harmonicminer

There is one guaranteed way to stimulate employment. That’s to cut taxes for employers, and make it known that the cuts will be in place for a very long time.  That stability will be the enticement that employers need to feel confident about expanding their operations.  This is historically verifiable for anyone who looks.  But in a strange dream that somehow strategies that have never worked before will now start to work,  Congress looks to create jobs, but will it be enough?

Democrats in Congress are furiously crafting legislation to spur job creation, but experts warn that the benefits could be too small to make much difference.

Senate Democrats plan to meet Tuesday to discuss a package that could provide billions in help for strapped state and local governments, as well as infrastructure projects. They’re also considering tax breaks to small businesses for hiring workers and to help make homes more energy-efficient.

The House of Representatives passed its own $154 billion jobs plan last month.

………………

Some analysts warned that such limited stimulus measures would hardly make a dent in a $14.2 trillion economy, however.

“It’s more of a painkiller than a cure,” said Robert Bixby , the executive director of the Concord Coalition , which monitors fiscal issues.

“While $150 billion might give the economy some stability, it’s not large enough to make much of a difference,” added Muhammad Islam , an associate professor of economics at St. Louis University .

…………….

“The roadblock is just general business confidence,” Bethune said. “Whether this kind of legislation will do the job is hardly clear.”

During his campaign, when a reporter pointed out to Obama that across-the-board tax cuts had created economic booms in the past, he said, regarding even-handed tax cuts for all economic classes, “It’s a matter of fundamental fairness,” by which he meant that tax cuts that benefit all economic classes, including the “rich,” are somehow unfair.  The Left, of course, is only for “targeted tax cuts,” meaning tax rebates to people who pay little or no tax..  and who do not engage in the kind of economic activity that creates jobs.

Crystal ball time (not that it’s especially difficult to predict that what has happened before will happen again):  the Democrat congress will not lower taxes generally, in a way that affects all businesses and likely employers.  They will fund a bunch of non-productive public works projects that will create flurries of employment, but nothing sustained, nothing that leads to a true recovery.  They will lionize themselves for small gains, and portray themselves as the great rescuers of the economy. 

Hopefully, the electorate will know better.  Of course, they didn’t in 2008.

Reagan proved that cutting taxes during a recession is the surest road to recovery.  Obama and the Democrats are raising them, regardless of what they say, simply by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010.

Some people are slow learners.

John Updike once said, “Americans have been conditioned to respect newness whatever it costs them”.  I think he’s right – after all, newness is a part of our heritage.  For one, we live in what was referred to by Christopher Columbus as “The New World”  We’ve got several states and cities given names that are a combination of the word  “new” with names brought by the pilgrims  from the “Old World”.  New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New York are on the “new” list of states.  The cities list includes New Orleans, New Haven and New Brunswick.  Yes we do seem to be attracted to all things new.

Our music is saturated with references to newness.  We all remember the big Disney hit, A Whole New World.  And can you imagine even for a minute that James Brown would have sung, Poppa’s Got A Slightly Used Bag?  You Make Me Feel Brand New, Brand New Day, New Kid On The Block….the list goes on and on.  In fact there is an entire genre of music known as “New Wave”.  Of course classical composers have jumped on this bandwagon too.  Dvorak penned the New World Symphony and he wasn’t even American..go figure!

Our politics (The New Deal), our literature (Brave New World), our advertising (”new & improved!”), and our vernacular speech (”turning over a new leaf”) all attest to our love of new. We compliment others when we say, “it’s the new you!” And when someone has been ill we give encouragement by telling them that in no time they’ll be “good as new”.

Nothing displays our love of new more demonstrably than the celebration of New Year’s Day.  We mark it as a fresh start, an annual genesis, a time to initiate personal improvement.  We make New Years resolutions, we begin a new calendar year.  It’s “new” at it’s best.

Politicians understand Americans and their love of “new”, and they use it as a very effectively campaign tool.  With each election cycle and with debate on major issues like health care, taxes, banking, finance, the military, etc, we are told new is good and old is bad.  Political candidates who successfully market themselves as a part of “new” and completely disassociate with “old” usually stand a pretty good chance of being elected, especially if “old” is unpopular.

In many instances we embrace “new” and equate it with “better” even though most of us have had experiences with new versions of something that does little more than make us long for the old version (software!).  And who hasn’t picked up a familiar food product in new packaging to note that there is now less of the product inside the package, but it costs more!

But “new” is NOT always “better”.  And we need to learn that lesson once and for all. I think John Updike is right.  However, this time the price tag on “new” is costing us more than we or our children can ever afford to pay.

