Sunday, March 28, 2010

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., March 27 & 28, 2010


Here we go, kids... read 'em and weep.

Literally...
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15 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100327/D9EN48U80.html

The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year... Those deaths have been accompanied by a dramatic spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months of the year and trending in the same direction based on the latest available data for March.

[Fifty-seven of our fellow Americans] were killed [in Afghanistan] during the first two months of 2010... At least 20 American service members have been killed so far in March...

The latest Associated Press-GfK poll at the beginning of March found that 57% of those surveyed approved his handling of the war in Afghanistan...

* WELL I DON'T. I PREDICT THAT AS WITH VIETNAM, HISTORY WILL SHOW THAT "NATION BUILDING" IN AFGHANISTAN HAS BEEN A MISTAKE.

* WHAT I WONDER IS... WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THAT 57% CITED ABOVE WOULD BE GIVING THE CURRENT STRATEGY A THUMBS DOWN IF IT WERE MCCAIN IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND THIS WAS MCCAIN'S STRATEGY.

The number of U.S. troops wounded in Afghanistan and three smaller theaters where there isn't much battlefield activity rose from 85 in the first two months of 2009 to 381 this year, an increase of almost 350%. A total of ...44 [American troops] were injured during just the first six days of March this year...

March 28, 2010 at 9:13 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/pay_unfit_to_mention_gEvfTkuSkN9btHnfaKutDJ

Those paydays that New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger and President Janet Robinson received last year are once again coming back to haunt them.

The Boston Newspaper Guild, which absorbed more than $10 million in pay and benefit cuts to members last year in order to save The Boston Globe, has lashed out at the Sulzberger and Robinson 2009 bonuses and are demanding their lost wages and benefits be restored.

"We were astonished to learn that the two of you received more than $10 million in stock awards and options in 2009," the Guild wrote in an open letter urging its members to send to Sulzberger and Robinson. "During the year for which you were so richly rewarded, the 600 members of the Boston Newspaper Guild gave back almost the same amount in pay and benefit reductions - $10 million to be exact - after you threatened to close our newspaper, lay off hundreds of people, and strip Massachusetts of its largest newspaper."

* DO WHAT WE SAY, NOT WHAT WE DO - SO SAYETH THE LIBERAL LORDS OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. (*SMIRK*)

"Now that the Times has shown it can afford to lavish so much on a few top executives, we expect our pay and benefit cuts will be restored in the coming months."

The Times Co. declined to comment.

* OH... WHAT A SURPRISE! (*CHUCKLE*)

The company raised eyebrows earlier this month when it revealed in a company filing that the pair of execs got higher bonuses in 2009, a year in which the company not only threatened to shut down the Globe, but also imposed a 5% pay cut on Times journalists and laid off employees.

* HMM... I WONDER IF SULZBERGER HAS A "GREED IS GOOD" BUMPER STICKER ON HIS LIMO... (*LAUGHING OUT LOUD*)

Robinson's base salary and options for last year totaled $6.2 million, a 32% hike from a year earlier. Sulzberger netted $5.9 million, also up 32% from 2008.

* WOW... IT'S GOOD TO BE A LIBERAL - ESPECIALLY "ONE TO THE MANOR BORN." (*SNICKER*)

* TO PARAPHRASE CARVILLE... "IT'S THE HYPOCRISY, STUPID!"

March 28, 2010 at 9:50 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.taxpayer.net/resources.php?category=&type=Project&proj_id=3393&action=Headlines%20By%20TCS

Broad coalition says providing subsidies for the ethanol industry bad for environment, food prices and taxpayers... [And they're right!]

Today, Congressman Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) introduced a bill that would extend ethanol tax credits for another five years, to 2015. This tax credit is set to expire on December 31, 2010. If extended, the tax credits will provide the conventional ethanol industry with $30 billion over five years.

Kate McMahon, Energy Policy Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Continuing to subsidize dirty corn ethanol is outrageous. ... This money should be invested in more cutting-edge, clean, and renewable energy that won’t cause environmental degradation and increase food prices.”

