Thursday, March 5, 2009
Senate Defeats Effort to Remove Earmarks
In his latest crusade against the process lawmakers use to finance home-state projects known as earmarks, Senator John S. McCain took to the Senate floor this week with an arsenal of numbers, sharply criticizing the $410 billion omnibus spending bill as 2,967 pages of text, teeming with 9,000 earmarks.
But the only numbers that mattered on Tuesday were 63 to 32: the vote by which the Senate defeated Mr. McCain’s amendment to strip the earmarks from the spending measure, which is needed to finance the federal government through September.
The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, said Congressional Democrats were not willing to relinquish their budget authority. Driving home his point, Mr. Hoyer called the spending items not earmarks but “Congressional initiatives.”
[Translation: PORK]
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Obama to Sign Spending Bill With Earmarks
President Barack Obama will sign a $410 billion government-spending bill, even though it includes thousands of the spending ''earmarks'' that he had criticized on the campaign trail, a top White House aide said.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, speaking on CBS's ''Face the Nation'' Sunday, said the president wasn't happy with the 9,000-or-so earmarks that lawmakers added to the legislation. But
"this is last year's business"
[I believe the year is 2009, and it's Obama's desk the bill will land on and his hand which will sign it into law. How stupid do they think we are?...................
{rhetorical}]
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Airbrushing Obama's name off earmarks
The evidence Obama sponsored earmarks (which he is publicly speaking against) will be destroyed. Jonathan Allen of CQ Politics reports on the process of hiding the evidence:
Congress will scrub President Obama's name from a list of earmark cosponsors in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill.
The reason: Whether Obama cosponsored the earmarks depends on what the definition of earmarks is and when an earmarks becomes earmarks, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Subsequently, Senate Appropriations Committee spokesman Rob Blumenthal said Obama's name would be removed from future versions of the congressional report identifying earmarks and their sponsors.
History is written by the victors, so they say, and Obama famously declared, "I won."
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Adding Insult to Injury
.
Congress wants to boost spending on itself by nearly 11 percent this year, an increase that's part of a massive spending bill that has smaller increases for most agencies that deal with public health, education, energy, and other domestic needs.
The congressional budget, which the Senate is considering this week as part of a $410 billion fiscal 2009 spending bill, is higher than the 8 percent overall boost for most domestic programs.
['smaller increases' averaging 8% - no recession in Washington]
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Mullen: Iran has fissile materials for bomb
[HT:NR]
The top U.S. military official says he believes Iran now has enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb. Adm. Mike Mullen issued that assessment after the world's nuclear watchdog said last week that it was wrong in earlier reports and now has evidence that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon...
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Six powers commit to "direct diplomacy" with Iran
The United States and five other powers said on Tuesday they were committed to direct talks with Iran to defuse a standoff over its disputed nuclear work, underlining a U.S. turnabout from a policy of confrontation. [I.e., strength.]
Speaking at a U.N. nuclear watchdog meeting, the six voiced serious concern at Iran's atomic advances and increasing restrictions on U.N. inspectors trying to keep track of them but did not mention toughening sanctions as a way to rein in Iran."We remain firmly committed to a comprehensive diplomatic solution, including through direct dialogue,"
the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China said in a statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors
[I.e., Iran wins. The only question is how big the bribe - all paid by America - will need to be. When will we learn; conveying weakness emboldens enemies.]
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The Iran-Israel nuclear endgame is now much closer
In recent days, four key developments have clicked in to edge Iran and Israel much closer to a military denouement with profound consequences for American oil that the nation is not prepared to meet.
Binyamin Netanyahu has just become prime minister of Israel. He is determined to take action before - not after - Iran achieves its nuclear potential...
[Well, at least we've had time to prepare by drilling our own ... oh.
Nevermind.]
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Obama's plan for unfree trade
Not once in the agenda is free trade defended or presented as a policy objective, unless you consider the following reference-- the only sentence in the agenda to actually use the word "free" -- to be an indicator of trade liberalism."If we work together, free and fair trade with proper regard for social and environmental policy and appropriate political accountability will be a powerful contributor to the national and global well being."
Otherwise, the Obama trade agenda is anti-free trade. All presidents have recently taken to talking about "free and fair" trade, compromising the basic objectives of trade liberalization for political reasons. But even George W. Bush, no stranger to compromise on trade, made trade freedom a dominant objective, constantly hammering away at the "benefits of free trade" and the need to "knock down barriers."
