some of those bosses might not want to continue offering a 401(k) if their tax benefit is greatly reduced.

“If it’s not worth it to the owner, [why] bother with it anymore?” Graff said.

Richard Rausser, senior vice president of client services at Pentegra, said that such a fundamental change to retirement accounts could be a deterrent to offering a plan.

“To the extent that there’s a change in taxation of salary deferrals … that’s going to be a disincentive for plan sponsors to adopt a plan, or for some of them, quite honestly, to continue to maintain a plan. They may rethink it,” he said.

Redistribution of wealth (which is what this plan is) is not an idea that has a place in a free market system. If you look at the history of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, you find that they originally adopted a communal system of farming. After the system failed because there was no incentive to work hard and people were starving, they instituted a free market system and prospered. The Joe Biden plan for taxes regarding 401k plans is simply wealth redistribution. It is socialism and should be rejected by the American people.

When Your Predictions Are Wrong, Just Change The Time Frame

Yesterday The Independent Journal Review posted an article about the global warming predictions that were supposed to be happening about now that are nowhere in sight.

The article reports:

The cult’s leader — Al Gore — said in 2009 that there was a 75 percent chance that the entire arctic polar ice cap would melt by 2014.

It’s still there.

The year before the North Pole was supposed to be gone, noted climate scientist Hans von Storch went against cult orthodoxy in an interview with Spiegel Online in 2013 and had some interesting things to say about the climate prediction models so revered by the alarmists.

After noting that “climate change seems to be taking a break,” von Storch had this to say about the models:

“If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.”

I’m not a scientist, but it seems to me that if your predictions supposedly using the scientific method continually do not happen, there might be something wrong with your models or your calculations.

The article reports what the scientists are doing to modify their failed predictions:

Climate alarmist James Hansen’s prediction of Manhattan being underwater by 2018 seems to not be happening, so he’s moving his own goal posts and saying “50 to 150 years” now.

That’s the beauty of being one of the “we believe in science” people: there’s never any penalty for being wrong. Every prediction that doesn’t come true isn’t a cause for reflection about perhaps adjusting the conclusion; it’s merely an opportunity to pull a new prediction out of thin air.

Perhaps they are finally getting embarrassed, though. Tossing all of the predictions a century down the road at least saves them from having to be around when those are proved wrong.

The global warming movement has never been about science or the environment.

The following is from an article I posted in March 2016:

Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn’t really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that “the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

The earth’s climate is cyclical.  Scientists have found fossils in Greenland of animals from much more temperate climates. The Middle Ages experienced a period of global warming that had nothing to do with SUV’s.  The bottom line is that man is rather insignificant in the grand scheme of the earth’s climate. I believe that we have a responsibility to keep the earth as clean as possible, but we also have a responsibility to develop the earth’s resources to allow all people on the planet to experience freedom and the ability to earn enough to have food and shelter. Redistribution of wealth is not the solution to poverty–freedom is–and that is exactly what the global warming crowd is trying to limit.

I would like to note at this point that at least one generation of school children has been raised on this fake science as if it were fact. Combined with the fact that our children are no longer being taught critical thinking skills, this may be a major problem for the future of our country.

Filling A Bottomless Pit

In January of this year, I posted an article entitled, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie,” relating to a children’s book published in 2013. The basic story line of the book is that if you give a mouse a cookie he will expect milk and other things to go with it. That story had to do with a company in Wisconsin that discovered that whatever concessions you make to a special interest group, they will not be enough. This story has to do with the tax situation in Princeton, New Jersey.

MSM posted a story today about a discussion in Princeton, New Jersey, about whether or not Princeton University should be tax exempt.

The article states:

Free lectures, admission to athletic games and concerts, even shuttles to Trader Joe’s are some of the perks that neighbors of Princeton University get from New Jersey’s only Ivy League school.

A growing number of residents, though, resent the gestures. Riding a national wave of discontent with nonprofit institutions, they’re suing to challenge the tax-exempt status of Princeton, whose $22.7 billion endowment makes it the fourth-richest U.S. university. The outcome could cut homeowners’ annual property taxes, averaging $17,699, by a third. It also could end the freebies that make Princeton a cushy oasis while other New Jersey towns, burdened by high public-worker costs and flat state aid, struggle to maintain basic services.