Once again, we have Chris Dodd trying to cement his place with the voters by bringing home the bacon.

A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who faces a difficult re-election campaign, his office said Sunday night.

The legislation leaves it up to the Health and Human Services Department to decide where the money should be spent, although spokesman Bryan DeAngelis said Dodd hopes to claim it for the University of Connecticut.

The provision is included in a 383-page series of changes to the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., outlined Saturday. Scattered throughout are numerous items sought by individual lawmakers, many of them directing money explicitly to programs or projects in their home states.

The one sought by Dodd provides $100 million for “a health care facility that provides research, inpatient tertiary care, or outpatient clinical services.” It must be affiliated with an academic health center at a public research university in the United States “that contains a State’s sole public academic medical and dental school.”

This health care bill is so laden with sweetheart deals and outright corruption in the form of direct vote buying that it may set a new high for sheer quantity and brazenness.

I’m sure that Connecticut needs a new hospital worse than anywhere else in the USA.

Imagine you are a police officer who has just stopped a vehicle for speeding.  When you make it clear that you intend to write a ticket, the driver offers you $100 to change your mind.  This action, a felony, is called Bribing a Peace Officer and carries a maximum penalty of $10,000 and two years in jail.

Now imagine you are a United States Senator from Louisiana who is unsure of how to vote on the so-called health care bill.  Another Senator tells you they will see to it that your state receives $100 million dollars to ensure that you vote “yes” on the aforementioned piece of legislation.  This action is called political hard ball, is apparently legal, and carries no fine or threat of imprisonment if found guilty.

it would seem that our political leadership has abdicated any real responsibility to deal with the issue, let alone the merits of this 2000+ page monstrosity of a bill.  It has become entirely about politics and money.

Is there anyone out there who can say with a straight face they truly believe this is at all about improving the health care system in this country?  If so, why don’t you hop on your unicorn, fly over and meet me at the end of the rainbow.  I’ll introduce you to a lovely little leprechaun who’ll point out the pot of gold we can use to pay for government-sponsored health care.

Read the details.  Senatorial votes are for sale to the highest bidder.

Watch this, from Lord Christopher Monckton, chief policy advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute.

I haven’t heard much about this from other sources…. I’m trying to get more information about it.  But if this fellow isn’t exaggerating, this is looking really ugly.

More info here and here and some especially scary nonsense from Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister.

There is an email in circulation that basically gives a moderately inaccurate history of social security in the USA, and makes some statements that are technically incorrect, but still fairly portrays (with a few errors) the broad sweep of changes in the system since it begin in the 1930s under FDR.  It is an example of well-meant and over-the-top reporting that would have done better to be scrupulously accurate.  Scrupulous accuracy would have revealed the situation as bad enough without the errors in the report.

Snopes attempts to debunk the email with a lot of explanation and clarification here.  What’s sadly funny is this:  the Snopes people seem to believe that their explanation somehow makes it all better, when what they end up admitting is nearly as bad as what is alleged in the original email.  Especially risible is Snopes’ attempt to de-link the Democrat party from increases in SSA taxes, increases in SSA benefits/spending, and congressional misappropriation for other purposes than originally intended, by using smokescreens like “borrowing from the social security ‘trust fund’,” etc.  Sure, a few Republicans erred here and there.  But it was overwhelmingly Democrats who pushed the spiraling ponzi scheme.

An example:  FDR did not “promise,” as alleged in the email, that the tax to fund SSA would only be 1% forever.  What he did, in the time-honored, incrementalist tradition of leftist-liberals everywhere, is create a system where the initial tax would be relatively light, and would increase slowly, over several years, so that most people who even understood what was going on at the time thought the tax would only be 1% for the forseeable future.  (How many people in mainstream USA at the time carefully reviewed legislation in detail, with all planned future changes, before forming an opinion of it?)   It is now a total of 15%, half directly out of your check, half “paid by the employer,” but in fact part of the employer’s cost of having you as an employee, by federal law.  It is going to go up, and the income ceiling that will be taxed is going to go up.

I hope you younger folks enjoy paying for my benefits.  Serves you right for voting for Democrats, in a spasm of hopey-changey good feeling.  We’ll see how good you feel when you’re paying for my 30 year vacation after retirement.

Read the Snopes article, and see if you don’t find Snopes’ defense to be nearly as damning as the email was in the first place.

And here is another take on the issue.  And another.

Exit question:  does any person who knows anything about the history of entitlement programs believe that when a national health care system for everyone is created, it will cost as little as proponents claim at its founding?

Only people with their eyes screwed tightly shut, and earplugs snugly in place.

In the 2008 elections, a bit over 13 million people voted in California.  Obama won about 8 million votes, while McCain won about 5 million.

