Fox News Viewers Are Misinformed Study, The Critique

BRILLIANTLY DONE!

Being a Haitian American pt2 (with Haitian Mom)

A light post, I felt I had to represent the culture that made me the man I am today. Enjoy!

PC Issues, Still Working it out

I'm trying to avoid this, but I may need to purchase a new PC.  Here's what's going on:

• Purchased this PC 5+ years ago and the Hard drive went kaput two weeks ago
• I ordered a new hard drive and RAM card last week that just came in today
• Installed that hardware, loaded windows with a generic boot disk
• Found that I don't have my Windows XP product key (from 5 years ago)
• Microsoft Customer Service pretty much tells me I'm out of luck without the original boot disk
• I have 30 days to find a copy of XP with the code
• The audio/video driver install disks are missing too, so I have no sound at all

So basically, I have 30 days to post while I scramble trying to find the things I need to get my PC back to 100%  Any suggestions to get me there would be greatly appreciated

Obama, Democrats, and Tax Extension Drama

Yup, It's me covering the recent events...

Obama Gets Busted on Mythbusters!

Here's where ReasonTV got their sources

Paul Ryan at Fiscal Commission

Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Economic Growth Causes Consumer Spending, ...

Via Ed Morrissey @Hotair.com:

Think of it as a Cash for Clunkers economic plan on a larger scale. The intention is to fool people into spending money in order to give the illusion of growth, and have that illusion somehow become reality through a process best known as FM; the M stands for “magic,” and you can guess what the F means. The problem is that the interventions run out of steam quickly without addressing the actual issues of income and asset value that drives organic consumer spending. Instead of increasing the size of the pie, we just cut it in different shapes.
The policies implemented in the early 1980s, in contrast, focused on generating growth in investment and income by reducing the government’s role in the economy and their bite out of it. That approach succeeded in long-term growth and prosperity by increasing the size of the pie. Critics scoff at this as “trickle-down economics,” but as the last two years showed, the Reagan approach worked while Keynesian Obamanomics has mainly generated nothing but short-term gimmicks and long-term stagnation

What We Believe, Part 7: American Exceptionalism

America's unique. Here's why:

Covering the terror behind TSA Travel

What We Believe, Part 6: Immigration

The US has no real ethnicity, no unique language to unify us. What unifies this nation is the rule of law. Our nation is conceptually founded on the principle that a free people can set its own laws and those who wish to live free agree to abide by them. Laws that don’t work can be repealed or replaced through the open processes of representative government, and in some cases direct democracy (referendums, in some states). Those who break the laws of a free people should be subject to prosecution — and those who break the law of a free nation in order to gain entry into it should not profit from that lawbreaking.

Thus, illegal immigration and tolerance for it insults those who legally migrate to the US, a process almost everyone supports. It also insults the rule of law to offer those lawbreakers amnesty, especially a second time. Besides, securing the border is one of the few legitimate duties that the federal government has under the Constitution, and perhaps it should focus on doing that right before arrogating other authorities and jurisdictions to itself.

What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights

Bill addresses the plague of gun-related homicides found in the US by pointing out that the epicenters of such plagues rarely coincide with higher densities of legal gun ownership, which means guns are a secondary issue and not the primary cause. It’s impossible to encapsulate Bill’s argument in anything less than the efficient manner in which he does so in this video:

3 Reasons This Election Didn't Change A Thing

Sorry, but that's reality.  Let's not forget that it's lame duck season in Washington. It's up to the NEW Congress and the Senate in January to change this outcome.

What We Saw at the Stewart-Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity

This is sanity? The good stuff comes at 2:31 - 3:40, 3:45 -3:58, and 5:12 to the end. You really can't make this stuff up.

What We Believe, Part 4: Natural Law

Bill Whittle examines the difference between Natural and Political Law and what makes some laws worth obeying, while others are overturned.

PSA From Zo

Zo pretty much covers my position when it comes to race relations and the Conservative message as a whole. Don't focus on race, because that's when you pretty much say what you didn't mean to (like meeting a person with a HUGE zit on their forehead, if try to ignore it, you'll probably stick your foot in your mouth). Be flexible when it comes to accusations of racism, because more often then not, that's all the other person has in a debate. The more time you spend defending yourself on a non-issue, the worse you end up looking. That's just a little bit (with some of my own points) of what Zo's covered.

New study shows ObamaCare subsidies potentially five times higher in first year than predicted

(Via Ed Morrissey)

In passing ObamaCare, Democrats argued that it would provide a net relief to the budget deficit in its balance of new taxes and fees, drastic cuts to Medicare Advantage, and the subsidies it would provide to Americans making $88,000 a year or less.  A new study commissioned by Families USA, a group that supports ObamaCare, shows that the Democrats and the CBO badly miscalculated the level of subsidies provided.  In the first year (2014), 28 million Americans would have eligibility for more than $110 billion, outstripping the Congressional/CBO estimate by almost 600%:

Families USA commissioned The Lewin Group to use its economic models to estimate how many individuals would benefit from the new premium tax credits in 2014 and the value of the dollars going to help pay for insurance (see the Methodology on page 12 for more details). We found that an estimated 28.6 million Americans will be eligible for the tax credits in 2014, and that the total value of the tax credits that year will be $110.1 billion.


The new tax credits will provide much-needed assistance to insured individuals and families who struggle harder each year to pay rising premiums, as well as to uninsured individuals and families who need help purchasing coverage that otherwise would be completely out of reach financially. Most of the families who will be eligible for the tax credits will be employed, many for small businesses, and will have incomes between two and four times poverty (between $44,100 and $88,200 for a family of four based on 2010 poverty guidelines). However, because the size of the tax credits will be determined on a sliding scale based on income, those with the lowest incomes will receive the largest tax credit, which will ensure that the assistance is targeted to those who need it the most.

That conflicts with the final CBO estimate that Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats used to argue for ObamaCare.  In his presentation to Congress, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf predicted a cost of only $20 billion on health-exchange subsidies and associated costs.  The Lewin Group, which conducted the study for Families USA, shows that four times as many people will become eligible for subsidies in 2014 than the CBO predicted in March and that the cost will be 550% higher as a result (page 4 of the linked study):
 
•„„ Nationally, approximately 28.6 million Americans will be eligible for these new premium tax credits in 2014 (see Table 1).„

•„ People in working families—those with annual incomes at or above 200 percent of the federal poverty level ($44,100 for a family of four in 2010)—will constitute nearly twothirds(65.6 percent) of the people who will be eligible for a premium tax credit (seeTable 1a).

Morgen at Verum Serum discovered the wide discrepancy and notes that the study wasn’t intended to argue against ObamaCare:
 
The Lewin Group study was commissioned by Families USA, a healthcare reform advocacy group based out of Washington D.C. which is closely allied with the White House and leading Democrats in Congress. Then Senator Obama was a keynote speaker at their annual Health Action conference in 2005 and 2007, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the 2008 event. Other leading Democrats who have participated at Families USA events in recent years include Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy.

The study appears to be the centerpiece of a major media campaign initiated last month by Families USA to promote the benefits of the health reform legislation. A September 14 press release touts the projected $110 billion in federal subsidies as “one of the largest middle-income tax cuts in history”, but makes no mention of the discrepancy with the CBO’s earlier estimate.
Families USA also published state-by-state estimates by the Lewin Group of the number of people eligible to receive these subsidies and the associated costs. Numerous local media outlets around the country have reported on these figures over the past few weeks.
The CBO’s projection that the healthcare reform bill would reduce the deficit by an estimated $143 billion over 10 years was a critical factor in the enactment of the bill. Democrats lost their super-majority in the Senate in January 2010 when Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts, and ultimately passed the bill in March only through the use of procedural tactics, and without a single Republican vote in the House or Senate.
The claim that the bill will reduce the deficit continues to be a leading selling point for proponents of reform. Just last month Families USA repeated this claim in a press release criticizing opponents of the legislation. But if the latest Lewin Group estimate is correct the initial 10-year cost of the bill will be significantly higher than what was forecast by the CBO, and would begin adding to the federal deficit as early as 2015.

