View All Larry Hunter Bogs
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May 12, 2012 02:45 PM
 Government clogs the arteries and gums up the works. Stress builds up in the system; potential energy accumulates seeking release. Politics makes continuous adjustment impossible to achieve. Markets are prevented from adjusting but the system must adjust to relieve the pressure. Zugzwang! Inflation! It’s coming. Prepare for it.
Apr 27, 2012 03:00 PM
 The Republican Party should change its moniker from the Grand Old Party (GOP) to FUP, the Fixing-the- Unfixable Party. FUP-Red is distinguished from FUP-Blue, which identifies the Democratic Party as the Fomenting Unrest Party because all it does is incite race resentment and class warfare so the people clamor and vote for destructive political solutions to fix things up. FUP-Red comes along trying to fix up the foul up FUP-Blue creates but alas all it accomplishes is to foul up the foul up even more, fomenting more discontent and inflicting more hurt as its geniuses attempt to convert the sinking ship into a flying ark. Red or Blue, both FUP parties are designed to keep politics in control of our lives and the people under the heel of government. Politics, red or blue, is not the answer to what ails us. Freedom is.
Apr 17, 2012 11:48 AM
 The virtue of a true federalism has nothing to do with the virtue, competence, or trustworthiness of local officials and the parasites they nurture but everything to do with the ability of people to escape their grimy little reach. Restrict the sphere of the monopoly to initiate violence (which is the true definition of government), and you increase the possibility of escape. Farmers in human cattle, which is all governments are, cannot survive if the livestock all walks off the plantation.
Apr 09, 2012 10:52 AM
 Congress’s appalling handling of Social Security makes Hoffa’s misuse of Teamster pension fund monies pale by comparison. Just because it’s Congress, however, doesn’t make it any less criminal than what Hoffa and company did. And, it certainly doesn’t justify compounding the felony by means testing Social Security and stealing workers’ paid-in contributions and cutting their earned Social Security benefits in the name of some higher “national need. . .something the nation does for its collective good” as Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson demands.
Mar 30, 2012 03:46 PM
 The best and most practical solution to the Social Security dilemma is simply to allow workers the freedom to choose to opt out of the program or remain in the current Social Security program unadulterated by benefit cuts, COLA chiseling, means testing, higher minimum retirement ages and other re-engineering devices. The federal government has become so bloated that the cost of allowing anyone who wants to remain in the program easily could be paid for without having to alter the program by cutting and reallocating other federal spending, still leaving plenty of room to reduce overall spending. Because Social Security has become such a bad deal, and gets worse everyday, an increasing number of younger workers will opt out, and the program will go the way of the horse and buggy.
Mar 23, 2012 04:24 PM
 My conservative and libertarian friends think me a wee bit inconsistent and some go so far as to say downright hypocritical when it comes to Social Security, which is supposed to be the bête noire of all freedom-loving conservatives and libertarians. I consider Social Security to be an irrevocable political and moral obligation of the U.S. Government, a commitment to workers and retirees it is bound to discharge fully and without dilution or tampering in the name of “reform” or “deficit reduction.”
Mar 08, 2012 07:41 PM
 As the nation fast approaches the Supreme Court’s deliberations on the fate of ObamaCare, the Obama Administration is pumping up a campaign to hoist the Court on the petard of conservative justice Antonin Scalia’s words. Scalia’s expansive view of federal commerce powers, which many legal scholars consider one of the broadest ever declarations of federal power under the Commerce Clause, combines with his constricted view of individual rights to raise the odds against his voting to strike down ObamaCare as unconstitutional.
Mar 04, 2012 06:25 PM
 Since the end of World War II, the balance of power has been tipped against the individual in favor of the state, and liberty has yielded to grasping government. Now, however, we may be approaching a tipping point. As the state becomes increasingly muscle bound with its technological capabilities to spy and employ violence against its citizens to force them to comply with its illegitimate dictates, that same technological capacity might soon be turned back on the state jujitsu style as that technology becomes available to individuals. Two such technological developments are Internet cloud computing (logistics) and drone technology (weaponry).
Feb 25, 2012 09:45 AM
 Democracy is fatally flawed as a social-choice mechanism, a victim of time's arrow, unable to repair itself and destined to produce chaos. Contrary to Winston Churchill’s famous quip, democracy is not the best of bad alternatives. One alternative stands head and shoulders above it: Liberty, a system in which people are left alone to do whatever they please except where they unanimously agree to restrict themselves under a precisely limited code of conduct that has stood the test of time and has evolved through a common-law process that reveals nature’s truths about human relationships (it used to be called Natural Law) rather than imposing the will of the majority in the name of the greater good (it used to be called Tyranny).
Feb 11, 2012 12:17 PM
 Upholding ObamaCare's individual mandate would leave no principled limit on the federal government’s powers. It would demolish two of the most fundamental doctrines of the Constitution: 1) The federal government is limited to delegated, enumerated powers; and 2) All powers not delegated to it are reserved to the states respectively or the people. Upholding the individual mandate would require tearing down these two fundamental pillars of the entire constitutional architecture, like blind Sampson pushing over the pillars of the temple, causing it to collapse on the heads of everyone inside.
Feb 10, 2012 03:54 PM
 The Commerce Clause grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce; it does not grant Congress the power to compel individuals to enter into interstate commerce. The Congress itself has recognized this fact for 220 years, as it never before has enacted a law compelling individuals to purchase particular products and services. Upholding ObamaCare's individual mandate would leave no principled limit on the federal government’s powers. As a result, the individual mandate would demolish the most fundamental doctrine of the Constitution, that the federal government is limited to delegated, enumerated powers.
Feb 07, 2012 03:29 PM
 The Supreme Court has long recognized under the Coercion Doctrine that just as Congress has no enumerated power to order states to implement federal policies, it may not use its Spending Power to achieve the same result indirectly. The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion effectively forces states to implement federal Medicaid policies and thereby unconstitutionally violates the Coercion Doctrine, transgressing state sovereignty and demolishing the Constitutional framework of federalism.
Feb 01, 2012 12:18 PM
 If every taxpayer earning more than $1 million was put under Obama’s 30-percent, minimum-tax rule, it would generate a maximum of only about $39 billion new revenues a year on a purely static basis, which requires assuming unrealistically that they all take no action to mitigate their increased tax liability. This is chump change for the federal government (3.0 percent of the annual deficit) and a clear indication that Mr. Obama’s proposal to increase the progressivity of the already highly progressive federal income tax is motivated more by animus toward those at the top of the economic ladder than by the deficit, concern for the economy or compassion for those at the bottom trying to get a leg up the ladder.
Jan 28, 2012 07:29 AM
 The fix is in. Two parties, one Establishment determined to raise taxes and cut Social Security and Medicare without reforming any of them. It looks like just a matter of time and subterfuge (unless Paul stages an upset) before this president or his successor rolls up the lane and drives the bucket off a screen set by the congressional GOP for an easy redistribution slam-dunk, jammed right down America’s throat once again.
Jan 21, 2012 08:18 PM
 ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid unconstitutionally violates the Coercion Doctrine under the Tenth Amendment thereby transgressing state sovereignty and violating the Constitutional framework of federalism. ObamaCare, therefore, simply cannot stand without bringing the entire edifice of federalism down around it.
Jan 20, 2012 12:57 PM
 REPRISE -- In National League of Cities v. Usery (1976), the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Tenth Amendment requires the existence of a set of essential state powers that remains beyond the reach of congressional regulation or preemption. The Court reversed itself in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1985), holding that the Tenth Amendment provides the Court no basis on which to limit the Congress in the exercise of its commerce powers. Although contradictory, both holdings can be inferred validly from the U.S. Constitution. This absurd result reveals profound inconsistencies in the constitutional design of federalism, requiring a constitutional solution. The article concludes with a discussion of a variety of constitutional remedies, including constitutional amendments.
Jan 15, 2012 03:50 PM
 To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio, the Court doesn’t need to draw precisely the outer bounds of federal power to know that ObamaCare exceeds them. The Court can know an act of legislative obscenity when it sees one—especially when it’s a lurid display of crude federal power that produces a contradiction at the heart of our political system. ObamaCare exceeds the bounds of constitutional decency and therefore cannot stand.
Jan 07, 2012 04:31 PM
 E-Verify is government over-reach at its worst. It is an arrogant exercise of power without having to assume responsibility or accountability for implementing the law. It constitutes impressing private citizens into the federal police apparatus and imposing a hidden tax on businesses. It is no less than federal conscription, dragooning private businesses into becoming the enforcers of federal government policy. It is another manifestation of the federal government’s growing proclivity to expand its routine use of force and violence while outsourcing their implementation (from mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan to rendition to foreign countries). It is an affront to the Constitution and an assault on the rights of individuals.
Dec 16, 2011 02:31 PM
 Anyone who proposes cutting Social Security for current retirees is either playing a deep political game to scare seniors into demanding the continuation of the coercive Ponzi scheme for current workers, or they see nothing wrong with trafficking in human labor in the name of social security and the greater good.
Dec 15, 2011 08:35 AM
 If you remember how the Establishment treated Ronald Reagan in the 1960s and 1970s, you'll think twice before swallowing the conventional wisdom that Ron Paul doesn’t stand a chance of becoming president because his views are “too extreme.” For 15 years after his famous “A Time for Choosing” speech endorsing Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, Democrats and establishment Republicans alike branded Reagan an “extremist,” an existential threat to the GOP and unfit to be president, all claims being reprised in 2011 about Ron Paul. Ari Fleischer, the former White House Press Secretary under George W. Bush, said of Paul, “The man is nuts.”
Dec 12, 2011 10:46 AM
 According to Mr. Obama, free markets invest too little on their own, and they create a destructive “race to the bottom.” That is why the president proclaims Americans must “come together, through our government, to help create the conditions where both workers and businesses can succeed.” He doesn’t give his vision a name. Benito Mussolini did: “Corporatism.” It is well advanced in America, spurred by Democrats and Republicans alike, beginning with the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln himself. After 150 years of steady evolution, President Obama wants to accelerate the mutation of what is left of capitalism in America into full-fledged corporatism in America.
Nov 30, 2011 06:08 AM
 Paul Krugman and Robert Reich are preeminent mainstream-media mouthpieces of the redistributionist welfare state. They never attack the real source of America’s problems, crony capitalism, the economic foundation of the welfare state in which rich and poor alike are partners in crime with the government to rip off their fellow Americans.
Nov 21, 2011 08:40 AM
 The failure of the Super Committee to come up with a deal has confused the situation temporarily, and the conventional wisdom among the mainstream media is that seniors dodged a bullet when the Super Committee dead locked and couldn’t come up with a deal by the drop-dead date. The fact of the matter is, the gun aimed at seniors—the Chained Consume Price Index (“Chained CPI”)—is still locked and loaded; the Social Security bullet is still in the chamber just waiting on a deal over taxes for Congress to pull the trigger.
Nov 20, 2011 04:55 PM
 Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) admits on Meet the Press that Democrats and Republicans alike want "fixed-income seniors to ante up more" to reduce the deficit while mischaracterizing opposition to tax increases as demands for tax cuts.
Nov 19, 2011 08:24 AM
 The Social Security Institute (SSI), plans to run this TV spot nation wide urging seniors to sign a petition demanding that current Social Security benefits and COLAs be taken off the table in all deficit discussions. Before Washington even thinks about cutting Social Security, they should lay off the hoards of meddling, counterproductive bureaucrats who have cushy jobs at taxpayers’ expense—jobs that pay twice what real workers earn in the private sector; bureaucrats who have Cadillac healthcare plans paid for by American taxpayers, many of whom can’t even afford health insurance themselves; bureaucrats who have the best retirement system in the world, a retirement system Washington denies every other working American.
Nov 16, 2011 02:36 PM
 Congressional Republicans are in full fledged panic but their terror goes way beyond their usual panic at being outmanuevered legislatively, which is, afterall, a regular occurrance. No the panic this time around reflects that fact that Republicans have given up all hope of winning the White House and picking up seats in the Congress to strengthen their hand.
Nov 07, 2011 08:04 AM
 The choice between direct and indirect taxes is not to be found in economic efficiency analyses because VATs, BTTs, Flat Taxes, Retail Sales taxes all can be designed to be taxonomically equivalent and equally efficient at producing revenue for the state. The deciding consideration in choosing indirect taxes over direct taxes, especially modern mutant direct taxes, is found in the indisputable fact that direct taxes stimulate social engineering, incite income redistribution and fuel oppressive bureaucracies.
Oct 31, 2011 07:24 AM
 If we are to make a new beginning of putting government back in its cage and restoring liberty to the people, we first must stop denying the mess we are in and begin denying governments and their private sector partners in crime the tools of tyranny and the instruments of oppression: Eliminate standing armies, deny governments all but the bare minimum of regulatory and police power and eliminate all direct taxes.
Oct 21, 2011 10:45 AM
 This week’s column delves into the constitutional history of the federal government’s taxing authority to lay the predicate for the conclusion that absent radical overhaul of the Constitution itself, which I do not rule out but neither do I expect, direct taxes on property, wealth and income are too politically toxic to permit their use by this national government.
Oct 16, 2011 10:25 AM
 When Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan is analyzed objectively, with all its virtues and vices on display, what one observers immediately is the virtues (which are plentiful) are all economic, and the vices (which are even more plentiful) are all political. Which is small consolation because it means an economically excellent tax plan would soon become a vicious bait-and-switch scam once enacted into law. The temptation would be such that no politician would be able to resist—raise the rates; narrow the bases.
Oct 11, 2011 12:55 PM
 Update 10/13 -- American politicians and their cronies in the establishment political duopoly have morphed into a band of Michael Vicks operating in the shadows. When the dogs get vicious from their repeated abuse and then start running wild in the streets, the Michael Vicks of the Establishment round them up—a Pit Bull for you, a Doberman for me—and pit them against each other in a ring for their own profit and amusement, not to mention keeping the mad dogs occupied with fighting each other so they don't turn on their masters.
Oct 10, 2011 08:04 AM
 Ron Paul should go to Zucotti Park in New York and speak to the occupiers. America needs an OccuParty, and Paul is just the guy—the only guy in the presidential race with the guts and the brains—to quicken the Occupy Movement and broaden it into a real political force to be reckoned with.