On May 19, 2009, California held a special election to decide if taxes were to be raised to the tune of about $15 billion dollars (to try to close an enormous financial deficit for the state government), or if the state politicians would have to do the hard work of cutting spending.  About 4 million people voted, with 2 to 1 margins _against_ the tax increases.

Therein lies a tale.  Given that Obama was well known to have favored enormous government spending programs, and tax increases that would be needed to support them, how is it that so many people voted for him, but against the same policies for the state?  It’s actually pretty simple.  A very large number of people who voted for Obama didn’t know much about his policies or stances on important issues, nor about his history as a politician and activist.  The media put forward an attractive image, acting as his unpaid campaign staff, and the public bought it, but professional polling has demonstrated that Obama voters were disproportionately ignorant of fundamental facts about Democrats, Republicans, Obama, McCain, Palin and Biden.

So why didn’t it work this time, too?  Why was the turnout in California less than a third of the presidential election’s turnout?  Why did those who did turn out vote 2 to 1 not to raise taxes in California?

Simply, the only people who voted this time were people who were reasonably aware of the issues, enough to have an opinion about them.  Given that public employees in California, whose jobs and pay are imperiled by cuts in the state budget, probably voted 4 to 1 FOR the tax increases, and given that there was probably a higher percentage turnout OF those employees than the general electorate, the result is even more decisive.  If you aren’t a public employee (including teachers, bureaucrats and staffers, etc.), the odds are overwhelming that you voted NO on the tax increases, if you voted at all.

There are a number of reasonable observations:

1)  People who are aware of what’s actually happening in government, who care enough to vote their opinion about it, and who don’t have a personal agenda (i.e., they work for the government), are overwhelmingly likely to vote more conservatively in fiscal matters.

2)  It is likely that the large majority who voted NO on tax increases also voted for McCain.  Of course, there will be a few examples to the contrary….  but not many.

3)  California’s fiscal future is being shaped, at least to some degree, by McCain voters, not Obama voters.

4)  It is likely, given the size of this sample, and the generally leftward tilt of California as a state, that if a national election were held today to raise taxes in order to “balance the budget,” but no other issue was on the ballot, the result would be similar.  With no _face_ on the ballot, many of those new, Obama-smitten voters would be hard pressed to make an appearance at the polls.  And the generally better informed conservative electorate would be more likely to vote.

5)  The media, and Democrats, will do their very best to keep anyone from noticing the implications of the California rejection of higher taxes.

6)  The job of the Republicans is to continue to tie the Democrat party, justly, to high taxes and high spending, in the public mind.  This will require some courage and resolve, and a refusal to succumb to the minor guilt that remains over excesses of spending by Republicans during the Bush years.  At this point, they are like someone who merely stole a car being afraid to point out the people who are robbing Fort Knox.  Obama and the Democrats are preparing to spend us into deficits FOUR TIMES the size of anything Bush every dreamed about, and that will have to be paid for, sooner or later, with higher taxes.

7)  Expect the media to have very little to say about California’s rejection of higher taxes, with national Democrats saying even less.  (On the other hand, if the high tax initiatives had passed, you can imagine the result being trumpeted far and wide as representing “the public will,” can’t you?)

The simplest way to explain all this:  the people who have jobs in the private sector (and who know something about what’s going on in state government) voted overwhelmingly against higher taxes.  Public employees voted for them, mostly.  People who fit in neither category couldn’t be troubled to turn off Oprah and get to the polls….  which is likely why they were watching Oprah in the first place.

We do have a Constitution in the USA, sort of. We ignore it sometimes. Well, to be more accurate, the Left ignores it sometimes, and gets away with it whenever possible.  There is, for example, a 2nd Amendment, that guarantees the right of citizens to keep and bear (that means CARRY) arms.  Except, of course, that it doesn’t, because legislators and the courts have decided the words don’t mean what they mean. 

Here’s a headline:

Steny Hoyer says Democrats beaten on guns

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer admits that Democrats are conceding the gun issue to Republicans for now.

Republicans have been increasingly using pro-gun amendments to throw a wrench into Democratic legislation, attaching amendments to seemingly unrelated bills allowing for expanded gun carrying privileges in national parks.

The tactic seems to be working, with Democrats acknowledging that pro-gun members rule in both chambers.

“There clearly is a majority in both houses that the Second Amendment rights … that relate to the national parks are too restricted,” Hoyer told reporters Tuesday. “The reality is that a majority in both houses agree with that position.”

Imagine:  a majority of both houses (which has to include a decent share of democrats in the current congress) seems to be willing to uphold the 2nd Amendment as meaning what it means. 