Morgen also contacted Families USA to get an explanation of the difference, and was told that he made an “apples to oranges” comparison. Why? This survey, they explained, showed how many people would be eligible, while the CBO predicted how many people would actually take advantage of their eligibility for tax credits. This is an odd distinction to make, since the entire idea of the subsidies is to encourage uninsured Americans to buy health insurance through both mandates and generous subsidies. How likely will it be that people will pass on the notion of getting big tax credits to subsidize must-issue health insurance? And if the success rate in applying mandates, higher taxes, and more government authority to the 270 million Americans who are already insured is only 20-25% in getting the other 30 million insured, how is that at all successful?


The deficit projection given by Democrats was apparently based on 75% failure rates to get people into the system; their advocates are busy touting the massive amounts of subsidies in the program that will tip ObamaCare into a deficit exploder in Year 2. Either way this goes, it’s a massive failure.

What We Believe, Part 3: Wealth Creation

Part 3 of a Series, Bill Whittle covers the concept of being wealthy: what it is, how it is created, and how society progresses as a direct result of it. 

EVIL RICH PEOPLE! (Election Shenanigans)

Steven Crowder came back with this important message:

What We Believe, Part 2: The Problem with Elitism

In Part 2 of his series on what Tea Party Conservatives believe, Bill looks at the problems and dangers associated with elitism and elitist philosophy.

Restoring America's Promise

Proposed presentation by Paul Ryan used at a fiscal forum hosted by the Concord Coalition.

What We Believe, Part 1: Small Government and Free Enterprise.

Part 1 of a series of videos from Bill Whittle explaining conservatism and the idea of small government. As he states in the video, the concept is misrepresented in various ways by certain Liberal/Progressive individuals that either do not understand or intentionally mislead others into thinking of it as a call to abolish government entirely or regulations. Bill does an EXCELLENT job in getting the message across clearly:





You can find Bill Whittle on Facebook or subscribe to his Youtube channel

Reason TV: 3 Reasons Obama's Education Vision Deserves an F

Dan Mitchell Breaks it Down: It's Simple to Balance The Budget Without Higher Taxes

Even at the current spending levels, tax hikes aren't needed.....





We can simply start cutting vast amounts of federal agencies in jurisdictions outside those granted the federal government by the Constitution.  But as Mitchell puts it, no one in Washington cares about the Constitution anyway.  If we just put a hard cap on spending, the budget would naturally balance itself in five years — with the Bush tax cuts still in place.  The only reason to raise taxes is to allow Congress to spend more … which is the real reason for our massive deficits.

Think We're Headed For a 2nd Collapse? You aren't alone...

In his new treatise published by Encounter for its Broadsides collection, Broadside No. 17: President Obama’s Tax Piracy, Ferrara notes that Barack Obama has chosen the opposite strategy in economic policy from Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut taxes, especially on capital gains and dividends, and broke down regulatory hurdles.  Obama wants not only to raise taxes on those who have the most capital, he wants to make it harder for them to use it as well, quoting a similar analysis by Arthur Laffer:

[W]hen the U.S. economy comes to 2011, the train’s going to come off the tracks. . . . The tax boundary that will occur on January 1 , 2011 tells me that GDP growth in 2010 will be some 6 percent to 8 percent higher than GDP growth in 2011 . A year on year decline from trend of some 6 percent to 8 percent in 2011 growth would represent a larger collapse than occurred in 2008 and early 2009 .

Ferrara includes this helpful and rather cheerless chart to emphasize what Laffer predicts:

On top of that, the government won’t see the revenues it expects, either:

President Obama’s budget projects that his tax increases on “the rich” (singles making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000) would raise $678 billion in increased revenue during the next 10 years. The ObamaCare legislation projected another $210 billion from the increased payroll taxes on those workers for a total of nearly $1 trillion. But these tax increases won’t raise anywhere near the revenue projected. Obama will be lucky if this tax piracy doesn’t result in less revenue. …

The projections of higher revenues from the other tax rate increases all fail to take into account the negative incentive effects discussed above and the counterproductive interactions from all those effects. Since we know from experience that those incentive effects are powerful and real, the result at a minimum will be less revenue than expected, if not less revenue overall.

All of this is based on the assumption that the changes in tax policy sets up no other incentives or changes any behavior.  Of course it does, though, as do even threatened changes.  This is called a static analysis on tax policy.  Ferrara believes that the economy may actually look better than it is this year because capital holders are moving gains and income into 2010 to avoid higher taxes next year.  After we hit the tax boundary, all the incentives go the other direction, and that means negative growth across the board. Essentially, that is why capital is moving about the economy, albeit at a slow pace.  Businesses are shoring profits by selling assets, limiting hiring or sitting on savings.  All of this to be ahead of the potential costs
 
Congress left Washington without addressing the massive tax hikes that will come at the end of the year as the tax-rate reductions of 2001 and 2003 expire.  Absent action on Capitol Hill, those increases will take $4 trillion out of the economy over the next ten years — and even if the lower tax bracket reductions get extended, $700 billion of capital will get redirected from the private sector to Washington.  How do you think that will that impact economic growth in the US?

Dick Blumenthal Stumped On How To Create A Job

Man, I wish I could participate in the CT election this year.....



“Creative policies” don’t create jobs. Creative policies usually interfere with job creation. We’ve seen that clearly enough in this administration.
McMahon (in a shorter amount of time) describes how jobs get created, but also consider the role of government in the process. Government has no direct role in the process. Government has a role in creating an environment in which entrepreneurs can create jobs by doing the following:

• securing a stable, predictable market without bias or tilt
• with a reliable rule of law rather than arbitrary interventions for preconceived outcomes
• utilizing a tax policy that encourages people to keep the fruit of their labor and investments to the greatest degree possible.

This will offend many public servants in the political world, but you shouldn't create laws pertaining to the economy if you don't know squat about business.

Taxes and Small Business Job Creation: How to get it done

From Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute:

A little background first, Taxes and Small Business Job Creation to get you started.

• 
  
  The chart shows that the average top OECD rate fell from 46.7% in 2000 to 41.5% in 2009. If we let the Bush tax cuts expire, we won’t be simply going back to our situation in 2000—the world has changed since then as other countries have adopted more competitive tax rates.

• President Bush cut the top federal tax rate by 5 percentage points, but the average top rate in the 30 OECD nations has also fallen by 5 percentage points since 2000.
• Unless policymakers extend current tax relief, the combined U.S. federal-state top rate will increase from 41.9% to about 46.5%, based on OECD data. That will give us about the tenth highest rate among the 30 OECD nations.
• President Obama’s proposed top federal rate of 39.6 percent is 41-percent higher than the 28-percent top income rate achieved in the late 1980s after the bipartisan Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Chris has many bulletpoints on the case for extending the Bush tax cuts.  Be sure to read them all. In other news, forty-seven Democrats have publicly demanded that Pelosi acquiesce to an across-the-board extension of existing tax rates on capital gains and dividends:

The debate over what to do about the expiring Bush-era tax cuts has focused mainly on income tax rates and the fight between Democrats and Republicans over maintaining the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. But in a letter to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, 47 rank-and-file Democrats urged Congressional leaders to maintain lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains that are also due to expire on Dec. 31.
“Our fiscal policy should be one that maximizes economic growth and private sector job creation,” the lawmakers, led by Representative John Adler, Democrat of New Jersey, wrote.
“By keeping dividends and capital gains tax rates linked and low for everyone, we can help the private sector create jobs and allow seniors and middle class households to save and invest more,” the Democrats added in the letter.