Oct 01, 2011 10:52 AM
.jpg?1317647983)  Janus was the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, hence also of gates, doors, doorways, endings and time, usually depicted as having two faces looking in opposite directions, simultaneously into the future and the past. Ron Paul has clearly fashioned himself as a political Janus. Is Paul Ryan? Or, is he just a GOP head on the two-headed Republocrat Raptor that both parties have mutated into? Here's how to tell. . .
Sep 24, 2011 04:45 PM
 Voters can send the candidates a simple, compelling message by signing the SSI petition to all presidential candidates demanding that they fill out the SSI Candidate Survey on Social Security: “If you don't respect me enough to be straight with me on Social Security and fill out the SSI Social Security Survey, I won't trust you enough to vote for you. No Survey = No Vote.”
Sep 19, 2011 08:11 PM
 It’s not bad enough Wall Street gets bailed out by taxpayers; its mouthpiece at the Wall Street Journal also wants to stiff middle-class workers even more by reducing the pitiful rate of return they can expect from Social Security when they retire. As the WSJ recently boiled down Social Security’s fiscal straits: “...the problem is that current seniors get more than they put in. . .”
Sep 09, 2011 10:29 AM
 Entreaty to Congress: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” Go away Washington, and let the automatic sequester spending cuts kick in.
Sep 03, 2011 01:42 PM
  Becker-type “solutions” to fixing up the welfare state are nothing more than disguised efforts to build an economic perpetual motion machine, to hang the superstructure of the welfare state from a sky hook, to thwart the Second Law of Thermodynamics by sneaking Maxwell’s Demon onto the congressional budget committee through the backdoor to sift and sort budget priorities. This isn’t sound economic design; it is Economic Escherism.
Aug 29, 2011 08:00 AM
 While the liberal Democrats are wrong when they say nothing is wrong with Social Security that expanding the base of the Ponzi pyramid won’t fix, they are right to say the program is not in immediate financial jeopardy, and it is not part of the current deficit and debt problem. While Republicans are right to say Social Security is financially unsustainable as currently configured, they are wrong to say it is, therefore, necessary to turn it into a welfare program and cut back benefits, not only for future recipients but also current retirees.
Aug 16, 2011 10:08 AM
Politicians, bureaucrats and judges (PB&J) routinely ignore and despoil the U.S. Constitution. What makes anyone think a new constitutional provision, such as a balanced budget amendment (BBA), forcing politicians, judges and bureaucrats to do something they don’t want to do, or preventing them from doing something they do, will be anymore effective than the rest of the Constitution, which lies in a shambles after 235 years of abuse and manipulation by the PB&J Devastators? The tragic history of the decline and destruction of the U.S. Constitution teaches, to paraphrase a famous observation about elections, that if constitutional strictures on government meant anything, they’d be abolished. Well, they did mean something a long time ago, and they were abolished.
Aug 11, 2011 09:51 PM
 The problem with the direction the country is headed is the Republican Establishment, which has made a long career out of snookering and hoodwinking conservatives into believing the Republican Party is the party of small government, low taxes, freedom and prosperity at home, and peace abroad. Republicans are, in fact, the very opposite. To paraphrase Pogo, “We Republicans have met the enemy and he is us.”
Aug 05, 2011 11:50 AM
 The bipartisan cabal, especially the Republican cabalists, played the American public for saps. It ran circles around the Tea Party neophites in manuevering them into a corner on the debt-limit from which there was no escape. Running the debt-limit gabfest up against a deadline no one is willing to ignore, the Washington Establishment is now jamming a fatally flawed plan into law. The Tea Party Caucus has no more cards to play except trying to explain to the American people and to themselves why they must hold their nose and vote "yea."
Aug 05, 2011 11:48 AM
 The Futility of Raising Tax Rates -- According to the CBO, once economic recovery occurs, federal revenues will revert to their long-run average of 18% of GDP under current tax rates. Until then, below-average revenues are baked in the cake, and the only thing raising tax rates will do is stall whatever economic recovery currently exists and further delay a return to revenue normality.
Aug 05, 2011 11:46 AM
 Updated 7/29, 2:15 pm -- Mr. Boehner, take down this bill. Tarting it up with a balanced budget amendment proviso is a fig leaf that doesn't cover up the bill's problems. Now is the time for all good conservative Americans to demand that Speaker Boehner take his Tea Tart bill down, and if he refuses to do so insist that Republican House Members treat a vote on the Boehner proposal as a Vote of No Confidence on the Speaker and his entire leadership team.
Aug 05, 2011 11:26 AM
  The Gang-of-Six fixer-upper perestroika reforms and restructuring efforts are doomed to failure because they try to square the circle by attempting to reconcile the internal fiscal and political contradictions of the welfare-warfare state. More simply put, they try to salvage the welfare-state Ponzi scheme by “expanding the base” of suckers. It won’t work.
Aug 05, 2011 11:24 AM
UPDATED: July 24, 11:30 pm -- Senate Democratic Leader Reid one-ups John Boehner.
Original Post: America, wake up. The Republican Party is playing Watch the Birdie and Listen to the GOP Jazz with you to mesmerize you into a stupefied trance. Meanwhile, they are maneuvering behind the scenes to enact a “Grand Bargain” with the Democrats and the White House to raise taxes at least a trillion dollars and cut Social Security benefits and Medicare for current retirees, right now.
Jun 20, 2011 11:10 AM
 Under President Obama’s ill-conceived Keynesian policies, the growth gap today is far worse than it has ever been. Not only is it larger than any time in the past, a cursory look at the nearby chart reveals the most ominous sign of all: For the first time in the recorded history of the U.S. economy, the trend growth path of the economy has declined a second time after falling below trend without first regaining the long-run-trend growth path. The growth gap is now verging on a growth chasm.
Jun 26, 2011 09:45 AM
 The U.S. House of Representatives Friday rebuked President Obama on his dirty little unconstitutional war in Libya but then refused to stop giving him money to prosecute it. "Bad boy, have some more bombs on us." The very definition of "craven."
Jun 26, 2011 07:06 PM
 Lost in the hype over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s walkout of the debt-limit negotiations last week was his parting, offhand revelation that negotiators already had tentatively identified more than $2 trillion in spending cuts during the next 10 years. So, while the haggling over taxes goes on, it looks like the spending side already is baked in the cake. It’s time the negotiators revealed these cuts so the American public can have a chance to assess what is being cooked up for them.
Jul 04, 2011 08:37 AM
 Barack Obama also doesn’t seem to understand that we cannot redistribute our way to prosperity. Indeed, he seems clueless that our continuing efforts to redistribute America to prosperity through progressive taxation and burgeoning social welfare spending have only led us into this great stagnation. So, Mr. President, please read the memo: We can’t tax, borrow, spend, redistribute, regulate, bailout or print our way to prosperity.
Jul 05, 2011 08:34 AM
Republican propagandist Charles Krauthammer admits GOP lacks economic program beyond cutting federal spending.
Jul 07, 2011 09:40 AM
UPDATE: July 9, 2:30 pm: A Majority of Republican Senators (25) go on record supporting a tax increase to impose “shared sacrifice” on debt and deficit reduction.
Jul 10, 2011 12:20 PM
 House Majority Leader John Boehner backtracked on tax increases but he did not say, “No New Revenue, Period.” The door is still open to new revenue. Just because Boehner called off the trillion-dollar tax increase at the last minute doesn’t mean they won’t be working in secret behind the scenes to generate more revenues in all kinds of exotic “revenue-neutral” ways they can claim aren’t really tax increases. Just because the mega-deal has fallen apart and they have scaled back their ambitions doesn’t mean they have given up on raising taxes. Oh my, no. Only a fool would believe that.
Jul 10, 2011 08:15 PM
 Ron Paul's idea of waving a magic wand and extinguishing $1.6 trillion of federal debt held by the Federal Reserve has the problem of not also extinguishing the $1.6 trillion the Fed printed to buy the bonds. However, that problem is easily fixed by first swapping real federal assets for the bonds held by the Fed and then having the Fed sell the assets at auction when it needs to extinguish the money it created to prevent inflation. Treasury could then replenish the Social Security Trust Fund by swapping those marketable bonds for non-marketable Trust Fund IOUs and then extinguish them and reduce the national debt by $1.6 trillion in the process.
Jul 11, 2011 09:56 AM
 Politicians are addicted to spending and the power it brings them, which in turn has addicted the American people to government. Republican politicians think they can feed their own addiction to power by forcing dependent Americans, especially American seniors, to go through cold-turkey-austerity rehab. It won’t work. It will only cause social backlash. When people see Republicans offer no alternative to socialism other than Socialism-Lite with an authoritarian twist, they will reject the GOP’s Thin Gruel and demand the Real Deal from Democrats who they will put in office by a landslide.
Jul 12, 2011 06:28 PM
 Updated 7/16: 10:30 am
There is absolutely no need for a default if the debt ceiling is not raised. If the U.S. Government defaults on the national debt or fails to make all Social Security payments in full and on time, it will be because the President of the United States, Barack Obama, intentionally and with malice aforethought refused to take the actions within his power and incumbent upon him by the oath of office he took when he became president to prevent these catastrophes from happening.
Jul 14, 2011 03:28 PM
 The president has made a thinly veiled threat to hold up Social Security checks next month if congressional Republicans don’t give in and raise taxes because, he says, “There may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it." However, the Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the U.S. Government puts the lie to Mr. Obama’s “uncertainty.” During the past 18 months, the entire monthly expenditures of the Social Security Administration comprised an average of 36.1 percent of total monthly receipts of the federal government, less than 30 percent seven of the 18 months. Average monthly interest on the national debt averaged 17.9 percent of total revenues over the same 18-month period. Combined, Social Security and interest on the debt averaged just under 54 percent of total revenues.
Jul 17, 2011 11:40 AM
 Memo to GOP: Stop swinging for the fences; play Small Ball -- Cut discretionary spending next year by 25%, amend the debt limit law a la Toomey-Vitter, and lift the debt ceiling for 12 months — Cut, Amend and Lift — that’s the way to get runs across the plate and win it in the bottom of the ninth or be prepared for extra innings.
May 09, 2011 08:56 AM
In the name of providing "public goods" and eliminating "market failure," the welfare/regulatory state reaches its tentacles into every nook and cranny of human life and in the process undermines the three greatest public goods of all -- Freedom, Peace and Prosperity -- while also undermining private markets, which most everyone agrees are unsurpassed in providing private goods.
May 11, 2011 05:30 PM
Former Bush CEA Head is asking questions about symptoms and complications of America's economic malady, a distraction, although one can appreciate that individuals nervously watching their incompetent and arrogant government stumble from one quack economic remedy to another might be more than a little nervous about whether and when late-stage hyper-inflation might set in from untreated stagflation and what collateral harm the quack might inflict on the patient in the meantime.
May 15, 2011 08:05 PM
 The current mood in the country against continuing to increase the national debt—67 percent oppose raising the debt ceiling—provides a golden opportunity to change the initial conditions on federal borrowing to prevent default on the national debt or Social Security payments and to make spending reduction the automatic default option in the event the debt ceiling is reached.
May 23, 2011 07:38 AM
From the beginning of this Congress, I have held that long-range entitlement reform and balanced budget amendments should be off the table in budget and debt-ceiling discussions. They are a bridge too far under the current circumstances. They are unobtainable under the current political power configuration (at least acceptable versions of each are unobtainable). Pushing such huge changes against a raging political current can only lead to RINO mischief to forge unacceptable compromise and agreement or another GOP capitulation, complete with fake deals like the recent budget deal designed to pull the wool over the public’s eyes.
May 29, 2011 09:45 PM
 Memorial Day has become America’s secular version of Easter and Passover, days dedicated to worshiping the suffering and sacrifice of innocent human life for the greater good—Christ was tortured and died for our sins, innocent Egyptians were tormented and their first-born slaughtered so that God’s People could go free. In 21st-century Empire America, which many people consider God’s secular City on A Hill, commemoration of innocent soldiers who died killing a lot of other innocent people “in defense of freedom,” is celebrated on Memorial Day with greater passion than Easter and Passover combined.
Jun 05, 2011 07:04 PM
 Fixing the exchange rate between the dollar and euro by bureaucratic edict would be a huge mistake, like anchoring two sinking aircraft carriers together hoping the buoyancy of the two is greater than the sum of the individual compartments. That hope rests on no theoretical basis or empirical results and defies common sense. If banking bureaucrats cannot manage a single fiat currency, what on earth makes anyone think they can manage two linked together?
Jun 07, 2011 10:28 AM
 Contrary to the popular view among economists that currency devaluation is necessary during periods of economic hardship, debasement works against the very investment that drives company formation and job creation given the tautological reality that any returns on investment will come back in cheapened money.
Jun 15, 2011 11:36 AM
 Government so disrupts the natural social and economic order when it goes beyond minimal efforts to maintain it that any incremental benefits society derives from increased social order are outweighed by the social and economic havoc government creates in the process of trying to maintain it.
Jun 17, 2011 11:01 AM
 In a 2008 paper, I noted that even before the subprime crisis there had existed for several years a fairly widespread feeling among average people that the economy had gotten worse than it was “back then” and more difficult times lie ahead. I pinpointed the reason for this queasy feeling as dashed economic expectations produced by a "growth gap," which had emerged 20 years earlier. I predicted things would get worse until politicians reversed course, overhauled the tax system and lowered tax rates substantially, drastically reduced government regulatory intervention, cut government spending and re-anchored the dollar to gold. Obama has done just the opposite, and the growth gap continues to get bigger.
Apr 06, 2011 11:50 AM
Americans are a long-suffering people but our willingness to take abuse from unelected, unaccountable usurpers such as Ben Bernanke is limited. The limit of that sufferance is at hand. I don’t know about you but I’ve had enough of the Federal Reserve Board’s secrecy and treachery...
Apr 11, 2011 11:21 AM
Paul Ryan's budget plan reveals shockingly little influence from his mentor, Old # 15, Jack Kemp. As Kemp understood, austerity without economic growth to anesthetize the pain and calm the passions of the mob is explosive—an economic maelstrom that drags all boats under...
