Central planning of an economy doesn’t work in large, diverse, environments, and works poorly in small homo-genius societies (Greece, Spain, Portugal all collapsing).
Government spending does not create wealth and in only limited circumstances does it have a long term positive impact with a high velocity of money. Politicians do not spend money on the greatest needs of individuals, businesses and communities; rather they spend those dollars with the hope that it will buy votes, increase influence, and come back in the form of campaign donations. People tend to act in their own self interest, so how can a politicians best interest be everyone elses?
Central planners are also very fond of “tax credits” which they call “tax cuts”. You get a tax credit if you engage in a behavior that the government approves of. This causes people and businesses to act not in what is best for them, their family, their business, their economic needs or the needs of their customers, rather they are acting in the interests of a politician. How is that good for the economy when it comes down to you feeding and taking care of your family? This also results in mass corruption as the tax code becomes a behemoth filled with politicians picking winners and losers. This is called “crony capitalism” or “state run capitalism” (all of which is just a mutation of socialism/corporatism).
Tax credits are also used as the politicians rhetorical ruse. Very often government tax credits are such a regulatory burden they are an economic non starter or they are so “targeted” it means that almost no one will qualify for them [Example: Tax credit for a family of four who makes under $40,000 per year, who is buying house over 2,000 square feet, that is ran by solar power].
The more the planner’s plans fail the more the planner’s plan – Ronald Reagan.
With a flamboyant downgrade of the outlook for economic growth, jobs and profits, Wednesday’s 280-point Dow plunge to launch the so-called June stock swoon is a warning shot across the bow.
The Dow tanked alongside a batch of dismal economic data. The ISM manufacturing index, ADP employment, Case-Shiller home prices and consumer confidence are all pointing to 2 percent growth or less, rather than the kind of 5 percent growth we ought to be getting coming out of a deep recession.
The economy now looks like a Government Motors engine that’s stalling out. Or perhaps, with energy and food inflation, and housing deflation at the same time, the economy is acting like a pinball machine on permanent tilt.
There’s a key message here: Big-government stimulus never works.
First there was the massive Barack Obama stimulus spending. Then QE1. And now QE2 is winding down. And what did we get for all this? Slower growth overall, paltry job creation, more energy and commodities inflation, continued housing deflation, and virtually no new business start-up entrepreneurship.
We know the Obama spending package failed to create a 7 percent to 8 percent unemployment rate, as advertised. And now we’re learning that the Fed’s QE2 has actually done more harm than good.
All that money-printing stimulus worked to depreciate the dollar and jack-up commodity prices, especially oil and gasoline, but also food. So both companies and consumers have been punished.
Some demand-side boneheads on Wall Street want the Fed to move to QE3, allegedly to fight a stalling economy. But if the central bank prints another $600 billion or so, all that will do is sink the greenback another 10 percent and drive oil and gasoline prices higher and higher. And that, in turn, will slow business and consumers even more.
If General Motors CEO Dan Akerson had anything to say about it, you would be paying a dollar more a gallon for gas. Yes, with $4/gallon prices hitting consumers in a tough economy, Akerson told the Detroit News: “You know what I’d rather have them do — this will make my Republican friends puke — as gas is going to go down here now, we ought to just slap a 50-cent or a dollar tax on a gallon of gas.”
Akerson, 61, was appointed CEO of GM last fall, having previously served as an Obama-appointed member of the board. He has been critical of the Obama Administration on several issues, including fuel economy standards, but now has discovered something in common: a love of high gas prices. He, like President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, believes that higher gas prices will force taxpayers to buy more fuel-efficient (and usually more expensive) vehicles.
In 2008, Secretary Chu said: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” And it was President Obama who told CNBC in 2008 that he preferred a “gradual” increase in gas prices. Obama and Chu know that only when matched dollar-for-dollar will Americans choose alternative energy sources that are much more expensive today. Since the already heavily-subsidized alternative energy sources are not getting cheaper, the only solution is to make cheap energy more expensive.
Akerson, Chu and Obama are wrong to embrace high gas prices. Hitting lower-income Americans with a punitive gas tax while unemployment remains near ten percent is a bad idea, regardless of what behavior you are hoping to mandate.
Akerson’s comments came in the context of a larger conversation on energy policy. Akerson correctly stated that the government’s imposed fuel standards are taxing production, which will cost jobs and raise the purchase price of cars. But passing that burden directly to consumers at the gas pump isn’t the solution. The idea that the government must either increase taxes on businesses or struggling taxpayers is a false choice.
High gas prices alone won’t encourage consumers to buy the hugely unpopular Chevy Volt. The Volt isn’t selling because even after substantial tax credits that the government cannot afford, the additional cost in buying a not-ready-for-market Volt, plus the cost of electricity (which isn’t free) is far greater than any potential gas savings.
Bill O‘Reilly and Glenn Beck don’t always see eye-to-eye — they don’t always agree on everything. But one thing that O’Reilly is agreeing with Beck on now is that there are those on the left who would love to see an economic collapse so that they can remake the system. Chief among those cheerleaders, O’Reilly says, is Beck’s “spooky guy” — George Soros.
Bill O’Reilly resisted accepting this premise for a long time; years even. But as the evidence mounted up it became hard to ignore.
The Democrats are the party of the status quo when it comes to Social Security and Medicare while the governments own numbers admit that these programs will go bankrupt and crash very soon. The reductions in spending discussed in the video were not real cuts at all, they were only reductions in Obama’s proposed budget, and even so it was not even a 1% cut in that budget proposal. The truth is that spending was higher this year than last year, so in reality there were no real cuts, yet the left was still upset.
One of the big problems with Medicare is that the bureaucracy is expensive and truly gargantuan. Billions of dollars go to fund those government jobs that should go to seniors care. The Democrats benefit in the short run and the long run by letting Medicare collapse. In the short run, Medicare not being reformed will mean countless thousands of government employees, will be paying Democrats and the government union dues which is used to finance Democrat political campaigns. Government employees make between 30% and 300% more than their private sector counterparts depending on the job field. That is right folks, Medicare funds are essentially being used to fund Democrat political campaigns.
In the long run, when Medicare explodes seniors will be forced into ObamaCare, which can ration care and push doctors into just “giving gramps the pain pill” kind of care. This is why the Democrats raided half a TRILLION DOLLARS of Medicare funds to pay for the ObamaCare implementation. The administration had moved to implement “death panels” like language but outrage forced them to delay implementation. The bottom line is that ObamaCare gives the President, or the HHS bureaucrat the regulatory authority to implement “death panel” like rationing with the stroke of a pen.
You Promised To Save Millions From Foreclosure Yet Your Housing Program Was A Failure And Now The Housing Market Is In The Midst Of A “Double Dip.” Why Has Your Administration Largely Ignored Struggling Homeowners?
The RNC asks a very good question here. A question we have been asking over and over again Link + 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.These girls would like an answer:
PROMISE: President Obama Promised That His Housing Program Would Prevent 7 to 9 Million Families From Foreclosure. “And we will pursue the housing plan I’m outlining today. And through this plan, we will help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages so they can afford—avoid foreclosure.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks On The Home Mortgage Industry In Mesa, Arizona, 2/18/09)
FACT:
Only One In Four Of 2.7 Million Homeowners Seeking Assistance From Obama’s Mortgage Relief Plan Succeeded In Getting Their Payments Reduced. “Just one in four of the 2.7 million homeowners who sought to participate in the Obama administration’s signature mortgage assistance program have succeeded in getting their monthly payments reduced.” (Alan Zibel and Louise Radnofsky, “Only 1 In 4 Got Mortgage Relief,” The Wall Street Journal, 2/28/11)
Inspector General Neil Barofsky, Who Oversaw HAMP, Said That The Program “Continues To Fall Short Of Any Meaningful Standard Of Success.” “The program has faced sharp criticism. Neil Barofsky, the departing special inspector general overseeing the program, has faulted the administration for launching it with inadequate analysis and only partially developed guidelines. This led to delays and confusion, and the program ‘continues to fall short of any meaningful standard of success,’ he said a report released in January.” (Alan Zibel and Louise Radnofsky, “Only 1 In 4 Got Mortgage Relief,” The Wall Street Journal, 2/28/11)
“It’s Official. Home Prices Have Double Dipped Nationwide, Now Lower Than Their March 2009 Trough, According To A New Report From Clear Capital.”(Diana Olick, “National Home Prices Double Dip,” CNBC, 5/5/11)
“Home Values Posted The Largest Decline In The First Quarter Since Late 2008, Prompting Many Economists To Push Back Their Estimates Of When The Housing Market Will Hit A Bottom.” (Nick Timiraos, “Home Market Takes A Tumble,” The Wall Street Journal, 5/9/11)
The Oregonian: “Economists Who Once Predicted That Prices Would Bottom Out Sometime This Year Now Are Saying, Well, Maybe In 2012.” “Lenders have filed more than 300,000 foreclosures against American families every month for almost two years. As long as that’s occurring, the housing numbers will stay bleak. Home prices nationally have fallen for 57 consecutive months. … Economists who once predicted that prices would bottom out sometime this year now are saying, well, maybe in 2012. ” (Editorial, “American Housing: Underwater And Still Sinking,” The Oregonian, 5/9/11)
The lobbyist revolving door. Do what they want now, quit and come to get your cash. Even though Baker was a Republican appointee, what happened to the new lobbying rules to keep this from happening that President Obama promised in the campaign? Oh that’s right he loosened them…
Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the two Republican Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, plans to step down—and right into a top lobbying job at Comcast-NBC.
The news, reported this afternoon by the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and Politico, comes after the hugely controversial merger of Comcast and NBC earlier this year. At the time, Baker objected to FCC attempts to impose conditions on the deal and argued that the “complex and significant transaction” could “bring exciting benefits to consumers that outweigh potential harms.”
Four months after approving the massive transaction, Attwell Baker will take a top DC lobbying job for the new Comcast-NBC entity, according to reports.
The response of groups like Free Press was expected in its anger, but not without merit. “No wonder the public is so nauseated by business as usual in Washington—where the complete capture of government by industry barely raises any eyebrows,” said Free Press’ Craig Aaron. “The continuously revolving door at the FCC continues to erode any prospects for good public policy. We hope—but won’t hold our breath—that her replacement will be someone who is not just greasing the way for their next industry job.”
Attwell Baker this afternoon released a statement once the news broke, explaining that she would leave on June 3 and that she was “privileged to have had the opportunity to serve the country at a time of critical transformation in the telecommunications industry. The continued deployment of our broadband infrastructures will meaningfully impact the lives of all Americans. I am happy to have played a small part in this success.”
