by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, NEW YORK, POLITICS
De Blasio’s recent mayoral victory was a sad day for New Yorkers. Electing him was proof that the constituency in NYC is morally, philosophically, and educationally bankrupt. And if the mayor sticks to his positions that he declared as candidate De Blasio, NYC will be financially bankrupt as well.
A strong argument can be made that the entire election was a public service union push. For four years now, the public service unions have waiting to negotiate their contracts until Bloomberg was out of office. The time has come for the unions. De Blasio, from a position of patronage, will roll over and give the unions huge back-end and retroactive pay increases and benefits both undeserved and unaffordable. New York City could easily find itself in the same fiscal categories as Detroit and Chicago.
Why have the unions been willing to work without a contract for virtually all of the Bloomberg tenure? A little known clause of the anti-strike Taylor Law is the Triborough Amendment.This provision mandates that if a contract expires before a new contract is in place, the benefits of the expired contract continue, unchanged, until the new contract is finally negotiated. NYC is the only place in the country that has such a clause, which renders it difficult to negotiate anything from a position of austerity.
Bloomberg understood the ever-expanding costs of public service union wages and benefits, and sought to restrain them during the economic downturn. Over the past four years, the unions have steadfastly refused to engage in contract negotiations that would bring their costs in line.Why should they? They could continue to accrue the unaffordable and unreasonable benefits of the expired contract that they could have no hope of getting with Bloomberg under a new contract. Then they could help elect a new mayor who is philosophically aligned, financially naive, and seemingly irresponsible enough to give them what they could only dream of in a new contract.
De Blasio won the election by a huge majority, despite the fact that he is so far left as to be an avowed supporter of the likes of Cuba and the Sandinistas. He clearly espouses policies — such as higher taxes, more spending and regulation, attempts at government imposed income redistribution, and curtailment of police activity — which will ultimately hurt the poor and economically disadvantaged more than anyone. And if he tops it off with crony contracts with the public service unions, New Yorkers will have dug themselves a hole virtually impossible to get out of.
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS
Are you a genetic lottery winner? Too bad.
The legislative name for Obamacare is the Affordable Care Act. This name was chosen precisely to appeal to Americans to consider buying a health insurance plan from a government-run exchange. Who doesn’t like the idea of something that is “affordable”? By using that term, it suggested that the current system of health care was the opposite –“unafforable”. But the Affordable Care Act was merely a red herring for what the government really thought about the healthcare system — that it was discriminatory, and could be used as another vessel for wealth transfer.
Yesterday’s interview transcript between Chuck Todd and the Architect of Obamacare, Mr. Jonathan Gruber, M.I.T. should be screaming from every newspaper this morning. But there was hardly a blip on the radar screen. Real Clear Politics has the video. Mr. Gruber revealed the singular truth about the real reason our government created and passed Obamacare — it was not about an “affordable” new system; it was about a “discriminatory” old system, and the government “fix”. Here’s what Gruber described:
“We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance. The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price.
That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return. And that, by my estimate, is about four million people. In return, we’ll have a fixed system where over 30 million people will now for the first time be able to access fairly price and guaranteed health insurance“.
Where to start?
The most glaring and insulting concept in his statement is the idea that someone is a “genetic winner” and “a lottery winner” that has been “paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination”.
The idea of a “genetic winner” is incredibly chilling. Brave New world-ish even. It completely removes the idea of personal responsibility in the health equation. We are somehow only and entirely healthy or not because of superior genetics, and therefore those who are should be financially punished for it due to a government-imposed standard of “fairness”.
The next absurity goes hand-in-hand with that — the idea that people who “won” the “genetic lottery” are paying artificially low prices for insurance. By what standard is something “artificially low” (or not)? The government standard! Not the insurance market. The government tells us something is artificially low and therefore needs to be corrected. It is their justification to punish the “winners”, a form of reparation of to those who the government considers “genetic lottery losers”. Pay up! It’s not fair you have been paying too low of a price!
Gruber also describes in detail how the government has decided the system is discriminatory: “where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance. At every point in time — present, past, and future — the system discriminates. If you might get sick in the future, you cannot have insurance now! Such a statement defies all logic. But it doesn’t matter. The groundwork is laid bare: our health care discriminates.
What is the solution? Gruber explains that the only way to level the playing field and be fair is to force the “genetic winners” to pay their fair share (sound familiar?).And finally, finally, Gruber tells us, “In return, we’ll have a fixed system where over 30 million people will now for the first time be able to access fairly price and guaranteed health insurance”.