Apr 18, 2011 10:20 AM
What passes for government “budgeting” in Washington, D.C. is a sham, mere playacting because it does not contain the essential elements of real budgeting: namely hard spending, revenue and borrowing constraints, which politicians and bureaucrats avoid like the plague...
Apr 18, 2011 10:25 AM
It is time to separate the discussion of “entitlement reform” from the debate over cutting federal spending and reducing the deficit in the near term (the next five years, or the next 20 years for that matter). Like many other good ideas, entitlement reform has been perverted by the Washington Establishment and is being used to corrupt efforts to reduce federal spending...
Apr 23, 2011 03:03 PM
The problem with the Big Lie is it is frequently difficult to discern until after the fact. Today, however, the Obama Administration's mouthpiece over at Slate provides a glaring, unambiguous example of the Big Lie...
Apr 25, 2011 12:07 PM
 Liberal politicians, and most conservative politicians for that matter, are addicted to reform, the heroin of politics. It’s what they do. They are reform junkies—reforming society, the economy, culture and even individuals whose personal behavior they find repulsive or not quite up to snuff by their own personal standards. Subsidize them, tax them, regulate them and ultimately put ’em in jail if they resist the rigors of reform—all for their own good and in the name of public security and the general welfare, of course...
Apr 27, 2011 02:39 PM
In 1978, Ronald Reagan said, “Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.” In 2011, Americans of all ages, but especially seniors on fixed incomes, are being blindsided by inflation’s return. But this time around, the inflation goon sneaking back out of the shadows is wearing a Harry-Potter Invisibility Cloak woven of contrived federal statistics designed by the government to hide how bad inflation is...
May 02, 2011 12:54 PM
A political party that does not control both Houses of Congress cannot win all-out frontal assaults on programs such as Medicare. Republicans, therefore, must avoid premature attacks in favor of limited forays and tactical sorties against the Administration and hold out for reinforcements, which can’t arrive before 2012. That doesn’t mean try nothing; it means try as much as you can accomplish but no more...
May 05, 2011 12:42 PM
Inflation Rising, Economic Growth Slipping, Stagflation Coming -- While Ben Bernanke stumbles through life with both eyes wide shut, stagflation is rearing its ugly head before our very eyes. Reports of skyrocketing prices and rising unemployment are finally peeking out behind the federal government's statistical invisibility cloak. This was all so predictable for anyone who wasn't willfully blind to what the Fed was doing. As I said right after the election last November...
Mar 01, 2011 12:14 PM
Modern democracy is a racket; a racket where the marks and confidence tricksters are one and the same: The People. The People, of course don’t do the dirty deeds themselves; they hire third-party made men—politicians and bureaucrats who call themselves “public servants”—who eventually ensconce themselves in their jobs through perks and government-employee unions and thus become the greatest organized gang in the game...
Mar 04, 2011 12:29 PM
Senate Democrats Put Pork Before Social Security; Kill Legislation to Ensure Seniors Receive Payments in Event of Debt Limit Freeze...FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 4, 2011-The Social Security Provision was Outlined by Alliance President Lawrence A. Hunter...
Mar 07, 2011 12:07 PM
Senate Democrats put pork ahead of Social Security last week when they lined up unanimously to kill legislation that would have guaranteed that seniors would receive Social Security payments in full and on time in the event the debt ceiling is not raised and the government is precluded from borrowing more money. In a 52-47 party-line vote, Democrats tabled an amendment (S.A. 113) to the Patent Reform Act (S. 23) that would have required the government to “prioritize all obligations on the debt held by the public in the event that the debt limit is reached, providing also that the government give equal priority to payment of Social Security benefits...”
Mar 11, 2011 12:49 PM
Last week’s Back on the Margin column (“The Fiscal Crisis of the Welfare State“) likened Interest Group Liberalism to a game of fiscal musical chairs and explained how it turns into a vicious, negative-sum game that ultimately generates a fiscal crisis of the welfare state. Today’s column explains how that fiscal crisis generates a political crisis...
Mar 21, 2011 11:21 AM
The current budget confrontation among House Republicans, Senate Democrats and President Obama is largely Kabuki theatre; albeit a serious drama where important principles are at issue. Ironically, relatively little money is actually at stake: as little as $60 billion and at most some $165 billion out of a presidential spending request of $3.6 trillion for FY 2011. This means they’re debating somewhere between 1.5 percent and 4.5 percent of the total budget...
Mar 25, 2011 02:33 PM
The Debt Limit Restoration Rider is the rider on the margin, which would provide Archimedean leverage in the budget process to reduce federal spending. By removing the specter of a default on the national debt or Social Security in the event the debt limit is reached, this rider would eliminate the ability of big-spenders to hold markets and seniors hostage to raising the congressional credit-card limit time and again.
Mar 28, 2011 04:09 PM
First, no one can accuse President Obama of not cutting federal spending; he cut a half-trillion-dollars from Medicare without reforming it. Top Administration aides and the Republican congressional leadership are now conspiring to extend this cuts-without-reform approach to Social Security...
Mar 30, 2011 10:07 AM
*UPDATE* In the face of a “smoking-gun” audio clip recently come to light, Fox News Editor Bill Sammon now admits he thought at the time his calling Barack Obama “socialist” back during the 2008 presidential campaign was “mischievous and rather far-fetched.” He could have saved himself a lot of grief if he had read Bastiat...
Mar 30, 2011 11:36 AM
The federal government has taken it upon itself to fine Virginia Tech $55,000 for failing to alert students in time that a gunman was loose on the campus back during the 2007 shooting spree. The federal government has no authority to fine a state government or an administrative agency of the state, and Virginia Governor McDonnell is betraying the great legacy of Mr. Jefferson and The Old Dominion by not standing up to Uncle Sam.
Sep 02, 2010 10:34 AM
President Obama is playing “Watch the Birdie” with Americans over the age of 50, diverting their attention with handouts and scare tactics to hide in plain sight the enormous damage his policies are doing to the retirement safety net. Now he is coming after Social Security.
Sep 05, 2010 01:46 PM
On Fox Sunday, Sen. John McCain said, “We [Republicans] have to give them a reason to vote for us,” as if saying no to bad stuff isn’t more than enough reason to vote for them. If McCain really wants to give Americans reasons to vote Republican, he should start by offering them this baker’s dozen:
Oct 04, 2010 07:36 AM
The president's concept of spreading the wealth includes sacking the Medicare system, on which America's seniors have come to rely for medical care, in favor of others the president's progressive vision deems more worthy.
Oct 04, 2010 07:45 AM
Leaks from the president's Debt Commission indicate that among the options being considered are delaying the retirement age, changing the basic benefit formula, and delaying or slashing cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs).
Oct 04, 2010 07:58 AM
Cut tax rates across the board. When tax rates are lowered, the share of taxes paid by upper-income individuals and businesses rises as they bring their money back into productive activity, which benefits everyone.
Oct 06, 2010 10:00 AM
Now comes another omen that President Obama has lost the “mandate of heaven” to govern. AP reports, “The presidential seal has fallen off President Barack Obama's podium and clattered to the stage as Obama delivered a speech to a women's conference.”
Nov 04, 2010 10:45 PM
We don’t need a new vision or a new version of government; we need less government, period.
Nov 04, 2010 11:02 PM
No more intricate “congressional budget process” designed to fail and leave Members to their own logrolling and pork-barrel devices when push comes to shove and it’s time to load up the bacon wagon for back home. Simple rules, straight-forward constraints, unrelenting enforcement mechanisms: It’s called “Real Life,” something Congress knows little about anymore. It’s time to bring some real life to Washington.
Nov 04, 2010 11:32 PM
Republicans seem to have lost faith in the free market and become intimidated by the Democrats’ false claims they want to “privatize” Social Security and destroy the retirement safety net. A fatal fallacy has infected too many Republicans and too many conservatives, namely that sweeping Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts are not only economically desirable but also more politically feasible than fundamental structural reforms such as a voluntary personal account option.
Nov 05, 2010 11:54 AM
As designated mouthpiece for the White House, AARP pooh-poohed and ridiculed criticisms that ObamaCare would raise private insurance costs, ration health care and destroy the patient-doctor relationship as “crazy” and “assaults on the truth.” AARP insisted ObamaCare must be enacted into law to “bend the health-care cost curve down,” otherwise insurance costs would continue to rise through the roof. Now AARP is raising the cost of its own employees' health coverage by eight percent to 13 percent next year.
Nov 06, 2010 09:44 AM
Election Day 2010 marked an historic turn in American politics; time will tell whether it portends a real change in policy. The day after marked a little-recognized turn in American monetary policy that will have profoundly detrimental consequences for the U.S. economy. On November 3, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (a.k.a. “Helicopter Ben”) announced the Federal Reserve intends to print up another trillion dollars in funny money in its ill-conceived efforts to revive economic growth.
Jan 04, 2011 01:26 PM
Another shoe falls, another piece of the puzzles drops into place, another peek at AARP’s payoff for endorsing ObamaCare comes into focus. While other health policies must go through a rigorous rate review under ObamaCare and justify any premium increases of more than 10 percent, AARP’s Medigap policies are to be exempt from the federal review and restriction...
Jan 11, 2011 05:12 PM
Imagine a newspaper story that reported on local auto mechanics having to seek state approval to install and operate the latest computerized diagnostic unit to efficiently determine what is wrong with their customers’ cars. Or conjure up a situation where retailers had to go before a panel of bureaucrats and seek the government’s permission to open a new shoe store or new electronics shop by “demonstrating the need for another store consistent with the state and regional retail plans” and show that a “market exists to justify the proposed new store or equipment...”
Jan 18, 2011 01:23 PM
For more than a quarter century after the 1983 amendments to Social Security, the federal government collected more in Social Security payroll taxes each year than it paid out in benefits. Those surplus revenues were supposed to be saved but instead Congress spent every last dime of them and replaced the excess payroll tax revenue it looted from the Trust Fund with IOUs written to itself. At the end of December 2010, the federal government owed the Trust Fund $2.609 trillion to be exact...
Feb 01, 2011 04:44 PM
Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Florida held yesterday that “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”—ObamaCare—is unconstitutional because “Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate provision” requiring everyone with few exceptions to purchase health insurance or face a fine...
Feb 03, 2011 08:12 AM
Senators Pat Toomey and Jim DeMint propose that Congress refuse to raise the debt limit and avoid default on the national debt by requiring interest on the debt to be paid first out of revenues before money is spent on any other programs. They should expand their list of priority spending beyond interest on the debt to include Social Security.
Feb 08, 2011 08:33 PM
The President wants to tax jobs. He will get fewer of them. Has he lost his mind or is he really that economically illiterate? Inquiring minds want to know.
Feb 15, 2011 12:52 PM
We are less than 60 days into the new Congress, and already the newly reinvigorated Republican Party appears to be going all wobbly over spending. This clever video illustrates the problem far better than any wonkish prose can convey. The Congressional Budget Office says the federal budget deficit will rise to $1.5 trillion, or almost 10% of GDP...
Feb 16, 2011 07:33 AM
Any government shut down caused by a presidential veto of a continuing resolution passed by the House and Senate would be Barack Obama’s doing, not the Republicans’ doing.
Feb 17, 2011 10:13 AM
U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (PA) gave a speech yesterday discussing his bill to prioritize debt repayment and "Debunking the Debt Limit Hysteria." Alliance for Retirement Prosperity President Larry Hunter was in attendance and suggested to Senator Toomey that Social Security Trust-Fund Bonds receive equal protection...
Jul 11, 2010 11:00 AM
It’s not enough for congressional liberals that AARP already has its own special private-letter ruling from the IRS exempting its insurance-commission revenues from the income tax; now the liberals in Congress want to give AARP special political-speech rights that they would deny to smaller, newer non-profits groups such as The Social Security Institute.
Jul 15, 2010 04:35 PM
U.S. House of Representatives attempts to sidestep Supreme Court's Ruling striking down limitations on free speech under McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. DISCLOSE Act discriminates among non-profit organizations and consigns groups like the Social Security Institute to second-class citizenship status under the First Amendment.
Jul 20, 2010 09:23 AM
One of the recurring themes of this blog is there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Establishment Democratic and Republican Parties. Both parties boil down to tax, spend, regulate and make war.
Jul 30, 2010 07:47 PM
For most of last year, AARP was the White House’s designated huckster with lawmakers to pass ObamaCare through the Congress. Today ObamaCare is the law of the land, and AARP has become the White House shill with older Americans, hawking ObamaCare like some kind of midway carnie to convince seniors that AARP and ObamaCare work for them.
Jul 31, 2010 03:17 PM
The Wall Street Journal reports on new research revealing rampant corruption running from the Halls of Congress to the nation’s biggest banks—something long suspected but now unambiguously quantified and verified. The research reveals that during the financial bubble, the banks contributing the most to congressional campaigns were risky lenders trying to buy influence. And buy it they did.
Aug 03, 2010 08:06 AM
In the past, when AARP spoke, senior citizens and members of Congress listened carefully because everyone thought AARP worked for and spoke on behalf of its members. Today, we know better.
Aug 06, 2010 10:50 AM
The motto of government in America today is: “Hurt Taxpayers First; Protect Public Employees At All Costs.” Massive cutbacks in essential public services is a bureaucratic tactic, not a fiscal necessity.
Aug 08, 2010 08:48 PM
At a cost of $700,000 of taxpayers’ money, Andy Griffith is on the air peddling President Obama’s propaganda about how wonderful ObamaCare is going to be for Medicare. He doesn’t have a clue as to what he is talking about.
Aug 11, 2010 12:30 PM
Maybe you have seen or heard of the Obama administration’s TV ad with Andy Griffith telling seniors how wonderful Obamacare is going to be for them, and how it preserves Medicare. The ad is a fraud, and Andy Griffith has no idea what he is talking about—sounds more like Deputy Barney Fife than Sheriff Andy Taylor.
Aug 17, 2010 07:36 AM
A Republican House candidate in Florida, former Florida Senate majority leader Daniel Webster, wants retirees to "share the burden" of deficit reduction by cutting Social Security benefits approximately $100 a month. Has the Democratic Party successfully infiltrated the ranks of Republican public officials and candidates for higher office with agents provocateur?