There are a lot of questions that come to mind after reading this. What is the budget of Princeton, and has anyone considered cutting the budget?

The article further reports:

The university pays its hometown about $8 million in annual levies toward a proposed $61.9 million municipal budget. It kicks in another $3 million voluntarily, a boost for emergency services and public works. The rest, the freebies, make for what the school calls positive town-and-gown relations.

So the tax-exempt University already pays more than 10 percent of the municipal budget, and now the city wants to take away its tax-exempt status. It’s interesting to me that the article cites the worth of the University to support its argument. This is classic redistribution of wealth. Princeton has acquired its wealth honestly. It belongs to Princeton. Now the municipality is trying to figure a way to take what has been rightfully earned away from the entity that earned it and give it to the city, which hasn’t earned it. Maybe it’s time that the City of Princeton redid its budget rather than resorting to legal theft.

Beware Of The Small Print In ObamaCare

Yesterday the Seattle Times posted an article about a provision of ObamaCare that has come as a surprise to some of the elderly people who are subscribing to the program.  The story deals with Sofia Prins and Gary Balhorn, both 62, who after reading the fine print in Medicaid that has changed as a result of ObamaCare, decided to get married.

The article explains the problem:

Medicaid, in keeping with federal policy, has long tapped into estates. But because most low-income adults without disabilities could not qualify for typical medical coverage through Medicaid, recovery primarily involved expenses for nursing homes and other long-term care.

The federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) changed that. Now many more low-income residents will qualify for Medicaid, called Apple Health in Washington state.

But if they qualify for Medicaid, they’re not eligible for tax credits to subsidize a private health plan under the ACA, which requires all adults to have health insurance by March 31.

Prins, an artist, and Balhorn, a retired fisherman-turned-tango instructor, separately qualified for health insurance through Medicaid based on their sole incomes.

But if they were married, they calculated, they could “just squeak by” with enough income to qualify for a subsidized health plan — and avoid any encumbrance on the home they hope to leave to Prins’ two sons.

The article further reports:

Late Friday, Gov. Jay Inslee’s office and the state Medicaid office said they plan to draft an emergency rule to limit estate recovery to long-term care and related medical expenses.

They hope to be able to change the rules before coverage begins Jan. 1.

Fixing the problem will cost the state about $3 million a year, said Dr. Bob Crittenden, Inslee’s senior health-policy adviser, but it’s the right thing to do.

“There was no intent on the part of the ACA to do estate recovery on people going into Medicaid (for health insurance),” Crittenden said. “The idea was to expand coverage.”

One of the problems with ObamaCare is that it will move many people who previously had basic health insurance into Medicaid. Unfortunately, Medicaid cannot support this increase–it is already going broke. The increase in Medicaid enrollment will put a severe financial burden on states, and create budget problems for the states that have formed healthcare exchanges.

The article explains the risk of the fine print in ObamaCare:

For health coverage through Medicaid, income is now the only financial requirement.

At first, Prins was pleased at the prospect of free coverage.

But the more she thought about the fine print, the more upset she got. Why was this provision only for people age 55 and older? Why should those insured by Medicaid have to pay back health expenses from their estates when people with just a bit more income who get federal subsidies don’t? Why didn’t she and Balhorn know about this before getting to the application stage?

As Prins began searching for answers, she found that even those trained to help people sign up for insurance under the ACA weren’t aware of this provision, nor were some government officials.

Around the country, the issue has sizzled away in blogs and commentaries from both right and left. The National Women’s Law Center noted the ACA and its regulations prohibit age discrimination in programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the politically conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, writing in the The Washington Times, called the recovery provision “a cash cow for states to milk the poor and the middle class.”

“People will think this is wonderful, this is free insurance,” Orient said in an interview. “They don’t realize it’s really a loan, and is secured by any property they have.”

Even states that are now limiting estate recovery, she warned, can change the rules again if budget problems become more intense.

