A great piece by John Nolte on Tuesday documents the coordinated attack on Romney’s wealth in an attempt to insinuate some sort of financial impropriety.
Nevermind the fact that Romney has unequivocally been squeaky clean in releasing and documenting every bit of his finances.
Nolte goes on to discuss how both the Washington Post and Politico coordinated with Obama’s campaign to hint at potential indiscretions with Romney’s money while covering a pro-Occupy article in Vanity Fair.
Though both Politico and the Post lie through the act of omission by not telling their readers Romney has complied 100% with financial disclosure requirements, what both are doing here (and you can expect the rest of the media to pile on) is laying the foundation for a media-narrative that will demand more disclosure from Romney. The tactic is an old one, for the media knows that the simple act of demanding this kind of information is in and of itself a way of making Romney look slippery and dishonest — you know, like a rich jerk with something to hide — which is exactly how the Obama campaign (and therefore Politico and the Washington Post) intend to define Romney.
Not only is this an attempt to discredit Romney, it is also part of a larger Obama anti-rich campaign narrative. We’ve heard them before: “the rich need to pay their fair share”, “millionaires and billionaires“, “Buffett Rules” and other class-warfare rhetoric. Painting Romney as a rich shyster allows the campaign to continue to push the idea that Obama is one of us…not a big-bad-rich-guy.
Yet, back in January, when Romney disclosed his taxes, the media story then was similar too; Romney paid only about a 15% tax rate — which means (according to their playbook) he didn’t pay enough. Interestingly however, was one aspect of the tax return that went wholly unreported by many news outlets, and not just the overtly liberal ones either (remember in January, Romney was one of several potential GOP candidates). Having reviewed Romney’s returns, I noted that he paid taxes on more than $1 million worth of income that existed on paper only, due to the nature of hedge funds, IRS deduction rules, etc. You can read that report here. Yet no less than five news agencies — liberal and conservative — chose not to cover and discuss a story that had Romney paying “more than his fair share of taxes”. That wouldn’t sell. That didn’t fit the rhetoric. Would have it been different if the returns came out now, now that he is our nominee — and therefore we are more unified against Obama?
Reflecting on that, one thing is certain: we can expect more of these baseless, factless attacks on Romney from the leftist media as the summer marches on. Thankfully, articles like Nolte’s help to expose and dispel the bias and campaign mouthpieces that are indeed active.
Carney went on to say Friday that the “penalty” will affect only about 1 percent of Americans, those who refuse to get health insurance. He said the penalty was modeled after the one put in place in Massachusetts when Mitt Romney was governor.
“It’s a penalty, because you have a choice. You don’t have a choice to pay your taxes, right?” Carney said.
Carney was initially reluctant to assign a label to the fine when pressed repeatedly by reporters Friday. “Call it what you want,” he said.
and more:
“You can call it what you want,” he said. “If you read the opinion, it is not a broad-based tax. It affects one percent, by CBO estimates, of the population. It is not something that you assess like an income tax.”
It was unclear which Congressional Budget Office estimate Carney was referring to. Despite being pressed on the issue, though, the spokesman would not relent.
It didn’t even take 24 hours for the games and backtracking by the White House to begin. Don’t forget, they insisted to the American people — in order to get the bill passed — that it was not a tax. Clearly, they are worried about the tax narrative shaping the rest of the election season rhetoric.
The basic premise that everyone should be protected in case of serious illness or injury with appropriate insurance is not an unsavory idea. But the concept of an individual mandate does nothing. Not only does it not help with that problem of encouraging everyone to carry coverage, it confuses the entire idea of what “health insurance” is or is supposed to be — so much that it affirmatively discourages or reduces the likelihood that people will have insurance. I propose that the concept of health insurance should only really be related to major medical situations, like other true “insurances”.
The individual mandate is both unconstitutional and ineffective because it leads to a poor allocation of resources. In order to understand why, it requires an understanding between the difference of real health “insurance” and what currently counts as health insurance (a broad medical coverage plan).
Insurance, by definition, is a payment of a premium to cover the very unlikely event that would result in high economic consequences. Therefore, it has the effect of relatively low premiums to protect against that economic possibility.
In contrast, what counts as medical insurance in this country is a small portion of real insurance, but is largely pre-paid medical care: you pay your monthly premium which you get back every time you go to the doctor because you’ve already contributed x so many dollars a month which covers the doctors’ fees (minus a “co-pay” or “deductible”). It’s not an efficient practice, however, nor a cost-effective one. It gives the false impression that going to the doctor is cheap, when in reality, you’ve already paid in advance for doctor visits – that you may or may not have.