Aug 21, 2010 11:19 AM
So now they want to send Roger Clemens to jail for lying to Congress. My question is when are they going to send Members of Congress and President Barack Obama to jail for lying to the American people?
Aug 22, 2010 12:27 PM
You’ve probably seen the television ads featuring Andy Griffith extolling the virtues of Medicare. But Social Security Institute President Dr. Larry Hunter says the ad is a lie and the Obama administration and the AARP are using Griffith to deceive seniors and to distract them. So what are they distracting seniors from hearing? How is Andy Griffith a major tool in getting seniors to ignore major cuts in Medicare? What’s the truth? And, is there a true alternative to AARP for people 50 and older to join? We asked Dr. Hunter. Listen to the Interview Here:http://www.wjr.net/Article.asp?id=1938329&spid=6552
Nov 20, 2009 09:59 AM
So now we see the first of many fig leafs Majority Leader Harry Reid has planted throughout his health bill. According to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, page 432 of the bill contains an incredibly convoluted and complicated provision that “fixes” a Medicaid problem for the State of Louisiana to the tune of $100 million...
Nov 20, 2009 02:52 PM
Yesterday, we discussed what is to be done with Senator Joe Lieberman to ensure defeat of the Reid healthcare bill. Today, we take up the matter of Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Unlike Joe Lieberman, there is no talk that Senator Ben Nelson will leave the Democratic Party and join the Republican Party...
Nov 22, 2009 04:47 PM
As we expected, the Democratic Leadership managed to muscle its caucus to get the Reid Healthcare Bill to the floor by voting for cloture on the motion to proceed. It would have been nice to strangle this ugly monster in the crib by defeating cloture but this is not the end of the fight to kill ObamaCare; it is really just the beginning. Republican Senators do not have enough votes to defeat the Reid Health Bill by themselves...
Nov 23, 2009 12:57 PM
The so-called public-option “trigger” is a fig leaf behind which certain Democratic and Republican Senators hope to hide their support for a government takeover of healthcare. They think it will mask their double-dealing in pretending to vote against a government-run public option—indeed allow them to take credit for prying the public option out of the bill—all the while they are actually providing the winning votes to enact government-run healthcare into law...
Nov 23, 2009 01:39 PM
If one wants a specific day on which to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the financial meltdown, November 27, 2007 is a good one. On that day, Freddie Mac tacitly acknowledged that its balance sheet had become contaminated with toxic assets and announced that it no longer would buy the most risky subprime mortgages and mortgage-related securities...
Nov 25, 2009 12:13 PM
According to ABC News, “There are at least two Democrats who say they’ll vote against any bill that does not include a public option, and there may be many more.” Conversely, there are also at least two Senators (Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark. and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.) who say they will NOT vote in favor of a bill that DOES contain a public option...
Dec 02, 2009 01:03 PM
A close reading of the president’s speech, however, reveals that he intends to escalate the United States military presence in Afghanistan not to fight al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan (there are but a mere handful left) but rather to fight Al Qaeda in Pakistan. The president made it crystal clear that he intends to escalate the scope and scale of the war against Al Qaeda far more than the magnitude of the troop surge in Afghanistan would suggest.
Dec 03, 2009 02:33 PM
Politico reports that liberal blogger Jane Hamsher has launched a campaign targeting House Democrats who supported the Stupak anti-abortion amendment in the House health bill. As Politico characterizes Hamsher’s pro-abortion campaign, she is “using the nifty online phone banking tools that helped power Obama's campaign to put a scare into House Democrats who voted to attach the anti-abortion Stupak Amendment to health care legislation...”
Dec 08, 2009 09:10 AM
Suppose a bunch of U.S. Senators told you that the reason the banking system practically collapsed was there weren’t enough Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Suppose they said the government needs to set up a new parallel banking system consisting of a bunch more new Fannies and Freddys?...
Dec 09, 2009 10:43 AM
The plan under consideration by Senate Democrats would expand Medicare eligibility to individuals as young as 55. Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, would be open to everyone not eligible for Medicare up to 150 percent of poverty...
Dec 09, 2009 10:44 AM
Insist that he be good to his word to vote against cloture on the Reid Bill if it is not amended to prohibit the use of federal funds and subsidies for abortion...
Dec 10, 2009 12:00 PM
SSI and Tea Party Support have broken through the center of ObamaCare’s defenses. Now is the time for grass-roots and Washington-based organizations opposed to ObamaCare to pour reinforcements into the breach. “Now is not the time to go all wobbly, Gen. Longstreet...”
Dec 14, 2009 07:41 AM
We have been saying for several weeks now that the Republican Senate Leadership and the vast majority of Republican Senators are putting their reelection ahead of their country by stepping aside and allowing the Reid Bill to pass the Senate before year’s end. We have taken an enormous amount of heat from Republican insiders trying to silence us...
Dec 14, 2009 07:44 AM
The scope and magnitude of the sellout on healthcare by the Senate Republican Leadership is beyond belief, even for someone like myself who has been a part of conservative and Republican politics in Washington for three decades. First, Senate Minority Whip, Jon Kyl let the cat out of the bag on Bill Bennett’s radio show a couple of weeks ago when guest host Rick Santorum asked him what the Republican strategy on the Reid Bill was going to be...
Dec 14, 2009 07:46 AM
The Huffington Post reports: “The White House, aided by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), is working hard to crush an amendment being pushed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, Senate sources tell the Huffington Post...
Dec 15, 2009 12:43 PM
We have been concerned for some time that Senate Republicans have not appeared to be doing everything possible to defeat the Reid health bill. Indeed, there has been substantial circumstantial evidence that the strategy of Senate Republicans, with very few exceptions, has been to stand aside and allow the Reid Bill and ObamaCare to sail through the Senate without parliamentary obstruction before year’s end...
Dec 15, 2009 02:07 PM
Word is Senate Majority Leader is short of the 60 votes he needs to pass ObamaCare through the Senate and getting shorter everyday that goes by with every new twist he puts together to placate Democratic holdouts—gain one, lose two. President Obama is so concerned his former Senate colleagues are mishandling his effort to have the government takeover healthcare he has summoned all the Democrats and Independents to the White House to discuss strategy...
Dec 15, 2009 05:46 PM
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund: “White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer says the stakes are enormous, telling reporters bluntly that the White House sees no ‘second chance’ if a bill doesn't pass before Christmas. ‘Congress won't come back to health care next year...’”
Dec 16, 2009 05:16 PM
OBAMACARE OBSTRUCTION UNDER WAY. You Roared! Senator Tom Coburn responded! Coburn forces reading of the 700+ page "single payer" amendment...
Dec 18, 2009 10:58 AM
In my blog today, I make the point that Ben Nelson is now the Senator on the Margin, and it is up to pro-life groups to prevent him from tipping in favor of the Reid Bill. Here is an update after a conference call that provided the most up-to-date information on the situation in the Senate...
Dec 19, 2009 01:41 PM
Pay no attention to that little senator Ben Nelson over there behind the fig leaf selling his soul to the devil and trading the lives of millions of unborn babies who will die in federal abortion mills in exchange for a politically expedient excuse to vote for government-run healthcare. Little Ben is putting politics over life as he prepares to vote for federal funding of abortion behind the dodge that states may opt out if they want to...
Dec 22, 2009 04:18 PM
After weeks of refusing to embrace the “obstructionist” label as a virtue, Senate Republicans finally saw the light and late last week began to use the parliamentary tools at their disposal to delay a final vote on health care. Until then, with the exception of South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, Republican lawmakers had refused to use Senate rules and procedures to obstruct the passage of the health care bill being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and run out the clock on Obamacare...
Dec 28, 2009 01:17 PM
During the week the Senate passed its version of a government takeover of healthcare, health insurance company stocks closed on a 52-year high. So when the health insurance companies crowed “We WIN” after the Senate passed its bill, it came as no surprise. It had been in the cards all along...
Dec 30, 2009 12:21 PM
Nelson is in trouble for one simple reason. He stopped listening to Nebraskans and started listening to his Senate cronies who were trying to buy his soul, twisting his arm and deceiving him on abortion into voting for ObamaCare...
Jan 06, 2010 11:16 AM
Rumors are rampant that the Fed and Treasury Department in league with large Wall Street firms are operating through the so-called Plunge Protection Team (PPT) to pump the stock market artificially. Fears are pervasive that if the pumping stops, the market will crash. Any truth to the rumors? Who knows? Only government insiders know because they refuse to open the books to public scrutiny...
Jan 11, 2010 10:12 AM
Bishop R. Walker Nickless, Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa compares the House and Senate healthcare bills to a set of criteria, what he and his brother bishops have described as clear goal posts to mark out what is acceptable reform and what must be rejected. He finds the House Health Care Bill does not meet the first [sanctity-of-life] or the fourth [preventative-prenatal-care] standards...
Jan 14, 2010 12:10 PM
President Obama issued Executive Order 13528 on January 11, 2010 establishing a Council of Governors ostensibly “to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State governments to protect our Nation and its people and property.” If history has taught us anything, it is to beware of “cooperative partnerships” between the federal government and states...
Jan 14, 2010 02:40 PM
OK dear readers, it is time for a reality check. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia—one of 10 GOP leaders who attended a strategy session in Annapolis, Md., this week— says the Republican Party will take over the U.S. House of Representatives this coming November in the congressional midterm elections and change the course of the nation for the better...
Jan 18, 2010 01:59 PM
If Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), all refuse to remove the holds they have placed on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s reconfirmation vote in the U.S. Senate—which seems almost certain—Majority Leader Harry Reid would be forced to get 60 votes to invoke cloture to bring Bernanke’s nomination to the floor. This sets up an opportunity for Senate Republicans to change themselves first, as I proposed in my recent blogs, before asking the American People to entrust control of the U.S. Congress to them in the upcoming midterm elections in November...
Jan 19, 2010 04:50 PM
In his RealClearMarkets blog today, Manhattan Institute fellow Josh Barro suggests it is time to freeze public employee pay. He makes a very good case:
“Since the end of 2006, hourly total compensation (wages plus benefits) has risen 6.5% for private sector workers, essentially keeping pace with inflation. But state and local government workers saw their hourly compensation rise 9.2%...
Jan 27, 2010 04:59 PM
Quite simply, the Fed has inflated the money supply beyond all historical boundaries and kept interest rates at historically low levels but banks are not loaning that money out to businesses and consumers. Instead, they are holding the newly printed money as excess reserves, on which the Fed is paying them interest. Consequently, newly printed money that otherwise would be sloshing around the economy bidding up prices is not putting upward pressure on consumer prices.
Feb 08, 2010 01:59 PM
The theme of SSI’s website from the beginning has been “Stop the Raid” on the Social Security Trust Fund; No Healthcare Rationing. Today we are changing that theme to reflect new realities: THE RAID COMPLETE; SOCIAL SECURITY IN DEFICIT; MEDICARE INSOLVENT
Feb 10, 2010 09:00 AM
The President had his head handed to him by the American public when he tried to take over healthcare and turn it over to the bureaucrats to run. Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof, 60-vote margin as a result, and Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress are sure to be reduced come November, and there is even an outside chance Republicans could gain control of one or both Houses.
Feb 24, 2010 10:38 AM
President Barack Obama failed in his brazen effort to have the government takeover healthcare. The American people rejected every variant of ObamaCare run up the flagpole. A man of integrity and common sense would have accepted the will of the people and moved on. A Congress worthy of the American people it represents would have recognized it lost the Mandate of Heaven when the people rejected every bill Congress concocted, and Members of Congress would have submitted the fate of healthcare reform to the will of the people in the upcoming November elections.
Mar 06, 2010 03:44 PM
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has telegraphed the strategy House Democrats are considering to shove ObamaCare down the throat of a resistant American public: • Both Houses pass separate legislation that can be portrayed as sufficiently “anti-abortion” to satisfy Congressman Bart Stupak and his supporters; which will • Mousetrap Republican Members of Congress and pro-life groups into supporting the bills; which in turn will make it possible to • Pass the Senate Bill in the House; with the promise that • The Senate Bill’s abortion language will be struck from the bill in a reconciliation package and justified as reducing federal outlays.
Mar 09, 2010 10:05 AM
Stupak Cannot Make ObamaCare Safe for the Unborn
As I explained in my last blog, the only realistic way ObamaCare can be enacted into law during this Congress is for the House to pass the Senate Bill un-amended and then for the Senate to “fix” the abortion language in the bill after the fact using Reconciliation to satisfy Stupak Democrats who refuse to be a party to enacting the Senate abortion language into law.
Mar 17, 2010 10:19 AM
As we have pointed out many times before, both outcomes one and two above will lead to a federally subsidized system of abortion on demand. Only outcome number three can prevent the creation of a federally subsidized abortion mill, not to mention preventing the host of other abominations in the bill that will change America’s political and economic systems for the worse on a scale not witnessed since the New Deal.
Mar 22, 2010 11:15 AM
What do Harlem Globetrotters basketball, professional wrestling and American politics all have in common? They are FAKES.
Apr 06, 2010 01:03 PM
If you are a mainstream Christian or a Jew, you need not apply to Opt Out of ObamaCare; that exemption is reserved for Muslims, Scientologists, Amish, Christian Scientists and Native American Indians who have a “conscientious objection” to insurance.
Apr 09, 2010 10:42 AM
By all means my fellow Americans, go to the polls in November and vote out the bums who are most aggressively subverting our free-market republic and transforming it into Democratic Fascism, i.e., Democrats. But just know when you do, the people you replace them with, Republicans, are themselves subverting the American free-market republic by offering nothing but Socialism Lite as an alternative.
Apr 20, 2010 02:12 PM
On first examination it is remarkable how the federal government so effectively imposes its will on a resistant public. It is true that the American people are a long-suffering people, and it takes a lot to arouse them to civil disobedience. Still, one would think there weren’t enough bureaucrats in all the land to impose the panoply of ridiculous and minute rules the national government has usurped to itself...