J. Patrick Boyle, President and CEO, American Meat Institute, said: “Unfortunately, this bill continues the unfair support and protection corn-based ethanol has enjoyed for more than 30 years at the expense of the American taxpayer and the livestock and poultry producers who rely on corn for feed. It’s time for the corn-based ethanol industry to stop using the American taxpayers as a crutch and finally compete on its own in our free market system.”

Jonathan Lewis, Attorney and Climate Specialist for the Clean Air Task Force, said: "If we hope to get ourselves out of the global climate change hole, the first thing we need to do is stop digging. This bill does just the opposite by lavishing taxpayer dollars on corn ethanol, a fuel that's even worse for the climate than gasoline. Renewing the corn ethanol subsidy makes no sense for our economy or for the environment."

Geoff Moody, Manager of Federal Affairs at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said: “The Grocery Manufacturers Association fully supports truly sustainable advanced biofuels and extension of the cellulosic ethanol tax credit. Unfortunately, this bill would also extend the unnecessary corn ethanol tax credit and import tariff at the expense of more sustainable biofuels.”

Scott Vinson, Vice President of the National Council of Chain Restaurants, said: “In a time of ballooning federal deficits, it is high time for the government to say no to the ethanol lobby’s seemingly endless demands for more subsidies from the hard-pressed American taxpayer. Restaurants have to do business without government support in an intensely competitive market, and the ethanol industry needs to prove it can exist without taxpayers and consumers footing the bill.”

Franz Matzner, Climate Center Legislative Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: “Taxpayers should no longer throw good money after bad when it comes to subsidizing corn ethanol. The public should get something in return for its hard earned money, and that means demanding real environmental performance. It’s time to invest in the future, not the past.”

Gawain Kripke, Director of Policy & Research at Oxfam America, said: “Congress should not waste taxpayer dollars by extending the current tax credits. The current package of ethanol mandates, incentives and subsidies is driving a rapid growth in ethanol production and the diversion of huge volumes of agriculture products from food markets to energy use. This year, the US will burn nearly one-third of our corn harvest in gas tanks, which drives up the price of corn. This has big implications for hunger, climate change, and land use around the world, contributing to food insecurity in developing countries.”

Steve Ellis, Vice President at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said: “For more than three decades the ethanol industry has received generous subsidies from taxpayers. With Americans staring into a budgetary abyss for the foreseeable future, blowing billions on more ethanol subsidies doesn’t make sense. Expanding the ethanol tax credit is fiscally reckless. Instead, Congress should be considering its repeal."

March 28, 2010 at 12:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.taxpayer.net/resources.php?category=&type=Project&proj_id=3394&action=Headlines%20By%20TCS

Taxpayers for Common Sense Action urges...support for legislation introduced by Representatives Patrick Murphy (D-PA) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) that would eliminate the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and save taxpayers $421 million over the next ten years.

OPIC is a government-supported agency that subsidizes U.S. companies to invest in risky foreign markets by providing them direct and low-cost financing and insurance. While purported to help American small businesses compete in the global marketplace, OPIC actually provides subsidies to some of the largest multinational corporations in the world. In fact, many of the firms OPIC aids are large U.S. corporations, such as McDonald's, DuPont, Citicorp and Coca-Cola, all of which are very capable of obtaining loans and risk insurance in the private sector.

Under current OPIC practices, Fortune 500 corporations gain healthy profits from their foreign investments while U.S. taxpayers are held financially responsible for any potential losses. American taxpayers should not be liable for potentially bad business decisions over which they have no control.

March 28, 2010 at 12:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cfif.org/v/index.php/commentary/56-health-care/555-rep-paul-ryan-costs-of-this-debacle-will-be-high

[By Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI)]

* TWO PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

This massive health care overhaul - a remake of one-sixth of our economy - will exacerbate the very problems this reform effort sought to address. It will dramatically alter our deteriorating economic and fiscal conditions for the worse and may irrevocably impair the American identity.