A fixed system now. Because the government decided the system was “broken”. It was the fault of the genetic lottery winners and the artifically low prices who discriminated against those who did not have insurance. Are you a genetic lottery winner? The government finds you contemptible.
Of course, there was no distinction of the uninsured between those who could not get insurance or who chose not to have insurance either. The Uninsured were discriminated against. And that needed to be fixed — by the government. We’re here to help.
The Affordable Care Act is only about being affordable to some. It is revealed to be another giant wealth transfer. Take the genetic lottery winners, kick them off their freely chosen policies, put them on the more expensive Obamacare government exchanges, and subsidize those who have been discriminated against to make it fair for all.
Fairness is yet again the objective of, and gift from, the government — no matter the cost to our wallets or our dignity.
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, QUICKLY NOTED
Last week, I reported that the whitehouse.gov website section pertaining to Obamacare still had the “if you like your plan, you can keep it” Promise. I checked out whitehouse.gov on November 6, a few days after Obama gave a speech during which he explained that the Promise actually had qualifiers.
Obama’s new Promise during that speech was: “Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed”. This Animal Farm-esque change drew outcries from around the county.
Back to whitehouse.gov. On November 6, the “Health Reform” section on Obamacare included the very bold statement:
“For those Americans who already have health insurance, the only changes you will see under the law are new benefits, better protections from insurance company abuses, and more value for every dollar you spend on health care. If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law”
And the screenshot from November 6:
Checking back a week later to see if whitehouse.gov has updated that section to include the new Promise made by Obama, an interesting thing occured ont the website. The same original Promise is still there. But the IT guys for whitehouse.gov did manage to edit that section by adding a new line after the original Promise. That line reads “The President addressed concerns from Americans who have received letters of policy cancellations or changes from their insurance companies in an interview with NBC News, watch the video or read a transcript”
Here is that screenshot of the same section, with the new line added:
Because the whitehouse.gov included a link to Obama’s interview and transcript, I clicked on it to see what Obama had to say about his Promise.
From the transcript:
“Well — first of all, I meant what I said. And we worked hard to try to make sure that we implemented it properly. But obviously, we didn’t do enough — a good enough job — and I regret that. We’re talking about 5% of the population — who are in what’s called the individual market. They’re out there buyin’ health insurance on their own.
A lot of these plans are subpar plans. And we put in a clause in the law that said if you had one of those plans, even if it was subpar — when the law was passed, you could keep it. But there’s enough churn in the market that folks since then have bought subpar plans. And now that may be all they can afford. So even though it only affects a small amount of the population, you know, it means a lot to them, obviously, when they get — this letter cancelled”…
and further…
“You know — I regret very much that — what we intended to do, which is to make sure that everybody is moving into better plans because they want ’em, as opposed to because they’re forced into it. That, you know, we weren’t as clear as we needed to be — in terms of the changes that were takin’ place. And I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position — a better position than they were before this law happened”.
Obama regrets that “we weren’t as clear as we needed to be”, but still has the original Promise in plain text right on the whitehouse.gov website. It still says, clear as day,
“If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law”
The same Promise he repeated previously at least 29 times.
What’s worse, not only is the original Promise still on the page mentioned above, it is also on ANOTHER page of the Obamacare section on whitehouse.gov. Head on over to the section on “Quality Affordable Health Care for All Americans, and you can see the text:
“For Americans with insurance coverage who like what they have, they can keep it. Nothing in this act or anywhere in the bill forces anyone to change the insurance they have, period”
Here’s that screenshot as well:
And at the bottom of the page when you scroll down, whitehouse.gov urges Americans to continue on to the page entitled “If You Like the Insurance You Have, Keep It“. That is the name of the actual page.
On that page, it boldly proclaims:
“If You Like the Insurance You Have, Keep It:
Nothing in the proposal forces anyone to change the insurance they have. Period.”
So whitehouse.gov continues to peddle the original Promise that Obama has to explain away. Whitehouse.gov can take the time to update their website to add the explanations, but can’t edit the Promise.
If Obama regrets not being clear as he said in the interview, why hasn’t the White House updated the Promise to the new explanation in order to be clear? How can the White House be “clear” when their own website says one thing in several places, and the President is running around explaining it in a different way? How is this transparent?
