Friday, September 24, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, September, 24, 2010


Holy Elmo, Batman!

Seriously, folks... that segment was CUTE, not obscene, not "inappropriate."

Now I'm not saying we air this on Sesame Street, but for Christ's sake, let's all ease up a bit!
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13 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/24/voting-rights-official-calls-black-panther-dismissal-travesty-justice/

The Justice Department is ignoring civil rights cases that involve white victims and wrongly abandoned a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party last year, a top department official testified Friday. He called the department's conduct a "travesty of justice."

* SEEMS THAT "CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN" = "TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE." ANYONE SURPRISED...???

Christopher Coates, former voting chief for the department's Civil Rights Division, spoke under oath Friday morning before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in a long-awaited appearance that had been stonewalled by the Justice Department for nearly a year.

* STONEDWALLED BY ERIC HOLDER FOR NEARLY A YEAR...

Former Justice official J. Christian Adams...testified in July and accused his former employer of showing "hostility" toward cases that involved white victims and black defendants. ... Coates backed up Adams' claims.

* WHOSE AMERICA ARE WE LIVING IN, FOLKS?

In lengthy and detailed testimony, [Coates] said the department cultivates a "hostile atmosphere" against "race-neutral enforcement" of the Voting Rights Act. He said civil rights attorneys stick to cases that involve minority victims, and he said the Black Panther case was dismissed following "pressure" by the NAACP and "anger" at the case within the Justice Department itself. "That anger was the result of their deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of white voters who have been discriminated against," he said.

* THIS IS OBAMA'S AMERICA, FOLKS; IS IT YOURS...???

Coates dismissed as weak the department's rationale for abandoning the [Black Panther] case, saying the department let one of the Black Panther members off the hook because a local police officer had determined he was a Democratic Party poll watcher.

Coates called it "extraordinarily strange" for the department to rely on this and urged the commission to consider what the legal backlash would have been if the Panthers had been members of the Ku Klux Klan.

* HEY! THERE'S NO NEED TO DRAG THE LATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY GRANDEE SENATOR ROBERT BYRD INTO THIS! (*SMIRK*)

"As important as the mandate in the Voting Rights Act is to protect minority voters, white voters also have an interest in being able to go to the polls without having race-haters such as Black Panther King Samir Shabazz, whose public rhetoric includes such statements as 'kill cracker babies' ... standing at the entrance of the polling place with a billy club in his hand hurling racial slurs at voters," he said.

Since last year, Coates has been transferred to the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina. He said Friday that the Justice Department told him not to testify before the commission after he was first subpoenaed in December 2009; in testifying Friday, he claimed protection from retaliation under "whistleblower" laws.

September 24, 2010 at 2:15 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-24/gold-rises-to-record-on-dollar-hedge-demand-silver-gains-to-30-year-high.html

Gold futures rose to a record $1,300 an ounce in New York...

Bullion traded at an all-time in London...

[S]ilver reached the highest price since 1980.

* O.K., FOLKS, IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE THAT THE DEMOCRATS ARE DELIBERATELY TANKING THE ECONOMY UNDER THE RUBRIC OF "NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE," THEN THE ONLY OTHER OPTION IS THAT THEY'RE COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT. EITHER WAY, THEY'RE SETTING THE STAGE FOR A RETURN TO STAGFLATION, PERHAPS HYPERINFLATION.

The dollar headed for a weekly drop against the euro...

(*SIGH*)

Gold, which usually moves inversely to the greenback, advanced to a record for the fourth day this week. Silver, which is used in industrial applications, headed for a fifth weekly advance in London.

“Gold is showing there is no confidence in the dollar,” said Bernard Sin, head of currency and metal trading at bullion refiner MKS Finance SA in Geneva. Recent “data has been showing signs of a troubled economy. That’s why we’ve seen this huge buying for investors as a safe haven.”

* WE'RE IN FOR BAD TIMES - BAD TIMES THAT WILL MAKE THE PAST TWO YEARS LOOK LIKE BOOM TIME - UNLESS THE FED CHANGES COURSE.