This is in contrast to other types of true insurance. I submit it is necessary to remodel the health insurance system after other insurance sectors – such as life, fire, or home insurance. For instance, it is both accepted and reasonable that you will pay more for life insurance at the age of sixty than at twenty-five. The reason for this practice is the understanding that the risk is higher.
Likewise, people buy fire insurance because the economic loss is from a fire is extraordinarily great and the cost for coverage is relatively low. But even with fire insurance, you pay more if you home is made of wood and not brick, and if you live farther from a fire station than closer — that is the matter of risk.
Everyone should have routine doctor visits. If everyone paid for those out-of-pocket, it would be more economically viable, because one would only be paying for what he needed – and would probably result in more healthy citizens who have an economic incentive to take better care of themselves. Instead, the government intentionally combines and obfuscates the meaning and definition of insurance to include medical coverage or routine costs. The only people who truly need that are the same people who can’t afford anything — and should be treated like those who can’t afford routine food.
You don’t need insurance to go to a doctor. That is welfare. For the average person who pays 15-20K a year of medical coverage, a very large percentage of the cost is not insurance – it’s the prepaid care for a larger pool of people. Therefore, individuals are really overpaying when it is set up this way because the real insurance part is intentionally combined with health care so you can hide the cost of those with higher risks, i.e the cost is buried within premiums.
The term “individual mandate” is intentionally confusing. The individual mandate — as the administration would describe it — is a requirement that everyone buy their own health insurance. The basic concept of everyone having their own health insurance is not, in and of itself, terrible — if health insurance were actually insurance in the same way life or fire insurance are. Obama Care, however, is not and therefore the individual mandate is not a mandate to buy health insurance as we’ve been told — it’s a mandate for universal and pre-paid medical care.
Since people of different ages, medical conditions, pre-existing situations, etc have different anticipated costs, the purpose of an individual mandate has nothing to do with getting people to buy their own insurance. It is the forcing of individuals to buy into a system that makes people pay for medical treatments that are not theirs, support welfare, and overpay for services in order to create a coverage that is similar for all person. That is legal plunder and anti free-market. The health care industry would best serve our citizens if Obama Care and the individual mandate was rescinded and if it restructured health insurance as a ‘true insurance’.
USA Today had a spot-on analysis of how misleading federal accounting practices are. In a previous article elucidating how Social Security is not Pay-As-You-Go, I pointed out the fallacy of this “system”, as it is a method of hiding future realities. USA Today takes this concept further and examines the entirety of the government’s deficit reporting:
The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.
Exactly. Any business profession which failed to take into account future liabilities would face scrutiny from the SEC.
The main argument for exempting future retirement promises into the deficit calculation is that the government has the flexibility to change the amount it is obligated to pay out by tweaking the formula — such as raising taxes or cutting benefits — while businesses do not typically have that luxury. Such a ridiculous premise. The deficit amounts are always in flux and this excuse only serves to hide the reality of extra trillion dollar obligations that no one wants to fix, own up to, or reduce. A few days ago, I did some number crunching on the “official” federal deficit figures. I can’t fathom the results I’d get incorporating the data USA Today compiled.
From the USA Today findings:
•Social Security had the biggest financial slide. The government would need $22.2 trillion today, set aside and earning interest, to cover benefits promised to current workers and retirees beyond what taxes will cover. That’s $9.5 trillion more than was needed in 2004.
•Deficits from 2004 to 2011 would be six times the official total of $5.6 trillion reported.
•Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household. By contrast, an average household owes a combined $116,057 for mortgages, car loans and other debts.
With folks like Dick Durbin perpetuating the lie, it’s no wonder how ignorant much of the population is with regard to proper accounting practices and fiduciary responsibility.
The folks over at CNS news had a little article about our current federal debt. They pointed out that federal debt is currently $15.709 trillion.
They went on to calculate that since March 4, 2011, the federal debt has increased $1,526,126,486,886.61.
The first spending deal the White House and leaders of both parties in Congress made last year was on March 2. On that day, the president signed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded past March 4, when the previous continuing resolution, passed by a lame-duck Congress in late 2010, expired.
The March 4 CR kept the government funded for two weeks and was approved by a bipartisan 335-91 vote in the House and a bipartisan 91-9 vote in the Senate.
Since that March 4, 2011 bipartisan continuing resolution, the federal government has been funded by a series of bipartisan deals cut between the White House and congressional leaders.
They further tabulated the debt per household since the first Continuing Resolution:
Given that the Census Bureau estimates there are about 117,538,000 households in the United States, the per household increase in the federal debt since Congress enacted its March 4, 2011 bipartisan spending deal has been approximately $12,984.
This got me thinking about some more facts and figures:
If the total debt it 15,709,000,000,000.00, and there are 117,538,000 households in the United States, each household is responsible for $133,650.39.