When you think about it, taking money from the estates of the middle class is simply another way to redistribute wealth, one of the major results of the implementation of ObamaCare. It is becoming very obvious that ObamaCare is a nightmare for the states, the insurance companies, and the insured. It needs to be repealed and replaced.

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Economic Justice???

I guess I’m  more than a little out of step here, but my definition of economic justice is helping more people increase their earnings and keep more of what they earn. Economic success should be available to everyone who is willing to work for it to the degree which they are willing to work. For example, a businessman starting a business will put in 60 hour weeks in the beginning of the venture in order to get things started. When his company grows and becomes more stable, he may be able to drop to 50 hours a week. If he becomes wealthy, it is because he has earned that wealth. That businessman should be held up as a positive example of what hard work can accomplish, and every American should be encouraged to follow that example. That is economic justice–you get what you work for and are allowed to keep a large portion of it. It is not economic justice to take money from someone who has earned it and give it to someone who has not.

Unfortunately, the definition of economic justice has been skewed in recent years to embrace the idea of taking money from people who earn it and giving it to those who have not earned it. ObamaCare is the epitome of that concept, and the mainstream media has finally awakened to that fact.

Yesterday, Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the redistribution of wealth that ObamaCare represents.

The article reports:

Take the New York Times. In a fit of candor, it now agrees with what we’ve said all along — “redistribution of wealth lies at the heart of” the Affordable Care Act.

The paper reported that “economic justice” was Obama‘s real goal in taking over a sixth of the economy.

But to make his plan “palatable” to “middle-class voters,” he had to mislead them into thinking nothing would be taken from them. He had to assure them, in a “semantic sidestep,” that ObamaCare was a win-win for all Americans, when in fact it created “losers as well as winners” — tens of millions of losers, as it turns out.

“Hiding in plain sight behind that pledge — visible to health policy experts but not the general public — was the redistribution required to extend health coverage to those who had been either locked out or priced out of the market,” the Times said. “Now some of that redistribution has come clearly into view.”

Of course, it was visible to Times correspondents as well. But they’re just now getting around to informing voters, after flooding them with pro-ObamaCare stories during the 2012 campaign.

Right now the media is not the friend of the American voter, but we as voters have to take some responsibility for what we are willing to believe. During the 2012 election campaign, the information about ObamaCare was available to anyone who chose to look past the mainstream media. The death panels were talked about, the taking money out of Medicare was discussed, and the problems with keeping your current health plans was discussed–not often in the mainstream media–but those ideas were discussed.

The lesson to all of us is simple–the media is telling us what they want us to know when they want us to know it. If we want to be informed citizens, all of us need to learn to do research on our own. There is an election next year–it’s time to get busy.

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Behind The Policies Of President Obama’s Second Term

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article yesterday which asked the question, “Does this mean it’s now okay to say that Obama is a redistributionist?”  The question was based on a Washington Post article posted on Friday by . Mr. Goldfarb is the Post economics reporter and posted an article about the underlying principles of President Obama’s second term as President.

The Washington Post reports:

Obama’s actions as president provide a glimpse of how he views legislation as a means to his end. His health-care reform law, aimed at covering as many of the uninsured as possible, takes a shot at addressing income inequality by imposing new taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Beginning next year, upper-income earners will pay new surcharges that will result in an average additional tax bill of $20,000 for the top 1 percent. The money will help finance insurance subsidies and other coverage in 2014 for people in the lower middle class and below. A recent study by Cornell University’s Richard Burkhauser estimates that “Obamacare” will add $400 to $800 in disposable income annually for these Americans.

The Post further reports:

Every president talks about education, but Obama’s rhetoric reflects an acute awareness of recent research. The data show that rising inequality is largely the result of a changing economy that handsomely rewards people with better skills or credentials — a college education — and leaves people with a basic education at a disadvantage.

Think about this for a minute. People with better skills or credentials are being rewarded, resulting in more income inequality. Good Grief! Translated loosely that means that people who work hard, go to school, and learn are being rewarded. Why else would they work hard and go to school?