Despite the regrets Obama expressed in his latest remarks on the Promise, it is clear that the Obama does not want to be clear.
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA
The best thing you can say about the Obamacare legislation and recent rollout is that the president lied. He lied about “keeping your plan” and “keeping your doctor”. He lied about the cost savings. He lied to the American people to sell it.That is the best spin that can be put on what he said.
What’s worse? We now know — based on recently-surfaced memos — that all of his advisors and speech writers also knew that keeping your plan and doctor was not true. This is more heinous than just the President lying. In this event, the American President and his coterie willfully and deliberately deceived the American public in order to push forth a complex and expensive piece of controversial legislation on which Obama was to hang his legacy.
And what if Obama didn’t know? That is the most terrible scenario of all. That our President is surrounded by people who knowingly and unabashedly lied to him about an important bill. If they can lie about health care legislation to the President and to our citizens, what else have they lied about? Benghazi? The IRS? Fast and Furious? How much has the media and Congress aided and abetted the deception? How could the office of the President be reduce to a mere shell — and by Obama the Wunderkind, no less? And more incredibly, when the President did find out that he had been lied to by his most trusted advisors and speech writers he did nothing about it! Not one head rolled.
If, in fact, Obama expressly lied to the country about Obamacare,it is outrageous and reprehensible. But it is Obama’s best scenario. Because the other scenarios, and their implications for our country and for our Executive Branch, are frighteningly worse.
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS
Oopsies!
The White House website (whitehouse.gov) still shows the original “If you like your health plan, you can keep it” promise. See the text here on www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/healthcare-overview:
Health Care that Works for Americans
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, putting in place comprehensive reforms that improve access to affordable health coverage for everyone and protect consumers from abusive insurance company practices.
For those Americans who already have health insurance, the only changes you will see under the law are new benefits, better protections from insurance company abuses, and more value for every dollar you spend on health care. If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law.
For the uninsured or those who don’t get their coverage through work, a key component of the Affordable Care Act will take effect on October 1, when the new Health Insurance Marketplace open for business, allowing millions of Americans to comparison shop for a variety of quality, affordable plans that best meet their health care needs”.
And the screenshot:
This is different than the speech he gave just a few days ago, where he gave qualifiers on the “if you like your plan, you can keep it.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard. They’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan they are selling. That’s part of the promise that we made too. That’s why we went out of our way to make sure that the law allowed for grandfathering.
After the speech above, The Daily Caller reported that Obama made the original promise at least 29 times. Does this make 30?
Perhaps the same IT guys in charge of maintaining healthcare.gov are in charge of updating Whitehouse.gov.
UPDATE, NOV 7: Foxnews is showing another page of whitehouse.gov’s healthcare reform section, which also currently states this:
“For Americans with insurance coverage who like what they have, they can keep it. Nothing in this act or anywhere in the bill forces anyone to change the insurance they have, period.”
Too bad Obama doesn’t read his own website.
by | BLOG, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, QUICKLY NOTED
In Animal Farm, the most important of the Seven Commandments of Animalism was the “All Animals Are Equal” Commandment. Upon this, Animalism was supposed to thrive.
Later, Napoleon gains power, drives out Snowball, moves into Mr. Jones white house, sells Boxer to the glue factory, and enjoys whiskey while the animals work. Animalism is struggling to survive and suddenly, the maxim is changed. It becomes:
“All Animals are Equal, But Some are More Equal Than Others”
In a strikingly similar way during this new age of Obamacare, we were repeatedly told that “if you like your plan, you can keep it”
Now, today we get the Animal Farm version:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard. They’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan they are selling. That’s part of the promise that we made too. That’s why we went out of our way to make sure that the law allowed for grandfathering.
I guess Obama expects that we won’t remember what he said. After all, he is our leader of Obamacarism. He has nothing to really apologize for. The Obamapology blames everyone else.
Surely it is the fault of the “bad apple” insurers who had such terrible plans to offer to begin with. Surely it is our fault because we couldn’t possibly have known any better or even really truly liked the plans we had picked.
Now, all insurance plans are equal. But some are more equal than others. (And those that aren’t equal will be canceled).
by | ARTICLES
Today marks 84 years since the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday. This typically is considered the beginning event of the Great Depression that lasted some 10 years in the United States.
The crash itself did not cause the Depression, but rather it was an overcorrection of a stock market that was too high and too inflationary. The 1920s was a period of good and strong economic gain, but with an abundance of speculating market traders, it became unstable.