Nothing comparable appears in Mr. Obama's agenda, which is tellingly entitled to capture the administration's prime trade objectives: "Making Trade Work for American Families." The opening sentences are a declaration of trade confusion -- trade as a social program...
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Big Brother Twofer
.
Outrage brewing over proposed 1,900% beer tax hike
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Five Oregon state lawmakers want to impose a hefty tax on beer and have introduced a bill that brewers say would cripple them. Four Portland legislators joined a Springfield senator to introduce Oregon House Bill 2461, which would impose a $49.61 tax on each barrel of beer produced by Oregon brewers.
[the inevitable path of 'sin' taxes, when government decides what's sin {with a profit motive thrown in}]
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[yet another one]
Adult download tax proposal awaits climax in Albany
This is the best tax you ever had. A state proposal to add a 4% tax for downloading movies and music will also apply to Internet porn. Gov. Paterson recently suggested the so-called iPod tax to help close a $15 billion budget deficit, but few realized the levy would also apply to XXX-rated material.
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GOVERNMENT POLICIES LED TO WALL STREET'S RISKY BUSINESS
Many observers blame the current financial crisis on a breakdown of private markets. A more careful look shows that government policy, step by step, led to the current crisis, says Randall G. Holcombe, an economics professor at Florida State University. Consider:
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created to help provide mortgages for people who didn't qualify for conventional mortgages; as government-sponsored enterprises (GSE), they rapidly grew to where their debt was nearly half the size of the federal government's debt.
- A related problem began with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977; if lenders wanted to expand their lending, they had to balance their loans to financially secure buyers with loans to buyers who did not meet the conventional mortgage criteria.
- A third factor was easy-money policy adopted by the Federal Reserve Bank early in the decade to mitigate the effects of an incipient recession exacerbated by the after-effects of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; low rates meant lower-cost mortgages, further enabling people to buy houses, however, the increased demand pushed prices up, and many buyers wouldn't have qualified for mortgages except for the relaxed standards.
As long as interest rates remained low and housing prices rose, the problems were hidden, says Holcombe. But then from 2004 to 2006 the Fed boosted the Federal Funds rate to 5.25 percent, pushing up mortgage rates and bringing the artificial housing boom to an end.
So government policy, not the free market, created much of the current financial crisis, explains Holcombe. Market participants aren't blameless - nobody forced Wall Street's large investment banks to take big risks - but the conditions that have led to today's mess weren't a product of a free market but rather one warped by government meddling.
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For Banks, Help Isn't On The Way
Financial System: Banks, it seems, are everyone's favorite villains these days. Blamed for much of the financial crisis by everyone from the president to the media, they are routinely vilified. But do they deserve it?
Our government is largely to blame for our current problems. (Snip) many of the same people who caused these problems — Rep. Barney Frank and Sens. Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer(Snip)— are now making new laws to "fix" them.
[There is no justice.]
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Bankrupting the Coal Industry
From a San Francisco Chronicle interview on January 17, 2008 with then candidate Obama regarding the coal industry:
"Let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
President Obama's first budget proposal includes $75 billion in tax revenues by 2012 from a cap-and-trade system that requires companies to buy credits if they exceed greenhouse gas limits. We don't have to guess which utilities this targets because POTUS told us last year: coal. This is part of his plan to bankrupt the coal industry.
The unintended (or intended?) consequence comes from the companies pass their costs to consumers principle: companies don't absorb costs, they pass them on to the consumer. How long will it be before the electric bills in areas where coal is the main provider of electricity are doubled or tripled? What is the consumer going to do? Switch power company providers? This isn't an option. These are monopolies.
Sadly, the administration feels that they can raise taxes and fees on companies and say that they're not hurting anyone. But when the administration raises taxes and imposes fees on business, they're really raising taxes and imposing fees on you and me, all of us, regardless of our income bracket. But don't expect to be reminded of that by the MSM.
[55% - the amount of our electricity supplied by coal.]
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How Regulation Harms
[HT:JK]
A New York City doctor's flat-fee, $79-a-month medical practice has run afoul of state insurance regulators who have told him to shut it down.
Dr. John Muney said Wednesday he's negotiating to try to keep the arrangement at his AMG Medical Group centers. The fee . . doesn't cover treatment requiring hospitalization or specialized care.
But the state Insurance Department says Dr. Muney's system amounts to insurance and requires a license...
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FREE THE ENTREPRENEUR
In normal markets, entrepreneurs in search of profit often spur cost efficiencies and quality improvements. Under Medicare, by contrast, entrepreneurial efforts find their greatest reward when they exploit the system rather than improve it.