Sky-rocketing health care costs are drowning families, businesses and governments in red ink - leaving millions priced out of the market and without coverage. This legislation - with its maze of mandates, dictates, controls, tax hikes and subsidies - pushes costs further in the wrong direction.

Premiums in the individual market would rise from 10% to 13% for families. Our debt and deficit crisis - driven by $76 trillion in unfunded liabilities - would accelerate from the creation of a brand new entitlement and an increase in the federal deficit by $662 billion, when the true costs are factored in. National health expenditures will increase by an additional $222 billion over the next decade, according the president's own chief actuary, and $2.4 trillion in the decade after the new entitlement is up and running.

The entire architecture of this overhaul is designed, unapologetically, to give the government greater control over what kind of insurance is available, how much health care is enough and which treatments are worth paying for.

The massive expansion of the federal government into the personal health care decisions will drive providers out of business and force employers to dump their workers on to government-controlled exchanges. Because Washington doesn't approve, millions of Wisconsin seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage plans and millions more will lose the consumer-friendly high-deductible health plans they enjoy.

There is another personal cost to this deluge of new government spending and control. Wisconsin remains in dire need of sustained job growth and robust economic recovery. This legislation will hit our economy with $569 billion in tax increases - tax hikes that will hit workers, families and job-creators alike.

* To be continued...

March 28, 2010 at 12:30 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cfif.org/v/index.php/commentary/56-health-care/555-rep-paul-ryan-costs-of-this-debacle-will-be-high

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

The true shame of this debate is that there are real problems in health care that need to be fixed. Almost a year ago, I introduced the Patients' Choice Act to fix what's broken in health care, without breaking what's working. I've spoken with Wisconsinites for years about patient-centered reforms that would make possible universal access to quality, affordable health care with the patient and the doctor - not the government or insurance companies - as the nucleus of the health care market. These alternatives were ignored by Democratic leaders in Washington - and the concerns from Wisconsinites and an engaged American public were dismissed by Washington's political class.

The yearlong partisan crusade - right through its ugly conclusion - revealed that this debate was never about policy but rather a paternalistic ideology at odds with our historic commitment to individual liberty, limited government and entrepreneurial dynamism. The proponents of this legislation reject an opportunity society and instead assume you are stuck in your station in life and the role of government is to help you cope with it. Rather than promote equal opportunities for individuals to make the most of their lives, the cradle-to-grave welfare state seeks to equalize the results of people's lives.

We must begin anew on mitigating the disaster from this health care debacle. Let's repeal the costly missteps before they hit with full force. Let's make certain we do not simply retreat to an earlier point on the same path to decline. Let's chart a new direction that will restore the promise and prosperity of this exceptional nation - and let's do it together.

March 28, 2010 at 12:30 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cfif.org/v/index.php/commentary/54-state-of-affairs/557-the-ominous-s-word-secession

After 230 years, are the American people coursing toward eventual divorce?

Our polarized society increasingly ponders what would happen if American conservatives and liberals simply agreed that their differences had become irreconcilable, and redivided the nation to go their separate ways. Which side would prosper and experience an influx of migration from the other? Conversely, which side would likely become a fiscal and socio-political basket case?

Any reasonable person already knows the likely answer. One need only compare the smoldering wreckage wrought by liberal governance in such states as California or Michigan with the comparative prosperity created by conservative governance in such states as Texas or Utah. We can also examine the past 400 years, during which immigrants abandoned Europe for an America founded upon the fundamental principles of limited government and individual freedom.

Consider the words of Dennis Prager, an intellectual whom no serious observer would label a bomb-thrower: "We are in a non-violent civil war. I write the words ‘civil war’ with an ache in my heart. But we are in one. Thank God this civil war is non-violent. But the fact is that the left and the rest of the country share almost no values. The American value system and the leftist value system are irreconcilable. If the left wins, America’s values lose. If American values prevail, the left loses. After [the Obamacare] vote, for the first time in American history, one [can] no longer confidently believe that the American system will prevail."