Note the phrase for everyone.  A hike in capital gains tax rates will discourage both initial investments and turnover in capital, both of which are necessary to expand the economy.  It has to apply to those with the most capital on hand in order to have the maximum effect.  It doesn’t do a lot of good to penalize those with the most potential to expand the economy through new ventures and significant expansion of existing projects and companies. This also extends to income taxes as well, since many business owners file their business income as individual income  (pushing them over the $250,000 limit).  Taking more money from this class of entrepreneur means less capital for hiring and keeping employees, capital investment, and so on.  The exact same arguments apply to income tax rates, perhaps even more so since the very wealthy can usually structure their cash flow as income, dividends, or capital gains depending on which method provides the least amount of loss.

Troubleshooting issues, but I'm BACK!

Site had some techincal issues to resolve, but i've fixed the issues.  26 posts should be up as a result since July 27th and through September 26th.  You can now follow me on Google Reader and keep up with the information.  I'm still heavily involved in discussions on liberal sites like Global Grind (their news channel) and the Huffington Post sites, so look for my tag: Cmyst82 if you want to get in the discussions.  I have a Youtube channel so videos may be up from time to time (as I try to figure out how to edit and post them).  I'll see how I can work that with this site.
As always, it's about educating people on what's going on.  I'll do my best to continue on that path.

Paul Ryan's attempt for an Adult Conversation on Debt & Entitlement Reform

Ryan tries to explain that his plan for reform focuses on any person younger than age 55. That group would have 3% of their Social Security savings (at the current withdrawal level) put aside into their own private account (not pooled) which is monitored and maintained by the Federal Government and not by Wall Street. The best part about it.....it's optional, thus giving Americans the choice to stick with the current system, or have the additional option of guaranteeing 3% of their Social Security investment.

Watch who's trying to scare the 55 and up retirement group.

We're now 4th in Competitiveness Against Other Nations

"We're no longer "exceptional" Joe..."

Investors Business Daily places the blame on the Obama Administration, but this is the result of years of federal intrusion into the private sector in the lase few Administrations.  The current Administration's only sped up the process.  The World Economic Forum notes:

The United States now ranks fourth among all nations in competitiveness, down from first just two years ago. Not surprisingly, it’s government — not business — that’s to blame. …

Why did we lose our spot at the top? Broadly speaking, the Geneva-based forum report cites “a weakening of the United States’ public and private institutions, as well as lingering concerns about the state of its financial markets.”
The group stressed that the U.S. remains innovative with a flexible labor market and outstanding higher education. But its soaring deficits, burgeoning debts and declining public confidence in the nation’s leaders and businesses are dragging it down. Finding a way to end the massive federal stimulus of the last two years will help boost U.S. competitiveness, the WEF also said.
The report doesn’t come right out and say it, but it might as well: Not only is Obamanomics not working, it’s doing material damage to America’s economic well-being.

It certainly hasn’t helped that under Obama and Democrats, government has grown more confiscatory and intruded farther into private markets. Healthcare Refrom is the best example, but the proposed cap-and-trade system would have been worse, impacting every single home and industry directly with higher costs that eventually transfer massive amounts of capital back to Washington. Congress would have put itself into the task of picking winners and losers in energy markets instead of allowing the markets to work that out for themselves — in other words, using the competitive pressures of markets determine outcomes rather than political cronyism. That goes to the heart of competitiveness, and shows why we’re declining.
 
But that is really a symptom of a deeper ill, as Business Insider noted earlier in the week:
 
Take property rights. They’re at the essence of US capitalism. Last year, according to the WEF’s survey of executives, the US was the 30th best country. This year we’ve fallen to 40th.

And you’ll be stunned at the countries that our better than the US.

If you aren’t stunned by the nations listed, then be stunned by the length of the list, at least. No one will be terribly put out to see Canada (10), Austria (9), or Switzerland (1) ahead of the US. But what about Saudi Arabia (28)? China (38)? Jordan (30)? The US got edged out by Gambia, which relies on foreign aid to deal with high unemployment and underemployment, according to the CIA factbook.
 
If we want to improve our economy, we need to improve our competitiveness. If we want to improve competitiveness, we need to protect property rights and get the federal government out of the redistribution business. Property rights are the first rights mentioned in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) for a reason. It’s the basis of prosperity and opportunity, and also the basis of a free, self-governing people.  China's doing better in property rights than we are.  That should be an emarassment.

Another "Surprise": The cost curve bends UPWARDS due to Healthcare Reform

Recall the time when President Obama and many Democrats promised that Healthcare Reform would "bend the cost curve downward" and cease the rapid increases in costs?  The Wall Street Journal has an advance look at a report from the federal government that shows no slowing in costs to the government as a result of the Healthcare Reform bill. In fact, the analysis will show that the bill’s passage actually results in an increase in future costs over what had been projected for the next decade:

The health-care overhaul enacted last spring won’t significantly change national health spending over the next decade compared with projections before the law was passed, according to government figures set to be released Thursday.

The report by federal number-crunchers casts fresh doubt on Democrats’ argument that the health-care law would curb the sharp increase in costs over the long term, the second setback this week for one of the party’s biggest legislative achievements. …
Regardless of the health law, national health spending has been rising in recent years and economists expect that to continue. In February, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projected that overall national health spending would increase an average of 6.1% a year over the next decade.
The center’s economists recalculated the numbers in light of the health bill and now project that the increase will average 6.3% a year, according to a report in the journal Health Affairs. Total U.S. health spending will reach $4.6 trillion by 2019, accounting for nearly one of every five U.S. dollars spent, the report says.
“The overall net impact is moderate,” said lead author Andrea Sisko, an economist at the Medicare agency. “The underlying impacts on coverage and financing are more pronounced.”

I present to you a chart directly from the Centers for Medicare &Medicaid Services; Health Affairs:
 

 
Earlier in the week, the Journal reported that insurers have already begun raising premiums in response to the front-loading of Healthcare Reform benefit mandates by the White House. That report sent Democrats into fits of anger, threatening to “ratchet up pressure” on insurers. Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) blamed “greed” for price increases instead of the higher costs imposed by the mandates — all of which was the predicted consequence of adding more mandates and bureaucracy to insurance coverage.
 
I would like to hear the same Democrats attempt to explain once again how the higher costs in Healthcare Reform meets their promise of bending the cost curve downward. In addtion to this bit of news, it also consistently pushes the curve upwards for private insurance, and especially Medicaid. It only bends downward for Medicare and slightly downward for out-of-pocket costs for consumers. (Figures are on WSJ link above)
 
Medicare does look slightly better under Healthcare Reform due to the lower reimbursement rates for Medicare services, which means it comes out of the pockets of doctors. The predictable result will be fewer participating providers in Medicare, which will mean longer wait times, more difficulty in getting treatments, and most likely higher out-of-pocket payments as those consumers pay retail for their medical care more often.

DOGGIN' OBAMA???!

I've been a little busy lately (if you haven't noticed). I'm leaving a little bit from Zo. He keeps it pretty mild in this video, but hits the good points. Some of the subjects that he brings up will be expanded upon in the near future (tax incentive versus tax cuts, etc.). Going to change the direction of this site a bit to focus strictly on economics.

Black Conservatives Blast Al Sharpton Protesters in DC 8/28

DUDE!!!

The Runaway Slave movie crews were at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor Rally” and at Al Sharpton’s “Reclaiming the Dream March” on Aug 28th. As the two ideologies clashed in DC, our movie crews were on the scene. In this raw footage, shot near the future MLK memorial site, Black Conservatives leaving the “Restoring Honor” rally encounter Sharpton’s protestors who were holding signs claiming “Tea Party Racism.” This is just one of the exchanges that was captured after the rally had ended.

