Category Archives: Republicans

Republicans Just Jealous

Democrats, Elections, Healthcare, Political Economy, Regulation, Republicans

I’m always appalled by individuals, even on this site, who keep faith with the two-party system—and especially, the Republican Party—which, they insist, can be reformed. They’ve been watching the worms wriggle longer than I; but from where I’m perched, it is plain that had Republicans not made such a nuisance of themselves for so long, they’d be standing where BO is standing, heralding the near completion of the work of FDR.

That ObamaCare is awfully similar to (Mitt) RomneyCare is also plain to policy wonks who’re in the know. David Frum is an example. Admonishing the GOP for losing it by ostensibly tacking right—engaging in “overheated talk” and refusing “to deal”—David Frum points out that,

The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

The FrumForum has more on the statist points of intersection between Romney- and ObamaCare:

Romneycare … did not create a federal bureaucracy; it created a state bureaucracy. It did not raise taxes; but instead was based on $300 million in free federal money. But in the main outlines, the two programs are identical.

My colleague Vox Day writes the following:

“…it is completely shameless for Republicans to complain that nationalizing health care is an unconstitutional expansion of federal power.”

“It wasn’t all that long ago that Republicans held the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. With the exception of an 18-month senatorial interregnum from May 2001 to November 2002, the Republican Party held unilateral control of all three branches of the federal government for six years. And what did it do with it?”

“Republicans wasted their electoral popularity on two unnecessary and unpopular military occupations. They foolishly transformed what had briefly been a bipartisan budget surplus into what were then thought to be nearly unprecedented deficits. They stupidly created a new federal entitlement program that has turned out to cost far more than was originally estimated. And, to top it all off, they arrogantly ignored the clearly expressed wishes of the American public and handed over $700 billion to a collection of corrupt and insolvent bankers.”

Lessons From Big Daddy O & His Right-Hand Ho

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Economy, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Regulation, Republicans, Welfare

HERE’S WHAT I TOOK away from the weekend long Pelosi Palooza and Obama health-care orgy:

With one flick of a pen, a politician is able to render finite resources infinite; that in the hands of millions of new affirmatively appointed state hires, private property—approximately $409.2 billion, confiscated from rightful, productive owners— will be funneled into so-called state-of-the-art health care. Basically turned into gold. That bilking “$69 billion more in penalties for individuals and businesses who don’t meet mandates to buy insurance” will generate plenty and prosperity like nothing else, just as The Founders envisaged.

Most of the revenue would come from higher Medicare taxes on about 1 million individuals earning more than $200,000 and about 4 million couples filing jointly who make more than $250,000

What assorted idiots and moochers-in-the making took away from this legislative theft is that it is constitutional to single out a distinct segment of society—the productive—for punishment. The only consideration that counts is, “How many Americans want it?” Gimme, gimme, gimme is the new national anthem.

“The man with the Reverse Midas Touch,” Big Daddy O, and his right hand Ho, have taught the nation so many lesson, not least that attainder laws are now constitutional (Article 1, Sections 9 and 10), and that “our high-minded messiah has the authority to punish an (innocent) group of people—more or less 5 million Americans who’ll shoulder the hulking H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010—“without the benefit of due process.”

Scrap that; no moocher knows what attainder laws are.

And if you don’t yet know that the Republicans are your fair-weather friends who’ll sign their own mammoth bills when they occupy the same seats in the game of political musical chairs they play exclusively with the Dems—then listen to stupid Michael Steel condemn freedom-loving demonstrators for their righteous ire and promise statists like Geraldo Rivera and Sheppard Smith of FoxNews that a welcoming immigration bill is next.

************
Here’s a good precis of H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010, courtesy of the WSJ:

The $940 billion health-care overhaul will take nearly a decade to roll out in full. A look at the key parts of the bill and when they go into effect.
2010

Coverage

* Subsidies begin for small businesses to provide coverage to employees.
* Insurance companies barred from denying coverage to children with pre-existing illness.
* Children permitted to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until their 26th birthday.

2011

Coverage

* Set up long-term care program under which people pay premiums into system for at least five years and become eligible for support payments if they need assistance in daily living.

Taxes and fees

* Drug makers face annual fee of $2.5 billion (rises in subsequent years).

2013

Taxes and fees

* New Medicare taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples filing jointly earning more than $250,000 a year.
* Tax on wages rises to 2.35% from 1.45%.
* New 3.8% tax on unearned income such as dividends and interest.
* Excise tax of 2.3% imposed on sale of medical devices.

Cost control

* Medicare pilot program begins to test bundled payments for care, in a bid to pay for quality rather than quantity of services.