(*SHRUG*) (*SLOW NOD*)

Shikha Dalmia writes in her forbes.com commentary “Resisting ObamaCare, Gandhi Style” that Obama “might have set the stage for the largest civil disobedience movement since the civil rights era.” She notes that, “even if a few million Americans simultaneously refuse to abide by it or pay the fine, they could easily overwhelm the system.” Whatever one’s views toward such sentiment, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny the irreconcilable ideals of “red” and “blue” Americans despite efforts to reestablish unity.

Dissolution obviously remains highly unlikely, but Yale University’s Bruce Judson notes in his book It Could Happen Here: America on the Brink that: "The United States is not the Soviet Union. Our economy is not as terrible. Our government is not as despised. But nobody thought the U.S.S.R. could collapse. Could everyone be wrong again?"

Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence that irreconcilable values sometimes make it “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another.” Jefferson further recognized the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, stating that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles.”

Those on the left, ephemerally content because they possess temporary political control, mock such wisdom as anachronistic. They would be prudent to recall, however, that they said the same thing about CNBC’s Rick Santelli just one year ago when he launched the Tea Party movement that now threatens to hurl their political control into the sea.

March 28, 2010 at 12:30 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/science/earth/26star.html?ref=todayspaper

Does a “gasoline-powered alarm clock” qualify for the EnergyStar label, the government stamp of approval for an energy-saving product?

Like more than a dozen other bogus products submitted for approval since last June by Congressional auditors posing as companies, it easily secured the label, according to a Congressional report to be issued Friday.

So did an “air purifier” that was essentially an electric space heater with a feather duster pasted on top, the Government Accountability Office said.

In a nine-month study, four fictitious companies invented by the accountability office also sought EnergyStar status for some conventional devices like dehumidifiers and heat pump models that existed only on paper. The fake companies submitted data indicating that the models consumed 20 percent less energy than even the most efficient ones on the market. Yet those applications were mostly approved without a challenge or even questions, the report said.

Auditors concluded that the EnergyStar program was highly vulnerable to fraud.

* YA THINK...?!?! (*SNORT*)

[A]uditors found problems beyond the approval of nonexistent products. They determined that once a company registered as an EnergyStar partner, it could download the logo from the government’s Web site and paste it on products for which it had not even requested approval.

Congressional auditors said they were told by EnergyStar officials that some of the approvals, including the one for the gasoline alarm clock, had been issued by an automated system and that the details had probably never been reviewed by a human being.

(*MASSIVE SKULL SPLITTING MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)

[President Obama's] economic stimulus bill included hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for people who buy EnergyStar products and that many government agencies were required to choose EnergyStar products if they were available. [According to Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who requested the accountability office study] "in effect, people are ripped off twice, [once] as consumers and [again] as taxpayers."

Previous reports have suggested that the EnergyStar label is not always a complete or useful guide to the best consumer choices. Last October, for example, the inspector general of the EPA. said that 100% of the computer monitors that carried the EnergyStar logo had indeed met requirements. But so did 80% of the monitors that did not have the logo; the manufacturers had apparently not sought approval. ... [S]ome consumer products lacking EnergyStar approval consumed less energy than those that had it, the audit found. [Furthermore,] the inspector general of the Energy Department reported the same month that EnergyStar claims were not “accurate or verifiable” for many products. The program requires manufacturers of windows and fluorescent lights to get their products certified by independent laboratories. But companies that make refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, water heaters and room air-conditioners, in which efficiency is far more critical because they gobble more energy, need only check a box on a form to be certified.

* GOVERNMENT IN ACTION. (*SHUDDER*)

March 28, 2010 at 12:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://townhall.com/columnists/ScottWheeler/2010/03/25/lies,_damned_lies_and_health_care?page=full&comments=true

During his year-long pitch for his so-called “health insurance reform,” President Obama repeatedly exaggerated problems, obfuscated facts, and manufactured lies about America’s insurance companies.