The best line:

"“In 1960 over 80% of black babies were born in two-parent households. After welfare, I work in the inner city, I work with kids that look like me. After LBJ’s welfare policies in the 60′s in the inner city over 90% of kids are born without fathers. Because the liberal establishment wants to break apart the nuclear family. Because they want kids controlled by the state. That’s what Karl Marx said. So let’s talk about that!”

Keynesian Economics haven't worked. Good news though, the White House has found Fiscal Conservatism

The left will forgive him if it helps to preserve the congressional majority in the Senate, and since the majority in the House is a lost cause, he’d probably be pushed by the GOP into doing something like this next year anyway. Might as well do it now and take as much of the credit as he can:

With the recovery faltering less than two months before the November congressional elections, President Obama’s economic team is considering another big dose of stimulus in the form of tax breaks for businesses – potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Among the options are a temporary payroll tax holiday and a permanent extension of the research and development tax credit, say people familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to describe private deliberations.
Permanently extending the research credit would cost roughly $100 billion over the next decade, tax experts said. And depending on its form and duration, a payroll tax holiday could let businesses keep more than $300 billion they would otherwise owe the Treasury.

Add that since some liberals like to remind us of how well Social Security is doing financially, there should be minimal screeching about a temporary revenue shortfall due to a payroll tax cut, no? But wait — what's this?
 
Worried about the fragile economy and their own upcoming elections, a growing number of Democrats are joining the rock-solid Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans to let some of the Bush administration’s tax cuts expire…

“In my view this is no time to do anything that could be jarring to a fragile recovery,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, a first-term Democrat…
Another freshman Democrat, Rep. Bobby Bright of Alabama, said he would like to see all the tax cuts extended for two or three years, if lawmakers cannot agree on a more permanent plan…
Several Democratic candidates for Senate have also come out in favor of extending them all, including Robin Carnahan in Missouri and Jack Conway in Kentucky.

If Congress moves to extend the Bush tax cuts even for the rich, will Obama dare veto the bill at this point? Or will he break liberal hearts by going back on another oft-repeated campaign promise? We know that every campaign promise, thus far, has had an expiration date.  For the sake of saving the party this year, I don't see why he would stick to his promises now.
 
Two videos ephasizing that the economic team, up to this point, had NO IDEA what they were doing from day one.  Watch in the next few months as the spin on the Stimulus will be: we shouldn’t have sold the job-creation program known as the stimulus as … a job-creation program.  You can't make this up.
 
From last year; Christina Romer (now resigned from the Economic team) explaining how they had no clue how to handle the economy:


Anita Dunn making her case recently:

Restoring Honor 2010

Live Feed from the "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington D.C.  Figured we might as well see what all the hubub is about.

Economic Info for the Month of July

All is well....

Man...economic news isn't good:

• Yesterday, the news came out that existing home sales dropped 27% for the month of July.  In order to stabilize the residential markets, jobs have to return and prices have to stabilize. The Obama administration has gotten in the way of both processes. Thanks to ill-advised taxpayer-subsidized interventions, prices have remained unrealistically high, and no one wants to buy until they pay the right amount for the value of their investment. And until we quit penalizing capital and introducing massive ambiguities into regulatory regimes and expanding them, jobs won’t get created and new buyers won’t materialize anyway.
• Today, the Commerce Department noted that new home sales dropped 12% for the month of July; down 37% from last year. Expect more deflation in housing markets this year as sales dive to new lows
• Although the Commerce Department predicted a 3% growth, durable goods orders rose, but only slightly thanks to transportation industry by 0.3%.  Meanwhile the rest of the industry dropped 3.8% last month.  In other words, absent artificial stimulation, we had no growth at all in Q2. Depending on the final revision, due on Friday, we could be anywhere from -0.3% to -3.4% excluding Porkulus in Q2. Recovery Summer, my ass.
• Thanks to last year's Cash for Clunkers, used car prices have JUMPED 10% overall due to a lower supply in inventory.  As predicted last year, the people most hurt by the price increases are those who can least afford them. The used-car market usually attracts people who need transportation on a budget, who cannot afford to buy new. By destroying a quarter’s worth of trade-ins in three weeks and permanently taking them off the market, the Obama administration has forced an artificial inflation by supply restriction. Moreover, they did so by subsidizing new-car sales that would have occurred anyway, eating up three billion dollars in taxpayer money. In other words, the White House spent $3 billion to make used cars more expensive for working-class families. Nice work.

Keep in mind that our entire economic recovery has been in the hands of a Democratic Administration and Congress with little to no experience in running a business in the private sector.  In the examples above, each have been directly affected by the laws passed since 2009 under their watch.  Businesses are sitting on 2 Trillion just to collect interest instead of spending to hire and expand because of the policies passed by the current party in power. Nobody knows what's to come of the new legislations that have been passed. I mean this with the utmost respect.....Wake the fuck up people.

Bye Bye Student Health Insurance, another victim in the wake of Healthcare Reform

After the University of North Carolina issues with health insurance, you'd think that colleges would be set with health coverage for their students. Well, due to a surprise in the new Healthcare bill: (via QandO)

Colleges and universities say that some rules in the new health law could keep them from offering low-cost, limited-benefit student insurance policies, and they’re seeking federal authority to continue offering them.

Their request drew immediate fire from critics, however, who say that student health plans should be held to the same standards that other insurance is.
Among other things, the colleges want clarification that they won’t have to offer the policies to non-students.
Without a number of changes, it may be impossible to continue to offer student health plans, says a letter that the American Council on Education sent Aug. 12 to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, signed by 12 other trade associations that represent colleges.
Additionally, the colleges say that some provisions of the law don’t apply to their policies, including those that require insurers to spend at least 80 percent of their revenue on medical care and that bar them from setting annual coverage caps.

Universities usually offer some form of health insurance to students, but those policies fit the needs of young adults, who generally don’t access the health care system nearly as much as older adults. They have smaller networks, as students generally stay within a small geographic area. Premiums are lower because of the low risk, but also because some comprehensive services don’t get fully covered, usually those accessed by people in middle age or older. In short, the policies are tailored to the clientele, which is why pricing can be more efficient.
 
With the new Healthcare Bill, policies can no longer be tailored to clientele, nor can consumers make choices that best fit their lives. All policies must look mainly alike, thanks to the top-down command “reforms” in Healthcare, which mandate coverages regardless of risk or need. So, a comprehensive policy designed to cover Americans in their 50s would be useless for just about anyone who attends college in their youth, and would be more expensive than they are likely to afford.
 
Universities can either offer policies that are so expensive that only a few can afford to buy them, which creates all sorts of problems in managing a risk pool, or they can simply get out of the health-insurance business altogether. Businesses have chosen to opt out thus far, so there's no reason to believe that the Universities wouldn't do the same.

Democrats are running against themselves!?

Let me start off by saying:  I'm glad the first day of school comes once a year.

Let's start today with the Democrats.....or should I say, the ones distancing themselves from the Democratic agenda as of late:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called them her “majority makers” – the moderate to conservative Democrats in right-leaning districts whose election in 2006 made her Speaker.

And now many of them – and other Democrats in competitive districts -- are fighting for their political lives in a harsh environment and have found it necessary to distance themselves from their leaders and Democratic policies.
After Democrats won a special election in Pennsylvania earlier this year in which the GOP nominee tried to tie the Democrat, Mark Critz, to Pelosi and Obama, the Speaker said, “What we learn from this election and I think hopefully Republicans saw clearly, is nationalizing the election, talking about Speaker Pelosi and President Obama was not as appealing to the public there than Mark Critz talking to them about their jobs.”
Will that also hold true for Democrats talking about Pelosi and Obama in a negative way?