Update: Comcast has issued an official announcement. Attwell Baker will report to Kyle McSlarrow, who formerly ran the top cable lobbying group NCTA. McSlarrow said, “Commissioner Baker is one of the nation’s leading authorities on communications policy and we’re thrilled she’s agreed to head the government relations operations for NBCUniversal. Meredith’s executive branch and business experience along with her exceptional relationships in Washington bring Comcast and NBCUniversal the perfect combination of skills.”
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels recently signed a bill that eliminated public funding for Planned Parenthood. It also banned abortions after 20 weeks, required women considering abortions to receive written information about the procedure and its alternatives, and required doctors to provide ready access to emergency care for women injured during abortion procedures. The bill makes Indiana the first state to prevent Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood.
In response to complaints that defunding Planned Parenthood would jeopardize the health of women, Governor Daniels “commissioned a careful review of access to services across the state and can confirm that all non-abortion services, whether family planning or basic women’s health, will remain readily available in every one of our 92 counties.” He promised to “take any actions necessary to ensure that vital medical care is, if anything, more widely available than before.” He even allowed that organizations such as Planned Parenthood could get their sweet, sweet taxpayer funding back… provided they stopped performing abortions.
Planned Parenthood didn’t care for this bill, and they weren’t about to shut down that lucrative abortion machine, so they asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt to block its implementation. Today she declined this request, so the new law will go into effect while Planned Parenthood’s legal and constitutional challenges make their way through the courts.
As reported by the Indianapolis Star, the judge “said from the bench that today’s ruling should not be viewed as an indication of how she will rule on the law’s constitutionality.” She didn’t stop the law from taking effect because she found no danger of “immediate” and “irreversible harm” to Planned Parenthood of Indiana, which has plenty of time to bill its Medicaid expenses, plus a hefty emergency fund. It will also continue to receive a couple of million dollars per year in federal funding.
In its pending lawsuit, Planned Parenthood argues that defunding them would “void contracts and grants already in effect, violating the U.S. Constitution’s contract clause.” They also maintain that forcing them to choose between performing abortions, and receiving funds not directly related to abortion, is both unconstitutional and a violation of Medicaid law.
This brings us back to the infinite flexibility of money. Every dollar taxpayers are compelled to give Planned Parenthood frees up a dollar to be used for any operations it conducts. It’s absurd to speak of public funding as somehow sanitized because it comes in envelopes that say “DO NOT USE FOR ABORTIONS.”
Ostensibly free Americans are forced to give far too much money to wealthy corporations – a point the Left suddenly loses interest in making, when the corporation in question is Planned Parenthood. We can at least grant the taxpayers relief from subsidizing activities they consider an outright moral horror. Then we can work our way back through the stuff they merely regard as stupid.
The Indianapolis Star notes that Governor Daniels’ signature of this bill “has added to speculation that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination. The move could be viewed as a way to reassure Republican primary voters. Earlier this year, social conservatives criticized the governor for calling for a truce on social issues.” I don’t think Planned Parenthood is interested in truces any longer. Today, they couldn’t even get a cease-fire.
Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start – and no one seems to have noticed.
On April 8, a group he’s funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros’s goal for such an event is to “establish new international rules” and “reform the currency system.” It’s all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for “a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order.”
The event is bringing together “more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders’ to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new ‘multilateral system,” or an economic system where America isn’t so dominant.
More than two-thirds of the slated speakers have direct ties to Soros. The billionaire who thinks “the main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat” is taking no chances.
Thus far, this global gathering has generated less publicity than a spelling bee. And that’s with at least four journalists on the speakers list, including a managing editor for the Financial Times and editors for both Reuters and The Times. Given Soros’s warnings of what might happen without an agreement, this should be a big deal. But it’s not.
Wait till you see who else on on the attendee’s list. Find out HERE.
George Soros is the number one money man of the radical left and the Democratic Party.
You can look at the 2010 Budget Chart Book HERE. Just click on the tabs near the top of the web page for the categories and then you will see sub-categories allowing you to examine almost any meaningful statistic imaginable.
Be sure to look at this chart right HERE to find out just who it is that have been paying taxes and you will see that the top 10% of wage earners paid 71% of federal income tax. But there are two very important thing you should know about this stat.
Starting in 2008 and more so today, this number is going down and more tax burden is being transferred away from the wealthy and investor and production classes. Why? because when you have a government that is this active and when you have this level of economic and regulatory and fiscal uncertainty those who can invest or take risk park their money so it is not taxed or they invest it in a safe place like China, where the leaders have some economic common sense. As a result the tax burden is transfered to the middle class, working poor and small businesses.
The other thing you should know is that for the super rich and the very well connected it does not matter what the wage earner (small business) tax rate is, because they have loopholes in the 6o,000 page tax code made for them and in the case of those like John and Teresa Kerry, or George Soros, much of their income is defined as either non taxable or not taxable at the wage earner rate. Now what party has been saying that we need to have a flatter and more simple tax code to help avoid this problem?
Your tax dollars at work…
The EPA is now paying the American Lung Association to attack Republicans:
[Editor’s Note – This is a billboard just a few miles north of where I live attacking Fred Upton. In a crazy ruling by the court, they handed the EPA the power to regulate CO2 as if it were a pollutant. The Constitution says that all lawmaking power rests with the Congress. It is with this “authority” under color of law (fake law) that Obama has instructed the EPA to create a Cap & Trade scheme against the will of Congress and the American people. This is profoundly and expressly unconstitutional and a complete violation of Separation of Powers.
So the Republicans are moving to take this power away. This billboard is Obama’s response. The dishonest narrative is “Republicans want to poison the air and kill this child “. CO2 is what we breath out and what trees and plants breath in, without it we would all starve. Almost any economic activity creates some CO2 so this is an “excuse” to regulate anything and everything by using unelected bureaucrats and ignoring Congress altogether.
This is abuse of power on its face, Democrats know this but just don’t care, and some Republicans are afraid of being accused of wanting to poison the girl on the billboard. The only way to put an end to this is to vote for bold conservative candidates overwhelmingly.]
The ALA put up four billboards like this one near Rep. Fred Upton’s office in Michigan. Upton is the House Energy and Commerce Chairman. (PlowShareGroup)
The Environmental Protection Agency is paying the American Lung Association to run attack ads against Republican members of Congress.
“The American Lung Association has targeted House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton for his efforts to stop U.S. EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions by placing billboards within sight of his district offices linking climate change with increased childhood asthma,” reports E&E News PM.
But as we reported last week in “EPA owns the American Lung Association,” the EPA has paid the American Lung Association over $20 million in the last ten years, and has paid the ALA many more millions in a symbiotic relationship going back to at least 1990.
The EPA-ALA relationship works something like this: EPA pays the ALA and, in return, the ALA agitates for more stringent EPA air quality regulation, including by lawsuit. Now it’s billboards.
In addition to defunding National Public Radio, the House GOP should look at the EPA’s funding of American Lung Association.
It doesn’t matter that the EPA policies will cause your
General Electric paid no American taxes in 2010, the New York Times reports:
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
G.E.’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, is considered Barack Obama’s favorite businessman and serves as the head of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Fred Barnes wrote about Immelt here.
Meet the lovely and quite brilliant YouTube personality Laurbubble.
I sent Laurbubble the following message:
You have just figured out the American left. They make a “policy” and cry “WERE SAVED!” without any regard for the unintended consequences of their policy. The policy usually makes matters worse as you have so eloquently described. Usually the policies they make for the “public good” increase the stock of one of their contributors, or stick it to those who donate to the other party.
The more the planner’s plans fail the more the planners plan.
Editor’s Note – It is tenacity and vigilance like this that has kept Michelle Malkin the queen of conservative internet news since the invention of the medium. The respect she enjoys is well deserved.
Caught between their boss’s anti-lobbyist rhetoric and the reality of governing, President Barack Obama’s aides often steer meetings with lobbyists to a complex just off the White House grounds – and several of the lobbyists involved say they believe the choice of venue is no accident.
It allows the Obama administration to keep these lobbyist meetings shielded from public view — and out of Secret Service logs collected on visitors to the White House and later released to the public.
…Obama’s administration has touted its release of White House visitors logs as a breakthrough in transparency, as the first White House team ever to reveal the comings and goings around the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building.
The Jackson Place townhouses are a different story.
There are no records of meetings at the row houses just off Lafayette Square that house the White House Conference Center and the Council on Environmental Quality, home to two of the busiest meeting spaces. The White House can’t say who attended meetings there, or how often. The Secret Service doesn’t log in visitors or require a background check the way it does at the main gates of the White House.
…It’s not only Jackson Place. Another favorite off-campus meeting spot is a nearby Caribou Coffee, which, according to the New York Times, has hosted hundreds of meetings among lobbyists and White House staffers since Obama took office.
And administration officials recently asked some lobbyists and others who met with them to sign confidentiality agreements barring them from disclosing what was discussed at meetings with administration officials, in that case a rental policy working group.
Mark Hertsgaard (MH): Why does your party continue to deny what the National Academy of Sciences and virtually every scientific organization…
Sen. James Inhofe (JI): You know you ask the same question over and over again. Did you happen six days ago to be at the hearing at the House where I testified?
MH: I was not, sir.
JI: See I answered all those questions in detail. The science is mixed. We all know the science is mixed. The economy is not mixed because the economics are pretty well established.
MH: How is the science mixed when the National Academy of Sciences and every…
JI: We have reports all you have to do is go back and look, I have given numerous talks on the floor…We started off with a list, I believe, of maybe 40 scientists who had different views, then it went up to 2- or 300, then it went to 900 or so. So there are a lot of scientists who don’t agree. I don’t take as gospel everything that comes from any particular scientific group.
MH: When every scientific organization in the world says this, sir.
JI: That is not true.
A Woman from ACP, identified by Solve Climate News as Allie Carter, a recent Michigan State University graduate (AC): I don’t understand why my generation has to suffer because it sounds like you’re not liking what you are hearing from these scientists you’re cherry picking.
JI: So your generation — Now who are you with?
AC: I’m with the Alliance for Climate Protection and I am here speaking on behalf young people.
JI: …No you’re not!
AC: I absolutely am.
JI: I have twenty kids and grand kids. You want to see a picture of them? [pulls out pictures]. Okay that’s good.
Inhofe then proceeded to calmly explain that the United States cannot sink its economy to satisfy the unproven hypotheses of a mixed group of scientists and activists.
JI: When you ask that question “what if you’re wrong?” Stop and think about it. What if you are wrong and we pass the largest tax increase in the history of America to do something that is not justified. I remember, and I use this in testimony. In 1993, you weren’t around in 1993… the Clinton/Gore tax increase was the largest tax increase at that point in history. All marginal rates, gasoline, everything went up. That was a total of a $30 billion tax increase. This would be ten times that great. This would be somewhere between $300 and $400 billion tax increase. That admittedly, now listen to this very carefully, according to the director at the EPA would not have any effect on emissions because that would only be in the United States. As jobs went to places like India and China and Mexico and maybe places that they don’t have any emissions requirements and actually increase emissions. So should we do that when we know and you know and everyone out here knows that it would not reduce worldwide emissions? Period. We all know this.
