Category Archives: Democrats

Update III: Obama’s Route To Economic Revival (A Stake Through The Heart Of The Economy)

Barack Obama, Debt, Democrats, Economy, Healthcare, Media, Socialism

A straitjacket is where this man and his followers belong. And where Bush before him should have been placed. For as much as the beaus and bimbos of FoxNews and their loyalists wish to forget, Bush paved the way for Barack’s Bacchanalia—“The unconstitutional campaign finance-reform bill and ‘Sarbanes-Oxley Act’ (a preemptive assault on CEOs and CFOs, prior to the fact of a crime); the various trade tariffs and barriers; the Clintonian triumph of triangulation on affirmative-action; the collusion with Kennedy on education; the welfare wantonness that began with a prescription-drug benefit that would add trillions to the Medicare shortfall, and culminated in the Kennedy-countenanced ‘New New Deal’ for New Orleans, for which there was no constitutional authority; the gold-embossed invitation to illegals to invade, and the ‘camouflaged amnesty'”—Barack wishes he’d done all this, but these were Bush’s babies.

Back to the bastard du jour : The New York Times editorializes approvingly on what Obama’s health care “reform” will accomplish:

It will “require virtually all Americans to carry health insurance or pay a penalty. And it would require all but the smallest businesses to provide health insurance for their workers or pay a substantial fee. It would also expand Medicaid to cover many more poor people, and it would create new exchanges through which millions of middle-class Americans could buy health insurance with the help of government subsidies. The result would be near-universal coverage at a surprisingly manageable cost to the federal government.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2015, 97 percent of all residents, excluding illegal immigrants, would have health insurance. The price tag for this near-universal coverage was pegged by the budget office at just more than $1 trillion over 10 years — at the low-end of the estimates we’ve heard in recent weeks.

The legislation would pay for half that cost by reducing spending on Medicare, a staple of all reform plans. It would pay for the other half by raising $544 billion over the next decade with a graduated income surtax on the wealthiest Americans: families with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $350,000 and individuals making more than $280,000.” …

Update I: Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee (led by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), who, as far as I know, did less than nothing to highlight the evils of their Boy Bush’s prescription drug program, have developed the following organizational chart to illustrate the efficiencies built into to the Democrats’ healthscare politburo. Since the image, never the program, is quite small, check it out here.

HC

Update II (July 17): “In total, CBO estimates that enacting [Obama’s healthscare) provisions would raise deficits by $1,042 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” But the CBO and the JCT hope that the net increase in the federal budget deficit of enacting H.R. 3200 will be only a meager $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period. That’s because of some “savings” the Act affords.

“That estimate reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill’s insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that JCT estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those
10 years.”

Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director of the CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE, who conducted the analysis of “H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” summarizes the Act’s mandates:

The legislation would establish a mandate to have health insurance, expand eligibility for Medicaid, and establish new health insurance exchanges through which some people could purchase subsidized coverage. The options available in the insurance exchange would include private health insurance plans as well as a public plan that would be administered by the Secretary of Health and Human
Services. The specifications would also require payments of penalties by uninsured individuals, firms that did not provide qualified health insurance, and other firms whose employees would receive subsidized coverage through the exchanges. The plan would also provide tax credits to small employers that contribute toward the cost of health insurance for their workers.

I must say, I’m quite impressed with the CBO. Just the facts, ma’am.

Update III (July 18): Warns economist Peter Schiff: “the economy is walking dead anyway, and this measure is the equivalent of a stake through the heart.” From “Prescription for Disaster”:

“[T]taxing the rich to pay for health care for the uninsured is the wrong way to think about tax policy and is an unconstitutional redistribution of wealth. While the government has the constitutional power to tax to “promote the general welfare,” it does not have the right to tax one group for the sole and specific benefit of another. If the government wishes to finance national health insurance, the burden of paying for it should fall on every American. If that were the case, perhaps Congress would think twice before passing such a monstrosity.