In case you are in disbelief, here are the campaign ads. First, Bobby Bright, D-Ala:



Next, Jason Altmire, D-Penn:



Mike McIntyre, D-NC:



Glenn Nye, D-Va:



Joe Donnelley, D-Ind with 2 ads.:





This is a just a mess.

Whew....LONG WEEK!!!

Too bad it's going to be much longer.  Summer's almost over and school will begin for the little one, so I'm in parent mode until next wednesday.  I have no special guest posters on my site just yet, but feel free to check out some of the links to the left of blogs I regularly visit.  Hotair.com is the absolute best.  Enjoy until I return!

Andrew Klavan: A Young Person's Guide to the United States Constitution

It's the little things they don't emphasize...this video lays out the basics of the Constitution so anyone can understand it

DEMOCRATS AND GOP BATTLE OVER BUSH TAX CUTS

Neil Boortz on Fox News explaining the effects of tax cuts in an economy in his subtle way:



In case you're wondering: 70% of economist favor extending Bush Tax Cuts.  Link to Wall Street Journal article here as the source. Go figure.

Video: “I’m willing to take a chance on something different”

Change?

Very Positive step towards Housing Reform by the Obama Team: Cut Out the Community Organizers

The Washington Post reports today that community organizers find themselves on the outside without a seat at the table where the new policies will develop for housing reform — and that they’re not keeping quiet about the betrayal:

Affordable-housing advocates raised concerns Thursday that the Obama administration is excluding consumer and community groups from playing prominent roles in a government-sponsored conference next week that will kick off efforts to overhaul national housing policy.

After the administration announced the 12 panelists for Tuesday’s conference, the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition said consumer and community groups had been “muscled out” by financial companies, economists and academics without a sense of how housing policy plays out in communities.
“Apparently being a community organizer qualifies you to be president, but it’s not good enough to be part of HUD and Treasury’s think tank on housing,” said NCRC chief executive John Taylor, whose group works with hundreds of community organizations to promote access to financial services for low- and middle-income people.

Inflating housing bubbles by forcing or incentivizing overreliance on subprime loans clearly hasn’t worked out well for most communities; we now have a foreclosure crisis, thanks to people overextending themselves on overvalued homes. The government interventions of the past twelve years have created crisis and instability, and it doesn’t take a community organizer to see that.

Cutting out the community organizers could mean one of two outcomes. Either Obama is serious about recalibrating HUD’s mission towards low-income rentals and away from distorting lending markets to push ownership where the economics simply don’t support it, or this process is just a beard to continue the status quo by claiming that the White House did its due diligence in checking out all of the possibilities.

A Little on the Economy and Jobless Claims

Great video about the number of jobs lost under the Pelosi-Reid Congress since 2007:



By the way:

• Initial jobless claims today jumped to their highest level in almost 6 months.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development have begun issuing emergency $50,000 loans at zero interest to unemployed homeowners in an attempt to stall foreclosures, using $1 billion of Porkulus funds for the effort and $2 billion from the same source for indirect aid through state governments.
• foreclosure seizures have increased by 6% over last year
• Home foreclosures are spreading in areas that didn't have problems before, like in the Northwest and Midwest
• The US bailout of financial institutions, and in particular AIG, wound up rescuing foreign firms, according to a new report from the Congressional Oversight Panel.
• That $26.1 Billion Jobs package for public servants?  There's already waste and abuse, reported a day after its passage.  States that don't need the money are recieving it.

But this is the "Recovery Summer"!!

Hispanics Fire Back at Harry Reid

Yesterday Harry Reid said this:
“I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican,” said Reid. “Do I need to say more?”
Seriously, this has been the issue for African Americans for how long? Nice to see the Democrats play the race card (i.e. if you are minority, you must vote Democrat). We have got to get past these political stereotypes and learn about the issues.
Dr. Manny Alvarez speaks out against Harry Reid’s prejudiced (NOT RACIST) comments about voters of Hispanic descent:

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism

More from Milton Friedman about the principles of Libertarianism. Just felt like I had to share this four part series.

Milton Friedman - Socialism vs. Capitalism

This guy pretty much said it. I've found a new hero.



I just realized that I'm a pure capitalist and not the current definition as defined by the progressives of today.  If it exists, I'm a Constitutional Libertarian Capitalist.  I'll define this later.

More From Black Conservatives

Some more from the Black Conservative press conference.  The first two address racism within the Tea Party movement and the last addresses the 14th Amendment.

Michael P. Fleischer: Why I'm Not Hiring (Rehash on How Businesses Work)

Straight from the Wall Street Journal Opinion page

Why I'm Not Hiring
When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits.
By MICHAEL P. FLEISCHER
With unemployment just under 10% and companies sitting on their cash, you would think that sooner or later job growth would take off. I think it's going to be later—much later. Here's why.
Meet Sally (not her real name; details changed to preserve privacy). Sally is a terrific employee, and she happens to be the median person in terms of base pay among the 83 people at my little company in New Jersey, where we provide audio systems for use in educational, commercial and industrial settings. She's been with us for over 15 years. She's a high school graduate with some specialized training. She makes $59,000 a year—on paper. In reality, she makes only $44,000 a year because $15,000 is taken from her thanks to various deductions and taxes, all of which form the steep, sad slope between gross and net pay.
Before that money hits her bank, it is reduced by the $2,376 she pays as her share of the medical and dental insurance that my company provides. And then the government takes its due. She pays $126 for state unemployment insurance, $149 for disability insurance and $856 for Medicare. That's the small stuff. New Jersey takes $1,893 in income taxes. The federal government gets $3,661 for Social Security and another $6,250 for income tax withholding. The roughly $13,000 taken from her by various government entities means that some 22% of her gross pay goes to Washington or Trenton. She's lucky she doesn't live in New York City, where the toll would be even higher.
Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.
Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers' comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally's Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security.
When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year.
Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector, we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure. Tax increases, whether cloaked as changes in unemployment or disability insurance, Medicare increases or in any other form can dramatically alter our financial situation. With government spending and deficits growing as fast as they have been, you know that more tax increases are coming—for my company, and even for Sally too.
Companies have also been pressed into serving as providers of health insurance. In a saner world, health insurance would be something that individuals buy for themselves and their families, just as they do with auto insurance. Now, adding to the insanity, there is ObamaCare.
Every year, we negotiate a renewal to our health coverage. This year, our provider demanded a 28% increase in premiums—for a lesser plan. This is in part a tax increase that the federal government has co-opted insurance providers to collect. We had never faced an increase anywhere near this large; in each of the last two years, the increase was under 10%.
To offset tax increases and steepening rises in health-insurance premiums, my company needs sustainably higher profits and sales—something unlikely in this "summer of recovery." We can't pass the additional costs onto our customers, because the market is too tight and we'd lose sales. Only governments can raise prices repeatedly and pretend there will be no consequences.
And even if the economic outlook were more encouraging, increasing revenues is always uncertain and expensive. As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company's vulnerability to government decisions to raise taxes, to policies that make health insurance more expensive, and to the difficulties of this economic environment.
A life in business is filled with uncertainties, but I can be quite sure that every time I hire someone my obligations to the government go up. From where I sit, the government's message is unmistakable: Creating a new job carries a punishing price.


Mr. Fleischer is president of Bogen Communications Inc. in Ramsey, N.J.

For every dime taken directly out of business, it's another dime taken from you.  This will be one of the hardest lessons that most of us will have to learn because we've been conditioned to dislike the system.  It used to be that you get rewarded for doing the right things, but the current administration (and the last) have put out the message that bad behavior trumps all others. 

This is the wake up call.