The ambush ended with Hertsgaard asking Inhofe if he would apologize to his children, to which Inhofe asked Hertsgaard if he would apologize to his 20 children and grandchildren.
Of course as we have reported IPCC scientists are backing away from that IPCC report fast as its claims are discovered to be unsourced, fraudulent, or well intentioned but just plain wrong. As far as literal conspiracies among academics and administrators to shut people up, force conformity, drive professors and students out, suppress research etc. please see our Academic Misconduct category as it has many of literally thousands of examples of just that. We start that category with this post right HERE. Of course the most famous proven conspiracy among academics was ClimateGate as the climate hoax scientists were busted by their own internal emails. So not only do literal conspiracies happen, we learn of new proven examples of them on a regular basis. If anyone is foolish enough to attempt to argue the point with me below, please have it it. Good luck because you are going to need it.
NOAA Refutes Gore’s Claim Recent Snowstorms Caused By Global Warming
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration somewhat under the radar a few weeks ago rebutted Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s claim that January’s heavy snowstorms across the country were caused by global warming.
As readers might remember, the man that has been made rich advancing the myth that carbon dioxide is destroying the planet weighed in on the inclement weather at his blog on February 1:
Last week on his show Bill O’Reilly asked, “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” and then said he had a call into me. I appreciate the question.
As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming:
“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”
“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”
A week later, NOAA posted the following article at its Climate Watch magazine (h/t Yid With Lid):
This is the second consecutive very wintry winter in the eastern United States. Last year, NOAA climate scientists concluded the record-breaking snowstorms most likely resulted from the combination of two natural climate patterns: El Niño and the Arctic Oscillation.
So what about this year? Last winter’s El Niño has flipped to La Niña, as temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific have been cooler than normal. But the Arctic Oscillation seems to be in a repeat pattern, with conditions this December and January very similar to last winter, according to Deke Arndt, Chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.
.…..Hence, and not at all surprisingly, the man that just this past Friday accused Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal of being part of a conspiracy to mislead people about the dangers of manmade global warming was once again guilty of it himself.
George Soros — whom we’re always told is not serving his own economic interests at all by promoting liberal politicians and big-government policies — is launching a new investment fund that plans to profit off of the “green energy” boom, which is entirely dependent on government subsidies supported by the groups Soros funds.
As the press release puts it, this fund will “leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications.” As Soros puts it in the same release: “Developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency is both a significant global investment opportunity and an environmental imperative.” Cadie Thompson at CNBC’s NetNet flagged this.
So, yeah. The big-government policies advanced by the liberal outfits he funds — like Center for American Progress — will enrich the companies in which Soros is investing.
But this story gets better.
The press release casually mentions whom Soros is hiring to run this new fund: Cathy Zoi. As Cadie Thompson at CNBC’s NetNet (edited by my brother John Carney), puts it,
Zoi was Barack Obama’s “Acting Under Secretary for Energy and Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.” An Al Gore acolyte, Zoi was Obama’s point-woman on subsidizing green tech. Now she’s going to work for George Soros to profit off of subsidized green tech.
If you remember Zoi’s name, it’s because of another green-tech conflict of interest: Zoi’s husband is an executive at a window company, Serious Windows, which the White House regularly held up as a “poster child of green industry.”
The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota put it this way:
“Ms. Zoi is married to Robin Roy, a top executive at Serious Materials, a privately held manufacturer of ‘sustainable green building materials’ located in California. On the Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure submitted by Ms. Zoi to the White House Ethics office as part of her confirmation, Ms. Zoi disclosed ownership with her spouse of 120,000 vested and unvested stock options in Serious Materials, a company her office regulates and that she may profit from.”
Oh yeah, Serious Materials pocketed federal stimulus money, too.
But we can put all that behind us, because now Zoi has left the Obama Administration and will go back to work making an honest living in the private sector, where she can put all the knowledge she gained from working for the Department of Energy to work for the private equity firms. Thata girl Zoi!
EPA making rules as they go, picking winners and losers
Congress isn’t the only entity that knows how to pick winners and losers for energy sources and technologies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing its best to follow suit by imposing new rules on the natural gas industry and providing exemptions to the biomass industry.
For natural gas, the EPA evasively posted a new rule on hydraulic fracturing, requiring a company to obtain permits if the company uses diesel when fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, a long-proven process by which pressurized water and other substances are injected into wells to extract natural gas, has been the subject of much debate between environmentalists and industry because of those “other substances.”
An exemption in the 2005 Safe Drinking Water Act protects natural gas companies from disclosing proprietary information regarding the chemicals they use to when fracking. Environmentalists are pushing for full disclosure because of the concern that hydraulic fracturing is a threat to America’s drinking water. But in this instance, with the EPA’s new rule on diesel disclosure, perhaps more unsettling than the new rule is the way in which the EPA issued the rule. Mike Soraghan of Greenwire reports:
Federal agencies usually change policies with a multistep process that begins with the Federal Register and does not end for a year or more. But the fracturing permit change happened without so much as a press release. It was quietly posted amid an increasingly noisy debate about fracturing, a process in which chemical-laced water is injected underground at high pressure to crack rock formations and release oil or gas.
EPA has launched a multiyear study of the safety of fracturing. Hundreds of people showed up last summer at EPA hearings about the practice in New York and Pennsylvania. It has been the subject of a piece on “60 Minutes,” an HBO documentary called “Gasland” and even an episode of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”
The casual nature of the posting, and the lack of any date, left oil and gas industry attorneys puzzling over what the change applied to and whether it applied only for the future, or retroactively. Of particular concern was that companies had been ordered to give documentation to Congress about their fracturing practices, and EPA was ordering disclosure, as well.
If they had disclosed that they had used diesel—legally—but did not get a specific permit, could they be penalized? Was there any way to get such a permit? What should states, who administer the program, do about regulating fracturing?
The story gets more complicated from there, mostly because of a series of loopholes with regards to the EPA regulating the use of diesel for fracking. Having the EPA close the loophole and create a clear definition with regards to diesel use isn’t necessarily bad, but it sets a dangerous precedent for the EPA quickly changing the rules of the game for industry with no consideration for debate and public comment.
Reining in the EPA’s regulatory overreach and unilateral decision making should be a priority for the 112th Congress. Congress should thoroughly evaluate and question the EPA’s newly implemented rules and have EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson justify her agency’s decision not just when it comes to hydraulic fracturing but other rules as well, most notably the regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Speaking of which, Congress should ask Jackson why the EPA exempted biofuel refineries from obtaining permit requirements for CO2 emissions. This year the EPA will start regulating emissions from new power plants and major expansions of large greenhouse-gas-emitting plants (more than 25,000 tons of CO2 per year) and will finalize regulations for existing refineries and fossil fuel electric utilities by November 2012. But not biofuel plants. The reason given is that the science clearly shows that biofuel production is net neutral when it comes to CO2 emissions.
Right. Just like the science clearly shows increased CO2 emissions will result in sea level rises, stressed water resources, increased size and quantity of wildfires, insect outbreaks, threats to ecosystems and national security, and other catastrophic events.
New studies, however, are showing that biofuel production is not carbon-neutral. A report from Rice Universitynotes that when you account for land use conversion, the use of fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides (which emit much more potent methane and nitrous oxide), as well as the fossil fuels used for production and distribution, biofuel production becomes quite carbon-intensive. For an industry that built its business model around subsidies, tariffs, and federal protection, it’s no surprise that the EPA threw the biofuel industry another bone. Now it’s time for Congress to put the EPA on the stand and ask why.
Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.
In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.
The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.
Federal agencies have also taken “insufficient” action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.
“We believe Google has inappropriately benefited from close ties to the administration,” the letter said. “Google is most consumers’ gateway to the Internet. Nonetheless, it should not get special treatment and access because of a special relationship with the administration.”
Consumer Watchdog may have an ally in Issa, a California Republican. In July he sent a letter to Google raising concerns that White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin, the former head of global public policy for Google, had inappropriate e-mail contact with company employees.
A Google spokeswoman questioned Consumer Watchdog’s objectivity. Some groups have questioned the group’s relationship with Google rival Microsoft, and Consumer Watchdog’s criticisms of online privacy efforts have also exclusively zeroed in on Google, with the group rarely mentioning Microsoft, Facebook and other Web-based companies in the past two years.
“This is just the latest in a long list of press stunts from an organization that admits to working closely with our competitors,” said the Google spokeswoman.
But Consumer Watchdog gets no funding from Microsoft or any other Google competitor, said John Simpson, consumer advocate with the group. “We don’t have any relationship with Microsoft at all,” he said. “We don’t take any of their money.”
Consumer Watchdog has decided to focus on Google’s privacy practices because the company’s services serve as a gateway to the Internet for many people, Simpson said. If the group can push Google, “without a doubt the dominant Internet company,” to change its privacy practices, other companies will follow suit, he said.
“Google’s held itself to be the company that says its motto is, ‘don’t be evil,’ and they also advocate openness for everyone else,” he said. “We’re trying to hold them to their own word.”
Consumer Watchdog, in January 2009, suggested that Google was preparing a lobbying campaign asking Congress to allow the sale of electronic health records. Google called the allegations “100 percent false and unfounded.”
In April, Consumer Watchdog officials called for the U.S. Department of Justice to break up Google. They appeared at a press conference with a representative of the Microsoft- and Amazon.com-funded Open Book Alliance.
Consumer Watchdog’s latest complaints about the relationship of Google and the Obama administration are outlined in a 32-page report.
The paper questions a decision by NASA allowing Google executives to use its Moffett Federal Airfield near Google headquarters. Although H211, a company controlled by Google top executives, pays NASA rent, they enjoy access to the airfield that other companies or groups don’t have, Simpson said.
The paper also questions Google contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and other agencies, suggesting that, in some cases, Google contracts were fast-tracked. The paper also questions Google’s relationship with the U.S. National Security Agency and calls for the company to be more open about what consumer information it shares with the spy agency.
When asked if other companies, including broadband providers, should disclose what customer information they share with the NSA, Simpson said they should, too.
“I understand the NSA is a super-secret spook organization,” he said. “But given Google’s very special situation where it possesses so much personal data about people, I think that there ought to be a little more openness about what precisely goes on between the two.”
There is a a great deal of hypocrisy in politics. Too much.