Many (not all) of the basic income inequalities in America are moral and cultural. Studies show that young people who finish school. get married, and have children in that order generally do not wind up in poverty. A year of college will not hurt anyone who applies himself during that year, but without the desire to work hard at getting a college education and the desire to work hard afterward, success will not magically appear.

America is not a third-world country. The poor in America have cars, air conditioners, flat-screen televisions, and the latest cell phone gadgetry. Taking money from the people who actually earn it makes all of us poorer in the long run because it erodes the work ethic of those receiving the money.

President Obama has been re-elected, but it is up to Congress and Americans to protect the opportunity that has historically been America. Being in the welfare system is not an opportunity. If we begin to encourage people to work rather than simply take money from those that do work, income inequality will begin to correct itself. However, we will always have income inequality as long as some of us would rather let someone else work to support us.

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A Chilling Agenda For A Second Term Of President Obama

PJ Media posted an article yesterday about a book by Stanley Kurtz called Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. The book exposes President Obama’s plans for his second term.

The book describes how President Obama and some of his closest advisers plant to do this:

Using Alinskyite measures and tactics meant to deceive, they implement policies that go over the heads of an unaware public who does not realize what is going on. You create the new social policy by bypassing Congress and hiding the measures in other programs — such as the stimulus, in which educational policy was included without any debate.

All of these measures were discussed in a major White House conference held on July 18, 2011, at an event not covered by the press and never given any publicity. Featuring Obama’s old mentor Kruglik, the movement to destroy the suburbs as the way to transform America by redistributing tax monies to the cities was the very topic of discussion. It is part of programs such as the Sustainable Communities Initiative, and to be run through the group set up by Kruglik, Building One America.

Please read the entire article to see who the advisers are and what they believe. I would also strongly recommend reading the book. We really cannot afford four more years of President Obama.

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Something That Wasn’t Mentioned In The State Of The Union Speech

I haven’t written anything about the State of the Union speech because I thought it was a political exercise. This is the ‘silly season’ and truth is a rare commodity in political speeches right now (not that it is always there in other times). However, the Wall Street Journal posted an editorial today that makes some very good points.

This is the chart from the editorial:1buffettrule

As you can see, the federal tax rate on long-term capital gains has varied a lot over the years. The article points out the fallacy of the “Buffett Rule” that President Obama is proposing which would make wealthy Americans give more of their money to the government. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the effective income tax rate of the richest 1% is actually about 29.5%. That is the rate you come up with when you include all federal taxes–such as the distribution of corporate taxes. That is about twice the 15.1% rate paid by middle-class families.

Investment income has already been taxed once. There is no reason to tax it again unless you are trying to redistribute wealth.

The article points out:

As the nearby chart shows, the rate has never since risen above 28%, and the last time it moved that high was in 1986 as part of the Reagan-Rostenkowski tax reform that also cut the top marginal income tax rate to 28% from 50%. With income-tax rates so low, a differential was arguably less necessary—though it’s worth noting that capital gains revenues fell dramatically after that rate increase.

A decade later Bill Clinton agreed to cut the rate back to 20% as part of the balanced-budget deal with Newt Gingrich. Capital gains revenues soared, helping to balance the federal budget. Nearly every study estimates that the revenue-maximizing tax rate from the capital gains tax is between 15% and 28%. Doug Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, says that a 30% tax rate “is almost surely above the rate that maximizes tax revenues.” So it’s likely the Buffett trick would lose revenue for the government.

So if we are in a time of federal deficits, why would you change the tax code in a way that would lose revenue for the government? Unless you are using the tax code to redistribute wealth, it makes no sense.

 

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Northborough On December 12

 Free Seminar

U.N. Agenda 21 …

A Threat to Our Constitutional Rights

 Monday, December 12, 2011, 7 pm

Northborough Free Library

____________________________________________________

 Subversion of property rights

Restructuring the family unit

Redistribution of wealth

Hand-cuffing industry

____________________________________________________

   ~ Sponsored by the Northborough Tea Party ~

  Public Welcome ~ Free Admission

 Information: John O’Mara, 508.393.2044

www.northboroughteaparty.com

           

                “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil  

             is for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke

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