* FOLKS... THOSE OF YOU OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER HOW THE REAGAN/VOLCKER POLICIES GOT US OUT OF THE NIXON/FORD/CARTER MESS MUST RECOGNIZE THAT OBAMA IS DOING THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT REAGAN/VOLCKER DID!

September 24, 2010 at 3:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499604575512254063682236.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLETopStories

Two years after the peak of the financial crisis, the federal government swooped in to stabilize a crucial part of the credit-union sector battered by losses on subprime mortgages.

* BY "STABILIZE" THE AUTHOR MEANS "BAIL OUT."

Regulators announced Friday a rescue of the nation's wholesale credit unions, underpinned by a federal guarantee valued at $30 billion or more.

* YEP. ANOTHER $30 BILLION BAILOUT. ANOTHER LIEN ON OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S CREDIT RATING.

Friday's moves include the seizure of three wholesale credit unions, plus an unusual plan by government officials to manage $50 billion of troubled assets inherited from failed institutions.

* WHAT DO YOU WANNA BET THAT NO ONE GOES TO JAIL? (ALSO, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE THAT THE MANAGEMENT OF THESE SEIZED CREDIT UNIONS ARE BY AND LARGE CONNECTED POLITICALLY TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY - JUST AS WITH FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC?)

To help fund the rescue, the National Credit Union Administration plans to issue $30 billion to $35 billion in government-guaranteed bonds, backed by the shaky mortgage-related assets.

* WOW! WITHIN JUST A FEW SENTENCES WE'VE ADDED AN ADDITIONAL $5 BILLION THE BAILOUT! NOW IT'S UP TO $35 BILLION!

Losses on the mortgage-backed securities held by the five seized credit unions are expected by regulators to total about $15 billion. Wiping out the capital of the failed institutions will cover a chunk of those losses. But the remaining $7 billion to $9.2 billion eventually will be passed along to the nation's 7,445 federally insured credit unions in the form of future assessments.

* MEANING THE RESPONSIBLE ULTIMATELY PAY THE PIPER FOR THE ACTIONS OF THE IRRESPONSIBLE; OBAMANOMICS 101.

Friday's moves could deepen tensions between regulators and retail credit unions that withstood the financial crisis and resent having to bear financial costs caused by the mistakes of wholesale institutions.

* YA THINK...?!?!

(*SNORT*)

September 24, 2010 at 8:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704129204575506280008322568.html

* LETTER TO THE EDITOR BY FRANK KINGSTON SMITH, SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA.

[Obama's "Cash for Clunkers destroyed] two revenue streams:

Auto dealers count on trade-ins to generate some kind of cash, even if they are wholesaled to secondary (used car) dealers. All of a sudden, the new car sales for, say, a year are compressed into three months and there is no "future" on the lot. This also hurts parts dealers - some people call them junkyards - who rely on those cars for a supply of parts that just aren't available from Pep Boys.

We are now seeing used vehicle prices rise.

There were 360,000 vehicles destroyed, many of them still serviceable. This is another brilliant policy from the folks on Pennsylvania Ave. who have never had to operate a business.

September 24, 2010 at 8:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703860104575508051998518526.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

General Motors is 61%-owned by American taxpayers....the company is once again spending freely on lobbying and political campaigns.

* WITH THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE, THE PELOSI HOUSE, AND THE REID SENATE ALL ACQUIESCING...

The Journal reports that the company has been particularly kind lately to Midwestern Democratic incumbents while shovelling out a total of $90,500 in campaign donations so far in the current election cycle.

On the lobbying side, The Hill newspaper reports that GM has spent $7 million in the four quarters since exiting bankruptcy, retaining a who's who of Washington hired guns.