The U.S. Constitution Page is Up

It's finally done.  I have put up the U.S. Constituition in it's entirety, followed by the 27 Amendments to the Constitution.   I explain my reasons for doing so, but some things for you to know:

• The dates when each Amendment was ratified has been included for historical reference
• Any Amendment following the Bill of Rights (first ten) has a link to the history behind them
• I've pointed out parts of the Constitution that have been overridden by other parts, just so you can see which will take more precedence over the other

This is for your reference.  You will always have a way to check mine, or the opinions of others with this very important document and whether it stands against it.

Schwarzenegger's learned an Important lesson AFTER 7 YEARS

This is just a shame. He had seven years to make this happen for his state, and instead, he's passed laws that punished business through tax and regulation in order to pay for California's bureaucracy and social programs. His message is mixed too, he claims that taxation is the sole problem, but gives examples of overregulation.



The key point here made by Schwarzenegger (and good for him for recognizing it) is that if it takes California eight months to approve a business for opening while only 30 days in Colorado and 22 days in Texas, businesses will invest first in those states and put California far down their list — especially when considering the high taxes California also imposes along with its regulatory burdens.
Take this seriously, our Federal Administration is headed down the same path as California.

Project in the Works! The U.S. Constitution

I'm about to put up a seperate page just for the U.S. Constitution.  Coming very soon

Conservative Black Leaders at Press Conference 8/4/2010

Two reporters engage in a heated exchange with black conservative leaders at a press conference at the National Press Club on August 4, 2010 challenging the NAACP on its charges of racism within the tea party. This will not do much to change the minds of most, but it may be enough to get them to think.

Keeping up with the Promises From the Healthcare Debate

Not posting anything today, so I'll leave you something from the page of one of my trusted sources

Via (Ed Morrissey at Hotair)

Today, we welcome a guest post from Mary Katharine Ham of the Weekly Standard and Townhall’s political editor Guy Benson, bringing us up to date on the status of promises made in connection with ObamaCare.

Two years ago, Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit were kind enough to allow us to write here on “The Comprehensive Case Against Barack Obama” —a lengthy analysis pitting candidate Obama’s rhetoric against his actual record, past statements and long-time associations. We felt certain at the time, and still do, that his campaign was at its core a savvy marketing machine designed, in part, to deliberately mislead voters about the candidate’s true beliefs and experience. Revisiting our presentation two years later, we take no joy in saying that the administration has largely vindicated our concerns.

One of those concerns is health care reform. On March 21, after more than a year of contentious debate, Congressional Democrats finally passed their health care reform bill without a single Republican vote in either house. The president has challenged Republicans to run against his unpopular health care law—implying that they don’t have the political courage to do so. He may be right on that point; he may not—but the facts show that (a) many of the highest-profile selling points employed by the Left to drag Obamacare across the finish line were either incorrect or intentional distortions, (b) the consequences of not repealing this law are dire, and (c) the public’s enduring hostility toward Obamacare demonstrates a political appetite for repeal.

Recent polls reflect America’s zeal for repeal, as does an August ballot referendum in Missouri rebuking the individual mandate, which succeeded by a margin of 71-29. Throughout the lengthy public debate, President Obama and his surrogates consistently ridiculed and denounced critics of the bill as bad-faith, fear-mongering propaganda merchants.

The facts now prove there was plenty to fear in good faith.

Promise #1: If you are satisfied with your existing health care arrangement, you can keep it.

Over and over again, the president and his ideological allies assured Americans satisfied with their current plan/doctor/coverage that nothing would change if the bill became law:



He told the AMA: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Critics of the bill predicted this pledge would expire almost immediately. They were right. As government mandates for plans— “important consumer protections” as Obama called them— pile up, premiums will rise and the composition of even allegedly “grandfathered” plans will change.

A former Medicare/Medicaid official wrote that insurers and doctors are already shifting business models in anticipation of dramatic changes. CBS News featured a small business in Pennsylvania to demonstrate how provisions within Obamacare incentivize employers to drop their employee’s health coverage, and how other elements of the law discourage hiring—thus undermining the nation’s employment recovery. Companies with 25-49 workers are relatively unscathed by the new law, whereas businesses with 50 or more employees face stringent new mandates. Under this system, employers with, say 48 workers, would have compelling reasons to avoid hiring any more full-time workers.

Even more devastating, draft regulation guidelines issued by the federal government itself predict that between half and two-thirds of Americans’ current private plans will lose grandfathered (i.e., “protected”) status by 2013. As the Daily Caller reports, “for plans that do not fall under the grandfathered status, employers would have to find a plan that complies with the health care bill.” More than one million part-time and lower-wage workers are already feeling the squeeze, as popular “mini-med” affordable limited-benefit plans will be banned by the feds starting this fall.

And, if none of this worries you, keep in mind that the same Congress assuring you that no matter how much changes, your personal health care will remain the same may have accidentally stripped themselves of their own health care.

Bottom line: Despite what the president told us repeatedly, it’s quite possible you will not be permitted to keep your health care plan– no matter how much you may like it. Supporters of health care reform argue that government mandates for certain kinds of coverage will only change health care plans for the better, making them more comprehensive, so no one will be negatively impacted. This argument ignores the loss of both choice and money inflicted by government mandates, but even if it were true, that wasn’t the promise, was it?

Promise #2: Reform will lower America’s health care spending.

Remember all that talk about “bending the cost curve down”? Obamacare supporters often spoke about the urgent need to lower the country’s out-of-control spending on health care. They often cited statistics suggesting that the U.S. spent exorbitant amounts of money on care; far more than other industrialized nations. Obamacare, they told us, would finally bring spiraling costs under control.

On March 4, 2010, President Obama committed to the premise that, “My proposal will bring down the cost of health care for millions: Families, businesses, and the federal government.” Conservatives weren’t so sure. Hadn’t Congressional Budget Director Doug Elmendorf warned Congress that, if anything, the legislation would actually bend the cost curve up?

Approximately a month after the vote went through, a damning report prepared by the government’s very own Medicare Actuary exposed the truth: Obamacare will actually increase the nation’s health care tab. In the first ten years of the program, spending will increase about 1 percent or roughly $310 billion.

Bottom line: Obamacare supporters were wrong when they told the country the legislation would lower the nation’s health care costs. Ten years after its passage, health care will represent a larger percentage of GDP than the current projection.

Obamacare proponents like Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic argued that the uptick in spending over 10 years didn’t matter because the long-term trend does bend the curve down. But the Actuary’s report says the savings liberals are counting on in part to cause this long-term bend “may be unrealistic.”

Promise #3: Reform will lower Americans’ health care premiums.

People on all sides of the debate seemed to agree on one thing: Higher premiums were a major bummer. So, President Obama announced his plan would reduce them. The new health care market “will lower rates,” he said, “it’s estimated by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you’re currently getting.” During a stump speech in Cleveland, he went even further, claiming that premiums could fall by as much as 3,000 percent (a spokesman later clarified he meant $3,000). Gaffes aside, the message was rates would head south under Obamacare. But CBS, the Washington Post, and the CBO argued in 2009 that kind of reduction was unlikely.

Even early on in the public debate, opponents of the plan harbored serious doubts about this claim. Could the government really force insurance companies to lower premiums without risking a collapse of the private market? Federally mandated bargain-basement premium rates would inevitably lead to insurance companies cutting costs through layoffs, offering lower quality care, going bankrupt, or all the above. President Obama insisted that the demise of private insurance was no longer his or the Left’s long-term goal, going so far as to claim that his bill would actually strengthen the private market by opening it up to millions of new consumers. But the question remained: How would the government add patients, add mandates to health plans, and not raise costs to average Americans?

Were Congressional Democrats convinced by their own party’s talking point? Nope. Less than a month after their March triumph, Senate Democrats were so concerned over the prospect of dramatic premium hikes, they began scrambling to regulate premium rates. (Video of Harkin’s committee hearing is unavailable on CSPAN or YouTube, but it can be seen here, on the committee’s website.)

