Category Archives: Barack Obama

Unhealthy Propaganda

Barack Obama, Communism, Democrats, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, The State

BELOW ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS, interspersed with comments, from BO’s much-anticipated address to the two chambers—an address that was, overall, thin gruel. For those who’ve switch off to preserve their health, the text to the president’s speech on “the need to overhaul health care in the United States” is here. I provided a rights-based primer in a previous post, “Preparing For Unhealthy Propaganda.”

“I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.” [The historical president’s quest to continue to make history …]

“There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage.” [Not so. See “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured.”]

“Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you’ll lose your health insurance too.” [The answer is to create the conditions for jobs in the private economy, not to kneecap job creators, Chicago style.]

“Then there’s the problem of rising costs.” [The solution is A Free Market in Medical Care, which we lack.]

“There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada’s, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.”

“I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months”

“The plan I’m announcing tonight would meet three basic goals:

It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.” [Only in defiance of the laws of economics.]

“First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you.

“Now, if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices.” [About this “exchange” BO wants to breathe life into: what he’s describing is a phony “market place” brought about by flesh-and-blood central planners. If that were possible the Soviet Union would not have collapsed. Pray tell, where in the world—and in history—have command economists “designed” functioning, efficient, fair markets?]

“For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need. And all insurance companies that want access to this new marketplace will have to abide by the consumer protections I already mentioned.”

COERCION KICKER: “individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance – just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers.” [BO forgot to mention that so-called Cadillac coverage amounting to $800,000 per annum will be taxed to the tune of 35 percent. Just saying.]

BO is nothing if not benevolent: “Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.”

Can BO count?: “I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. … based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.” [And this 5 percent will pay through premiums alone for a $900 billion plan over a decade? How on earth?]

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.” [What do they know, but the CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE disagrees, writing, on June 15, 2009, that “enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010–2019 period.” Where did these professional number crunchers go wrong?]

I’m getting tired of following this fanciful fairytale. So let me end my service to BAB readers with one more fabulous assertion by BO: “Most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent – but spent badly – in the existing health care system. The plan will not add to our deficit.”

THE PREMISE OF THE ABOVE being that the government, which is responsible for the waste and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid and the VA system, will also be in charge of eliminating the same features of these state-run systems.

Dipstick Depression

Barack Obama, Communism, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Free Markets, Regulation, Socialism

Following the deductive genius of Austrian economics, many of us have been warning that Obama’s policies are plunging the country into a depression. The best book on the topic, of course, is America’s Great Depression By Murray N. Rothbard. Now, in a study endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, economists Charles Rowley of George Mason University and Nathanael Smith of the Locke Institute contend that Obama’s “policies even have the potential to consign the US to a similar fate as Argentina, which suffered a painful and humiliating slide from first to Third World status last century.”

According to the British Telegraph, “There are ‘troubling similarities’ between the US President’s actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and much of the world spiralling into the worst economic collapse in recorded history, says the new pamphlet, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.”

“… the White House’s plans to pour hundreds of billions of dollars of cash into the economy will undermine it in the long run. They say that by employing deficit spending and increased state intervention President Obama will ultimately hamper the long-term growth potential of the US economy and may risk delaying full economic recovery by several years.

“The study represents a challenge to the widely held view that Keynesian fiscal policies helped the US recover from the Depression which started in the early 1930s. The authors say: ‘[Franklin D Roosevelt’s] interventionist policies and draconian tax increases delayed full economic recovery by several years by exacerbating a climate of pessimistic expectations that drove down private capital formation and household consumption to unprecedented lows.'”

The researchers err in their support for “the Federal Reserve’s moves to slash interest rates to just above zero and embark on quantitative easing, pumping cash directly into the system.” That goes against the grain of what the authors have contended.

Truly scary, but nothing that Austrians have not been bracing for, is the warning “that greater intervention could set the US back further. It is also not impossible that the US will experience the kind of economic collapse from first to Third World status experienced by Argentina under the national-socialist governance of Juan Peron.”

“The paper … recommends that the US return to a more laissez-faire economic system rather than intervening further in activity.” Dah!

Said James Buchanan: “We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s’ Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work.”

Read “Voodoo Child Talks Up A Storm,” and “The Commie Who Controls the Economy From the Grave.”

Update III: A Jeremiah-Wright Repeat Performance (Jones Gone)

Barack Obama, Communism, Democrats, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Socialism

Spare me a repeat performance of the Jeremiah Wright farce, only with Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, substituting for the Obamas’ preacher; and surfacing in YouTube clips while delivering Wright-like jeremiads lambasting white men and Western civilization, as every liberal lunatic and wimpish WASP pretends Obamby hardly knew the jejune Jones.

Can we skip this? Can this country’s anointed cognoscenti at least pretend to be familiar with the concept of a learning curve?

To quote ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper:

Van Jones,

“[a] top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into “evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.”

Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called “Truther” movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of “the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.”

He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. A source said Jones did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.

It’s one thing to have voted for Obama; it’s quite another to walk around in a daze pretending the man has no relationship to the entourage of crazies that has been catapulted to power with him.

Incidentally, I am less perturbed by Jones’ affinity with 9/11 conspirators than with the vertiginous ignorance of economics that accompanies his green faith. The man’s mandate is to do serious damage.
Just as Obama intended.

Here’s a prophetic prediction (NOT): There are many Van Jones’ in the Obama administration. You’ll meet them in the fullness of time. Quit feigning surprise when they crawl out from their dank corners.

Update I (Sept.4): I TOLD YOU SO. The predictable LiveLeak and YouTube clips are surfacing showcasing this apparent anomaly in the Obama administration: a black man who is every bit as cynical and smug as Jeremiah Wright, and like him is consumed by savage rage and envy. But like Obama’s confidant and reverend of 20 years, Van Jones is somehow treated atomistically. Conservatives too are positing only whether he has a future; will he be fired, and what kind of vetting did he undergo. It is manifestly obvious to these pundits that Obama could not possibly have approved of such a man.

Once again, “The Real Slim Shady” slithers away successfully.

Update II: THE REAL STORY is this, courtesy of Byron York:

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

Update III (Sept. 6): JONES FALLS ON HIS SWORD so that Obamby may retain his porcelainized image. My Way News:

“President Barack Obama’s adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.

Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.”

B. Hussein In History Wonderland

Africa, Barack Obama, History, Islam, Middle East, Pseudo-history, The West

The following excerpt is from my new, Worldnetdaily.com column, “B. Hussein In History Wonderland”:

“Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak arrived in Washington this week to press flesh with the president. In an interview, Mubarak told PBS television that Barack Obama’s speech had shown him that ‘America is not against Islam.’ …

The address Mubarak was referring to was delivered by a grandiose Obama in Egypt’s capital, early in June. There, the president prostrated himself before the Muslim world, offering up prolix praise for the religion of peace – a tradition that his predecessor established. …

Given the veritable mirage of lies he conjured in Cairo, blaming the decadence of Arab countries on nefarious Western imperialist intervention in the 19th and 20th centuries, B. Hussein’s historical horizons vis-à-vis the Middle East could also do with some broadening.

A good start would be to stop relying on ‘Lawrence of Arabia’s’ homoerotic, ahisotric memoir for the facts.” …

The complete column is “B. Hussein In History Wonderland.”

If you miss the column on WND.COM, you can catch it each Saturday on Taki’s Magazine.