For Democrats the hypocrisy is on more issues than I can list. They are “pro-choice” unless you want to pick what school your child goes to, want choice on forced union membership, want a toilet that holds more water, want to keep buying the Edison light bulb, want to have a powerful car without being punished and the list goes on. Democrats rail about Wall Street, big corporations and the super rich, but what they don’t want you to know is that these groups overwhelmingly fund an support Democrats. The simple truth is that most of the regulations and “social justice” imposed by the left creams small and medium sized domestic business while aiding large and international finance, banks and corporations [See our Corporatism and our Big Bizz Loves Big Govt categories for all the evidence you will ever need if you doubt it – Editor].
For both party’s a big one that sticks out is agricultural corporate welfare (this includes ethanol). For Republicans this type of corporate welfare runs into the face of the Republican brand. While natural disasters and other extreme shocks are a problem that government subsidies can deal with and it can be argued should, everyone knows that farm subsidies are out of control and go to those who for the most part do not need them.
The problem is that speaking this truth has always been considered political suicide in many farm states like Iowa and Indiana. Republicans are learning that the Tea Party, which enjoys support form women, Hispanics and cross pressured independents, is here to stay and they are serious. Many believe that Americans are ready to have an adult conversation about these third rails. Democrats still consider government union over reach a third rail. Democrats are going to pay another price in ’12 by walking out to protect government unions that over reach, often get overpaid, often perform their duties poorly, are corrupt, and have gold plated benefits which they contribute little or nothing for.
Soon more Democrats are going to stand up for the taxpayers who are being fleeced by these government unions because Independents who are getting more and more informed are not going to have it any longer. The Republicans are noticing this too.
So Haley Barbour came out and told it to Iowans faces saying that the program “can’t be off limits” from reductions. This is a startling act of political courage and the fact that he isn’t already doomed to be ousted from politics is yet another indication that even farmers get it and are willing to have an adult conversation about these programs. We just cannot afford them.
We should not cut these programs off cold turkey as that would be an economic shock, but with the exception of the program to aid farmers who suffer natural disasters and other economic shocks, these programs need to be slowly but surely scaled back so that the industry can adjust.
[Editor’s Note – Tucker Carlson’s “The Daily Caller” has been on a roll lately. While the left might dismiss DC as partisan, the truth is that DC has never been afraid to point out GOP hypocrisy and dirty laundry. DC will not demean the conservative/traditional point of view like the elite media does and is willing to blatantly lie to do so. The DC is center/right but so are the American people. The journalism here is first rate and the article below is an example of it.]
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour generally opposes government involvement in the economy, but like other potential Republican presidential candidates, he’s willing to make an exception when it comes to farm subsidies.
The federal government doled out about $20 billion to farmers last year, including some with net worth in the millions. Barbour made a trip to Iowa this week where he said he could support some kind of cut in those subsidies, but in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, the seven-year governor said he’s in favor of keeping the Depression-era welfare programs going.
“Some of them are very important,” Barbour told TheDC when asked if he supported taxpayer subsidies for farmers. “What we want to have in the United States is abundant food at a responsibly low price. To do that, we have to have an appropriately large supply of agricultural products. When sales volumes are good, prices are reasonable, there shouldn’t be any farm subsidies. But for natural reasons, nature, or what other countries are doing in terms of how they’re handling their markets, sometimes it is appropriate to have farm subsidies.”
Dating back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, farm subsidies guarantee farmers a bottom line price on their goods — a taxpayer-funded luxury many other industries lack.
The idea that the government should step into a marketplace to ensure prices are “reasonable” is anathema to the orthodox conservative view that markets work best left free from government interference. Republicans often tout a free, or lightly regulated market as the best method to distribute goods and services, but for Barbour, that principle does not apply to agriculture, which he says needs the government interference to function properly.
“What you want is to have policies that lead to ample supply and prices that yield good prices for the person at the grocery store but profits for the farmers,” Barbour said.
Many Republicans not only support the subsidies, they also benefit from them.
Perhaps most famously, Congressional Tea Party Caucus founder Rep. Michele Bachmann’s family farm received more than $250,000 in government subsidies over 11 years.
Barbour, however, has gone further than others toward support for cutting farm spending, saying in Iowa this week that the program “can’t be off limits” from reductions.
The reasons Republicans have trouble prying themselves away from government welfare programs for farming are varied. For starters, farming interests have a major footprint in the world of Washington lobbying. The American Farm Bureau has spent more than $60 million on lobbyists since 2000, and the farming interest groups donate mightily to both parties in each election cycle. Many of the most conservative members of the Republican House and Senate represent agriculture states, and bring in millions of federal dollars for their state in subsidies.
The state of Iowa, which plays a starring role in the presidential primary election each cycle because of its early primary schedule and relies heavily on federal subsidies, also makes it difficult for candidates like Barbour to come out against them.
But the support for the programs doesn’t stop candidates like Barbour from railing against government involvement in the economy.
“Every American knows that the last two years the government’s growth should have been on economic growth and job creation. It hasn’t been. The Obama stimulus bill stimulated more government, not more jobs in the private sector,” Barbour told TheDC. “We gotta understand, a bigger government means a smaller economy.”
Barbour added that he’s “thinking” of running for president and will make his decision sometime in April.
The video is of Dr. Thomas Sowell who is likely the greatest and most published economist alive. He is a free market guy so this is why you may not have heard of him. The use of Dr. Sowell’s materials is virtually banned at IUSB so do not expect to see him in class. The left is very hostile to Dr. Sowell especially because he is a black free market economist.
Dr. Sowell appeared on Wednesday night’s “The Kudlow Report,” on CNBC to promote his book, “Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to Economics.” Host Larry Kudlow asked Sowell about the current outlook and his long-term predictions for the economic system as a whole in the United States. The senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution replied that politics plays into the answer.
I have never seen Dr. Sowell so concerned. As some of the good economists have said, this recession is different. Combine that with the fact that government has so effectively chased wealth out of the country and undermined economic confidence that unless we change government culture permanently and do it soon the United States may be done as an economic super power.
WASHINGTON — Top Democratic fundraisers and lobbyists with links to the White House are behind a proposed wind farm in Texas that stands to get $450 million in stimulus money, even though a Chinese company would operate the farm and its turbines would be built in China.
The farm’s backers also have close ties with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who, at the height of his hard-fought re-election bid this fall, helped blunt congressional criticism over stimulus dollars possibly going to create jobs in China by endorsing a proposal by the Chinese company to build a factory in his home state. Although his campaign received thousands of dollars in donations from the wind farm’s backers and Reid stood on stage with them at a campaign event they hosted, his office declined to answer any questions about the wind farm’s organizers or their plans for Nevada.
The wind farm, first announced more than a year ago, would consist of 300 2-megawatt wind turbines, each perched atop a 26-story-tall steel tower and spinning three blades — each half the length of a football field. The farm would span three counties and 36,000 acres in West Texas land best known for its oil. Dubbed the Spinning Star wind farm, the project’s 600-megawatt capacity is, theoretically, enough to power 180,000 American homes and would be the sixth-largest wind farm in the country.
It is being planned by an unusual joint partnership between the U.S. Renewable Energy Group, a Dallas investment firm with strong ties to Washington and the Democratic Party, and A-Power Energy Generation Systems, an upstart Chinese supplier of wind turbines. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicate the Chinese are bringing financing and the turbines.
What the Americans are supplying is the local know-how and political clout in Washington, where decisions on how to distribute billions in loan guarantees, stimulus grants and financial incentives are made.
The clock is ticking for Spinning Star: To claim the stimulus grant it must arrange its financing and begin work on the wind farm by Dec. 31. Besides the $450 million stimulus grant, A-Power’s SEC filings indicate the joint-venture also will pursue a Department of Energy-backed loan guarantee. According to the SEC filings, the project is waiting to hear if it will receive the loan guarantee before financing will follow to build the turbines.
This is neo-corporatist corruption in its Chicago style glory.
GE, which owned NBC and MSNBC, benefited with its relationship with the Democratic Leadership. GE has also had other ethical problems which are pointed out in the video. Of course noth NBC and MSNBC abandoned serious news reporting long ago and chose a path of highly biased and unfair reporting on one side, to nightly lies and character assassination on the other.
This leads us to another opportunity to remind you all of Norton’s First Law:
Big business loves big government, which is why big business loves domestic taxes and regulation because it keeps the small and medium sized competition out of the competition. It also causes inflation, so ultimately it is you who pays and the poor who are hardest hit. (Big business often gets loopholes written in the laws for themselves such as Nancy Pelosi trying to get a part of the tuna industry exempted from the minimum wage law).
Three SEIU Locals–Including Chicago Chapter–Waived From Obamacare Requirement
Monday, January 24, 2011
Three local chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), whose political action committee spent $27 million supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, have received temporary waivers from a provision in the Obamacare law.
The three SEIU chapters include the Local 25 in Obama’s hometown of Chicago.
The waivers allow health insurance plans to limit how much they will spend on a policy holder’s medical coverage for a given year. Under the new health care law, however, such annual limits are phased out by the year 2014. (Under HHS regulations, annual limits can be no less than $750,000 for 2011, no less than $1.25 million in 2012 and no less than $2 million in 2013.)
The SEIU, with more than 2 million members nationally, includes health care workers, janitors, security guards, and state and local government workers.
The three SEIU locals, covering a total of 36,064 enrollees, are covered by the federal waivers, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS gave a waiver to Local 25 SEIU in Chicago with 31,000 enrollees on Oct. 1, 2010; to Local 1199 SEIU Greater New York Benefit Fund with 4,544 enrollees on Oct. 10, 2010; and to the SEIU Local 1 Cleveland Welfare Fund with 520 enrollees on Nov. 15, 2010.
So far, the Obama administration has issued waivers to 222 entities, including businesses, unions and charitable organizations. Of that total, 45 were labor organizations.
A total of 1,507,418 enrollees are now included in the waivers. More than one-third — 512,315 – of the enrollees affected were insured by union health plans.
SEIU Local 1199’s health plan put a $50,000 cap on medical expenses for its New Jersey nursing home workers, according to 1199 SEIU spokeswoman Leah Gonzalez. That’s $700,000 under the 2011 limit stipulated by HHS regulations.
In September, HHS announced it would grant waivers to employers to prevent some workers from losing their benefits if the insurer could not meet new health care law’s requirements on annual limits. The waivers are granted by HHS if the department determines “compliance with the interim final regulations would result in a significant decrease in access to benefits or a significant increase in premiums,” according to a Sept. 3 memo by Steve L. Larson, director of the HHS Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.
Local 1199, SEIU’s Greater New York Benefit Fund, requested the waiver specifically with respect to its separate plan for New Jersey members, according to Gonzalez. This waiver primarily affects low-wage New Jersey nursing home workers whose health care plan provides medical, hospital, prescription, dental and vision benefits.
The New Jersey members now have an annual maximum health care benefit of $50,000. Gonzalez said fewer than 1 percent of members have ever reached that cap, and that those members who did received additional help.