In a speech at George Mason University last Friday, President Obama [claimed] that health-care reform will henceforth mean insurance companies can’t cancel an insured’s coverage when they have a claim. "This year, they will be banned from dropping your coverage when you get sick. Those practices will end,” he declared.

Pretty bold stuff. Also, an outright lie.

According to attorney Richard Giller, a leading expert on insurance coverage, it is currently illegal in all fifty American states to cancel an insured’s coverage for getting sick. In fact, this column spoke with an actuary for a state insurance commission. Requesting anonymity, the government actuary stated unequivocally that Obama’s claim was completely untrue. “These policies cannot be cancelled, they are guaranteed renewable and have been for over twenty years.” “Guaranteed renewable” means the insurance company can’t cancel the coverage for anything except nonpayment of premiums.

Mr. Giller also informs this column that in more than half the states, insurance companies are strictly accountable to the government of the state in which they operate, forbidden from raising rates without specific approval. Furthermore, insurance companies are bared from raising one person’s health insurance policy premium without first raising the premium for the entire underwriting category to which that person belongs. Additionally, “most states review all rate increases according to the loss ratio standards,” (which means that the state not only reviews to make sure the rate is not too high, but also to ensure that the rate is high enough to pay the expected claims), confirms this government actuary. ... [T]he insurance industry is among the most regulated business sectors in America.

Among the other outrageous claims by Obama is that there is half a trillion dollars lost in “waste, fraud and abuse” of Medicare. But if there really is half a trillion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare, then why didn’t Obama find it last year and use those funds instead of the piles of taxpayer cash that were consumed by his failed stimulus bill?

(*SMIRK*)

Obama’s health-care bill includes funding for over sixteen thousand new Internal Revenue Service agents to make sure everyone is covered. Think about that for a moment. Seem a little strange to you? If Americans really needed his brand of “health-care reform,” why does Obama think he would need the IRS to enforce it?

Now that it has passed, Obama is prepared to spend millions more in taxpayer dollars touring the country to convince us just how lucky we are that he got his bill through Congress.

Stay tuned for more great policy initiatives; Obama has now turned his attention to his Cap and Trade tax bill, which will attack the energy industry on the basis of saving us from global warming. By design, it will make energy a vastly more expensive commodity for all Americans. And really, in this recession, who could ask for anything more?

March 28, 2010 at 12:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62R12420100328

Obama in Kabul for unannounced Afghan trip...

* GOOD FOR HIM!

March 28, 2010 at 12:38 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

** And a key newsbite in the sense of imparting the kind of academic wisdom so few receive during their school years - up to and including college and even grad school.

http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2144

Like so many other concepts promoted by the left, self-proclaimed progressives and their allies in organized labor have used the term “living wage” to mislead the public and justify government intervention in this case on behalf of organized labor. While the term “living wage” evokes sympathy and sounds innocuous, the real objective of the “living wage” in the eyes of organized labor is to use the coercive power of the government to unionize millions of new workers at the expense of the taxpayer and the American economy.

Progressives utilize government intervention to enable workers to receive far more than market value for their services through labor union coercion and collectivism. The “living wage” concept is closely related to the Marxist theory of surplus labor. Marx used surplus labor theory to create class envy and create the illusion that workers could never receive the fair value of their efforts. He used this concept to justify a violent overthrow of capitalism and replacement with worker run communism. However under communism, workers were constrained to lives of misery in support of Communist Party officials.

Historically, government promotion of a “living wage” has produced something entirely different for the vast majority of Americans. During the first 100 days of FDR’s presidency, he used the financial crisis to extend or enact many of the programs that progressives had tried to enact since the Wilson administration. One of the most important of these programs was the National Industrial Recovery Act. The act extended the voluntary government and industry cooperation created under Herbert Hoover to keep wages and prices high. It produced thousands of pages of regulations dictating products that business could sell and the prices they could change. In exchange for allowing unionization of their companies, large manufacturers could form cartels to set artificially high prices for their products. The effect of this act was to greatly increase unemployment by keeping prices and wages extremely high and ultimately prolonged the Great Depression by 7 years.