So, now to use your imagination.  What if the headline read this way?

       “Steny Hoyer Says Democrats Beaten on Freedom of Speech”

And, what if, as we read the article, it said that Democrats had been trying to restrict Freedom of Speech, but unsuccessfully so far.

That’s where we are these days.  We have, to our shame, a government of men, not one of laws.  And it will probably get worse.

Read it all

After virtually every disaster created by Beltway politicians you can hear the sound of feet scurrying for cover in Washington, see fingers pointing in every direction away from Washington, and watch all sorts of scapegoats hauled up before Congressional committees to be denounced on television for the disasters created by members of the committee who are lecturing them.

Do you REALLY want these people running your health care?

A friend alerted me to a fascinating excerpt from a book on Davy Crockett.  While some dispute the authenticity of the passage, it has never been proved false, and it does fit with what we know of Crockett’s politics.

The passage is just a bit long, but well worth the read, and I recommend it to you for it’s clear application to our current circumstances.

An earlier version of this was posted Oct 21, 2008.  It has been edited slightly to reflect current conditions, but it is basically accurate still.
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The patient takes vitamins and minerals in doses recommended by most physicians, and gets plenty of exercise.

The patient eats a reasonably healthy diet. However, the patient depends to a large degree on imported food, which is often expensive, though the price goes up and down to a degree, and while the patient could grow plenty of home grown food, the patient hasn’t been planting enough lately to sustain present and future dietary needs. So the patient is hungry, and losing weight

The patient is mysteriously ill. Upon examination, it appears that the patient has been slowly poisoned. The patient’s immune system and general state of health might have been sufficient to cover the symptoms of the poisoning longer, except for the strain imposed by the recent hunger and weight loss. The symptoms have been coming on for sometime, but only recently have they become indisputable, as what seemed subclinical does of the poison accumulated in the tissues enough to cause big problems.

Some physicians suggest simply stopping the poison immediately, engaging in a crash program to feed the patient, and growing lots more food for the future, starting today. The basically healthy patient’s immune system and generally good habits will reverse the effects of the poison.

Some physicians suggest continuing the patient’s calorie restriction, cutting back on the vitamins and exercise, switching to a different poison (but reducing the dose) and using leeches to drain away the bad blood. When it’s pointed out that the vitamins and exercise are usually good things, and that poison is usually a bad thing, these practitioners assure the patient that the problem was an unexpected reaction between the nutritional supplements and the low grade poison dose, and the new poison is really a purgative to help clear the system of the effect of too many vitamins, and won’t do any harm. When these doctors are asked if the patient really shouldn’t be eating more, they say it’s good to be skinny, and research shows that skinny people live longer, anyway. They point to all kinds of studies that seem to prove all of this, and cite complicated sounding theories to justify the counter-intuitive nature of their prescriptions. Trust them: they’re the experts. And besides, even if the patient starts growing more food again, it will be many years before enough can be grown to adequately feed the patient (aren’t growing seasons usually annual things?). And even if the patient eats more, the patient will just start exercising more again, and burn the calories, and what good will that do?

I know which advice I’d follow, if I was the patient.

The patient, of course, is the US economy.

The vitamins and exercise are the tax cuts put in years ago by the Bush administration and Congress. Strictly speaking, the vitamins are the tax cuts (think antioxidants that prevent cross-linking), and the exercise is the additional economic freedom those cuts created for productive activity that drove the huge success of our economy for six years after 9/11, until the combination of oil prices and the housing/financial meltdown drug it down about a year ago.

Did you get the pun?  The housing/financial meltdown “drug” the economy down.  Ouch…

The diet is oil and energy, and we don’t make anywhere near enough of our own, which is part of the reason prices were so high not long ago.  Don’t be fooled!  Even though prices have fallen far off the $150/barrel highs, oil is still in short supply for an active, vibrant economy.  You can’t have a speculative bubble without an underlying “shortage,” and right now people are simply doing less that demands energy. But our access to energy is going to reflect itself in our ability to “rev up” the economy as we grow out of the recession.  The combination of a true structural energy shortage for a vibrant economy, plus the inflation that is going to result from the printing of new money, is going to result in higher oil prices than we’ve ever dreamed of, within a relatively short time, as the economy improves, demand goes up, and the worth of money goes down.