The real problem that followed was deflation. That was joined with credit problems, monetary problems, and a decrease in international trade. Additionally, Both Hoover and FDR intervened to help the economy back on track. The effects of those interventions have been hotly debated.
Many of Hoover’s policies — meant to be aid recover — did not help as intended. Smoot-Hawley comes to mind. So does his tax increases when many could least afford them.
The election of FDR took things to a whole new level. FDR’s New Deal vastly expanded the size and scope of government with relief and regulatory agencies. Some projects, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, remain hallmarks of improvement during a bleak age. Others, such as the National Recovery Administration, contributed to the prolonging of the Depression.
The National Recovery Administration in particular slowed growth in the business sector. Many were reluctant to hire employees because prices were fixed and capital was scarce. But the crushing blow was dealt with FDR’s “undistributed profits tax”.
This tax which introduced in 1936, was considered a revenue raiser for the New Deal. In reality it was merely a tool intended to extract money from businesses and into the economy. Businesses now had to distribute their profits in either wages or dividends rather than savings or investment. This directly impeded a business’s ability to save capital or reinvest profits back into the business, which crippled small businesses in particular.
The tax was such an economic failure that it was reduced by 1938 and repealed a year later. But the Depression went into its bleakest hour at that time in 1937.
Deep and far-reaching government intervention combined with unbridled spending programs throughout the 1930s by FDR prolonged rather than helped the economy to recover from the Great Depression. And today five years after the mini-market crash of 2008, there are definitely parallels of the policies of that era — and our recovery is certainly sluggish at best. Remembering Black Tuesday and the era afterwards serves as a reminder that runaway spending and expanded government aren’t always the medicine needed for a better economy.
by | BLOG, POLITICS
What a year it has been since Hurricane Sandy hit the US on October 28-30, 2012. The size and scope of Superstorm Sandy is a perfect analogy of the the fiscal ineptitude that has churned up in Congress over the last year.
Nearly three months after the Hurricane, the Sandy Relief bill was passed. It almost didn’t make it in Congress at all, having been caught up in the “Fiscal Cliff” crisis of January 1, 2013. No one denied that those citizens who were affected by the catastrophic and legendary storm deserved help. However, the bill was mired down by pork and Congressional dysfunction.
Only three weeks after the fiscal cliff deal that raised taxes on the highest income earners, Congress managed to figure out how to fritter away a year’s worth of that revenue that was raised (after many months of wrangling and negotiations, mind you). By raising the tax rates on the wealthiest citizens, which was a longtime objective of Obama’s, here was finally something tangible to soak the rich so the the rich could “pay their fair share” This, we were told, was absolutely necessary to raise revenue because of our deficit. The tax increase was to provide the government with $600 Billion in revenue over ten years (roughly $60 billion each year).
But when Congress finally got its hands on Sandy Relief, a bill with good intentions, they created a half-pork barrel spending/half-relief spending measure. Once the Mulvaney amendment failed, a $17 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill with a 1.63 percent cut to discretionary programs, the final version of Sandy Relief metastasized into the monstrosity passed. It was spending spree bill that was not offset by equal and opposite cuts. It fully added $50.5 Billion dollars to the deficit — three weeks after the tax hike on the rich for the purpose of deficit reduction.
The stinging part of the Sandy Relief Bill was that it wasn’t all hurricane relief. Also included were items such as $10 million for FBI salaries, $2 billion for road construction across the country, as well as funding for the Head Start program and roof repairs at the Smithsonian. Such items did not belong in the Sandy Relief Bill. Only about a third was actually for relief: $17 billion was for aid, while another $33 billion was for “other”
This has nothing to do with whether the non-Sandy provisions of the bill were worthwhile or not. But there is no reason why those extra provisions shouldn’t be dealt with on the same playing field as all the other potentially important uses of our federal tax dollars. Why did these particular spending measure bypass the intense oversight and scrutiny that every expenditure in the budget requires of our legislators so that we don’t overspend our revenue? Herein lies a neverending problem.
At the end of the day, the tax hike on the rich was almost entirely wiped out by the Sandy Bill. By voting up the $50.5 Billion in “aid” that was crafted, (and if you combine that amount with the $9 billion for the National Flood Insurance Program also approved in January 2013), Congress spent the entire sum of a year’s worth of revenue from the rich’s “fair share” — with most of it going to fund more government instead of reducing the deficit — in one fell swoop.