This may sound like the business model of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all over again, but remember that the failed mortgage giants at least had to shut down most of their Beltway influence operation once they explicitly became wards of the state. GM has your money and now it apparently has the license to use it to lobby Congress and support its political friends.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... OBAMA IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE... NANCY PELOSI CONTROLS THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES... HARRY REID CONTROLS THE SENATE. THIS IS TAKING PLACE ON THEIR WATCH - WITH THEIR ACQUIESCES.

September 24, 2010 at 8:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384204575509812090777570.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

House Republicans released their "Pledge to America" campaign agenda yesterday, and it was quickly attacked by Democrats as dangerously radical and by the blogging right as dangerously cautious.

The reality is that it's somewhere in between, a "consensus" document typical of Congress that is very strong in promising to shut down the Obama agenda but less clear as a road map to governing.

* BOTTOM LINE, THE OBAMA AGENDA MUST BE SHUT DOWN.

To put it in context, the document is more ambitious and candid than the "Six for '06 proposals that the Nancy Pelosi Democrats offered when they regained control of the House four years ago. It is less specific in offering new ideas than was the GOP's 1994 Contract with America, which included welfare reform and a capital gains tax cut, both of which eventually became law.

* YEP. THAT ABOUT COVERS IT.

Republicans understand that above all this year voters want to stop the Obama-Pelosi agenda. Stop it cold. Stop the spending, the tax increases and the huge expansion of the regulatory state. The GOP pledges to do all of those, and this alone would have a salutary economic impact.

(*NOD*)

At the very least, a Republican majority in the House or Senate would mean a healthy gridlock that stops the Pelosi liberals from doing more harm.

(*NOD*)

[Republicans] promise to "roll back spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels," which they claim would save at least $100 billion in the first year. This is real money and directly challenges the claim by former White House budget official Peter Orszag that spending can never again fall below 25% of GDP.

Republicans want to reduce spending over time to its postwar norm of closer to 21% or less, and their proposals are a good down payment. They say they'd impose "strict," if still undefined, annual spending caps, and block any extension of TARP.

* YES, OF COURSE I'D FEEL BETTER IF THEY'D PLEDGED TO ROLL BACK SPENDING TO SAY PRE-9/11 LEVELS - ADVERTIZE IT AS "CLINTON SPENDING LEVELS" IF NEED BE - BUT BOTTOM LINE, THE REPUBLICANS ARE COMMITTING TO MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

All in the all, the GOP "pledge" moves the national debate in the right direction—away from government-directed policy frenzy toward a restoration of private growth and political restraint.

September 24, 2010 at 8:25 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/548467/201009241901/Privileged-Democrats-Mortgages-Underhanded-Never-Underwater.aspx

Former senior senator from Delaware and current Vice President Joe Biden has a custom-built house in Delaware's ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood. It is now worth at least $2.5 million and is the Bidens' most valuable asset.

* O.K., SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM... SENATOR BIDEN WAS MAKING WHAT - APPROXIMATELY $170,000/YR. AS A U.S. SENATOR. DON'T MOST FOLKS MAKING LESS THAN $200,000 A YEAR LIVE IN A $2.5 MILLION MANSION...???

Biden tapped campaign funds to pay for his compound's lawn needs.

* NICE... (*SMIRK*)

He secured the new estate with the help of a corporate executive who worked for Biden's top campaign donor, credit card giant MBNA.

(*SNORT*)

In 1996, Biden sold his previous mansion to MBNA Vice Chairman John Cochran. The asking price was $1.2 million.

* O.K., SERIOUSLY... JUST TO PUT THIS IN PERSPECTIVE... I HAVE SEVERAL FRIENDS WITH HOUSEHOLD INCOMES OF BETWEEN A QUARTER AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS - NONE OF THEM LIVE IN A HOUSE VALUED AT $1.2 MILLION, LET ALONE $2.5 MILLION.

Cochran forked over the full sum.

Biden then paid $350,000 in cash to real estate developer Keith Stoltz for a 4.2-acre lakefront lot. Stoltz had paid that same amount five years earlier for the undeveloped property.

