Category Archives: Democrats

Update II: Fascism Rising (Henry ‘Nostrilitus’ Waxman)

Bush, Business, Democrats, Economy, Fascism, Government, Republicans

A couple of day ago a number of major companies came out with the preliminary assessment of the costs to each of the “Manna From Mount Olympus” bill, namely Obama’s healthscare legislation. The fascist state that America has become responds sternly to economic forecasts that go against the government’s grain. You may be called on to justify yourself if your assessment of your books diverges from the government’s.

“Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has summoned some of the nation’s top executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment,” reports the Washington Examiner.

Waxman wants “the executives to explain themselves at an April 21 hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative subcommittee.”

As Byron York points out, “Waxman’s demands for documents are far-reaching. ‘To assist the Committee with its preparation for the hearing,’ he wrote to Stephenson, ‘we request that you provide the following documents from January 1, 2009, through the present:

“(1) any analyses related to the projected impact of health care reform on AT&T; and (2) any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of health care reform on AT&T. We also request an explanation of the accounting methods used by AT&T since 2003 to estimate the financial impact on your company of the 28 percent subsidy for retiree drug coverage and its deductibility or nondeductibility, including the accounting methods used in preparing the cost impact statement released by AT&T this week.”

“Waxman’s request could prove particularly troubling for the companies. The executives will undoubtedly view such documents as confidential, but if they fail to give Waxman everything he wants, they run the risk of subpoenas and threats from the chairman.”

AN enterprise’s freedom of speech, right to privacy, prerogative to disseminate information about its finances and accounting—this government is asserting ITS right to infringe all these and more.

The Republicans had similar witch hunts when in power (which is why I’m perplexed that some conservative commentator are convinced, and keep repeating, that only now, under Obama, have they lost these freedoms). The “Sarbanes-Oxley Act,” signed into law by President Bush, was government’s response to The People hoisting their pitchforks against business. Also known as the Corporate Corruption Bill, it singled out a much-maligned minority for the kind of persecution that, if visited on women, blacks or Jews, would be considered actionable, hate-filled discrimination. Hearings were all the rage at the time too.

Update I (March 30): Related: “Dems fear honest Obamacare accounting”:

Democrats, in their zeal to raise revenues and improve Obamacare’s claimed effect on the federal deficit outlook, took away a tax break these companies needed in order to supply prescription drugs to their retirees. The tax subsidy, itself a government accounting ruse crafted in 2003 by the Republican Bush administration to dissuade corporations from dumping their retiree drug benefit programs on the then-new Medicare Part D, becomes taxable under Obamacare. Corporations are now being reminded of the harsh truth: What Big Government giveth, Big Government taketh away, too.

Update II (March 31): Henry “Nostrilitus” Waxman (thanks for the laugh, Greg):

CBOafs Scores Always Way Off

Debt, Democrats, Economy, Government, Healthcare, Political Economy, Regulation

Has any bill passed by Washington ever come in on or under budget? Of course not, but faith runs eternal among the faithful. Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon has said what I did in my last column, “Heeere’s Health-Scare”: “Ultimately, the CBOafs’ forecast is only as good as their premise, which is faulty” (my version). “The Democrats have required the CBO to adopt some really unrealistic assumptions … even if those projections are accurate, politics gets hold of that program. And people start demanding more out of that program” (Cannon’s).

Here are some facts from a research paper authored by FreedomWorks Foundation:

* “The Medicare Program: When Medicare was instituted in 1965, there was no Congressional Budget Office. Instead, in 1967 House Ways and Means analysts estimated the cost of the program. Medicare, they predicted, would cost $12 billion in 1990. (1) They were wrong—by a staggering factor of 10. The actual spending in 1990 was $110 billion. (2) And Medicare costs continue to skyrocket. Through the first 9 months of 2009, Medicare has cost taxpayers $314 billion and that price tag continues to grow by 10%. (3)

In the case of the Medicare Program, the government estimate was off by over 816%. If the CBO estimate for the Senate health care bill is off by the same percentage, then the price of reform may be as high as $7.74 trillion.”

Police State Shaking In Its Goose-Stepping Boots

Democracy, Democrats, Fascism, Law, Terrorism, The State

It’s the leading story on just about every cable network. “House Democrats are concerned about their security due to increased threats since Sunday’s vote to pass the health care bill.”

A grim-faced House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer held a news conference, where he bemoaned that “a significant number, meaning over 10” Democrats “had reported either threats, vandalism or other incidents. Capitol Police officials have briefed House Democrats on reporting suspicious or threatening activity and taking precautions to avoid ‘subjecting themselves or their families to physical harm,’ said Hoyer, D-Maryland.”

Hoyer was flanked by a chap called Jim Clyburn who mouthed cliches about the lessons of history, and threw the kitchen sink of civil rights, holocaust, homophobia in for good measure.

Most other news outlets ran with this story, against a backdrop of besieged Democrats speaking about the need for security details to guard their homes and families and wallowing in horror stories about a handful of disenfranchised voters who seem to have lost faith in the vaunted American mobocracy. (Your wishes to be left alone are ignored in a democracy?! You don’t say.)

Good luck to you in trying to get a security detail should your family come under threat or should your boyfriend threaten to kill you. The sponger class has no perception of how rarefied and cloistered is its worthless, parasitic existence.

How ludicrous and contemptuous for the political class (and its media sycophants), backed as it is by the tanks that took out tots at WACO, to put on this show—aimed at depicting a tiny number of angry voters who dared to step out of line as Timothy McVeighs in the making.

Update III: ‘Jerusalem Is Not A Settlement; It's Our Capital’ (Forthcoming)

Bush, Christianity, Democrats, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: (Who else?) “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital.” (PBS NewsHour)

So said Mr. Netanyahu during a visit to the United States Capitol, following a “two-week old” tiff between his administration and Obama’s over ongoing construction in East Jerusalem. (Refresher is here.)

The WaPo ventures that “Netanyahu believes that a halt to construction represents political suicide for his coalition, so no amount of U.S. pressure will lead him to impose a freeze — at least until he is in the final throes of peace talks.”

For Israeli’s sake, let’s hope there’s more to Bibi’s stand than political expediency.

Update I (March 24): “…in Israel—foibles and frailties notwithstanding—the West has reclaimed a small spot of sanity in a sea of savagery, where enlightened western law prevails, and where Christians and Jews and their holy places are safe. (Muslims are always secure in western societies, Arab-Israelis too.)” [From “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too.”]

A reminder to relapsed Republicans; Condi Rice was as good a friend to Israel as is Barack Obama.

Update II: Watch this space. Forthcoming on Barely a Blog this weekend “Impressions From Jerusalem,” written by a special young woman who went to Israel with the expected perspectives imbibed in insulated North America—and shared by paleos and liberals alike—but had a transformative experience.

Most individuals who write about Israel, pro and con, should not be doing so, as they have never experienced the place or the people. This young woman had the heart and the head to ditch tinny ideology (she is not your average Millennial, described in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable”) her own included, when confronted by something far more powerful and persuasive.

Be sure not to miss BAB’s upcoming weekend feature.

Update III: You’re in luck. I’ve decided to post the promised evocative piece of writing tomorrow. The mystery young woman has real talent for spare, strong writing.