In the second place, the bill is just plain bad economics. For an administration that claims to want to create jobs, this bill is one of the biggest job-killers yet devised. By increasing the marginal income tax rate on high earners (an extra 5.4% on incomes above 1 million), it reduces the incentives for small business owners to expand their companies. When you combine this tax hike with the higher taxes that will kick in once the Bush tax-cuts expire, and add in the higher income taxes being imposed by several states, many business owners might simply choose not to put in the extra effort necessary to expand their businesses. Or, given the diminishing returns on their labor, they may choose to enjoy more leisure. More leisure for employers means fewer jobs for employees.

More directly, mandating insurance coverage for employees increases the cost of hiring workers. Under the terms of the bill, small businesses that do not provide insurance will be required to pay a tax as high as 8% of their payroll. Since most small businesses currently could not afford to grant 8% across-the-board pay hikes, they will have to offset these costs by reducing wages. However, for employees working at the minimum wage, the only way for employers to offset the costs would be through layoffs.”

Read the complete column on Taki’s.

Update III: Obama's Route To Economic Revival (A Stake Through The Heart Of The Economy)

Barack Obama, Debt, Democrats, Healthcare, Media, Socialism

A straitjacket is where this man and his followers belong. And where Bush before him should have been placed. For as much as the beaus and bimbos of FoxNews and their loyalists wish to forget, Bush paved the way for Barack’s Bacchanalia—“The unconstitutional campaign finance-reform bill and ‘Sarbanes-Oxley Act’ (a preemptive assault on CEOs and CFOs, prior to the fact of a crime); the various trade tariffs and barriers; the Clintonian triumph of triangulation on affirmative-action; the collusion with Kennedy on education; the welfare wantonness that began with a prescription-drug benefit that would add trillions to the Medicare shortfall, and culminated in the Kennedy-countenanced ‘New New Deal’ for New Orleans, for which there was no constitutional authority; the gold-embossed invitation to illegals to invade, and the ‘camouflaged amnesty'”—Barack wishes he’d done all this, but these were Bush’s babies.

Back to the bastard du jour : The New York Times editorializes approvingly on what Obama’s health care “reform” will accomplish:

It will “require virtually all Americans to carry health insurance or pay a penalty. And it would require all but the smallest businesses to provide health insurance for their workers or pay a substantial fee. It would also expand Medicaid to cover many more poor people, and it would create new exchanges through which millions of middle-class Americans could buy health insurance with the help of government subsidies. The result would be near-universal coverage at a surprisingly manageable cost to the federal government.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2015, 97 percent of all residents, excluding illegal immigrants, would have health insurance. The price tag for this near-universal coverage was pegged by the budget office at just more than $1 trillion over 10 years — at the low-end of the estimates we’ve heard in recent weeks.

The legislation would pay for half that cost by reducing spending on Medicare, a staple of all reform plans. It would pay for the other half by raising $544 billion over the next decade with a graduated income surtax on the wealthiest Americans: families with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $350,000 and individuals making more than $280,000.” …

Update I: Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee (led by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), who, as far as I know, did less than nothing to highlight the evils of their Boy Bush’s prescription drug program, have developed the following organizational chart to illustrate the efficiencies built into to the Democrats’ healthscare politburo. Since the image, never the program, is quite small, check it out here.

HC

Update II (July 17): “In total, CBO estimates that enacting [Obama’s healthscare) provisions would raise deficits by $1,042 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” But the CBO and the JCT hope that the net increase in the federal budget deficit of enacting H.R. 3200 will be only a meager $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period. That’s because of some “savings” the Act affords.

“That estimate reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill’s insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that JCT estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those
10 years.”

Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director of the CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE, who conducted the analysis of “H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” summarizes the Act’s mandates:

The legislation would establish a mandate to have health insurance, expand eligibility for Medicaid, and establish new health insurance exchanges through which some people could purchase subsidized coverage. The options available in the insurance exchange would include private health insurance plans as well as a public plan that would be administered by the Secretary of Health and Human
Services. The specifications would also require payments of penalties by uninsured individuals, firms that did not provide qualified health insurance, and other firms whose employees would receive subsidized coverage through the exchanges. The plan would also provide tax credits to small employers that contribute toward the cost of health insurance for their workers.

I must say, I’m quite impressed with the CBO. Just the facts, ma’am.

Update III (July 18): Warns economist Peter Schiff: “the economy is walking dead anyway, and this measure is the equivalent of a stake through the heart.” From “Prescription for Disaster”:

“[T]taxing the rich to pay for health care for the uninsured is the wrong way to think about tax policy and is an unconstitutional redistribution of wealth. While the government has the constitutional power to tax to “promote the general welfare,” it does not have the right to tax one group for the sole and specific benefit of another. If the government wishes to finance national health insurance, the burden of paying for it should fall on every American. If that were the case, perhaps Congress would think twice before passing such a monstrosity.

In the second place, the bill is just plain bad economics. For an administration that claims to want to create jobs, this bill is one of the biggest job-killers yet devised. By increasing the marginal income tax rate on high earners (an extra 5.4% on incomes above 1 million), it reduces the incentives for small business owners to expand their companies. When you combine this tax hike with the higher taxes that will kick in once the Bush tax-cuts expire, and add in the higher income taxes being imposed by several states, many business owners might simply choose not to put in the extra effort necessary to expand their businesses. Or, given the diminishing returns on their labor, they may choose to enjoy more leisure. More leisure for employers means fewer jobs for employees.

More directly, mandating insurance coverage for employees increases the cost of hiring workers. Under the terms of the bill, small businesses that do not provide insurance will be required to pay a tax as high as 8% of their payroll. Since most small businesses currently could not afford to grant 8% across-the-board pay hikes, they will have to offset these costs by reducing wages. However, for employees working at the minimum wage, the only way for employers to offset the costs would be through layoffs.”

Read the complete column on Taki’s.

Updated: The Politics Of Torture

America, Barack Obama, Bush, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism

When I think of a libertarian-leaning patriotic warrior, I think of Michael Scheuer. The chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, Scheuer is also the man behind the enhanced interrogation methods, which the hard-left and their friends on the libertarian left would have you believe are as heinous as the war crime at Hiroshima.

Like myself, Scheuer opposed the invasion of Iraq, opposes the occupation of Afghanistan, the presence of permanent troops across the world, and the nation-building farce. Scheuer, like this classical liberal writer, has excoriated Bush as much as he has Obama (adjusted for time in office).

Scheuer told Glenn Beck (May 21) that the Clinton administration practiced exactly the same interrogation methods with terrorists—including rendition and water boarding — methods he had a hand in devising. Both Republicans and Democrats, said Scheuer, are playing politics with the security of Americans, and that includes Mr. Hannity’s hero: Dick Cheney.

I wrote this about the hysteria: “The two parties are exchanging fusillades over ten interrogation techniques deployed with fourteen ‘high value al-Qaida detainees,’ three of whom endured the most controversial method of all, because they were purported to possess ‘credible intelligence of an imminent terrorist attack,’ as well as ‘actionable intelligence’ to ‘prevent, disrupt or delay an attack.’ …
there is a vigorless, extinction-courting quality to those who squeal about placing a bug in the bug-phobic Abu Zubaydah’s ‘confinement box.’ These are just the type of insects the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would delight in squashing.”

Scheuer nails it in a Washington Post op-ed: This “episode of political theater [is] another major step in the bipartisan dismantling of America’s defenses based on the requirements of presidential ideology. George W. Bush’s democracy-spreading philosophy yielded the invasion of Iraq and set the United States at war with much of the Muslim world. Bush’s worldview thereby produced an enemy that quickly outpaced the limited but proven threat-containing capacities of the major U.S. counterterrorism programs — rendition, interrogation and unmanned aerial vehicle attacks.”