* HUH...??? ($350,000 MINUS $350,000 = ZERO; ACTUALLY LESS THAN ZERO SINCE STOLTZ HAD TO PAY FIVE YEARS WORTH OF TAXES ON THE PROPERTY!)

Stoltz told the Wilmington News Journal "the residential real estate market was soft" at the time he sold the land to Biden. But "soft" for whom? Stoltz was a well-off businessman who didn't appear to be in such dire financial straits that he needed to unload the property quickly in a weak market.

Reporter Byron York looked at comparable properties in Biden's neighborhood and found three cases where homes in the area went "for a good deal less than their appraised value. In comparison, it appears Cochran simply paid Biden's full asking price."

* SOUNDS MIGHTY FISHY TO ME!

Biden's office denied any sweetheart deals took place, but York noted that it appeared MBNA indirectly helped Cochran buy the Biden house through six-figure executive compensation funds listed as moving expenses and losses suffered on the sale of his previous home.

(*SNORT*)

* HEY... ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER... I THINK I HAVE A TIP FOR YOU!

To be clear, no laws were broken.

* HOW CAN THAT BE SAID WITHOUT A FACT-FINDING INVESTIGATION?

These arrangements were simply a continuation of Biden's decades-long, Beltway business-as-usual relationships with a deep-pocketed corporate benefactor - which, by the way, later hired his son.

* AMAZING, HUH? THERE'S "THEM" AND THERE'S "US."

September 24, 2010 at 9:11 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/548403/201009241830/Dreams-Of-The-Presidents-Aunt-Zeituni-Social-Justice-And-The-American-Heart.aspx

[W]hat are we to make of the stunning demonstration of arrogance and entitlement by President Obama's Aunt Zeituni Onyango?

After living illegally in the U.S. since 2000 - defying two deportation orders, a felony - she was granted asylum four months ago.

(*SMIRK*)

She lived illegally in public housing and received $700 monthly in disability payments - systems she had not paid into.

* OBAMANOMICS IN ACTION!

And she continues to collect, in spite of wealthy relatives who can well afford to wean her away from public assistance.

(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)

* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... YOU'RE GONNA TELL ME BARAK OBAMA ISN'T A SCUMBAG JUST BASED UPON THIS ALONE..???

In an interview with Boston's WBZ-TV's Jonathan Elias, she was unrepentant. "If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen." Elias reports that she doesn't understand the public's anger:

"It's a great country," she said. "It's nice to live here. You can do whatever you want when you live here." Despite what she's been given, Zeituni Onyango said flatly that she owes this country nothing in return.

"But, it's given you so much?" said Elias.

"So? It's a free country under God," was her terse response.

Interestingly, the president has not shown any private charity toward his aunt, and has not relieved the taxpayer's burden of supporting her.

* AGAIN... EXPLAIN TO ME HOW HE'S NOT A SCUMBAG...

September 24, 2010 at 9:11 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/548460/201009241901/Turning-Down-The-Terrorist-Emeritus.aspx

In an era when our universities have become liberal re-education camps, '60s radical William Ayers has been denied professor emeritus status. For one brief instance, academia shows a spine.

* BRAVO!

It was, no pun intended, a bombshell. Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and co-founder of the anti-war group Weather Underground, was denied the honor he requested for himself after a passionate speech by board chairman Chris Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy.

* REALLY...?!?!

Kennedy said he could not confer the title "to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father." Kennedy referred to a 1974 book co-authored by Ayers, "Prairie Fire," that was dedicated to, among others, RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan and "all political prisoners in the U.S."

* HEY... PERSONAL ANTAGONISM OR PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM... I'LL TAKE IT. KENNEDY GETS A GOLD STAR.

Ayers' "body of work" includes Weather Underground bombings of NYPD headquarters in June 1970, the U.S. Capitol Building in March 1971 and the Pentagon in May 1972. A review of his memoir, "Fugitive Days," appeared oddly enough on Sept. 11, 2001, in the New York Times. "I don't regret setting bombs," he told reviewer Dinitia Smith. "I feel we didn't do enough." In the book, he said he found "a certain eloquence in explosives."