Apr 20, 2010 02:33 PM
Evidently, contracting out tyranny isn’t enough for the creepy democratic fascists running the federal regulatory Behemoth; now they insist on contracting out propaganda as well. The Environmental Protection (sic) Agency (EPA) is running a cash-prize contest to recruit average Americans...
May 03, 2010 12:09 PM
President Obama revealed in no uncertain terms the collectivist mentality that underpins his administration and the governing philosophy of his party when he recently extemporized: “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money...”
May 10, 2010 09:21 PM
How cozy everything remains inside the Senate Club. Today’s Washington Post print-edition headline informs us, “A Sense of Harmony Pervades the Senate” on so-called financial “reform.” Interesting that the Post editors felt compelled to change the headline to “Parties working together on financial regulatory bill in Senate” in the online edition...
May 13, 2010 11:43 AM
The Law of the Hammer states: Give a child a hammer, and he will discover everything needs a good pounding. It holds for politicians as well. However, while children grow up and learn to use many of the other implements available in the human tool kit, politicians never grow up because their tool kit—government—contains only hammers...
May 19, 2010 10:42 PM
Don’t ask American taxpayers to support the Greeks in the socialist style to which they have become accustomed. Demand Congress Get our Money Back! The United States government is so broke it would have to permanently set aside $106 trillion and draw interest on it in perpetuity just to pay all the unfunded commitments it has made to American taxpayers, senior citizens in particular...
May 30, 2010 11:47 AM
The Parasitic State continues to displace the private sector. Private pay shrinks to historic lows as government payrolls and wage rates rise under the guise of "economic stimulus."
Jun 06, 2010 03:40 PM
When H. R. Clinton speaks, the truth suffers...Hillary Clinton says the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes. The facts say differently: According to the Tax Foundation, using the most recently available data...
Jun 28, 2010 02:33 PM
Congressman Rep. Posey of Florida has developed legislation to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal taxes on the income of senior citizens and to improve income security of senior citizens.
Jul 01, 2010 09:19 AM
The G-20 is all about is the creation of a new international order. Our best hope is that they will not trust each other enough to pull off their plan. That has been true in the past. Let us hope that it will be true in the future. But let us not be naïve about what they are planning. They have posted the outline for everyone to see.
Jul 01, 2010 09:35 AM
Majorities of Americans oppose virtually any sort of specific cut or postponement of Social Security benefits. This includes reducing COLAs or increasing the retirement age.
Jul 02, 2010 09:53 AM
Multiple sources tell me the National Rifle Association is planning to endorse liberal Harry Reid against pro-gun champion Sharron Angle.
Jul 02, 2010 11:56 AM
Independence Day, which used to be a joyous celebration of individual liberty and freedom from the shackles of oppressive government, has morphed into a maudlin celebration of the state under the guise of rage against the politicians in power.
Jul 02, 2010 01:35 PM
The spy scandal may look like Russian incompetence, but that's precisely why it's likely something far more sinister is happening. All agree that, of course, there would be Russian spies in America, just as there would be American spies in Russia – that's life. The majority also agree that the American security services needed the scandal to happen just now, right after the meeting of the American and Russian presidents, who happily went on pressing the "reset" button, and that somebody in the CIA or FBI is clearly dead set on jamming it.
Jul 03, 2010 07:00 AM
James Madison predicted that the greatest dangers to liberty would continue to arise within the states. Within a decade of the writing of the Constitution, however, Madison saw how dangers to liberty could arise at the enlightened level of national government as well as at the more parochial level of the states; and even how the political influence of the states could be used to check the excesses of national power.
Jul 04, 2010 07:56 AM
Jefferson was a professed non-interventionist, as distinguished from being an isolationist. He called for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. Let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations except as to commerce," Jefferson declared.
Jul 05, 2010 10:11 AM
Having dragged the GOP down to utter defeat with eight years of “big government conservatism,” i.e. perpetual war and ballooning deficits, and handed the country over to the tender mercies of the Obama cult, it seems Kristol and his fellow neocons are determined to drag the party all the way down to the status of an irrelevant sect, i.e. the neoconservatives writ a bit larger.
Aug 13, 2009 09:52 AM
A former colleague who was intimately involved in the fight to defeat HillaryCare back in 1993/94 reminded me today that AARP is up to its old deceptive tricks in disavowing that it ever endorsed ObamaCare. In particular, AARP is tap dancing around it membership again—what we used to call the AARP Two Step—promoting a liberal agenda while trying to maintain plausible deniability that it is doing so...
Aug 13, 2009 09:56 AM
Negotiations have a life cycle about them, and they go through numerous phase changes throughout their duration. The life cycle of any protracted negotiation always passes through at least one crisis point at which at least one of the parties threatens to walk away from the table or pivots away from the earlier framework of negotiations and attempts to alter the terms of debate. When all the parties behave this way, the negotiations enter a phase change.
Aug 14, 2009 12:16 PM
Thank you, thank you, thank you Paul Krugman for showing Senator Chuck Grassley the smoking gun of “your” (by which I mean those in the White House and among congressional Democrats for whom you shill) deceit and duplicity. Poor Chuck, with Iowa sincerity and straightforwardness totally alien to you “sophisticates” in New York, Washington and Chicago, Senator Grassley has, against the advice of his fellow conservatives...
Aug 18, 2009 11:39 AM
Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) convinced fellow Finance Committee negotiators among the so-called “Gang of Six,” who are attempting to forge an agreement on healthcare, to keep death counseling out of a Senate Bill. Senior citizens should not take solace in that fact, however, and certainly should not let down their guard against death counseling sneaking back into a heath bill. Here’s why...
Aug 18, 2009 04:33 PM
I was saddened to hear of Bob Novak’s death Monday. The Prince of Darkness, a moniker he earned for his dour countenance, was in fact a prince of a man and a bright beacon of truth and optimism to the world...
Aug 19, 2009 11:19 AM
Now comes the report that South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis has put on the RINO suit and is trying to help President Obama smuggle ObamaCare into the United States inside a Trojan RHINO disguised as a “bipartisan compromise..."
Aug 24, 2009 10:42 AM
On Wednesday the 18 of August, a camera crew with an eighteen-passenger van filled with actors was in Warrenton, Virginia shooting a “Pro-ObamaCare Commercial” according to the set director. I wish I could give you more information, but he refused to reveal whom they were with, only that they were “Shooting through an add agency...”
Aug 24, 2009 11:16 AM
One doesn’t have to subscribe to every jot and twiddle of Ralph Bristol’s Health Independence Act to appreciate the lesson it teaches: There are much simpler and more effective ways to address the real problems we have with health insurance currently than creating the monstrosity ObamaCare and its variants envision, including the so-called bipartisan plans such as Wyden-Bennett ...
Aug 24, 2009 11:26 AM
I am now back from a week on the road in Montana, Wyoming and Iowa with the Patients First Hands Off-My-Health-Care-Express bus tour. At every town along our route, people turned out to express their anger that the Obama Administration is threatening to jam a comprehensive takeover of healthcare through the Congress without adequate deliberation by the slimmest possible vote...
Aug 24, 2009 11:50 AM
Not only will Social Security recipients NOT get a cost of living increase next year—according the Washington’s Enron accounting system the cost of living is not increasing—their Social Security checks will likely GO DOWN...
Aug 25, 2009 02:13 PM
There is a dismal consensus building among Republicans that the best we can hope for on healthcare is a watered-down version of ObamaCare. This is the political version of the “abused-spouse syndrome” to which Republicans are especially prone after being in the minority for even a short time...
Aug 27, 2009 01:02 PM
The marvel of the Internet has allowed experts, activists and concerned citizens from across the nation to be connected in the fight against fascist healthcare by whatever name you choose to call it, ObamaCare, RHINOCare or ObamaCare Lite...
Aug 28, 2009 01:20 PM
In the first in a series of Arizona town hall meetings, Senator John McCain was greeted on Tuesday by a self-described former Democrat who is opposed to ObamaCare chanting, “No compromises, no comprises, no compromises. Senator, nuke it now!"
Aug 31, 2009 09:33 AM
Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) was one of the original authors of the Congressional Budget Process, which contains the extraordinary budget procedure called Reconciliation. Reconciliation was intended to ensure passage of an annual budget and consequently severely limits debate.
Aug 31, 2009 11:17 AM
Fighting ObamaCare has become such an overwhelming task that I have neglected writing about the situation with our money, which is bad and deteriorating. This morning, however, I came across a blog by Gary North discussing the importance of Congressman Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Fed to which is attached a video produced by the Mises Institute back in the 1990s explaining money and banking from an Austrian perspective. It should be required reading/viewing for anyone concerned about the state of the dollar...
Sep 01, 2009 12:36 PM
Is Bobby Bright another one of those pantywaist Congressmen afraid to talk to his own constituents? It looks that way.After getting a whiff of the stench of political cowardice, I explored Mr. Bright’s behavior a bit more and discovered this WWNT radio interview he gave last Friday in which he employs lots of typical Washington mumbo jumbo and double talk about giving unprecedented access to constituents and his “jam-packed schedule...”
Sep 02, 2009 01:09 PM
So President Obama has jettisoned the public option right on cue. The pivot is being portrayed in the press as an effort to salvage ObamaCare from ferocious opposition to the public option from the right, which is true but it is not the whole explanation of what Obama is doing and why he is doing it...
Sep 03, 2009 10:28 AM
My day yesterday was consumed by participating in an email discussion group about what our (ObamaCare opponents’) end-game strategy on healthcare should be. It was a fascinating, and somewhat disturbing discussion. Fascinating because this is the first major policy battle, as opposed to political campaigns, in which the interconnectivity provided by the Internet may determine the outcome of the political struggle...
Sep 03, 2009 12:17 PM
OK, heads up everyone, the Obama Administration is preparing to play precisely the insurance-company/Chamber-of-Commerce card I have been warning of. “The White House is holding intensive talks with Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican, about Ms. Snowe's proposal to use the public plan as a fallback option, aides familiar with the conversations said...
Sep 04, 2009 11:04 AM
If Senator Olympia Snowe Really Opposes Government Health Care As Her Office Insists She Does, A Federal Insurance Exchange Similar To That Contained in H.R. 3200 Must Be Off The Table...
Sep 07, 2009 09:15 AM
President Obama said in his radio address Saturday that he wants to make it easier for Americans to save for retirement, noting the toll the recession has taken on income and saving. So what did he do: Ask Congress to allow workers to place a portion of their Social Security payroll contributions into personal retirement accounts? NO. Ask Congress to cut their taxes?...
Sep 07, 2009 10:13 AM
The Republican Party is withering on the vine. The grass roots is growing disgusted with the GOP’s unwillingness to stand on principle, first with TARP then the stimulus package, then cap-and-trade and now its refusal to put a stake through the heart of ObamaCare, the greatest proposed expansion of the state since the New Deal...
Sep 08, 2009 09:45 AM
Our thanks to Dr. David McKalip for catching this website. It is the smoking gun of the big-business/big-government conspiracy taking place to shove fascist healthcare down the throats of the American public under the guise of a “bipartisan compromise”—RHINOCare (which we have warned about repeatedly on our website.
Sep 08, 2009 05:08 PM
Well Ladies and Gentlemen of the grass roots looky here: Now emerges from the shadows the hand holding the smoking gun spotted earlier of the Big-Business/Big-Government bipartisan conspiracy to conscript the entire population into a government-run healthcare system...
Sep 09, 2009 10:10 AM
Is this the sound of professional Republican politicians beginning to cave in on a government takeover of healthcare? Was the Republican Leader signaling their willingness to cut a deal with the “right reforms,” such as an individual mandate and healthcare cooperatives, which Senate Democrats are now promoting and numerous Republican Senators are on record supporting?
Sep 10, 2009 11:41 AM
Much is being made of the “hard choices” Virginia’s Governor Tim Kaine is making by laying off some 600 of the state's 101,000 executive branch employees. This works out to be a whopping 0.6 percent of state employees—hardly a courageous executive decision. In fact, it is little more than a token move—a PR stunt—by the governor while private-sector employment continues to shrink.
Sep 10, 2009 11:43 AM
Readers who frequent this website know I am no apologist for the Republican Party but I must question the high dudgeon in which Democrats, the media and even some RINOs have gotten themselves into over the heckling incident during the President’s address to a Joint Session of Congress last night. OK, I will admit, many Americans were offended by Congressman Joe Wilson’s calling President Obama a liar...
Sep 15, 2009 03:25 PM
*Update 9/15* The opinion columns of Dr. Richard Rahn appear frequently on SSI’s website. Dr. Rahn recently received a letter of enormous importance from Robert P. Nirschl, M.D., M.S., which Dr. Nirschl has graciously allowed us to reprint. The letter goes to the very soul of ObamaCare and reveals how President Obama’s bureaucratic monstrosity will corrode the very foundation of medicine—the Hippocratic Oath—which has underpinned the healing arts since ancient times.
Sep 15, 2009 05:38 PM
The Hill reports that Senate Democratic Leadership remains optimistic they can produce a RHINOCare “bipartisan compromise” on healthcare reform that will get 60 votes. If not, Democratic Leader Harry Reid said they are prepared to jam ObamaCare down the American People’s throats under the special parliamentary maneuver called Reconciliation...
Sep 16, 2009 11:58 AM
In a blog written the day after the President’s healthcare speech to a Joint Session of Congress, during which Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted, “You lie,” from the floor of the House, I observed that it was the President who started the “liar-liar” exchange right there from the Dias in the U.S. House of Representatives...
Sep 16, 2009 01:03 PM
To all of the opponents of ObamaCare and its kissing cousin RHINOCare, which is best exemplified by the bill Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (MT) just released, CONGRATULATIONS. It looks like the message got through, and all Republican Senators now oppose the healthcare fall-back option of the Obama Administration—an individual mandate—and will not support the Baucus Bill...
Sep 18, 2009 10:20 AM
Did Madam Speaker become so paranoid during the past 3 ½ years that she now shivers and cries at the thought of boisterous political rallies? Or, is she as sane as ever but willing to say and do anything, no matter how destructive and hurtful to get her own way politically? The good news is we don’t need a shrink to answer that question...