Given that the US Population Clock records that there are 313,582,673 persons in the United States as of today, each person is responsible for $50,095.24
Given that it is estimated that 46% of households either paid no federal income tax in 2011 or will receive more from the IRS than they pay in, that means 63,470,520 households (54%) did. If you divide the entire debt per taxpaying household, each is responsible for $247,500.72 of the total debt, or an increase of $24,044.65 since last March. (14 months ago)
“Following the contentious debt ceiling last August, President Obama promised that he would take action to address the country’s fiscal crisis. He has failed to do that. In fact, his new budget increases spending and projects that Washington will be hitting the debt ceiling again in mid-October – burning through a $2.1 trillion debt limit increase in just over 14 months. This is an unfortunate but clear signal to the American people that Washington is spending too much, borrowing too much, and putting our nation’s fiscal stability at risk.
So some final calculations here.
By around Election Day, the total debt of the United States will be $16,394,000,000,000.00 ($16.394 trillion).
Based on today’s (May 20th) population numbers,
That’s $55,279.67 per person
That’s $139,478.29 per household
That’s $258,293.14 per taxpaying household
This little gem came out today during the daily White House press briefing. Real Clear Politics is reporting that Ed Henry pressed Jay Carney about Obama’s vote in 2005 where he supported a bill which contained more than $2 billion in oil subsidies. This is one for which he didn’t vote “present”; he voted “yes”. Click here for the amusing video exchange.
Henry: Why did the President vote for the energy bill in 2005 as a Senator that had over $2 billion in tax breaks for the oil industry? They were making a lot of money then too.
Carney: What I can tell you Ed is that the oil and gas companies in this country are making record profits, now, in 2012. The price at the pump is very high and that is plenty of incentive for these companies to continue drill, to continue to explore, to continue to develop energy sources here in the United States and abroad. There is no reason for the American taxpayer to subsidize that activity.
Henry: So why’d he vote for it?
Carney: I haven’t examined the vote, or what the prices were at the time, or the whole bill it was attached to. What I know and what the President knows is that this year, 2012, when we are seeing high prices at the pump, high prices in the international oil markets and high profits for the oil and gas companies, there is no reason to continue these kinds of subsidies. Take that argument to the people, I don’t think they’ll go along with it.
In previous writings, I’ve noted how politicians decry oil’s “record-profits” — but coincidentally forget to mention how much money the oil companies have invested just to earn said profits.
Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget proposal was defeated Wednesday night in the House of Representatives by a vote of 414-0. Not a single Democrat supported it. This vote was reminiscent of the defeat of Obama’s budget last year in the Senate, by a vote of 97-0. No Democrats would put their name to that budget, either.
Clearly, considering that we are now 1065 days without a budget is result of the lack of any substantive and serious thought coming from the White House. Two years, two unanimous defeats in two different parts of Congress can only lead to one conclusion: Barack Obama’s economic ideas on taxes and deficit reduction are so vastly out of touch with both Republicans and Democrats that no one is willing to back them.
As I have written here before, the President has been able to effectively pass laws which Congress has not passed through the use of the Executive Order and his government agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seems to be one of his most popular. For instance, limitations on emissions were passed as a set of rules by the EPA, implementing almost the entirety of the cap-and-trade bill which failed in the Congress. Now the EPA strikes again!
long-awaited rules to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from new power plants that will effectively block the construction of new coal-burning plants and make natural gas even more attractive as a fuel for generating electricity.
New power plants have a emissions limitation of 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced. This affects new coal plants because they must be fitted with special equipment which catches the emissions and stores them. The cost to do so is extremely expensive, and a pilot program has shown it is not economically viable.
AEP pulled the plug last summer on a high-profile pilot program to capture emissions from one of its plants in West Virginia because the utility couldn’t recover the costs of the program from its customers.
These unnecessary regulations could spell the end of coal-burning plants, which admittedly, is a goal of the Obama administration. Obama is pushing natural gas as an alternative fuel for generating electricity. The demise of the coal industry, however, would be a huge loss of income and jobs for many states, something Obama fails to mention. Apparently, excessive regulations trump the economy. Glad we have the EPA to help us along!
On this two year anniversary of ObamaCare, we must remember a greater anniversary, the sage words spoken 237 years ago today.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
This begs the question. If ObamaCare was such a monumental piece of legislation as the White House claims, why no mention in the news today?
Thomas Buch-Andersen, host of the Danish TV show Detektor, mocked President Obama’s political rhetoric in a recent episode….Buch-Andersen wonders aloud, “Maybe the copy key got stuck on the presidential speechwriter’s keyboard.”