* AMAZING ISN'T IT - THE GUY NEVER WENT TO JAIL. IN CHICAGO DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL CIRCLES HE'S CONSIDERED AN 'ELDER STATESMAN" OF SORTS - A RESPECTED FIGURE AT ANY RATE.

[IBD and other mainstream media outlets have] documented [Ayers'] long and intimate association with President Obama. When Obama was making his first run for the Illinois Senate, Ayers and Dohrn had Obama at their house for a 1995 campaign event. Ayers served with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a liberal nonprofit, from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, and in 2001 Ayers donated $200 to "Friends of Barack Obama." UIC records show that in the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Annenberg Challenge, a project to overhaul Chicago public schools. Obama was given the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office.

(*SMIRK*)

* AS REGULAR READERS KNOW, I'M NOT A HUGE FAN OF SEAN HANNITY, BUT I'VE GOTTA ADMIT... HE KNEW EXACTLY WHO OBAMA WAS LONG BEFORE I WISED UP.

September 24, 2010 at 9:12 PM
William R. Barker said...

* FILE UNDER: SCUMBAG REPUBLICANS.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/247768/help-joe-miller-editors

What does it take to earn the opprobrium of the Senate Republican caucus? Would running a write-in campaign against a Republican Senate candidate who won a fairly contested primary be enough to do it?

If the offender is Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, apparently not.

[I]t would make sense to strip Murkowski of her status as the ranking member of the Energy Committee because 1) she deserves it; and 2) her appeal is primarily based on her pork-barreling prowess as an inside-D.C. player. Earlier in the week, it seemed Senate Republicans would do just that. At a meeting Tuesday, Republicans decided to boot Murkowski, and several news outlets reported as much. Minority leader Mitch McConnell was quoted saying there’s “an issue as to whether or not it’s appropriate for her, under the circumstances, to continue as ranking member on the Energy Committee” - Senateese for, “She’s gone.”

Then, the Republicans held a conference meeting where the worst chummy instincts of the Club took hold.

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina says he was the only one to speak out in favor of stripping Murkowski.

We are told that Murkowski’s friends spoke in her favor, and a secret vote was held - and, amazingly enough, the Alaskan won.

* IN MY VIEW, IT WOULD ACTUALLY BE BETTER IF THE GOP DID NOT CAPTURE THE SENATE THIS GO-AROUND. IT'S OBVIOUS THAT ANOTHER ROUND OF "COUPS," OF "PURGES," MUST TAKE PLACE INTERNALLY.

* MCCONNELL MUST GO. QUITE A FEW SENATE RINOs MUST GO. IF GIVEN POWER PREMATURELY... THEY'LL STRANGLE A CONSERVATIVE RESURGENCE IN THE CRADLE.

September 24, 2010 at 9:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obama-team-uses-flimflammery-to-inflate-job-numbers-976771-103672044.html#ixzz10SAxiFMO

Are you a financial adviser? You may not know it, but you've got a green job. Are you a wholesale buyer? You've got a green job, too. Or maybe you're a newspaper reporter. You, too, have a green job - at least according to the Obama administration.

For months, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has been pushing the administration to substantiate its claims of having created nearly 200,000 green jobs. More fundamentally, Grassley has asked Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to state clearly what a green job is. So far, he hasn't gotten an answer.

Now, Grassley has learned that, in lieu of a settling on a straightforward definition of a green job, the administration has adopted an extraordinarily broad description of such jobs that could include not only financial advisers, wholesale buyers, and reporters, but also public relations specialists, marketing managers, and many more occupations that have nothing to do with protecting the environment.

If federal money has created any of those jobs, then the administration can claim to have created a green job.

(*SNORT*)

For the administration, Grassley's discovery is just the latest in a long line of embarrassments on the green jobs front.

First there was the controversy surrounding departed green jobs czar Van Jones.

Then there was widespread skepticism about the nearly 200,000 such jobs the administration claims to have created.