“The members’ health benefits are paid for by the employer and are negotiated through collective bargaining,” Gonzalez said in a written statement to CNSNews.com. “Several years ago, facing limited dollars from the employers for this small group, the members themselves chose how to shape their health plan to get the most out of their coverage.”
Gonzalez added that prescriptions are excluded from the cap. “For example, if a member maxes out from a hospital stay, she/he can continue to get their life-saving medications throughout the year while accessing alternative coverage at low-cost community clinics.”
Neither SEIU Local 25 nor Local 1, nor the national organization responded to CNSNews.com’s request for comment.
The SEIU’s Committee on Political Education made $27,829,845.91 in independent expenditures on Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. SEIU-affiliated groups in Illinois have long supported Obama’s campaigns and endorsed him for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2004. In 2008, the national union backed Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. (See earlier story.)
A move by the Environmental Protection Agency to revoke the long-standing permits for a mammoth coal mine in West Virginia sends a strong signal that President Obama plans to implement key parts of his agenda even though newly empowered Republicans can block his plans in Congress.
In the aftermath of the November elections, many political pundits predicted that the once-unchecked Obama legislative machine would turn it’s energies to federal rulemaking as a way to circumvent Republicans on Capitol Hill. And the EPA’s decision last week suggests that those forecasts were spot-on.
Much to the consternation of the West Virginia delegation in Congress, the coal industry, and the working people of the Mountain State, the agency took the unprecedented step of revoking a mining permit that it had issued four years ago to Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia.
The revocation prompted unusually harsh responses from West Virginia’s two Democratic Senators.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller sent the president a letter which read, in part:
“I am writing to express my outrage with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to veto a rigorously reviewed and lawfully issued permit at the Spruce Number 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. This action not only affects this specific permit, but needlessly throws other permits into a sea of uncertainty at a time of great economic distress.”
[Wow, take a look in the mirror Sen. Rockefeller. Who are YOU to lecture anyone about creating uncertainty in business especially after the failed and corrupt stimulus, the regulatory and tax burden that is ObamaCare, AND who are you to complain about regulators just doing what they want in spite of law passed by Congress especially after you said THIS – IUSB Vision Editor]
Sen. Joe Manchin issued a statement which appeared to mock the EPA’s permitting process.
“According to the EPA, it doesn’t matter if you did everything right, if you followed all of the rules,” Manchin wrote. “Why? They just change the rules.”
ObamaCare, bank take overs, car company micromanaging, power grabs in the Food Bill and the new Financial Regulation Bill etc etc etc…. all while trillions are spent and only a few people are helped…
This leaves the United States with the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
Of course the little truth about the corporate tax rate is this, corporations never pay this, you do in the form of higher prices. All expenses of goods and services are passed on to the consumer which is you. Corporate taxes are just a way for government to raise your taxes and hide it in the form of higher prices. Of course some companies cannot raise their prices and stay competitive so they leave the country and go to China, Canada, Ireland, Mexico or Brazil.
President Obama’s own deficit commission said that we need lower rates and a leaner tax code to bring business here and to help spur compliance. Indeed, they said that the tax rates should be made lower so the government could collect more revenue to lower the debt. John Kerry even advocated lowering the corporate tax rate when he ran for president. The high tax rate combined with a 16,000 page tax code allows for government to pick winners and losers which generates corruption and paybacks. This is a no brainer folks, it needs to get done.
Will the Democrats do the right thing and lower the rate to bring jobs here? Or will they insist that the best way to grow the middle class is by waging a war of taxes, regulation, and uncertainty on their employers? And by trashing the currency with policy and monetizing the debt (printing money out of thin air). [See Cloward-Piven Strategy LINK1 and LINK2 – Editor]
UPDATE – Steve Forbes on why business is not hiring:
Well first of all the 20th Amendment was enacted in part to prevent this exact type of abuse of power. It also shows how much respect the Democrats (and a few Republicans) have for the will of the people. There was no way that the hyper flawed START Treaty would have been approved before the election or this mountain of legislation that was passed. The Democrats even attempted to pass a new 1.2 trillion dollar spending bill at the last minute. Thankfully it was pulled in the Senate.
“Christmas tree” bills filled with pork, goodies and favors, a return of the overwhelmingly unpopular Death Tax at 35%. The bill preserving the tax rates should have been passed long ago. A food regulation bill that is just a huge federal power grab to control the industry and pick winners and losers, gifts to the trial lawyers to gin up more lawsuits…. more rules, regulations and “easter eggs” we still haven’t seen yet will likely be popping up as they are discovered.
There is no doubt about it, this was the Democrats sticking their finger in your eye and yet another violation of the intent of the Constitution once again. These people do not respect the limits of the law, or any limits on their power. And this past election should just be the first step of what we, the American people, are going to do about it.
Of course the elite media raced to see who could parrot the Democratic leaderships talking points with the most flare. That little 20th Amendment thing and the spirit behind it, not worthy of a mention….. will of the people, forget it as the elite media holds you in almost as much contempt as Nancy Pelosi does.
UPDATE – Congresswomen Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) Will Move To Ban Lame Duck Sessions Of Congress as they violate spirit of the 20th Amendment.
Does it get more straight forward than this folks?
Did you see the link behind him sustainability.asu.edu – go HERE to find out just what that means.
Van Jones was appointed to work in the White House. He is a self proclaimed revolutionary communist. The founder of STORM, a group which advocated revolutionary communism. Jones was “resigned” when Glenn Beck started reading what this man writes and playing his speeches on his show. White House communications director Anita Dunn was “resigned” after she told a group of people that the philosopher she turns to most is Mao. Mao is the greatest mass murderer in the last 100 years and was a founder of the Chinese Communist Party. We know what the economic goals of communists are. This also is another example which demonstrates that government does not regulate for our benefit. They regulate to pick winners and losers to empower and enrich themselves.
Fat retirement plans, low or no contributions towards fat employee benefits, and pay that is double the average of the private sector. Who is exploiting who?
Often the politicians who negotiate the contracts with the government union work for the union as they are their number one cash contributor and make up much of their campaign force.
The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or “strong back” jobs. They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming “industry” left in our economy. Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.
How did this happen? Very quietly. The rise of government unions has been like a silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions.
Public employee unions contribute mightily to the campaigns of liberal politicians ($91 million in the midterm elections alone) who vote to increase government pay and workers. As more government employees join the unions and pay dues, the union bosses pour ever more money and energy into liberal campaigns. The result is that certain states are now approaching default. Decades of overpromising and fiscal malpractice by state and local officials have created unfunded public employee benefit liabilities of more than $3 trillion.
…
The moral case for unions—protecting working families from exploitation—does not apply to public employment. Government employees today are among the most protected, well-paid employees in the country. Ironically, public-sector unions have become the exploiters, and working families once again need someone to stand up for them.
Who is the largest single political contributor in the 2010 campaign cycle? You can be pardoned if you answer, erroneously, that it’s some new conservative group organized by Karl Rove. That’s campaign spin by the Obama Democrats, obediently relayed by certain elements of the so-called mainstream media.
The real answer is AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union’s president, Gerald McEntee, reports proudly that AFSCME will be contributing $87,500,000 in this cycle, entirely or almost entirely to Democrats. “We’re spending big,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “And we’re damn happy it’s big.”
The mainstream press hasn’t shown much interest in reporting on unions’ campaign spending, which amounted to some $400,000,000 in the 2008 cycle. And it hasn’t seen fit to run long investigative stories on why public employee unions — the large majority of whom work for state and local governments — contribute so much more to campaigns for federal office.
…
Public employee union members have become, as U.S. News and World Report Editor Mortimer Zuckerman writes, “the new privileged class,” with better pay, more generous benefits and far more lush pensions than those who pay their salaries — and who are taxed to send money to their leaders’ favored candidates.
Franklin Roosevelt thought public sector unions were a lousy idea. Do you?
He said for instance…that Republicans want to end middle class tax cuts. I thought ‘are you kidding me? The Republicans want to end middle class tax cuts?’ He said that it’s his job to grow the economy. He made one kinda odd statement after the other. And he said Republicans oppose various credits for the middle class. Those are flat-out lies!
The truth is that Democrats are not interested in taxing the wealthy and in recent years never have. Most of the very wealthy enjoy a 16,000 page tax code that is filled with exceptions. Much of the income for the truly wealthy is defines as non wage earnings, meaning that they are non taxable or taxable under a much lower rate. This is why John Kerry, who also wants to raise your taxes, paid only 12.34% federal tax on his $5,0072,000 he made in 2003.
The wealthy also have the option of just parking their money in a tax deferred growth account or some other shelter, buy gold, or just invest in China. Remember that it can only ba taxed when the money is moved. They have the option of simply not moving it, small businesses don’t have that option.
So while Google who earned 3.1 Billion dollars last year paid 2.4% tax they throw gala fund-raising events for Obama and give mega-bucks to the Democrats. In the mean time the small business Sub-S corporations (pizza shops, small manufacturing businesses, construction etc) who also pay in this tax rate are facing a new rate of 39.6%. Obama demonized the Chamber of Commerce most of the last year and who do they represent… you guessed it, most small business. Small businesses such as a small roofing manufacturer may bring in over $250,000 on paper, the simple truth is that most of that money is put back in the business. The small business owner, employer, risk taker has to pay everyone else first, the bills and the taxes all before he pays himself.
This brings us to Norton’s First Law: Big business loves big government because big government taxes and regulates the small to medium sized competition out of the competition.
The left and the elite media says that continuing current tax rates will cost the government half a trillion dollars. This is nonsense because the government increases its revenue when people move their money and when the economy grows, not when it jacks the rates up. The half a trillion dollars figure is an inflated Keynesian static model, the same static model that underestimated the 20 year cost of Medicare by a factor of 10 and the same kind of static Keynesian model that predicted that the Obama Stimulus would keep unemployment below 8%.
Always remember, figues don’t lie but liars figure.
The video below is typical of global warming propaganda. It is filled with ad-hominid attacks, claims that people like me are paid by someone combined with some very cherry picked and take out of context quotes. This video, by itself, makes an argument complete with emotional prodding that seems pretty convincing, until its claims are examined a little more closely.
But let us be clear first of all who it is that is getting paid.
These are just a couple of examples of some very serious cash. Evidence is readily available that Goldman Sachs, other investment bankers and people such as George Soros have big money riding on the acceptance of legislation like Cap & Trade schemes (look at the list of those who invested in the Chicago Climate Exchange which is now going through a reformation after Glenn Beck went after them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Other big businesses will pile on when they realize that they can use their money and influence to buy exemptions in the regulations for themselves while those regulations stick to their smaller competition.
While the alarmists claim that “deniers” are all paid for, which is demonstrably false, any examination of the grant money that goes to pro AGW groups and scientists shows massive money from just the groups we mentioned including ideological groups that have always favored centralized control of the economy. In fact as we reported just recently UN documents state that 31 out of the 62 final IPCC reviewers had a vested interest in promoting the AGW cause.