Sep 21, 2009 10:04 AM
As economist Hans Sennholz said, the creation of the Fed was “the most tragic blunder ever committed by Congress. The day it was passed, old America died and a new era began.” Since the financial meltdown of a year ago, one hears increasing talk of a "New World Order" in which a new global currency and world central banks plays a major role...
Sep 21, 2009 11:27 AM
The federal government is demanding that Humana cease and desist writing their clients letters urging them to oppose efforts to cut Medicare benefits. It is a perfect example of how a public-private syndicate such as Medicare chills political speech and basically requires companies to give up their constitutional rights of free speech and petition for redress of grievances...
Sep 22, 2009 10:05 AM
The fight against ObamaCare not only has activated and mobilized average people at the grass-roots to become politically active for the first time in their lives, it also has created an efficient information-sharing network through Google Groups and other networking devices that allows experts to disseminate information, discuss and debate issues among themselves and interact with non-specialists in real time...
Sep 28, 2009 03:55 PM
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have been funding dubious causes for a long time and it is showing up in record deficits. It is high time that the light of day be shown on what they are doing. And now, they are planning on using reconciliation to hurry through complicated, far-reaching legislation. This is an abuse of the budget process...
Sep 29, 2009 09:26 AM
*Update* Mr. President, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the authoritative source of legislative interpretation for all things tax related coming out of the Congress says in unambiguous terms that the individual health-insurance mandate in the Finance Committee bill will become part of the Internal Revenue Code...
Sep 30, 2009 09:16 PM
Virginia’s race for governor (one of only two in the country this year) will provide a glimpse of how politicians intend to campaign in the Obama era of large Democratic majorities. So far, Democratic candidate State Senator R. Creigh Deeds is taking a page right out of Obama’s playbook on taxes, which he, in turn, stole from Groucho Marx—“What are you going to believe, what I tell you or your own two eyes?”...
Oct 01, 2009 09:30 AM
Hurrah for Kentucky Senator and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for speaking clearly about ObamaCare -- it stinks. On Wednesday, Senator McConnell made it clear in no uncertain terms that Republican opposition to ObamaCare and all of its Lite variants goes way beyond details, right to the core of what the president and congressional Democrats are trying to do. McConnell said...
Oct 01, 2009 09:33 AM
Is there something in the water down in Louisiana causing both Governor Bobby Jindal and Congressman Charles Boustany, Jr. to say idiotic things about healthcare? In a blog written the day after President Obama’s address on healthcare to a Joint Session of Congress September 9, I wrote of Congressman Charles Boustany’s response on behalf of the GOP...
Oct 07, 2009 08:41 AM
*UPDATE*Has the grass-roots Tea Party Movement run out of steam? Many Washington insiders seem to think so. The buzz around the nation’s capital is that opponents of ObamaCare pretty much shot their wad on September 12 when two million of them travelled from every corner of America to show up on the National Mall in protest of out-of-control government, of which ObamaCare is indicative...
Oct 08, 2009 11:36 AM
The Washington propaganda mills are revving at high-speed rpms this morning with reports about “a giant step forward” and a “boost in momentum” for the Senate Finance Committee healthcare bill. The catalyst for the media cheerleaders to start their routine is a new Congressional Budget Office report contending the bill—still in “concept” form, not legislative language—will reduce the deficit by $81 billion over ten years...
Oct 09, 2009 10:06 AM
The bad news is, according to a report in the Politico, “Members [of Congress] usually arrive for the first vote of the week as the sun sets on Tuesdays, and they’re usually headed back home before it goes down again on Thursdays.” Nice work if you can get it, huh?...
Oct 14, 2009 09:22 AM
The fierce battle between insurance companies and politicians over the exact nature of that “reform,” is really just a falling out among thieves.
Oct 14, 2009 09:38 AM
Orwellian New Speak for Old Fashioned Price Controls and Rationing
Oct 15, 2009 09:14 AM
In a remarkable mea culpa in today’s Bangor Daily News, Senator Olympia Snowe admits that the Senate Finance Committee Bill (the Baucus Bill) she voted for not only will “hurt Medicare” but also be a huge boondoggle and a bailout for private health insurance companies, which her state of Maine is currently trying to tax into oblivion...
Oct 19, 2009 09:04 AM
The fur is really flying now in Washington as the thieves continue their attacks on each other over healthcare legislation. In his radio address Saturday, President Obama called health insurance companies “deceptive and dishonest” for challenging the Senate Finance Committee’s version of ObamaCare...
Oct 20, 2009 10:00 AM
The propaganda wars over healthcare “reform” are heating up as the Washington Post claims public support has swung substantially in favor of a so-called “public option.” The Post’s Website headlines its story reporting the results of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, “Clear Majority Now Back Public Option.” What does that headline hide? The details, of course...
Oct 29, 2009 12:08 PM
Traveling on the Hands Off My Health Care Express through Arkansas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Missouri, and Iowa I thought I would let a proponent of the public option explain why the so-called state opt-out provision is a “smoke screen” and why no state would ever dare to opt out...
Nov 04, 2009 02:48 PM
A grass-roots uprising in key states against a government takeover of healthcare has stalled ObamaCare in the U.S. Senate. Three key Democratic Senators—Ben Nelson (NE), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Blanche Lincoln (AR)—have refused give Majority Leader Harry Reid their vote to stop a Republican filibuster even to proceed to consideration of a bill, much less to vote in favor of final passage of ObamaCare through the Senate...
Nov 06, 2009 11:32 AM
As the old saw has it: Never Ass-u-me. I did, and it made an ass of me and anyone who might have repeated my estimate of how much the Senate health bill’s expansion of Medicaid would cost the state of Louisiana. I sincerely apologize for misleading my readers...
Nov 08, 2009 06:07 PM
So the U.S. House of Representatives has done the dirty deed: On Saturday, it passed ObamaCare by a vote of a 220-215. Thirty-nine Democrats were given a free pass by the Democratic Leadership to vote against the measure while a lone Republican traitor, Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana, defected and voted for it....
Nov 10, 2009 01:08 PM
The State of New Jersey is in fiscal crisis. NorthJersey.com reports that the new governor, Chris Christie, is “examining the possibility of declaring a financial emergency in the state.” He would be well advised to do so.Between 2002 and last year, New Jersey’s economy grew by 27.4 percent. It is expected to contract this year...
Nov 12, 2009 03:46 PM
In the aftermath of the narrow victory of PelosiCare (a.k.a. ObamaCare) in the U.S. House of Representatives, the campaign of disinformation and revisionist political history has begun to pave the way for the U.S. Senate to jam ObamaCare down America’s throat by as few as 50 sitting Senators under an extraordinary budgetary procedure known as Reconciliation...
Nov 13, 2009 11:32 AM
On the day of the vote on PelosiCare in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Democratic Leadership was at least 10 votes short of passing the bill because anti-abortion Members could not accept the prospect of government-funded abortions. Thus, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi allowed a vote on the Stupak Amendment, which provided anti-abortion Members a political fig leaf to hide behind even though as a matter of fact the amendment would be ineffective in preventing government-funded and assisted abortion once a government-run healthcare system is in place...
Nov 16, 2009 09:33 PM
Americans have come to know Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) as the UK’s healthcare rationing board. The horror stories coming out of NICE have been used to illustrate to Americans how under the guise of “comparative effectiveness research,” government-run healthcare bureaucracies ration medical treatment, procedures, medications and devices in order to hold down the cost of state-run medicine...
Nov 18, 2009 05:10 PM
Today, SSI president Lawrence Hunter faxed the following letter to Senators explaining how SSI intends to rate their votes on amendments and cloture on the Reid healthcare bill. The SSI Healthcare-Voting Scorecard will hold Senators accountable for any votes they cast that improve the likelihood that the bill passes the Senate...
Nov 19, 2009 04:04 PM
As Politico reports, Senator Joe Lieberman says, “He won’t block efforts to begin the [healthcare] debate, but he will filibuster a public option to end the debate.” In other words, he will vote for [first] cloture on a motion to proceed to consideration of the Reid bill—which contains a public option—so it can be put on the floor where Lieberman wants a chance to amend it by removing the public option; however he will not vote to invoke [final] cloture to enable the Senate to move to final passage of any bill that contains the public option...
Jun 10, 2009 03:34 PM
July 1991 and time to sign up for Medicare; the journey begins, as well as the education that goes with it. In my case, I found that the education would be self taught brought about by circumstances- -usually not by choice. At the "sign up" I was told what the monthly cost - premium - would be; I soon discovered what Medicare would not cover (pay for). That was the first step in my Medicare education.
Jun 10, 2009 05:02 PM
Something is wrong, very, very wrong with our country when the young men who are supposed to be protecting us wantonly attack old women in a fit of—what, rage, fear, insanity, or just plain cowardice? A nation that treats its old people this way will soon be treating everyone the same way, all in the name of public order. None dare call it fascism but that is what it is.
Jun 12, 2009 01:27 PM
According to sources on Capitol Hill, the committee mark-up of the Kennedy healthcare reform bill is set for Tuesday, June 16. The deadline for committee members to submit amendments to the Kennedy bill is Monday, June 15. Language of three major sections of the bill to be marked up and amended has not even been made available to committee members as of this writing.
Jun 15, 2009 09:26 AM
In his weekly radio address today, President Barack Obama announced new Medicare and Medicaid cuts of more than $300 billion over 10 years to help pay for his healthcare reform. This new $300 billion in cuts is in addition to the $635 billion in cuts included in his budget request to the Congress earlier this year. After the radio address, the White House released a fact sheet explaining the proposed cuts.
Jun 15, 2009 10:07 AM
Just as we been predicting for the past year Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has painted himself and the economy into a corner. Most Americans are yet unaware of the bind we are in, and all the happy talk about “green shoots” and “economic recovery” hide the fundamental fix we are in.
Jun 22, 2009 01:36 PM
At least it is beginning to dawn on some Members of Congress that the Obama Administration is bamboozling them on the true cost of ObamaCare. But even Senator McCain doesn’t yet comprehend just how much government-run healthcare really will cost...
Jun 15, 2009 12:05 PM
In a recent blog posting entitled "How Do You Expect Bankers To Act?" I point out that human beings all respond to incentives and that perverse incentives in the financial realm—those incentives created both by the law and by extra-legal actions of politicians and bureaucrats—fully explain bankers’ destructive behavior and the financial meltdown. While this fact should be perfectly obvious to anyone who studies the current financial situation, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to become financial experts.
Jun 15, 2009 01:42 PM
President Obama spoke to the American Medical Association this morning and reiterated the same platitudes and promises he has been uttering since the presidential campaign. What he did not explain, however, is how he intends to square the circle of universal, top-quality healthcare for everyone without imposing healthcare rationing, without raising taxes on the middle class and without blowing another trillion-dollar hole in the deficit.
Jun 16, 2009 09:50 AM
In his AMA speech Monday, President Obama made a special effort to convince America that nothing in his healthcare reform plan will force anyone to give up health coverage they currently enjoy. Here is what he said...
Jun 18, 2009 10:18 AM
Listen to this short recording on YouTube of Max Baucus strong-arming the Congressional Budget Office to get them to do whatever it takes to make Obama’s healthcare reform proposals appear financially sound. Amazing. Scary. Infuriating...
Jun 18, 2009 11:15 AM
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll makes it crystal clear that in order to defeat government-run health care it will be necessary to educate the public that ObamaCare will blow another huge hole in the budget. The poll also makes it clear that the coalition fighting against government-run healthcare is failing to connect those dots. This must change fast or the struggle to prevent a government takeover of healthcare will be lost by the time the kids go back to school in the fall...
Jun 19, 2009 12:30 PM
In 1993, Hillary and Bill Clinton promised us they had found a way to provide every person in America top-of-the-line (“Fortune-500”) healthcare without raising taxes or blowing a hole in the deficit, all while lowering the share of national income spent on healthcare (then at 13.4 percent of GDP) without rationing care. Alas, they were wrong. Their promises were inconsistent and impossible to fulfill...
Jun 21, 2009 12:33 PM
The pharmaceutical industry and the Obama Administration have cut a deal on healthcare reform. For its part, Reuters reports, drug companies have agreed to offer discounts of up to 80 percent on the price of drugs they sell to government-run programs such as Medicare.
Jun 24, 2009 09:59 AM
The terms of the deal between Big Pharma and the Obama Administration are beginning to come into focus. USA Today reports today how drug manufacturers and insurance companies plan to feather their own nests by playing ball with the president in designing Obama’s new government-run healthcare system...
Jun 24, 2009 02:49 PM
Today in prepared testimony, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that the Obama administration is open to new ideas about reform but will oppose any plans that increase the deficit...
Jun 28, 2009 05:03 PM
In a recent edition of Politics Daily, Matt Lewis wrote an article ( Don't Like ObamaCare? Just Opt Out) about the National ObamaCare Opt Out (NOOO!) Registry. He expressed reservations about the campaign...
Jun 30, 2009 09:17 AM
The president has attempted to counter the flood of horror stories about government-run healthcare in Britain and Canada by compiling a list of his own horror stories about the largely private system in the United States. Insurance companies, employers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies play the cast of heavies in Obama’s drama...
Jun 30, 2009 09:20 AM
So, I guess we struck a nerve, huh? Hillary’s outfit Media Matters attacked us today, for of all things spouting Luntz talking points. What a lame attack... First, we are not Luntz’s clients, and anyone who knows me knows I write my own stuff. That said, Luntz is usually right so it wouldn’t be surprising if we were saying the same things...
Jul 01, 2009 12:37 PM
I haven’t had much time to write this week because I am traveling hectically doing grass-roots meetings to inform Americans in Sioux Fall, SD, Billings, MT and Mountain View Arkansas about the dangers of government-controlled healthcare. But when I saw this Washington Post article I sat down to write a Seniors’ Alert because it is vital for everyone to understand that WAL-MART HAS SOLD OUT ITS CUSTOMERS, the average working stiff who has relied on Wal-Mart for quality products at low prices.
Jul 01, 2009 01:55 PM
President Obama is asking people to sumbit questions to him on the topic of Healthcare. Here is the question we submitted... The american public deserves to know the Presidents answer. Unless enough people ask it of him however, he will dodge it. The time is NOW to ask our president why he can say "No! I will not have my family's care rationed and cut!" But we must?