* To be continued...

March 28, 2010 at 1:01 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

During the 1970’s, inflation was rampant in no small part due to the pattern bargaining and cost of living adjustment (COLA) provisions written into contracts in the auto, steel and other heavy industries. In a time before global competition, labor unions in these industries were able to impose the provisions negotiated with one company upon the rest of the industry. In addition, as the cost of living went up, the COLA provisions automatically increased their wages. It took the actions of Paul Volker at the Federal Reserve Board and rise of global competitors to end this inflationary spiral.

Because businesses that are forced to pay higher than market labor rates do not expand, private sector unionization has dropped to 8% of the work force. However, the wages and benefits that they have been able to obtain are far beyond a “living wage”. The management of General Motors and Chrysler must share the blame for their company’s demise, however, it is very difficult for GM and Chrysler to be competitive with a wage and benefit cost of $75.00 per hour when the cost at Honda is $43.00 per hour.

The greatest opportunity for progressives to utilize government intervention to promote a “living wage” has been in the unionization of government employees. Even the patron saint of progressives, FDR, was able to recognize the fundamental conflict of interest in allowing government employees to organize and strongly opposed it. It was not until President Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988 that public employees could form unions.

There is a reason that Andy Stern, head of the SEIU, has been such a frequent visitor to the White House. Although he is not registered as a lobbyist, he is there lobbying to make sure that every program that the Obama administration enacts benefits organized labor, especially the SEIU. So far he has been successful. A large portion of the 787 billion dollars of the Stimulus Act will preserve public sector union jobs at the expense of state government budgets when the stimulus funds end. Other portions of the bill will ensure that only union workers are able to work on infrastructure projects.

As a result of public sector unionization, public employees earn far higher wages and enjoy much more extravagant benefits than workers in the private sector. Since 2000, salaries of government workers have increased by 54% while salaries in the private sector have increased by only 28%. This disparity is most profoundly illustrated in the Bureau of Economic Analysis Data for wages and benefits of Federal Civilian Employees and private sector employees. Between 2000 and 2008, the average total compensation for Federal employees grew from $76,000 to $120,000 while the average total compensation in private industry grew from $46,000 to $60,000.

While progressives claim that government support of unions is essential to ensure that workers receive a “living wage”, the reality is that unionized industries in the private sector receive far beyond a living wage and the highly unionized public sector receives wages and benefits double that of the private sector. Like so many other concepts of the left, the living wage is more propaganda than fact.

March 28, 2010 at 1:02 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704100604575146002445136066.html

ObamaCare passed Congress in its final form on Thursday night, and the returns are already rolling in. Yesterday AT&T announced that it will be forced to make a $1 billion writedown due solely to the health bill, in what has become a wave of such corporate losses.

This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or "political."

Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. (*SHRUG*)

On top of AT&T's $1 billion, the writedown wave so far includes Deere & Co., $150 million; Caterpillar, $100 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; and Valero Energy, up to $20 million. Verizon has also warned its employees about its new higher health-care costs, and there will be many more in the coming days and weeks.

As Joe Biden might put it, this is a big, er, deal for shareholders and the economy. The consulting firm Towers Watson estimates that the total hit this year will reach nearly $14 billion, unless corporations cut retiree drug benefits when their labor contracts let them.

Meanwhile, John DiStaso of the New Hampshire Union Leader reported this week that ObamaCare could cost the Granite State's major ski resorts as much as $1 million in fines, because they hire large numbers of seasonal workers without offering health benefits. "The choices are pretty clear, either increase prices or cut costs, which could mean hiring fewer workers next winter," he wrote.