On with the propaganda complete with advanced associative advertising techniques. The production value and the cleverness of the techniques used shows that this was not done for free on someones Imac. The name of the video, and pay close attention to this as we will come back to it later, is Climate Denial Crock of the Week – The “Temp leads Carbon” Crock.
1 – At first you get the term “deniers” as if it is akin to holocaust deniers and then they go about with the Wizard of Oz imagery.
2 – They talk about what is a straw man argument, you put a false or incomplete argument in your opponents mouth and proceed to knock that down rather than the contextual argument that your opponent really presents.
3 – But at 1:30 they make a straw-man argument. They state that Dr. Ball and the other scientists in the video are falsely saying that climate scientists they oppose are claiming that “CO2 has always been and in every case the single controlling factor of global temperature” – The video they are showing is from a documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle in fact when you watch the entire clip you will see that they are not responding to the claims of climate scientists in that section of the film, they are responding to the claim of Al Gore in his filmAn Inconvenient Truth when we all saw Al Gore show that 600,000 year chart and say “Now do they ever match up” directly implying a causation between CO2 global temps. The whole point of that section of the film is to begin to educate the layman viewer on the science and to debunk false narratives that are driven in the elite media.
Below is the same clip but just expanded a few moments and you can see that they are specifically and by name talking about Al Gore’s claims. A much longer clip can be seen HERE.
The truth is that the so called “deniers” never made that claim about all global warming alarmist scientists. Their careful bit of straw man making was pretty slick wasn’t it?
Let us continue.
4 – Like all good propagandists they follow their lie with something that is true. In the next minute of the video they accurately explain that changes in Earth orbit likely cause a glacial “ice age” period every 100,000 years. Keep in mind that this section of the video is a direct admission that natural forces far out-way CO2 as a climate driver.
5 – The BS starts again, as he quotes James Hansen who is one of the most zealous proponents of global warming alarmism. He even said that energy company CEO’s should be put on trial for crimes against humanity. It is important to understand just who it is that the video relies on as “the expert”.
Hansen is now at the NASA’s Goddard Institute/ NOAA. Data from NASA’s Goddard Institute has come under fire for making up gaps in data sets
The NASA/Goddard/NOAA ground stations have been touted as evidence of AGW for the last few years but look at where these ground stations have ended up – On parking lot black tops, next to heat vents on buildings, on the back of a runway so that hot jet engine jet-wash can hit the censor, in junk yards, in rock gravel areas. Anthony Watts has been tracking these sensors down and it has led to a long series of articles called “How not to measure temperature“.
Editor’s Note – But wait a minute haven’t they been telling us that heat is being trapped at the greenhouse layer because of more man-made CO2 and Methane? If that is so then it would be easy to measure the heat changes at and just below the greenhouse layer with satellites and balloon instruments? Well guess what, climate scientists have and now those methods are made fun of and minimized by the alarmists (LINK see CBS story at the link) because much of that data just doesn’t show the warming they want to see (LINK – LINK). So they only want to use methods like the NASA ground stations which you can see by the evidence directly above such data is not just lacking in scientific scrutiny, it is laughable.
6 – At 5: 05 the video claims that “deniers” are cherry picking data and he actually shows us the “source” from Nick Caillon. Now remember this entire section and purpose of the video is to convince you, as the title says, that the 800 year lag in CO2 statement is a “crock”.
The narrator says that “deniers” do not want you to read the paper, but in reality it is the narrator who is hoping that you will not see what we are about to show you.
We confirm the close correlation between CO2 and Vostok temperature during deglaciations (1). However, Fig. 3 indicates that CO2 increases and peaks at a shallower depth in the core than 40Ar. To closely examine their phase relationship, we searched for the best fit between those two properties by adjusting the scaling ratio between 40Ar and CO2. The best correlation (R2 0.88) was obtained when we shifted the CO2 profile by 800100 years (Fig. 4). Combining this uncertainty with the uncertainty introduced by ice accumulation (800 0.2, i.e., 160 years), we obtain an overall uncertainty of200 years, indicating that the increase in CO2 lags Antarctic warming by 800 200 years, which we must consider a mean phase lag because of the method we used to make the correlation. We cannot think of a mechanism that would make 40Ar lead the temperature change, although a lag is possible if the temperature or accumulation change affects the nondiffusive zone (27).
Now wait a minute, isn’t the entire point of this video that the 800 year lag in CO2 statement is a crock… as in not true? Yet there it is in black & white right on the very study he says that “deniers” didn’t want you to read. In fact I would be thrilled if you read the paper because the whole point is this:
Does climate change – yes
Is there such a thing as greenhouse effect – yes
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas – yes
With that said, CO2 is a trace gas, if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was doubled it would still be a trace gas. There are plenty of other gases that have a much higher impact on the greenhouse effect such as water vapor. Man’s contribution to CO2 is dwarfed by natural forces that put CO2 back into the air such as animals, insects, decaying plants, volcanoes etc. There are plenty of other natural forces that effect global temps other than greenhouse gas.
You all know the old saying that a butterfly flapping its wings can effect weather. This study says, and most people agree that made made CO2 may be responsible for a tiny portion of the greenhouse effect. Nut the question is, if we all started driving a Prius tomorrow and replaced all coal plants with nuclear what would the effect be and the answer which has been stated by Bjorn Lomborg, Lord Monckton, and countless others is that the answer would be a tiny fraction of 1 degree over many decades.
Back to Nick Caillon:
The 800-year lag cannot really rule out any of these mechanisms as having sole control. Any of these mechanisms might plausibly require a finite amount of warming before CO2 outgassing becomes significant. Nevertheless, we think that our results are more consistent with a process that involves the deep ocean, as its mixing time is close to the observed 800-year lag.
Finally, the situation at Termination III differs from the recent anthropogenic CO2 increase. As recently noted by Kump (38), we should distinguish between internal influences (such as the deglacial CO2 increase) and external influences (such as the anthropogenic CO2 increase) on the climate system. Although the recent CO2 increase has clearly been imposed first, as a result of anthropogenic activities, it naturally takes, at Termination III, some time for CO2 to outgas from the ocean once it starts to react to a climate change that is first felt in the atmosphere. The sequence of events during this Termination is fully consistent with CO2 participating in the latter 4200 years of the warming. The radiative forcing due to CO2 may serve as an amplifier of initial orbital forcing, which is then further amplified by fast atmospheric feedbacks (39) that are also at work for the present day and future climate.
So once again Caillon is making it clear that natural forces are the big movers and shakers in global temperature changes and that CO2 MAY have some amplifier affect on the changes that happen naturally. I agree, just as the butterfly’s wings also have an effect on a hurricane, man made CO2 may have an effect on large natural forces that are the movers and shakers of climate change, but for us to really feel it and see it the big natural mover has to happen. No where in the Caillon study does it predict that the CO2 caused by man will bring catastrophic results that require the wholesale change of society nor does he claim that by eliminating all fossil fuels can we save the planet as NASA’s Dr. Hansen likes to fear monger on about.
Also notice that Caillon indicates that this CO2 amplifier effect may participate in the last 4200 years of warming in the 100,000 year ice age cycle; the end/beginning of which we are no where even close to near.
Scared yet? Ready to trash the economy and turn freedom over to government central planners now? Cooler heads prevail.
7 – At 7:48 in the video the narrator starts his summation with a totally new false statement, “We know that the Sun has not been a significant factor in the last 50 years”. Wow, 50 years is a pretty short time, weren’t we just talking about lengths of time in 30,000 and 100,000 years? Wait a minute how does he “know” that ? The Caillon article nor the clip from the “deniers” film mentioned the sun, so where is this coming from?
Well it wasn’t from the University of Colorado data set featured on Tony Watts’ site showing a correlation between sea level rise and solar activity:
For those of you who do not know Michelle Rhee, she is one of the stars from the hit film “Waiting for Superman”. The film is a brilliant documentary about people who made a difference or who tried to make a difference in public schools. Rhee was the Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor. While she was able to make positive changes, the key aspects of her reform plan were stopped by the teachers union who is desperate to maintain the failing status quo (if you think that what I just said is even a MILD exaggeration consider this your personal invitation to demonstrate otherwise).
Before we begin it should be clear that the “Center for Public Integrity” CPI is a far left outfit complete with all the spin and trimmings. And while the story they tell is spun I find it to be directionally accurate. While it is rather obvious that environmental regulations go way beyond science and are in fact used to pick winners and losers for purposes of corruption, influence and donations; this article demonstrates that fact with detail. Unknowinglyand in it’s own way, the CPI has made the case against leviathan government and the kind of “Chicago Style” regulations that always result from it as well as this web log ever could.
In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.
The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Coal-burning utilities like Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling are among the firms with histories of serious environmental violations that have won blanket NEPA exemptions.
Even a project at BP’s maligned refinery in Texas City, Tex. — owner of the oil industry’s worst safety record and site of a deadly 2005 explosion, as well as a benzene leak earlier this year — secured a waiver for the preliminary phase of a carbon capture and sequestration experiment involving two companies with past compliance problems. The primary firm has since dropped out of the project before it could advance to the second phase.
Agency officials who granted the exemptions told the Center that they do not have time in most cases to review the environmental compliance records of stimulus recipients, and do not believe past violations should affect polluters’ chances of winning stimulus money or the NEPA exclusions.
The so-called “stimulus” funding came from the $787-billion legislation officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February 2009.
Documents obtained by the Center show the administration has devised a speedy review process that relies on voluntary disclosures by companies to determine whether stimulus projects pose environmental harm. Corporate polluters often omitted mention of health, safety, and environmental violations from their applications. In fact, administration officials told the Center they chose to ignore companies’ environmental compliance records in making grant decisions and issuing NEPA exemptions, saying they considered such information irrelevant.
Some polluters reported their stimulus projects might cause “unknown environmental risks” or could “adversely affect” sensitive resources, the documents show. Others acknowledged they would produce hazardous air pollutants or toxic metals. Still others won stimulus money just weeks after settling major pollution cases. Yet nearly all got exemptions from full environmental analyses, the documents show.
We are all glad that the plant in Kokomo was prevented from closing due to a large taxpayer bailout. The concerns with the bailout plan remains the same. The bond holders were illegally hosed including Indiana retirement funds. That was real economic damage. The other problem with government rushing in to prevent loss to a highly inefficient corporation is that the reforms are done for political reasons and not economic ones. This can result in reforms that do not go far enough. The bailout was done in such a way where the union that had clearly over reached did not have to take its fair share of the shared sacrifice that the taxpayer and the rest of the private sector has taken. The result is that even after the reforms the labor costs are still excessively high when compared to foreign automakers that are making cars in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee.