Entrepreneurs are creating new products to fill needs that traditional health insurance does not meet. For example:
- People can purchase blood tests via the Internet and get results in 24 hours.
- They can get low-cost care with very little waiting at walk-in clinics in shopping malls.
As a regulator of care, government has erected many obstacles. For example:
- It is illegal for a doctor practicing on the Texas side of Texarkana to treat a patient by phone on the Arkansas side of the same city.
- It is illegal for a doctor practicing in East St. Louis (Illinois side) to interpret x-rays taken for a patient treated in west St. Louis (Missouri side).
Most importantly of all, a national market for provider services should be established quickly, and the protectionist practice prohibiting interstate insurance providers abolished .
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New Orleans, Unguarded
In discussing Hurricane Katrina, people never tire of maintaining there was “enough blame to go around.” Every sensitive American knows to cite “the failure of local, state, and federal governments to respond more effectively.”
Which means, in real terms, that New Orleans’ mayor, Ray Nagin, should have gotten citizens out of the city and kept police in; Louisiana’s governor, Kathleen Blanco should have immediately asked for National Guard troops; and President Bush should have . . . not been photographed looking out of an airplane window?
There’s a story today highlighting that the federal government not only saved the day three and a half years ago, but also continued to outshine Louisiana’s local and state entities ever since. The last members of the patrolling National Guard are pulling out of New Orleans by the end of this weekend, and residents are petrified at the prospect of not having federal troops around to aid and protect them...
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Democrats strike different tone on Katrina
WASHINGTON (AP) — The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there's not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.
And there's no outrage about it.
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Montana loading another shot for states' rights
HELENA - Montana lawmakers are betting the words 'Made in Montana' might be able to trigger a court showdown with the federal government, while also freeing some gun owners and dealers from background check and licensing requirements.
Under a proposed law before the Legislature, firearms, weapons components and ammunition made in Montana and kept in Montana would be exempt from federal regulation, potentially releasing some Montanans from national gun registration and licensing laws...
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What Kind of President Seeks to Effectively Tax Charitable Contributions?
Those of us who disagree with Obama need to break through apolitical Americans' general sense of "he's a good guy, I trust him, I'm not going to look too closely at what he's doing."
I suspect his proposal to lower the deductions on charitable contributions is a good example of talk differing from action. By lowering the deduction, Obama is effectively raising taxes on donations to charity.
Of all the places to raise taxes, why here? Why does Obama want the government to take more from those who donate to good causes? Can he really believe that the government should be punishing those who make these donations?
[A: by reducing charitable giving the have-nots will have less, thereby strengthening the class-warfare arguments on which he depends.]
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'Name That Party' Reaches House Floor
On NewsBusters we have for a few years now been chronicling the constant failure of the media to label a criminal or troubled politician with his party affiliation when that politician is a Democrat, we all know.
Every couple of days we detail a new "name that party" story where an Old Media outlet reports on a Democrat politician arrested, convicted, or accused of a crime though he seems never to be labeled as such. We've also noted many times the opposite tale where a recalcitrant pol that happens to be a Republican finds his party receiving top billing in the Old Media. We have dozens and dozens of examples.
Well, it appears that at least one member of Congress has noticed the same thing and has mentioned the media's penchant for Democrat Party passing on the floor of the House of Representatives. The Hill's Briefing Room blog gives us the story.
But, I just had to laugh at The Hill's headline. It went a little something like this:
GOP Leader Blasts Media Bias in House Floor Speech
You got it... The Hill made darn sure that party affiliation was first up in the headline.
Sigh.
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Drunk Rides Gravy Train
He got so drunk that he fell into the path of a subway train - costing him his right leg - but a Manhattan jury still awarded him $2.3 million after finding that NYC Transit was to blame.
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One man stood.
Across the table,
a collective tyranny saying,
Submit.
On the lawn oustide,
a hostile media saying,
Submit.
In his faraway land,
a faction of partisans saying,
Submit.
And on his shoulders,
the fate of the free world:
One Man.
One man stood his ground,
he just said,
"Nyet."
President Ronald Reagan
ReykjavÃk Summit
October 12, 1986
Across the table,
a collective tyranny saying,
Submit.
On the lawn oustide,
a hostile media saying,
Submit.
In his faraway land,
a faction of partisans saying,
Submit.
And on his shoulders,
the fate of the free world:
One Man.
One man stood his ground,
he just said,
"Nyet."
President Ronald Reagan
ReykjavÃk Summit
October 12, 1986
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