The mysterious poison (that “drug” we mentioned, the one with inevitably serious side effects) is government interference in the marketplace, particularly in trying to repeal the basic laws of economics. One of the main things that poisons do is to interfere with normal biological processes, and market interference is little different. There are many of these poisons, and when one of them is having an obviously negative effect on the patient, too many so-called experts suggest we try a different one. The problem is that all such interference is toxic for our economy. Some amount of government interference is probably inevitable; after all, we take medicines that are essentially poisons, because our overall organisms can handle it in small amounts, and the medicine sometimes helps resolve a short-term problem. But you will die young on a steady diet of high doses of all kinds of medicine, regardless of how beneficial some medicines are in short term use for very specific problems. A body can tolerate just a very few “maintenance” medicines for a long life, and they must have very mild side effects to be survivable.

A few years ago I had some blood tests that revealed serious problems.  My doctor couldn’t figure it out, and sent me to a specialist.  He looked at the list of medicines I was taking, and simply took me off everything but the absolute minimum.  My blood-work improved dramatically, as did my overall health.  What had happened was “medicine creep”, where the doctor prescribes one thing, then another to deal with the side effects of the first, then another, then another, and so on.  It took an expert to decide to do very little, while the mediocre practitioner tried to do too much.

We are toxic with government economic medicine right now. The physicians who are prescribing it were wrong about the LAST ten prescriptions, with side effects they claimed we wouldn’t experience, and with frequent failure in the purpose of the medicine, even WITH the deleterious side effects. And they are planning to send us the bill for their professional services, anyway. The very best thing they could do is to withdraw all but the very minimum of economic medicine (meaning a tolerable toxicity), and let the body heal itself. It will.

But our president and Democrat congress have big plans. They want to put us on about a dozen VERY STRONG maintenance medicines for life, medicines with serious toxic side effects, medicines that have not ever worked for any other patient over the long term, and send our children the bill.

I wish politicians had to take the Hippocratic oath before taking office, which includes, if memory serves, this promise:

First, do no harm.

Unfortunately, instead of Hippocrates in office, we have hypocrites.

Both parties love big government _ just different programs

Republicans say they’re outraged that Obama would “borrow and spend” his way to a new behemoth government. But they borrowed and spent their way through the ’80s and the current decade. And they love big government — when it’s at the Pentagon .

Democrats from Obama on down insist that they don’t like big government, that they’re just forced into a temporary spending spree by the recession. But Democrats love big government as well, when it’s for social programs such as universal health care.

“The basic difference between Democrats and Republicans in recent decades is which aspect of government spending they prefer,” said Steven Schier , a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. “With the Republicans, it’s defense. With the Democrats, it’s education, environment, health care etc. That’s been the major difference between the two parties going back to Reagan.”

What a crock.

Without a strong military, a nation disappears, or must depend on some other nation for its defense. Who, exactly, would have defended the USA during the Cold War, if not the USA? Who, exactly, will defend the USA now against the various threats on the world stage? Bluntly, our biggest error has probably been letting OTHER nations subsist under the USA defense umbrella for so long, especially Europe and Japan, but that’s Monday morning quarterbacking at this point… After WW II, it seemed like a good idea for Germany and Japan not to be militarized.

But what happens if a nation does not provide nationalized health care and retirement programs, centralized education bureaucracies and regulatory agencies? Not much. People simply make other arrangements. The market works, except when government interferes with it, and then blames the market for the outcome of its own interference.

Defense is one of the two biggest absolutely required roles for government, the other being the maintenance of law and order in the interest of public safety.

In any case, the amount of money that has been spent on social programs since 1960 is ENORMOUS, and social spending remains 60% or more of the national budget. And Obama’s intentions in social spending make the Pentagon’s fondest wishlist look like chump change.

The Lefty media, of course, wants to pretend there is a moral equivalence between what a nation must do to survive, and what Left leaning politicians must promise in order to be re-elected.

Powerline points out, in an absolutely fantastic article, how the Left’s reaction to Bush deficits was panic and accusation, but its reaction to 4 or 5 times bigger Obama deficits is ho-hum, when it’s not out and out cheerleading.

Power Line

It’s no secret that there is no intellectual integrity on the Left, but it’s still hard not to be a bit shocked by liberals’ reaction to the budget proposal that Barack Obama unleashed yesterday. Let’s take the example of the New York Times, probably the most prominent voice of the Far Left in the U.S. Throughout the George W. Bush administration, the Times’ editorial board waxed eloquent about the terrible consequences to be expected from the Bush deficits.

There is a deficit in the Left’s reaction to the Obama deficit.

Read the whole thing at the Power Line link above.

Read this next paragraph carefully.   If people who believe such things are ever in control of our government and you are not frightened by the implications, then you simply didn’t understand what you read.
Keynes Returns

“The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members.”

The problem, as is pointed out in the article at the link above, is that people who believe this ARE in control of government, right now. Read the whole article. Then pray.