2014

Coverage

* Create exchanges where people without employer coverage, as well as small businesses, can shop for health coverage. Insurance companies barred from denying coverage to anyone with pre-existing illness.
* Requirement begins for most people to have health insurance. Subsidies begin for lower and middle-income people. People at 133% of federal poverty level pay maximum of 3% of income for coverage. People at 400% of poverty level pay up to 9.5% of income. (Poverty level currently is about $22,000 for a family of four.)
* Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor, expands to all Americans with income up to 133% of federal poverty level.
* Subsidies for small businesses to provide coverage increase. Businesses with 10 or fewer employees and average annual wages of less than $25,000 receive tax credit of up to 50% of employer’s contribution. Tax credits phase out for larger businesses.

Taxes and fees

* Employers with more than 50 employees that don’t provide affordable coverage must pay a fine if employees receive tax credits to buy insurance. Fine is up to $3,000 per employee, excluding first 30 employees.
* Insurance industry must pay annual fee of $8 billion (rises in subsequent years).

Cost control

* Independent Medicare board must begin to submit recommendations to curb Medicare spending, if costs are rising faster than inflation.

2016

Taxes and fees

* Penalty for those who don’t carry coverage rises to 2.5% of taxable income or $695, whichever is greater.

2017

Coverage

* Businesses with more than 100 employees can buy coverage on insurance exchanges, if state permits it.

2018

Taxes and fees

* Excise tax of 40% imposed on health plans valued at more than $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for family coverage.

—Sources: House bill; Kaiser Family Foundation

Corrections & Amplifications
The House health legislation imposes a 2.3% excise tax on the sale of medical devices. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the tax was 2.9%, the figure before a last-minute change to the legislation.

Update II: Waiting For The Weasel Vote (Baier Badgers Barack)

Democracy, Democrats, Healthcare, Media, Regulation, Republicans

“A procedural sleight of hand,” the Washington Post calls Pelosi’s putative plan to pass her hulking healthcare bill without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic — known as a “self-executing rule” or a “deem and pass” — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

“It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know,” the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. “But I like it,” she said, “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”

This is not unusual; Republicans have resorted to “deem and pass” in the past, but will now make a big fuss, I hope. However, let this country not be lauded, as it often is, by the pundit peanut gallery for the great democracy it is. It is well-accepted that in a democracy the minority is thwarted. Less accepted is the fact that democracy bypasses the majority as well.

Update I: Via Glenn Beck a chart depicting the bypassing of democracy discussed in this post:

Update II (March 17): BAIER BADGERS BARACK. Bret has to be saluted for his valiant efforts to get this smooth operator of a president to answer a question instead of mouth agitprop, in this exclusive FoxNews interview. It’s worth watching Baier at work. He’s good. But, of course, the top propagandist had the upper hand in the end.

Toyota Shakedown Continues

Business, Government, Republicans, Technology, The State

Torquemada’s onslaught against Toyota has signaled to others in the business of shakedown to try their luck. That was what James Sikes, in his unstoppable Prius, was up to, as the malfunctioning media broadcast a blow-by-blow account of his Prius gone wild, while network bimbos looked on, shaking empty heads and tsk-tsking loudly.

Sikes was trying out the trick Rhonda Smith of Sevierville, Tenn., pioneered, and with which she won the Congressional inquisitors to her side. Smith’s run-away “Herbie” was a Lexus 350 ES sedan. You don’t want to get into one of those death traps.

Toyota Motor Corp. dismissed the story of a man [Sikes] who claimed his Prius sped out of control on the California freeway, saying Monday that its own tests found the car’s gas pedal and backup safety system were working just fine.

The automaker stopped short of saying James Sikes had staged a hoax last week but said his account did not square with a series of tests it conducted on the gas-electric hybrid.

The Regulator in the person of U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif) was looking over Toyota’s shoulder during the testing. We’re safe! He follows the proud tradition of the Floridian Republican, John Mica and Jason Chaffetz.

During the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform inquisition, last month, “in florid language,” Mica blasted a Toyota official: “‘I’m embarrassed for you, sir,’ Mica shrieked, clutching his smoldering toupee. Not much better was Chaffetz. This Republican admonished Mr. Inaba for an internal Toyota brief that called ‘the American government safety agency under the Obama administration less ‘industry friendly.'”

This revelatory reality—at least to Republicans—had pushed the Toyota team into a dalliance with the regulators. Any serious student of economics knows that regulation forces an entrepreneur to substitute viable, voluntary trades and transactions with politicized decision making. But what does Chaffetz [and his fellow Republicans] know?