Jul 06, 2009 10:40 AM
The Missouri legislature has enacted a law that in effect charges electricity consumers for using less electricity. Here is an example of how the law works: The St. Louis-based power company AmerenUE will be allowed to offer credits to businesses that voluntarily shut down or scale back their electricity use during peak demand...
Jul 07, 2009 11:55 AM
In a recent blog I explained how much of the so-called “debate” over the form ObamaCare will take is a diversion: “Finally, all one can say about Obama Tales of Healthcare Terror that cast big, bad insurance companies as the ogre is that once people get over the powerful emotional reaction they will have from reading these sad stories, they need to consider that the insurance companies portrayed as the bad guys in many of the Obama Tales are the very insurance companies Obama is presently cutting a deal with behind the scenes...
Jul 08, 2009 12:36 PM
Even as the White House announces a new “voluntary cost-saving” agreement with hospitals as part of the ongoing fascist conspiracy between big business and the government to nationalize healthcare and turn it over to bureaucrats to run, congressional politicians are demanding to change the terms of an earlier, similar deal with the pharmaceutical companies to control costs. I knew it would happen eventually but it is happening even faster than I predicted...
Jul 10, 2009 11:02 AM
Don’t be snookered by AARP, the Obama Administration and the pharmaceutical industry. They are trying to snow you into believing seniors will get a great deal under ObamaCare when in fact they are setting you up for healthcare rationing and cuts to Medicare to pay for a loony system that won’t work and they can’t pay for.
Jul 11, 2009 09:27 PM
*UPDATE* 7/13 The internal contradictions of ObamaCare are finally rising to the surface. People are beginning to understand the fundamental truth about ObamaCare: Whatever the true cost of ObamaCare is going to be—and based on careful analysis of the numbers I believe the Administration is off by a factor of ten, it’s going to cost a trillion dollars a year rather than a trillion dollars over ten years...
Jul 13, 2009 12:45 PM
There is much chatter these days among the various Tea Party Groups and grass roots activists in their chat groups and email groups about whether or not to support, endorse and/or become active in a third-party movement. Emotions are running high...
Jul 14, 2009 10:57 AM
The National Retail Federation has condemned the Wal-Mart deal with the White House on healthcare in open letter: “When Wal-Mart sent a letter to President Obama two weeks ago supporting government mandates on businesses as a part of reform, the retail industry was astonished. Seeing the company in lock-step with the unions on this issue was troubling to say the least...
Jul 15, 2009 10:00 AM
I’ve taken a lot of heat for publicly endorsing Barack Obama for President over John McCain. I’ve been called everything from naïve to a useful idiot. I’ve tried to explain to my conservative and libertarian friends that I voted for Obama not because I had any confidence whatsoever that Obama would do the right things but because I was absolutely positive that McCain would do the wrong things...
Jul 15, 2009 12:37 PM
Why the sense of desperation out of the White House to pass comprehensive healthcare reform legislation before the August congressional recess? Pure and simple, the President and his staff are petrified that the longer it goes on, the more the American people understand what the President is proposing, the more certain they are to reject it. It is like a dead fish rotting in the sun, and it is beginning to stink...
Jul 16, 2009 03:06 PM
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page finally caught on to Billy “the Ragin’ Cajun” Tauzin’s belly flop trying to feather Big Pharma’s nest at the expense of consumers by turning his industry over to the government to run. What a sap...
Jul 17, 2009 12:11 PM
Yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden told an AARP town hall meeting, “We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation.” And then he said we have to nationalize healthcare to prevent it. Huh?...
Jul 17, 2009 12:23 PM
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed today, Kimberley Strassel confirms that Chuck Grassley, Iowa Senator and Ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, may hold the key to delaying and ultimately defeating ObamaCare. As we pointed out in the original post below, Grassley seems almost desperate to cut a deal with Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus to make the Senate healthcare bill “bipartisan.”...
Jul 19, 2009 06:59 PM
For anyone who hasn’t yet figured out the code words, “Limit Rising Medicare Costs” means squeezing doctors and hospitals by lowering the amount of money the government will pay them for delivering healthcare services under Medicare. The direct consequence will be that fewer doctors and hospitals will be willing to participate in Medicare and those who do will limit and delay the procedures and treatments they provide Medicare recipients.
Jul 20, 2009 11:02 AM
I haven’t written about toxic assets in some time because the President’s blitz krieg to nationalize healthcare and turn it over to the government to run has been so all consuming. Today, however, I came across this Wall Street Journal article by professors Kenneth Scott and John Taylor confirming what I have been saying for more than a year now.
Jul 20, 2009 11:56 AM
William Greider represents the very best of serious and thoughtful people on the left side of the political spectrum who have an incisive understanding of why and how entanglement between government and business always leads to disaster...
Jul 21, 2009 10:49 AM
Today’s Washington Post rips the cover off the putrid dealings of Members of Congress surrounding the healthcare bills making their way through the Congress. It’s a classic government takeover instigated and financed by the industry being taken over...
Jul 22, 2009 01:13 PM
The AP reports that, “Instead of votes in the House and Senate by August, the best Democrats may be able to hope for this summer is action by the full House by the end of the month and some sort of agreement on a bipartisan plan in the Senate before lawmakers head home for vacation.”...
Jul 23, 2009 01:20 PM
A new phrase entered the congressional lexicon in 1993—to be “BTU’d”—when the White House and the House Democratic Leadership pushed reluctant Democratic Representatives to vote in favor of a controversial new energy tax, which would have placed a levy on the energy content of a fuel source measured in British Thermal Units (BTU’s), before the Senate Democratic Leadership had the votes lined up in the upper chamber. The tax got dubbed a “BTU Tax.”
Jul 24, 2009 01:40 PM
Forget partisan politics. Think about Separation-of-Power Politics to understand what is happening on ObamaCare right now. Anyone who has worked on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as I have will recognize what is going on: An arrogant, impatient and scared White House is recklessly trying to force House Democrats into committing political harakiri to prevent the president from getting a political black eye.
Jul 27, 2009 10:12 AM
Today comes unequivocal confirmation that as we advised in Friday’s Strategy Memo, Senate Finance Committee Republicans are ON THE MARGIN in the healthcare debate. See today’s front-page article in the Washington Post...“Although the Senate will not vote on its plan until after Labor Day, a Senate Finance Committee deal this week would reassure several dozen anxious House Democrats who are wary of the more liberal course their leaders have taken on health care.
Jul 28, 2009 12:52 AM
Well, we knew the sellout on healthcare was coming but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow when it happens. And, it appears to be happening right on schedule, on script just as we at the Social Security Institute have been predicting here and here. We warned everyone what was coming down and how to stop it but the Republican instinct for selling out is just too inbred to resist...
Aug 01, 2009 12:24 PM
The President is proposing a “cut-Medicare-first” strategy of cost control, and people have caught on. On top of that, the provision in the bill for mandatory “life counseling” (read “death and dying counseling”) is the final straw that convinces seniors nationalized healthcare will put them out in the cold and into an early grave. As one woman told me in Gate City, “the federal government just wants me to feel guilty for going on living...”
Aug 03, 2009 11:25 AM
I urge you to stand for the rights of the American people by OPPOSING the Obama-Kennedy health care plan being discussed in Congress now. Stand against the loss of personal freedom, the skyrocketing tax increases and the health care rationing that will result from this rushed and ill-thought through plan.
Aug 04, 2009 03:57 PM
If there ever was any doubt that President Obama is following a “cut-Medicare-first” strategy to pay for his healthcare reform, it is dispelled by this analysis and the video of the President’s own remarks. Medicare is bankrupt...
Aug 05, 2009 11:32 AM
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives are back home under siege from angry constituents terrified over the House version of ObamaCare. Meanwhile, a few Republican Senators remain huddled with Democrats on Capitol Hill trying to construct a legislative Trojan RHINO with ObamaCare hiding inside disguised as a bipartisan compromise. Call it RHINOCare—Republican Healthcare In Name Only—and it is nothing but a ploy to deceive people into inviting government-run healthcare into America...
Aug 06, 2009 10:19 AM
KSL TV in Salt Lake City reports that Republican Utah lawmaker Carl Wimmer wants Utahns to have the option of opting out of any national healthcare program that might be imposed on the country from Washington, DC. Wimmer is drafting an opt-out amendment to Utah's Constitution, which he believes will receive overwhelming support from citizens of the Beehive State...
Aug 07, 2009 11:28 AM
According to a Fox News report, White House officials yesterday promised skittish Democratic Senators preparing to go back home to face their angry constituents that the Democratic Party and its “allies” (read labor unions, AARP and big business interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries) would “respond with twice the force if any individual lawmaker is criticized in television advertising...”
Aug 07, 2009 01:42 PM
Late last night reports also began to leak out that Democratic dirty-tricks operatives in districts where emotions are running the highest are actively using black-op tactics to provoke incidents in which protestors clash with police and other officials, which would provide ObamaCare supporters under the most pressure a pretext for cancelling all town hall meetings in the name of pubic safety and security...
Aug 08, 2009 11:57 AM
American lawmakers have turned into a bunch of pantywaists, scared of their own shadows and terrified of their own constituents. Is this the quality of representative we now send to Washington, people who are afraid to come home and face boisterous constituents? It was bad enough when the Congress abrogated its duty during the Bush Administration, cowering for eight years in fear of an aggressively over reaching president but now they are afraid to meet with the very people they represent. Do you suppose the two are in any way connected?
Aug 08, 2009 01:22 PM
In case you had any questions about the perniciousness of the new corporate arrangement since GM (Government Motors) came out of its sweetheart bankruptcy proceeding, this should clarify the situation...
Aug 10, 2009 08:44 AM
The Obama Administration is in near panic mode with the realization that senior citizens have turned against ObamaCare with a vengeance. The Washington Post reported Sunday that: “‘They [seniors] only want to hear one thing: that their Medicare benefits won't be affected...’
Aug 10, 2009 04:50 PM
For those of us who follow closely the federal financing scam called the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) and Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Funds, more commonly known as the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds, nothing here in Gary North’s new article on the subject is surprising...
Aug 11, 2009 10:28 AM
More evidence they are splitting at the seams...
Aug 11, 2009 10:48 AM
KSL TV in Salt Lake City reports that Republican Utah lawmaker Carl Wimmer wants Utahns to have the option of opting out of any national healthcare program that might be imposed on the country from Washington, DC. Wimmer is drafting an opt-out amendment to Utah's Constitution, which he believes will receive overwhelming support from citizens of the Beehive State...
Aug 11, 2009 01:56 PM
Everyday brings more screaming headlines and hysterical accusations from the White House and Congress that anti-ObamaCare protestors are un-American hooligans, thugs, troublemakers, mobsters, and now a U.S. Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) has even accused an emotional father of a handicapped son of being a throwback to the KKK for confronting the Congressman at a town hall meeting...
Aug 12, 2009 10:55 AM
As usual, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is trying to have its cake and eat it too, which in Chamber parlance means deceiving its small members (which make up the vast majority of its membership numbers wise) while still doing the bidding of its big-business members (which account for the vast amount of its membership dues)...
Apr 10, 2009 08:38 AM
I don’t agree with everything Andrian Salbuchi says in this video—especially when he calls U.S. Federal Reserve Notes “real money” or when he concludes that the government and bank cartel conspire to create an artificial scarcity of “real money..."
Apr 09, 2009 10:59 AM
In President Obama’s first budget request, he asked Congress to reserve $634 billion (half of which—$316 billion—to be paid for with cuts to Medicare) during the coming decade to make a “down payment” on healthcare reform Obama Style...
Apr 11, 2009 11:40 AM
A recent Rasmussen Poll demonstrates that the public sees through the public-private-partnership scam (a Republican invention, by the way) for the fascism it is. Why then does government continue to grow out of control despite the fact that a large majority doesn’t support it? Here is an essay I wrote last year entitled "Two Parties; One Establishment" that helps explain why.
Apr 15, 2009 04:18 PM
Like everything else about 21st century America, even our outrage is safe and fake. When the kids got fed up with the Vietnam war, they burned their draft cards and chanted, "Hell no we won't go;"... To understand how rebellions come about one has to understand how the confluence of external events interacts with a critical mass of personal circumstances...
Apr 15, 2009 04:21 PM
In a recent posting at www.AntiWar.com, Edouard Husson provides an excellent analysis of why and how a global fiat-currency monetary standard not only has caused the global economic meltdown but also how funny money stands at the center of much of the global conflict during the past 40 years...
Apr 16, 2009 03:32 PM
Here is a note I sent to Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto on the occasion of his outstanding LA Times article on toxic assets...
Apr 17, 2009 09:27 AM
No one in the Establishment knows what to do but the Establishment offers the voters no alternative to itself...
Apr 20, 2009 09:49 AM
Many people know the economy is in a mess and the financial system is teetering on bankruptcy but cannot connect the dots between current policy and future conditions that will affect them directly. Senior citizens, as a group, pay more attention to these connections but the public discourse about the current state of the economy is so arcane that even the most attentive and well-informed citizen has trouble understanding what is happening and how it will affect the future...
Apr 20, 2009 02:27 PM
An article in the May issue of the Atlantic Magazine by Simon Johnson provides both a meticulous description of the public-private financial oligarchy that runs the United States and at the same time a completely wrong-headed analysis of what is wrong with the American economy and how to fix it. Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), views the United States through IMF lenses...
Apr 21, 2009 12:30 PM
Today’s article in the Washington Post chronicling a bigger, bolder role for the IMF reveals that a dramatic shift toward global governance is well underway with the active support of the Obama Administration. The Post reporters describe...
Apr 22, 2009 09:50 PM
Before health insurance companies get too cozy with the idea of nationalizing healthcare with a so-called “public option,” i.e., government-run health insurance, they should play close attention to what a “public option” has meant for insurance companies selling lines of insurance that compete with AIG...
Apr 24, 2009 09:29 AM
Writing in the Financial Times today, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner confirms the fears I expressed here and here that the Obama Administration is in the process of turning control of the American economy over to international bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund. Here is the crux of what he said...