And this important insight as to the self-righteous, reality averse Utopianism which unites neoconservatives, liberals and libertarians:

“Obama now stands alongside Bush as a genuine American Jacobin, both of them seeing the world as they want it to be, not as it is. Whereas Bush saw a world of Muslims yearning to betray their God for Western secularism, Obama gazes upon a globe that he regards as largely carnivore-free and believes that remaining threats can be defused by semantic warfare; just stop saying ‘War on Terror’ and give talks in Turkey and on al-Arabiyah television, for example.”

“Incorrigibly anti-American” all.

Update (May 23): Andrew C. McCarthy (via reader Robert Glisson) raises a perfectly good point about ex post facto prosecutions, which the Constitution prohibits for obvious reasons.
The point about the Democrats conducting a political fishing expedition is true too. For, the invasion of Iraq, as I’ve said, repeatedly, not the dunking of the unlovely KSM and Abu Zubaydah, is the real issue here. You’re following the wrong scent, and I have no idea why:
“The torture kerfuffle is secondary to—and subsumed within—the broader category of an unjust war, waged by George Bush with Democratic assent.”
Given that the jack-ass Democrats welcomed the opportunity to “lug an army across the ocean to occupy a third-world country that was no danger to us and had not threatened us,” it behooves them to focus on bubkiss, minutia.
That our friend Myron is following the scent of the females and pacifists is, well, baffling. The greatest sin of all is pacifism.
I’d trust the patriotic and moral Scheuer, who knew a thing or two about the capabilities of al-Qaida, to protect me, over the Pussy Brigade (PB).
If someone suggests prosecuting Bush and the gang for invading Iraq, they’ll get my full attention. Until such an unlikely day, please spare me the self-righteous fussing over what the PB decries as torture and the loss of Our Values (what values?).

Updated: ‘He One Holy Roller’

Constitution, Democrats, Ethics, Federalism, Individual Rights, Iraq, Law, Morality, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Republicans

Another of my archaic titles (it hails from the Beatles’ “Come Together“).

Speaking at Notre Dame, “America’s leading Roman Catholic university,” President Obama called on the factions warring over abortion to come together and find common grounds.

“So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”

I agree. In their lyrics, the Beatles exhorted, “Come Together Right Now Over Me.” Make it, “Come Together Right Now Over the Constitution.”

There is no warrant in the constitution for or against abortion, adultery, homo-or hetero marriage, etc.

Quaint, I know, but to the federal government were delegated only limited and enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8):

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Yet pro-life advocates want to force their way on the rest through a constitutional amendment. And pro-choice agitators wish to compel the country—and their countrymen who oppose the procedure—to pay for abortions.

Obama is no constitutional scholar although he is touted as one. But he should know that the Constitution proscribes his meddling and prescribes, via the brilliant Tenth Amendment, a perfectly good solution: Leave it to the states and the individuals concerned (and let them pay out-of pocket).

Would that pro-life types fussed as much over fully formed, innocent human beings (such as those who’ve perished in Iraq) as they do over fetuses. Republicans sure showed their contempt for life in their enthusiasim for the carnage visited on Iraqis.

Come to think of it, the culture of life never seems to extend beyond a claim of dominion over another human being’s body.

Update (May 19): I’ve posted this Iraq notice before, but judging from the letters received, retention is non-existent. So here goes again:

A note to the neoconservatives who frequent this site, and post their ill-formulated fulminations vis-a-vis the war on Iraq: That war is not going to be adjudicated again here, not ever. I chronicled the invasion of Iraq at great length, applying fact and every ounce of reason in my possession to repudiate and denounce that war crime. The case is closed! Neoconservative ideologues stand in the dock for aiding and abetting a war crime. The lazy neoconservative can read my archive on the topic. While I can imagine these ideologues urgently need to make peace with their maker, or consciences, for their role in a crime of such moral and material magnitude, they will not do so on my private property!