I am by no means saying that people should not be paid well, but many of these union workers, much like many government union employees are paid beyond well, especially when it comes to Cadillac benefits that they contribute very little towards. The result is a company that may get along in the short term, but still faces a real disadvantage. These shortcomings are well known and have been covered by journalists, commentators, and blogs for a long time.
The problem I have with President Obama today is the dishonest narrative that he keeps repeating. If he gets his way it will cost Indiana even more jobs than the 40,000 plus that have left since the stimulus.
PERU, Ind. — President Obama used part of his appearance at a Chrysler factory on Tuesday to hammer home his argument that the country cannot afford to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — even though his speech was advertised by the White House as a celebration of the auto bailouts.
The tax cuts apparently are weighing heavily on Obama’s mind as he prepares for a meeting with GOP leaders at the White House on Nov. 30, the first one since his party was punished by voters in this month’s midterm elections.
Newly empowered Republicans, who captured the House and increased their presence in the Senate, are pushing to extend the Bush tax cuts to all Americans, saying that the economy is too fragile for a tax hike on anyone.
But Obama told the crowd at the Chrysler transmission plant that the country cannot afford the $700 billion cost for extending tax cuts to individuals making $200,000 and above or families making $250,000 and above.
“I don’t think that we can afford it right now, not when we are going to have to make some tough decisions to rein in our deficits,” he said.
This is coming from the man who signed budgets that increased yearly deficit spending over the Republicans by a factor of seven. Obama went on to say that we should not be giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, but here is the problem. Even if the tax cuts all expire and we tax rates increase in January, the super rich will hardly be effected, but small businesses will get creamed and Obama knows it.
Why?
I – The super rich benefit from a 16,000 page tax code is not just filled with exceptions and shelters for those with influence, the code defines much of the super rich’s income as non taxable, or it is defined as income that is covered under a different rate than “taxable wages”. For Example: John Kerry made $5,072,000 in 2003 and his total combined federal tax burden was 12.34%. If all the Bush era tax cuts expired Kerry would have still only paid a fraction over 13%.
II – The truth is that there are not many people who make taxable wages over $200,000. The vast majority who pay that tax at what will be the 39.9% rate are small business “S-corporations”, not the John Kerrys of the world. While these small businesses bring in that much money on paper, most of their income goes back into the business. These are not “millionaires and billionaires”, they are people who have a roofing business, or own a couple of pizza shops, or a small manufacturing company. These are the businesses that do 75% of the hiring in this country.
III – Google is a multi-billion dollar company and they paid a federal tax of 2.4%. They gave $800,000 to Obama and the Democrat leadership and throw gala events for Obama, yet where is Obama’s class warfare rhetoric when Google skips out in many millions of taxes? Obama has no problem attacking the Chamber of Commerce, who by the way represents most small business.
This brings us to Norton’s First Law: Big business loves big government, because big government taxes and regulates small and medium sized business, out of the competition.
A – Bruce Schneier: In theory, it sees stuff that isn’t part of the body. So if you’ve got a stapler in your pocket, it will show up. The thought is that it will see stuff that a metal detector won’t detect, like a ceramic knife. But this doesn’t seem to be borne out by reality.
Q – The machines have shown up in the wake of the so-called underwear bomber, who tried to blow up a plane with chemicals stored in his briefs. Would this technology have stopped him?
A – The guys who make the machines have said, “We wouldn’t have caught that.”
Q – So what kind of attack will this prevent, that otherwise might be successful?
A – There are two kinds of hijackers. There’s the lone nutcase, like someone who will bring a gun onto a plane because, dammit, they’re going to take the whole plane down with them. Any pre-9-11 airport security would catch a person like that. The second kind is the well-planned, well-financed Al Qaeda-like plot. And nothing can be done to stop someone like that.
Q – Has there been a case since 9/11 of an attempted hijacker being thwarted by airport security?
A – None that we’ve heard of. The TSA will say, “Oh, we’re not allowed to talk about successes.” That’s actually bullsh*t. They talk about successes all the time. If they did catch someone, especially during the Bush years, you could be damned sure we’d know about it. And the fact that we didn’t means that there weren’t any. Because the threat was imaginary. It’s not much of a threat. As excess deaths go, it’s just way down in the noise. More than 40,000 people die each year in car crashes. It’s 9/11 every month. The threat is really overblown.
Q – Do you think there’s been an over-reaction, on the part of the government and the press, to the underwear bomber?
A – That case was really instructive. Nobody was injured, and the plane landed safely. It was a success! And it was pre 9-11 security that made it a success. Because we screen for superficial guns and bombs, he had to resort to a syringe and 90 minutes in the bathroom with a bomb that didn’t work. This is what success looks like. Stop bellyaching!
Q – What’s the motive behind introducing this new level of security?
A – It’s politics. You have to be seen as doing something, even if nothing is the smart thing to do. You can’t be seen as doing nothing.
Q – Does it surprise you that at last, after several escalations in the TSA’s level of intrusiveness, the public seems to have finally rebelled?
A – Back in 2005, when this full-body scanner technology was first being proposed, I wrote that I thought this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, because it would unite conservatives and liberals. Nobody wants their daughter groped or shown naked.
Q – Is privacy being violated, in your estimation?
And of course the government employee union is the largest contributor to the Democrats. Defeated New Jersey Governor Bob Corzine tried to do this as well, but was stopped by Governor Christie on inauguration day. UPDATE – Wisconsin too LINK (via Kyle Carroll).
Gov. Chet Culver’s administration agreed Friday to offer pay increases for state employees that will cost taxpayers more than $100 million, despite Republican requests that the decisions be delayed until Terry Branstad becomes governor in January.
A Branstad spokesman called the deal “reckless,” and House Republican Leader Kraig Paulsen said it would likely lead to layoffs.
But Culver defended the decision, noting that most state employees took at least five unpaid days in the past year along with suspension of employer deferred compensation contributions.
“These people are on the front lines of delivering vital services and information to the people of Iowa and deserve to be paid in accordance with their qualifications and efforts,” Culver said in a statement.
Union members will formally meet to accept or reject the state’s offer later this month, but Danny Homan, president of Council 61 for AFSCME, said: “In my mind, this is done.”
The wage hike plan would give members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, better known as AFSCME, a 2 percent across-the-board increase for the fiscal year that begins July 1 and another 1 percent raise the following calendar year on Jan. 1, which is what the group had requested. This 2- and 1- percent increase, under the contract, would be given in each of the next two contract years.
In addition, many union members who are not at the top of their pay grade would receive an additional 4.5 percent raise, known as a step increase, for certain professional milestones or for job longevity and other career advancements.
“The state accepted the union’s proposal,” said Homan. “I believe that probably ends this process.”
But wait there’s more!
A review last year by The Des Moines Register showed that Iowa is one of only six states to offer free health insurance to state government employees and their families.
Iowa’s state employees also pay substantially lower out-of-pocket health costs, such as deductibles and office co-payments, than private-sector workers, according to an independent study of nearly 900 businesses and government employers conducted this year by David P. Lind & Associates of Clive.
The Iowa Department of Management, in previous years, has released a statement showing how much the union concessions would cost taxpayers.
That wasn’t immediately available Friday. However, in 2009, each percentage point increase in state employee salary cost taxpayers $32.2 million.
“Taxpayers are the losers in this backroom deal,” said Jeff Boeyink, Branstad’s chief of staff. “Governor Culver’s decision to rush through a collective bargaining deal with state employee unions before he leaves office is reckless and irresponsible. This will cost Iowa taxpayers $103.5 million the first year alone, and hundreds of millions in subsequent fiscal years.”
Work for the government, kick back money to the party and you’re livin’ fat.
How many of you don’t have to contribute to your benefits and healthcare at no cost or on the mega cheap? Wow I am so glad that we have these rich government unions to protect our state employees who are obviously so underpaid and exploited……
The White House recently released a video, narrated by Austan Goolsbee of the Council of Economic Advisers, asserting that higher tax rates on the so-called rich would be a good idea.
Since Goolsbee’s video made so many unsubstantiated assertions and was guilty of so many sins of omission, here’s a rebuttal video, narrated by yours truly.
Given the time constraints, the video highlights three fundamental flaws in Goolsbee’s presentation.
1. The economy is not a fixed pie. Notwithstanding all evidence, there is a near-religious view on the left that the rest of us somehow must have less if a rich person earns more. The video highlights important evidence on income mobility and economic growth.
2. There is a Laffer Curve. Folks on the left assume that higher tax rates have no impact on economic performance. Not surprisingly, there is widespread evidence that taxpayers are very responsive to changes in tax rates. Using IRS data, the video explains what happened with tax collections from the rich during the Reagan years.
3. Keynesianism is wrong. The Obama Administration has a simplistic Keynesian approach to fiscal policy. As such, they only think tax cuts help growth if people rush out and spend the money. Yet this was the same rationale for the failed stimulus, and the video shows how unemployment is far higher than the White House promised.
Pelosi and Reid will convene a lame-duck session next week and taxes will be one of the key issues since the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts will expire at the end of the year without further action. The White House is willing to keep some of those tax cuts, but they want higher tax rates on the rich. Goolsbee’s video shows that the Obama Administration has a very weak argument.
[IUSB Vision Editor Piles On: Indeed the Obama Administration’s approach to economic policy is such an oversimplified approach to an already oversimplified economic theory (Keynesianism) that Goolsbee’s approach to the subject is laughable. I wish I could say that I was exaggerating or wiping my feet on the truth for effect, but to describe his argument as laughable is, if anything, an understatement as the prolonged economic suffering caused by the regulatory uncertainty and flat-lining of the economy are no laughing matter.
Even Obama’s own deficit commission suggested that the top marginal tax rate be drastically cut from the upcoming 39.9% to 23% and with it a deep cut in the corporate tax rate as well. Why? We all know that wealth goes where it is treated well. The worlds capital investment (and this means jobs) are more and more going to China and other places where the cost of government isn’t punitive. When the government starts whacking people and businesses at 40% people will hide their money or simply park it somewhere where it will not be taxed up the wazoo (like investing it in China). The deficit commission has rightly concluded that if we have a tax rate that promotes taking on economic activity instead of punishing it the result will be more dollars flowing into the Treasury, and of course they are correct.
As a result of punitive state policy in California 153 businesses have left California and moved to Texas from last year.
The deficit commission also asked for a greatly simplified and flatter tax code as the cost of compliance is in itself a huge tax. The tax code is rife with corrupt paybacks and favors that pick winners and losers and prevents a level and open playing field.]