The Democratic political calculation with ObamaCare is the proverbial boiling frog: Gradually introduce a health-care entitlement by hiding the true costs, hook the middle class on new subsidies until they become unrepealable, but try to delay the adverse consequences and major new tax hikes so voters don't make the connection between their policy and the economic wreckage. But their bill was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected. (*SIGH*)

March 28, 2010 at 2:49 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/03/26/new-obama-mortgage-plan-a-backdoor-bank-bailout/

[On Friday] Today President Obama announced an expansion and modification of his Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

Several of the largest mortgage lenders, including some that have already received huge bailouts, carry hundreds of billions worth of second mortgages on their books. As home prices have nationally declined by almost 30%, these second mortgages are worthless in the case of a foreclosure.

Second mortgages are usually wiped out completely during a foreclosure if the price has decreased more than 20%. Yet the Obama solution is now to pay off 6 cents on the dollar for those junior liens.

While 6 cents doesn’t sound like a lot, it is a whole lot more than zero, which is what the banks would receive otherwise.

Given that the largest lenders are carrying over $500 billion in second mortgages that may need to be written down, we are looking at tens of billions of taxpayer dollars again being funneled to the very banks behind the mortgage crisis.

* TENS OF BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS... TENS OF BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS... TENS OF BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS...

(*HEADING TO MY BAR, POURING MYSELF A STIFF DRINK*)

If that bailout isn’t enough, the new plan increases payments to lenders to not foreclose, all at the expense of the taxpayer.

(*GLUG-GLUG-GLUG*)

While TARP was passed under Bush’s watch, and he rightly deserves blame for it, Obama continues these bailouts in the name of avoiding a much needed correction in our housing market.

* LET'S NOT FORGET, OBAMA AS A SENATOR VOTED FOR TARP. THEREFORE, OBAMA IS AS GUILTY AS BUSH AS REGARDS THE INITIAL TARP. ON THE OTHER HAND, BUSH IS NOW RETIRED... OBAMA IS CREATING FRESH DISASTERS.

March 28, 2010 at 6:35 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/ny_broke_and_broken_A7pChiXNgetBGh16ufLeZM

Consider the current decline and fall of New York. The city and state are careening from one crisis to another, with the worst certainly to come.

Yet the alarmist talk of "doomsday" budgets and "crippling" service cuts makes truth a casualty. The Big Lie is that City Hall and Albany don't have any money. By any historic measure, they are filthy rich[!] The windfall they take in would make Tammany Hall blush and was inconceivable just a few years ago[!]

New York City will spend over $63 billion this year. In Mayor Bloomberg's first year, 2002, it spent $41 billion. That's an increase of 57% in unadjusted dollars. Thanks to unrelenting tax and fee hikes and the economic boom, revenues, including state and federal aid, grew by as much as $5 billion a year.

The city spent it all, and then some.

Data assembled by the Independent Budget Office tell how bad it is, and how much worse it's getting.

Medicaid costs over $5 billion a year and is expected to rise 7% a year.

Debt service will double to $6.3 billion in three years.

The city spent at least $5.5 billion on the homeless in eight years, and the number of street people keeps growing.

Pension costs were $1.4 billion eight years ago, and will be $7.1 billion next year.

The price of labor is prohibitive. The city pays its workers so much, and has so many, it can no longer afford them. Fringe benefits are going up 8.5% annually.

Each 1% raise costs $300 million a year, yet Bloomberg gave raises of 4% through the recession. He proposes hikes of 2% from now, but no union has agreed.

Of the 173,000 city jobs lost in the recession, only 20,000 were in government. Which means fewer private workers shoulder the ever-higher cost.

A study found the city could save $1.4 billion a year just by matching its benefit package to prevailing private ones. So far, not even a "maybe" from City Hall.

Beyond wasted money, we pay another price for fiscal follies. After years of historic drops, murders and shootings are up more than 20% this year. Bloomberg, who talked of further cutting cops to balance the budget, now concedes he may already have gone too far.

March 28, 2010 at 6:36 PM

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