Democrats’ price-control bluster has only intensified as reality sets in. The original bill did not use explicit price-control mechanisms because, of course, premiums were supposed to fall because of the original bill. But the CBO and media fact-checkers agreed that higher premiums were likely on their way.

Obama himself conceded people might be paying more for health insurance before his bill passed, during a Blair House exchange with Sen. Lamar Alexander, but that it was only because they’d be getting better insurance. Politifact awarded the president a generous “Half-True” in this exchange, but added, “Bottom line, people won’t be paying more for the same thing. They’ll be paying more for better plans.” One can argue that paying more for more product is something worth doing, but one can’t argue it satisfies Obama’s promise.

In their defense, if only some real-life scenario had been available to Democrats to help them envision how top-down health insurance price controls would play out, may have made more responsible decisions. Oh, wait. If only there had been some trusted, liberal source who could have delivered the message— like an Edwards and Clinton speechwriter who can’t afford health care in a state with allegedly “universal” health care.

Bottom Line: Contrary to the president’s commitments, your premiums could increase under Obamacare. Why? Just count the reasons. Or ask Dick Durbin.



Promise #4: Obamacare will not lead to a doctor shortage, or escalate the primary-care physician shortfall.

Implicit in the president’s if-you-like-your-doctor-you-can-keep-him schitck was the assumption that his plan certainly wouldn’t negatively impact Americans’ access to doctors. The administration dismissed admonitions of the impending doctor shortage their bill would exacerbate. No worries, they cooed, primary care physicans would come out of the woodwork once all of the bill’s wonderful elements were implemented. After all, Obama had secured the backing of the AMA for his endeavor, right? What could go wrong? Quite a lot, actually.

As a result of the new law, the Associated Press advises Americans to “beat the crowd and find a doctor” because the “landmark health care overhaul…promises extra strain” on the already-dwindling ranks of primary care physicians. Inauspiciously, the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Center for Workforce Studies estimates a shortage of 160,000 doctors within 15 years. America’s medical schools “can’t keep up,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “A nurse may soon be your doctor” because of the shortage, explains USA Today.

Obamacare proponent Ezra Klein conceded this point in a post arguing against fears of a doctor shortage. He euphemized such a possibility as a “hiccup” in a growing system and predicted, “Increased need for basic care could lead to more use of nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and things like Minute Clinics.”

There’s also considerable evidence that Obamacare will overwhelm cramped emergency rooms and slammed hospitals. How might this deepening shortage affect Americans? Just ask a Canadian.

Bottom Line: Thanks to Obamacare, America’s doctor shortfall will accelerate and it will become more difficult to get quality, timely care from a doctor.

Promise #5: There will be no government rationing of medical care.

Democrats’ most furious pushback against anti-Obamacare arguments resulted from predictions of government-mandated rationing. The White House website’s “reality check” feature devotes two full pages to “debunking” so-called right-wing smears about rationing. The president himself assailed his opponents on this point.

Speaking in New Hampshire, he dismissed concerns over rationing, “that somehow some government bureaucrat out there will be saying, well, you can’t have this test or you can’t have this procedure because some bean-counter decides that this is not a good way to use our health care dollars.” Those fears, he said, were unfounded. “So I just want to be very clear about this. I recognize there is an underlying fear here that people somehow won’t get the care they need. You will have not only the care you need, but also the care that right now is being denied to you.”

What worried many skeptics was the equal clarity expressed by liberal Democrat and former cabinet secretary Robert Reich, who in 2007 candidly laid out the underlying need for government rationing within any government-run health care framework:



Does Secretary Reich fall under into the category of smear merchant? What about Obama’s own Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag? After his boss’ plan was signed into law, Orzag publicly marveled at the government’s new powers to hit “aggressive” health care cost-cutting goals—largely without the inconvenience of Congressional oversight. His unedited remarks belie the president’s words in New Hampshire:



In addition to Orszag’s remarks, consider President Obama’s appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, arguably one of the most influential health care posts in the entire new federal bureaucracy. The president has selected Harvard professor Donald Berwick, who the American Spectator’s Philip Klein nicknamed “Obama’s rationing man.” Berwick is an unapologetic fan of Britain’s National Health Services, notorious for cutting effective (but expensive) medical treatments, and subjecting patients to sub-standard care and neglect.

“I am a romantic about the [British system]; I love it,” Berwick told a British audience in 2008. He also co-authored an academic paper urging “rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest” to “reduce per capita costs.”

The Obama administration gave Berwick a recess appointment in July, which means he will get no public hearing. The disingenuous rationale for this appointment was that Republicans were holding the nomination up, but as ABC News reported at the time, “Republicans were not delaying or stalling Berwick’s nomination. Indeed, they were eager for his hearing, hoping to assail Berwick’s past statements about health care rationing and his praise for the British health care system.”

It is precisely because the administration no longer wants to address what Obama once called a “legitimate concern” that Berwick will not have to face the Senate.

There was also that whole Guide to Death pamphlet issued by the VA— a joint venture of sorts with the Hemlock Society—which might have led to “legitimate concern” about bean-counters meddling in personal medical decisions.

Bottom Line: Whether dressed up as “comparative effectiveness research” or described bluntly by Mr. Reich or Berwick, government rationing is a frightening and unavoidable byproduct of government-administered and –regulated health care.

Promise #6: “The firm pledge” – Ninety-five percent of Americans will not see any form of tax increase because of Obamacare (or anything else).

It doesn’t get any less ambiguous than this Obama promise: “I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12, 2009. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”



Candidate Obama repeated this vow so often on the campaign trail, anyone who even loosely followed the 2008 presidential campaign could likely repeat it in his sleep. Once a behemoth new entitlement was on the table, some dishonest, rumor-peddling cynics began to wonder if the president would be forced to abandon his central campaign pledge to pay for it. Such an admission, naturally, might have caused some angst among voters and fomented more opposition to the bill. “But of course we’ll honor our tax pledge!” the White House insisted.

Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, the president was adamant: “I can still keep [the $250,000 tax] promise because as I’ve said, about two-thirds of what we’ve proposed would be from money that’s already in the health care system but just being spent badly. And as I said before, this is not me making wild assertions.”

He was even more frank speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.



Now the federal government itself is arguing in court challenges to its constitutionality that the individual mandate is a tax after all, to which all Americans will be subject. The New York Times:

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

We also now know that in its current and future attempts to pay for Obamacare, the federal government will raise taxes on millions of Americans, violate “the firm pledge” repeatedly, and force the American public to become even more intimately acquainted with the Internal Revenue Service.

There are at least 18 new taxes embedded into the new law, many of which don’t detonate until after the president’s 2012 re-election campaign. All of those taxes must just target the rich, right? Wrong. The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation breaks the bad news: Millions of middle class families will get “socked” with a $3.9 billion tax hike in the years ahead thanks to Obamacare.

There are also some “costly” new IRS mandates. The head of the IRS has warned taxpayers failure to comply with the government’s new universal mandate to purchase approved coverage may result in the confiscation of tax refunds. If that sounds like a lot of bureaucratic work, you’re right: The feds are contemplating hiring thousands of new IRS agents to track and enforce compliance on a national scale.

The federal government’s own National Taxpayer Advocate Service argued in July that Obamacare has it doing work it’s not remotely trained, qualified, or funded for and that the health care law “may impose significant burdens on businesses, charities, and government agencies.”

So, how’s that ‘firm pledge’ holding up, Mr. Outgoing White House budget director? It’s been downgraded to a presidential “preference,” eh? It was fun while it lasted.

Bottom Line: Hold on to your wallets.

Promise #7: Health care reform won’t add “a single dime” to the deficit—and will actually cut it.

Remember that unambiguous, crystal-clear presidential promise from item number six? Here’s another one, delivered to a joint session of Congress and a nationally televised audience: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. (Applause.) I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.”