Debt Has Increased $5 Trillion Since Speaker Pelosi Vowed, ‘No New Deficit Spending’ – CNSnews
Yahoo Finance: New York state manufacturing plunges – LINK What? How can this be in the liberal progressive mecca?…
UK Telegraph: China may be bigger economy than US within two years – LINK
The Blaze: Professor Exposes Federally Funded ‘Revisionist’ History Conference – LINK
Malkin: Obama job-killlers Salazar, Browner lied about drilling ban rationale – LINK
Morrissey: Personal income drops for first time in 14 months, spending slows. Consumer spending drops – Reuters blows it. – LINK
CNBC– Secret Walmart Survey Shows Inflation Already Here
American Business Analytics & Research tells the Salem-News that if the government still calculated inflation the way it was calculated during Carter and Reagan (changed under Clinton) the inflation rate would be 10%.
Wall Street Journal: “Food Sellers Grit Teeth, Raise Prices: Packagers and Supermarkets Pressured to Pass Along Rising Costs, Even as Consumers Pinch Pennies.”
American Thinker: Pro-ObamaCare Group – CBO Underestimated Costs of new law by 600%
Breaking: Obama reverses on outsourcing; tells Indian audience that outsourcing out high paying IT jobs is good and opponents are proponents of stereotyping.
Via Times of India and Tammy Bruce:
BANGALORE: The resilient Indian IT industry on Wednesday lauded US President Barack Obama for terming those against outsourcing as holding onto old stereotypes and for committing to do away with protectionism.
“Obama did a great job for our industry by terming them (anti-outsourcing lobbies) as stereotypes. I think his administration will also do a great job in terms of changing those stereotypes,” IT industry lobby Nasscom president Som Mittal told reporters here.
For positioning India as the market for US businesses and declaring that India was no longer emerging but had emerged, the US administration’s efforts to change the stereotypes would get support of the industry, Mittal said.
“I think we too have to do our job to change those stereotypes and ensure there is a much larger community that understands our business model that we are part of the solution rather than creating the problem itself,” Mittal said on the margins of Nasscom’s annual Product Conclave & Expo 2010.
Expressing the industry’s satisfaction over the outsourcing issue figuring at the discussions between Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday, Mittal said that both the governments were committed to do away with protectionism.
Tammy Bruce:
They say travel broadens you. Apparently so. Obama’s trip to India seems to have changed his thinking about outsourcing.
Democrats have been demonizing outsourcing at least since John Kerry’s campaign in 2004. We sure heard a lot from Democrats about the issue this election year. So much so that many Indian-Americans were motivated to raise money for Republicans.
On the East End of Long Island in New York, Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop is accusing GOP candidate Randy Altschuler of shipping American jobs to India who in turn is saying that he created hundreds of jobs in the USA.
In the Connecticut Senate race, Democrat Richard Blumenthal is accusing his challenger, former wrestling CEO Linda McMahon, that her company had profited from manufacturing that was done in foreign countries.
In the Arkansas Senate race, Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s supporters ran attack ads against Bill Halter during the primary that caricatured Indians.
In Illinois, Democratic Rep. Phil Hare is running attack ads against Republican Bobby Schilling that flatly states: “Bobby Schilling: Good for India and China.” The ads then state that be is focused on creating jobs in places like India and China.
In Ohio, Democratic Rep. Zack Space is accusing his Republican opponent, Bob Gibbs, of supporting free-trade deals that sent jobs to China by running attack ads with a giant dragon while a narrator sarcastically thanks the Republican by commenting: “As they say in China, xie xie Mr. Gibbs!”
In California, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is running ads against her opponent, Carly Fiona [sic], the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, accusing her of creating thousands of jobs in Shanghai and Bangalore instead of San Jose or Burbank and of proudly stamping her products “Made in China.”
Ohio Governor Strickland, for whom Obama made several campaign trips, went so far as to ban using Ohio public funds for outsourcing by executive order.
Democrats are determined to punish corporations for overseas business operations. As recently as September, Obama was scolding Republicans for favoring outsourcing over the American worker. Less than two months later, Obama is in India saying wonderful things about outsourcing. It’s part of a win-win opportunity. Well, not so much for Obama.
[IUSB Vision Editor’s Note – Tammy Bruce had linked to a YouTube video of Obama’s reversal. Google, who now owns YouTube and is very close to the administration promptly not only banned the video, but also banned the account of the person who posted it. This is yet another in a long string of political censorship at YouTube, which is why we now post our new videos at DailyMotion and Eyeblast.tv.]
Germany Was Right When It Called Our Financial Policy “Clueless”
It’s never a good thing when another country calls your financial policy clueless. It’s particularly bad if that other country is one of the world’s leading economies, and if it also happens to be right.“With all due respect, U.S. policy is clueless,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said recently, referring to the Federal Reserve’s decision to throw $600 billion at our sluggish economy.The Fed can create as much money as it likes, but the U.S. economy is presently unable to productively put that money to work. By setting near-zero interest rates, the Fed has established that money in this country has no real value. We give it to the banks for nothing, and the banks lend it back to the deficit-ridden U.S. Treasury for almost nothing. The result is a guaranteed profit for the banks, but no incentive to lend cash to creative entrepreneurs or expanding businesses.
18 Iconic Products That America Doesn’t Make Anymore
Rawlings baseballs
Last production date: 1969
Rawlings is the official supplier of baseballs to Major League Baseball. The St. Louis shop was founded in 1887 by George and Alfred Rawlings. In 1969 the brothers moved the baseball-manufacturing plant from Puerto Rico to Haiti and then later to Costa Rica.
Etch a Sketch
Last production date: 2000
Etch A Sketch, an iconic American toy since the 1960s, used to be produced in Bryan, Ohio, a small town of 8,000. Then in Dec. 2000, toymaker Ohio Art decided to move production to Shenzhen, China.
Converse shoes
Last production date: 2001
Marquis M. Converse opened Converse Rubber Show Company in Massachusetts in 1908. Chuck Taylors– named after All American high school basketball player Chuck Taylor– began selling in 1918 as the show eventually produced an industry record of over 550 million pairs by 1997. But in 2001 sales were on the decline and the U.S. factory closed. Now Chuck Taylors are made in Indonesia.
Stainless steel rebar
Last production date: circa 2001
Many forms of this basic steel product are not available domestically. Multiple waivers to the Buy America Act have allowed purchase of rebar internationally.
Note: The Buy America Act requires government mass transportation spending to use American products.
Dress shirts*
Last production date: Oct. 2002
The last major shirt factory in America closed in October 2002, according to NYT. C.F. Hathaway’s Maine factory had been producing shirts since 1837.
*We know there are other shirt manufacturers in America. They do not produce in large quantities or supply major brands.
Mattel toys
Last production date: 2002
The largest toy company in the world closed their last American factory in 2002. Mattel, headquartered in California, produces 65 percent of their products in China as of August 2007.
Minivans
Last production date: circa 2003
A waiver to the Buy America Act permitted an American producer of wheel-chair accessible minivans to purchase Canadian chassis for use in government contracts, because no chassis were available from the United States. The waiver specified: “General Motors and Chrysler minivan chassis, including those used on the Chevrolet Uplander, Pontiac Montana, Buick Terraza, Saturn Relay, Chrysler Town & Country, and Dodge Grand Caravan, are no longer manufactured in the United States.”
Note: The Buy America Act requires government mass transportation spending to use American products.
Vending machines
Last production date: circa 2003
You know that thing you put bills into on a vending machine? It isn’t made in America, according to a waiver to the Buy America Act.
Neither is the coin dispenser, according to this federal waiver.
Note: The Buy America Act requires government mass transportation spending to use American products.
Levi jeans
Last production date: Dec. 2003
Levi Strauss & Co. shut down all its American operations and outsourced production to Latin America and Asia in Dec. 2003. The company’s denim products have been an iconic American product for 150 years.
Radio Flyer’s Red Wagon
Last production date: March 2004
The little red wagon has been an iconic image of America for years. But once Radio Flyer decided its Chicago plant was too expensive, it began producing most products, including the red wagon, in China.
Televisions
Last production date: Oct. 2004
Five Rivers Electronic Innovations was the last American owned TV color maker in the US. The Tennessee company used LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology to produce televisions for Philips Electronics. But after Philips decided to stop selling TVs with LCoS, Five Rivers eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Oct. 2004. As part of its reorganization plan, the company stopped manufacturing TVs.
Now there are ZERO televisions made in America, according to Business Week.
Cell phones
Last production date: circa 2007
Of the 1.2 billion cell phones sold worldwide in 2008, NOT ONE was made in America, according to Manufacturing & Technology publisher Richard McCormick.
After studying the websites of cell phone companies, we could not identify a single phone that was not manufactured primarily overseas.
Railroads (parts including manganese turnout castings, U69 guard bars, LV braces and weld kits)
Last production date: circa 2008
Here’s another standout from dozens of waivers to the Buy America Act: railroad turnouts and weld kits.
Manganese turnout castings are used to widen railroad tracks, and they were used to build our once-great railroad system. U69 guard bars, LV braces and Weld Kits, along with 22 mm Industrial steel chain are basic items that were certifiably not available in the US.
Note: The Buy America Act requires government mass transportation spending to use American products.
Dell computers
Last production date: Jan. 2010
In January 2010, Dell closed its North Carolina PC factory, its last large U.S. plant. Analysts said Dell would be outsourcing work to Asian manufacturers in an attempt to catch up with the rest of the industry, said analyst Ashok Kumar.
Canned sardines
Last production date: April 2010
Stinson Seafood plant, the last sardine cannery in Maine and the U.S., shut down in April. The first U.S. sardine cannery opened in Maine in 1875, but since the demand for the small, oily fish declined, more canneries closed shop.
Pontiac cars
Last production date: May 2010
The last Pontiac was produced last May. The brand was formally killed on Halloween, as GM contracts Pontiac dealerships expired.
The 84-year-old GM brand was famous for muscle cars.
Forks, spoons, and knives
Last production date: June 2010
The last flatware factory in the US closed last summer. Sherrill Manufacturing bought Oneida Ltd. in 2005, but shut down its fork & knife operations due to the tough economy. CEO Greg Owens says his company may resume production “when the general economic climate improves and as Sherrill Manufacturing is able to put itself back on its feet and recapitalize and regroup.”
Incandescent light bulb
Last production date: Sept. 2010
The incandescent light bulb (invented by Thomas Edison) has been phased out.
Our last major factory that made incandescent light bulbs closed in September 2010. In 2007, Congress passed a measure that will ban incandescents by 2014, prompting GE to close its domestic factory.
Note: A reader pointed out that the Osram/Sylvania Plant in St. Mary’s, Penn. is still producing light bulbs to fill old and international contracts. However, the plant has announced plans to wind down incandescent production.
Beloved Democrat New York Times’ Paul Krugman Advocates Death Panels:
And here is former Lobor Sec. Robert Reich saying the same –
We are going to let the old die because its too expensive and we are going to make the drug companies poor so they cant innovate new drugs so you young people likely will not live much longer than your parents. We have to make the young pay more.
The IUSB Vision Weblog 