Apr 25, 2009 02:40 PM
While the Obama Administration hosts the G-20 nations in Washington, DC this weekend to indulge their delusions of “fixing” the world economy by replacing the fiat US dollar with a new international fiat reserve currency and anointing the IMF as a global central bank, China finally acknowledged Friday...
Apr 29, 2009 09:01 AM
The United States has a decision to make: Are we as a country going to nationalize healthcare and entrust our medical treatment to the government? Many abstract arguments are made daily for and against the idea, but currently we have a unique chance to examine a real case study of government-run healthcare in action--Mexico...
Apr 30, 2009 10:43 AM
The ObamaCare Express keeps chugging down the line headed for enactment sometime this fall unless the public wakes up to the reality of what government-run health care portends for them...
May 02, 2009 09:29 AM
If you have the feeling the political-financial complex is feeding you a lot of hooey when presidential appointees tout how financially sound banks are and bank accountants proclaim large bank profits , it’s because they are. The banksters and politicians feeding you this twaddle are full of baloney.
May 04, 2009 12:20 PM
In a recent Howard Ruff interview with John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics Blog , Williams said, “Because of the changes in the 1990s [in the way cost of living—COLA—adjustments are made], our Social Security checks are about half what they should be!”
May 07, 2009 12:03 PM
In an hour-long interview with Charlie Rose last night, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner displayed an impressive depth of knowledge of facts and details about the economy, which only a bureaucrat can possess, while simultaneously revealing a profound ignorance about money and the actual dynamics of markets and government intervention into markets, which is so typical of technocrats.
May 08, 2009 12:11 PM
According to a new survey of 1,162 medical offices conducted by Merritt Hawkins & Associates, a national physician search and consulting firm, the average time needed to schedule a doctor appointment in 15 large metropolitan areas is rising...
May 08, 2009 12:37 PM
Congress and the Obama Administration want to nationalize healthcare and turn it over to the government to run. One of their most popular ideas is to create a national healthcare system to cover everyone much like Medicare, which currently provides healthcare coverage for individuals 65 and older.
May 12, 2009 08:57 AM
According to a May 11 AP Report, “Hospitals, insurance companies, drug makers and doctors are planning to tell President Barack Obama that they'll voluntarily slow their rate increases in coming years in a move that government economists say would create breathing room to help provide health insurance to an estimated 50 million Americans who now go without it...”
May 12, 2009 09:06 AM
Former George W. Bush aide Keith Hennessey characterized the President’s healthcare announcement yesterday as “silly”. Well, in many regards it was silly. But at a deeper level it revealed something truly disturbing, if not surprising about the growing incestuous relationship between Big Government and Big Business in the United States...
May 12, 2009 09:15 AM
With the broadest measure of annualized inflation rising to almost three percent during the first quarter of this year, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is finding himself in the very squeeze we warned of. As the Hudson Institute’s Irwin M. Stelzer puts it: “He [Bernanke] must find life more than a little fraught these days. Wait too long to tighten, and double-digit inflation and a dollar stripped of its role as a reserve currency will be his legacy...
May 12, 2009 10:03 AM
In his latest blog from Café Hayek, Don Boudreaux laments the fact that Americans seem to have traded in New Hampshire's state motto, "Live Free or Die" for a new dictum: "Exist as Coddled Children or Cry." Well, it does seem to reflect the attitude many Americans exhibit today. However, it isn’t enough to observe this remarkable shift in national character; one feels compelled to ask why.
May 12, 2009 10:28 AM
If you like IRS Form 1040, you will love what the bureaucrats have in store for you after Congress and the White House nationalize healthcare and turn it over to the government to run. For a preview of the red tape you will have to deal with once federal healthcare agents become the gatekeepers to doctors’ offices and hospitals...
May 12, 2009 10:40 AM
In a recent Huffington Post article under the screaming headlines "Banks Blocking Way Out Of Foreclosure Crisis," Arthur Delaney and Ryan Grim ask why banks are refusing to renegotiate mortgages, and in particular, why are they refusing so many short sales when they would appear to be in the banks’ own self interest?
May 12, 2009 10:58 AM
Florida Governor Charlie Crist is a controversial character. His announced intention to run for the US Senate to replace retiring Republican Senator Mel Martinez has sparked an intramural GOP debate reminiscent of the argument that took place over Arlen Specter before he jumped ship and joined the Democratic Party.
May 13, 2009 09:52 AM
So now Republicans are going to live up to the reputation Democrats have tarred them with for more than a half century: They want to destroy Social Security in the name of saving it. “Sen. Lindsey O. Graham makes no apology for elbowing his way to the front of the Social Security debate, arguing for significant tax increases and benefit cuts to salvage a program whose long-term solvency, he says, requires nothing less.”
May 14, 2009 11:44 AM
Some Establishment dissenters, whom the media likes to call “critics” of the Administration such as economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz think the patient is still too week to recover on its own and requires an additional jolt of the Keynesian snake oil—more government spending, further bailouts and higher budget deficits.
May 17, 2009 07:44 PM
Here is a note I sent yesterday to SSI board member Lew Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee (NTLC). NTLC operates out of Sacramento, CA, which is on the front lines of the next brewing tax revolt. My note to Lew was prompted by a recent blog, "California's Day of Reckoning: May 19" from Gary North. This blog is must reading for citizens across America.
May 18, 2009 04:26 PM
So here’s the deal—and it’s not pretty. The opposition political party, Republicans, are too scared and too incompetent to lead any serious resistance to the Obama Blitz Krieg to nationalize every facet of American life and turn it over to the government to run... What is to be done? It is up to everyday Americans to resist. The only option is for individuals across America to rise up with a single voice to oppose the headlong rush to nationalize healthcare and turn it over to the government to run.
May 21, 2009 02:01 PM
Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus, a think tank, and author of "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming" wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal today about global warming and the “climate-industrial complex” profiting from climate hysteria
May 21, 2009 09:31 PM
Query to Ben Bernanke: Do you feel the squeeze of the pincers closing around you? We warned you and suggested that the only way out of the squeeze was to: “Restore sound money at the core of the system and remove the shackles of a tax system unfit for a free people and a prosperous nation..."
May 22, 2009 12:03 PM
Today we are inaugurating a new feature on the SSI Blog, Seniors Sound Off. This feature is an opportunity for you to participate in the discussion and share your views and opinions with others. You may submit your blog at the Action Center on our Home Page. We won’t be able to publish all blogs submitted but we will do our best to choose a broad cross section of opinions and make it possible for you to comment on and discuss each blog among yourselves. I have asked my father to launch Seniors Sound Off...
May 22, 2009 12:11 PM
Hey seniors, did you know the official Washington Establishment believes your Social Security cost of living allowances (COLAs) are TOO LARGE? Former Social Security Administration bureaucrat Andrew Biggs, now comfortably ensconced as a “thinker” at the American Enterprise Institute thinks “existing COLAs are too high...”
May 25, 2009 05:01 PM
On Meet the Press Sunday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Americans “should be afraid” because of President Obama is seeking to change the way the so-called “war on terror” is conducted.
May 27, 2009 01:23 PM
I Spent Saturday Memorial Day Weekend in Williamsburg, Virginia speaking to an overflow room full of mostly seniors who had come to educate themselves about what it will mean to them if we nationalize healthcare and turn it over to the government to run..most seniors already have a nagging awareness that all is not right with Medicare although few of them yet fully appreciate just how dire the straits Medicare is in financially...
May 27, 2009 01:27 PM
I know I write a lot on the SSI web site about the financial system and the Federal Reserve Board. Many of you might ask yourself why am I cluttering up the site will all this stuff about high-roller bankers and Fed bureaucrats?... When you read what I write and post about money, banking and the Fed, you don’t have to understand all the nuances and you don’t have to become a money-and-banking expert...
May 28, 2009 04:06 PM
Last week, angry voters in California soundly defeated a slate of special-election budget measures that would have raised taxes to deal with the state’s $21.3 billion shortfall. Does this mean a larger tax revolt is on the horizon? Maybe; maybe not.
Jun 01, 2009 10:12 AM
Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy has released his vision of healthcare reform, which you may read about here in his Briefing Paper. The three essentials of KennedyCare look an awful lot like the essentials of HillaryCare, which would have cost a billion dollars a day 15 years ago— individual mandate, guaranteed issue, and modified community rating, which fixes premiums without regard to risk...
Jun 01, 2009 10:36 AM
If you think the way Congress raids the Social Security Trust Fund is detestable, you will be sickened and outraged by what Senator Ted Kennedy has in store for America under the guise of “healthcare reform.” It will be the Raid on Steroids...
Jun 01, 2009 10:51 AM
The Florida 912 Project web site has a very interesting post entitled "Have you heard of Bio Surveillance" that connects the dots between the federal government’s lust for total medical information awareness (TMIA), which it seeks through the billion-dollar program electronic-medical-records provision slipped into the stimulus bill...
Jun 01, 2009 01:01 PM
In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention when he was nominated to run against president against Ronald Reagan, Senator Walter Mondale famously said: “Let’s tell the truth. That must be done. It must be done.
Jun 02, 2009 01:44 PM
Are you struggling to get by on Social Security or Social Security plus whatever your part-time job brings in after taxes? Are you unable to work but are making ends meet by prudently managing your pension and investments? Whatever your situation, it must make your blood boil to watch the US Government bailout Wall Street and takeover the private sector.
Jun 03, 2009 02:32 PM
Yesterday, we posted a May 1 US News and World Report article, "Health Reform, Too Tough on Hospital Readmission" that reports on how the Obama Administration is deviously rationing healthcare to older people under Medicare by refusing them admission to the hospital...
Jun 04, 2009 07:52 PM
Today's article from USA Today reports that one in every six dollars of Americans’ income comes directly from a government check of some sort. In reality, it’s even worse than that. As I wrote last year, if one adds the estimated 8 million plus private sector jobs generated...
Jun 08, 2009 07:12 PM
Here is a note sent by William Shaker, president of American Council for Health Care Reform, to an email discussion group exchanging thoughts on how to prevent the Obama Administration from nationalizing healthcare and turning it over to the government to run...
Jun 10, 2009 10:34 AM
“After the ‘quality improvement’ project in New York that required the public reporting of death rates after cardiac surgery, patients at high risk for surgery were turned away from doctors who feared getting bad report card scores. MINORITIES HAD A 19% HIGHER RATE OF BEING TURNED AWAY and this population did not recover from this for several years...
Mar 17, 2009 08:19 AM
AmericansForProsperity.org A WSJ article by American Enterprise Institute scholar Peter Wallison today illustrates how America is being cartelized by big government -- none dare call it Fascism --so call it Corporatism...
Mar 20, 2009 08:24 PM
Disney World is not the only Fantasy Land in the Sunshine State. The state government is turning the entire insurance industry into a mini Randian world of looters, parasites and moochers...
Mar 20, 2009 08:42 PM
The fed believes inflation fosters economic growth and stable prices... Have they lost their minds? Yes, it appears they have...
Mar 20, 2009 09:22 PM
Hear SSI's president discuss Obama's fascist plans for healthcare with The G Man, Dr. G. Gordon Liddy...
Mar 22, 2009 01:14 AM
Just as I predicted mid-last year, the enormous borrowing and fear of future inflation created by the Fed’s stupendous increase in its balance sheet finally swamped zero-percent short-term rates...
Mar 23, 2009 08:27 PM
"The political winds blow through three distinct age brackets. First, through the college age, young academics hitting them hardest... Finally, the retired community, upon which the full stench of the previous two groups' dilemmas have been blown and now rest”...
Mar 24, 2009 07:13 PM
Federal Officials have known for years the Social Security Trust Fund is an accounting ruse and the so-called Trust Fund surpluses were a deception. Here is what a few of them have said about it...
Mar 25, 2009 01:54 AM
Uncle Sugar Daddy and his consorts of Big Health companies living the fascist principle in a cozy public-private partnership that limits choice and rations care—that, not socialism is what ObamaCare has in store for the American public...
Mar 27, 2009 11:39 AM
Bruce Bartlett today exposes Republican Members of the U.S. House of Representatives who voted for the 90-percent AIG tax. He interprets the meaning of this extraordinary turn of events this way: “I believe that when half of the Republican caucus in the House supports not just a tax increase, but a confiscatory tax increase, this shows that the wind has shifted again in favor of higher taxes"...
Mar 30, 2009 02:25 PM
Beneath the rhetoric of “a major expansion of health coverage” for young and middle-aged people, Obama is plotting to drastically curtail health coverage for older Americans. While his true intentions are shrouded in bureaucratize, mind-numbing technocratic jargon and sloganeering, the reality of what he proposes can occasionally be glimpsed through the fog...
Apr 04, 2009 05:38 PM
If seniors don’t organize, mobilize and resist the ObamaCare Express, the politicians will throw them under the train when it comes time to pay the bills. Don’t be fooled by the politicians’ smooth talk...
Apr 07, 2009 06:00 PM
For those of you inclined to wade through it, this discussion of the financial crisis is the most lucid account I’ve seen, somewhat technical but still accessible to a layman who takes the time to read it carefully...
Apr 07, 2009 06:05 PM
Well, Andrew Rosenfield gets it almost right—closer than most people have—in my opinion. Still, he seems a slave to the fetish of injecting huge amounts of taxpayer dollars into failed financial institutions to “recapitalize” them before selling them off to private investors...
Apr 07, 2009 06:21 PM
The Administration intends to spend half the Social Security surplus during this year and next to bail out big, bad banks...
Apr 08, 2009 09:55 AM
Remember how the hotshot Wall-Street bankers packaged all those subprime mortgages together and miraculously produced Triple-A rated securities? Well, the hotshot politicians who just met at the G-20...
Apr 08, 2009 10:22 AM
Here is how the AP reporter explains the government model Schumer has in mind: Each year, the government plan would budget for health expenses, then hire an insurer to process claims, negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals and...
Apr 09, 2009 10:56 AM
Just as I predicted mid-last year, the enormous borrowing and fear of future inflation created by the Fed’s stupendous increase in its balance sheet finally swamped zero-percent short-term rates and oceans of excess bank reserves and began to push long-term rates up...
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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