Right-wing paranoiacs really didn’t believe this one, but the Democrats had an ace in the hole. Leading up the vote—voila!—Pelosi & Co engineered a final CBO score that magically validated the president’s famous words. Go crazy, America! Your massive new entitlement program will reduce the deficit by $130 Billion over ten years!

A number of Debbie Downers made valiant attempts to expose the folly. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin crunched the un-manipulated numbers for the New York Times and found that the “real arithmetic” was nowhere near deficit-reducing or –neutral. The truth: Obamacare would bloat the deficit by $563 Billion. The advertised ten-year price tag of $900+ Billion was risible. In reality it sat much closer to $2.5 Trillion, as the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Financial Services Committee inadvertently admitted.



So how did Democrats manage to gerry-rig the CBO’s scoring system to produce superficially solvent math? Rep. Paul Ryan meticulously decimated their “smoke and mirrors” gimmickry at the Blair House summit, thoroughly explaining to the president’s face precisely how his administration and party were misleading the country. The clip is worth your time, and informative to the last drop:



In fairness, here’s Obamacare proponent Ezra Klein’s rebuttal to Ryan, which is worth a read for a pretty frank but ultimately unconvincing defense of tricky government accounting. But even in rebutting Ryan, Klein concedes, “The 10-year cost of the bill is really only counting six years of operation. This was a deceptive effort to keep the bill’s price tag under $1 trillion, even as the bill’s price tag was really quite a bit more.”

In short, the Democrats’ bogus score relied on:

(a) Double-counting unrealistic, never-gonna-happen Medicare cuts to the tune of $500 Billion.
(b) Pretending the $200B+ “Doc Fix” was a separate, unrelated issue—it has since passed the Senate. For those who think treating “doc fix” as an unrelated issue was fair, they may want to ponder why the expensive measure was included in an early version of the House bill until Democrats needed a better CBO score, at which point it was removed.
(c) Shoehorning 10 years’ of tax revenues into just six years of “benefits.”
(d) Double-counting social security tax revenue.
(e) Totally ignoring billions in requisite “discretionary” spending for Obamacare’s implementation.

On the eve of the health care vote, a CBO letter to Rep. Paul Ryan confirmed that, without such gimmickry, the health care bill would add $260 billion over 10 years to instead of reducing it by $138. Both the CMS and the CBO have objected to the double-counting of Medicare savings as paying for Obamacare and shoring up Medicare, but the administration continues to use the misleading metric, even this week.

Passage of the “Doc Fix” alone, coupled with this little wrinkle, has already driven Obamacare into the red. Finally, the current director of CBO has decisively torpedoed the entire “cost savings” charade. Revisiting a previous devastating critique that nearly derailed the process in 2009, Elmendorf has concluded that Obamacare will not “bend the cost curve” of health care spending down.

Putting the federal budget on a sustainable path would almost certainly require a significant reduction in the growth of federal health spending relative to current law (including this year’s health legislation).

Too little, too late. It’s now the law of the land.

Bottom Line: The president’s bill won’t add a single dime to the deficit. It will pile trillions upon trillions of dimes atop an already mountainous debt.

Promise #8: Health care reform will help businesses—employers and employees, alike.

The conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation offers a good list of concerns conservatives had about the effect the health care reform bill might have on businesses. Here’s the story of just one, wholesome Midwestern company rethinking its employer-provided health insurance in the wake of Obamacare. White Castle, maker of the nation’s beloved fast-food sliders, provides employees with health care coverage that covers 70-89 percent of their costs. This would seem to make the company one of the good actors, according to the administration’s standards. But health care reform is discouraging this good behavior instead of encouraging it. They will consider dropping their health care and leaving employees to government exchanges.

They’re not the only ones. That’s why the International Franchise Association opposed the law, saying it will “impose tremendous burdens on America’s restaurants and hurt our industry’s ability to create and sustain jobs.”

Small business owners and the self-employed get hit again with a new, onerous tax burden meant to close a tax reporting “loophole” to pay for the health care that’s allegedly going to do nothing but help them. The federal government’s IRS ombudsman took issue with a new requirement that every business and non-profit file a 1099 form for anyone from whom they buy $600 or more in goods or services annually. This would require that each business owner keep a tally of goods he bought from Staples to make sure his ink cartridges don’t hit $600, and would affect up to 40 million businesses, many of them sole proprietorships.

Some House Democrats have since realized the folly of this anti-business imposition, and have offered a bill to repeal this part of Obamacare, but are balking at the loss of revenue. They say realizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Let’s hope they’re right, as even Democrats begin to relinquish the farce that this bill can be all things to all people and all paid for, all at the same time.

Promise #9: Obamacare will not allow for funding of abortions with taxpayer money.

At his address to the joint session of Congress in September 2009, President Obama attempted to “clear up” what he called a “misunderstanding.”

“Under our plan,” he said. “No federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

Pro-life activists were accused of lying for pointing out that a “segregation of funds” would not prevent funding of abortions through federally subsidized plans because money is fungible. Pro-life Democrats balked at the idea of the federal government funding abortions on Indian reservations and in community health centers, endangering the passage of the bill. A last-minute Executive Order allegedly preventing federal funding of abortion only affirmed the inadequate language in the original bill, but garnered enough pro-life Democrats to win bill passage.

In July 2010, the Congressional Research Service found that Obamacare did indeed allow federal funding for abortions through high-risk pools created and entirely funded by the federal government. The Executive Order doesn’t prevent abortion funding through high-risk pools.

When New Mexico’s high-risk pool made it possible to get an abortion on demand, the public outcry caused the federal government to set stricter guidelines, allowing abortions only in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. The rules in Pennsylvania also seem to allow for federally funded abortions, though the administration and the state claim the problematic language is just a “placeholder.” Pro-life activists also have concerns about Maryland.

Bottom Line: Were it not for watchful pro-life activists and the wide unpopularity of federally funding abortions, the bill would already be paying for them in at least one state.

Promise #10: Obamacare will not only satisfy each of the promises above, but satisfy all of them at the same time with virtually no downsides.

In defense of the administration, it did start lowering expectations shortly after passage. On Obama’s post-passage p.r. push, he gave a speech in Iowa that included this decidedly un-lofty section:

“Now, it’s going to take about four years to implement this entire plan — because we’ve got to do it responsibly and we need to do it right. So I just want to be clear: that means that health care costs won’t go down overnight; not all the changes are going to be in place; there are still going to be aspects of the health care system that are very frustrating over the next several years.”

With all due respect to the president, we weren’t pitched “This’ll take four years of frustration but it won’t be as bad as Republicans say it is” for $2.5 trillion. We were pitched perfection. Every substantive criticism was met with charges of “fear-mongering.” We were pitched a bill that expanded coverage and increased subsidies without increasing the deficit, mandated new levels of coverage without taxing citizens, that changed everything unless you didn’t want anything to change, that cut costs without rationing, and that enacted 2,500 pages of law without any unintended negative consequences.

Instead we have a bill that’s already been uncertain on whether it covers Congress, is missing deadlines and confusing doctors and patients, is threatening to throw the sickest off its high-risk rolls to save money, raises questions about covering children with and without preexisting conditions, and may take decades for the federal government to figure out. No wonder proponents got a little testy, right after passage, about actually providing verifiable results of all they’d promised.

At the risk of using the “overheated rhetoric” and “fear-mongering” I know the president hates, it’d be fitting if Americans exercised their Berwickian right to comparative research and subjected Obamacare to its own death panel. All Obama’s promises have expiration dates. Why not his policies?

Thanks to Ed and Allah for letting us hang out with Hot Air readers once again, and special thanks to Phil Klein of the American Spectator, whose extensive health care reporting and knowledge (cited throughout) added so much to this effort.