Here we are a year later. The AP reported this week citizens impacted by Sandy have had a lot of waiting to do with very little to show for it in New York City. “Because the federal government has only released the first tranche — about $700 million — of the roughly $60 billion package of storm recovery aid approved by Congress, city officials say they still don’t know how much money they’ll be able to distribute to storm victims”.
And more: “About 24,000 families have signed up for the city’s Build-It-Back program, which will help pay for repairs, elevate their homes and reimburse them for repairs that have already completed, among other things. But many still haven’t received any money nearly a year after the storm“.
How can this be? How is it that Congress has only released $700 million so far? The $17 billion “aid” part of the Sandy Relief bill included the following:
$5.4 billion for FEMA to provide immediate relief to families and pay for temporary housing, debris removal and crisis counseling.
$5.4 billion went to major transportation agencies in New York and New Jersey
$3.9 billion to repair damages to publicly owned hospitals, roads and utilities
$1.35 billion to the Army Corps of Engineers
$287 million for national parks
$235 million for veteran facilities
$32 million for Amtrak
$6 million to replenish and stock food banks and soup kitchens.
It is gross incompetence that supposedly only $700 million of a $50 billion aid package — 1.2% — has been released by Congress. Where are the funds? And what about the non-aid parts of the bill? The $33 billion in pork? Have those funds been distributed?
Equally disturbing is the revelation this week that the very company responsible for the disasterous Obamacare website (CGI Federal Inc.) also received funds to distribute for Sandy Relief. According to the Daily Caller, CGI “assisting the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the distribution of $1.7 billion in relief for Hurricane Sandy”. This was verified by a memo obtained by Freedom Works. Notes of the minutes of the memo record that
Mr. Nelson presented that the State received a $1.7 billion allocation in CDBG Disaster Recovery aid from HUD to aid impacted businesses and residences. He stated that the State’s Action Plan was approved on April 26, 2013 and HTFC is currently in a phase of implementing the program. He stated that in this phase, the corporation needs to stand-up its recovery programs as soon as possible to deliver critical resources, and in order to do so, the corporation requires immediate access to consultant services to assist in policy and procedure development, training, surge capacity, and call center assistance, and stated that CGI Federal Inc. could provide such services.
Mr. Nelson stated that the corporation entered into a short term contract with CGI, Federal Inc. on a discretionary basis of $49,000 to start with these critical disaster recovery efforts, and he requested that the Board approve a contract with CGI Federal Inc., procured on an emergency basis as justified under Executive Order 63, for an amount up to $4,280,000 for a term through March 31, 2016.
The company that charged the federal government more than $600 million to build a website that has failed miserably is the very same company that received a contract for another $4 + million through 2016 to help distribute Sandy aid, a task at which it has also failed miserably.
One year after Superstorm Sandy, we can clearly see the failings of Congress in its fiduciary responsibility.
It approved tax hikes on the wealthy under the guise of deficit reduction — $60B a year for 10 years
It approved as a relief bill nearly the same amount that was to be raised by the tax hikes — a bill that was 2/3 pork and only 1/3 relief — that increased government spending
It has only released 1.2% ($700 million) of the $50+ billion in aid
It contracted enormous sums of federal tax dollars with CGI, a company that is being paid 1) to assist with distributing nearly $2 billion in aid and 2) is the chief architect behind the Obamacare website abomination
And yet, just a few days ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave a radio interview in which he spelled out the next phase of budget negotiation, where he once again calls for more taxes:
“The only people who feel there shouldn’t be more coming in to the federal government from the rich people are the Republicans in the Congress. “Everybody else, including the rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more.”
He also went on to announce that the only way there could be some sort of Congressional “grand bargain” would be under the conditions that the Republicans would have to agree to more tax revenue:
“They have their mind set on doing nothing, nothing more on revenue, and until they get off that kick, there’s not going to be a grand bargain on — there’s not going to be a small bargain,” Reid said. “We’re just going to have to do something to work our way through sequestration.”
William Pitt the Younger sagely observed that “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” We constantly hear how the government needs more money . After a year of particularly gross fiscal mismanagement in Congress — from Hurricane Sandy to the Fiscal Cliff to Sequestration to the government shutdown to Healthcare.gov the Democrats still have the gall to sound the call for more taxes.
The trillion dollar question then becomes: What Will Republicans Do?