And then there was the unhappiness on Capitol Hill over reports that of $2.1 billion the government has granted for renewable energy jobs, like assembling wind turbines, about 80% has gone to foreign companies. (The stimulus has created some actual green jobs, but they're in China.)

The promotion of green jobs with stimulus money - a marriage of the Obama administration's environmental and economic agendas - has been a top priority for the White House since Day One. It still is. ... But if you look a little closer into the administration's claims, you'll find they literally don't know what they're talking about.

September 24, 2010 at 10:34 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/247461/destroying-king-dollar-not-solution-larry-kudlow

Fed head Ben Bernanke and the FOMC dropped a new policy bomb at their meeting this week. Now they say inflation is too low.

(*SIGH*)

* IN ALL SERIOUSNESS... IF BERNANKE DOESN'T DIE SOON... WE'RE ALL SCREWED.

In the 24 hours following the Fed announcement, gold rocketed up toward $1,300, a new record high. And the dollar plunged.

* I AM ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS! BERNANKE'S DEATH IS OUR ONLY SHORT-TERM HOPE OF SAVING THE ECONOMY.

Wall Street economist John Ryding ...notes that over the past four-and-a-half decades, the consumer price index (CPI) has increased six-fold. So Ryding believes it’s absurd for the Fed to worry about a low inflation rate over the past year or so.

The CPI over the past year is up 1.1%. Producer prices paid by businesses are up 3.1%. And import prices are rising 4.1%. So it’s not as though all these indexes are actually plunging. And to the extent that the CPI and the personal consumption deflator (1.5%) are rising only a bit, well, that should be a good thing.

* AND REMEMBER, FOLKS... THE CPI IS ITSELF A MANIPULATED AND OFTEN MISLEADING MEASURE OF "REAL" INFLATION AS EXPERIENCED BY THE AMERICAN CONSUMER VIA PURCHASING POWER AND STANDARD OF LIVING.

[F]orward-looking inflation proxies - like gold and the CRB spot raw-materials index - are surging upwards. And the dollar downwards.

* THAT'S INFLATIONARY - NOT DEFLATIONARY! BERNANKE AND THE MAJORITY OF HIS FELLOW FED GOVERNORS ARE IDIOTS!

One of the cornerstones of economic growth in a free-market model is domestic price stability and a stable, reliable dollar. This is crucial for confidence and capital formation. In fact, Nobelist Robert Mundell always argued for low tax rates to spur growth and a steady dollar linked to gold to ensure price stability. But now we are moving deeper into monetary Keynesian fine-tuning to control the economy. That, plus an overspending Keynesian fiscal policy, may be combined with higher tax rates and an ever-weakening dollar. It’s totally wrong. It’s exactly the reverse of Mundell’s thesis. Sinking the greenback and pumping more money into the system while raisingtax rates and overspending is, over time, a prescription for stagflation: too much money chasing too few goods.

A much better idea would be a fiscal freeze on spending, tax rates, and regulations. This is apparently what the tea-party driven Republican congressional leaders intend for their election platform.

Historically, nothing good has ever come to our economy from a steadily rising gold price. Doesn’t anybody around here have enough common horse sense to see that?

(*RAISING MY HAND*)

September 24, 2010 at 10:35 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/247453/how-fix-medicaid-avik-roy

Medicaid is annihilating state budgets all across the country, a problem that ObamaCare makes significantly worse.

[And] in 2014, ObamaCare forces the states to increase the number of people who are eligible for Medicaid, expanding the states fiscal liabilities and constraining [their] latitude to institute needed reforms.

The State of New York is a poster child for how decades of irresponsible management of Medicaid can drive a state treasury into a ditch. On Monday, New York lieutenant governor Richard Ravitch published a thoughtful and distressing report that details the depth of the problem. Medicaid is “the largest single driver of the State’s growing expenditures,” writes Ravitch. “The current State budget crisis,” in turn, “is threatening New York’s ability to handle the growth of this program without dramatically raising taxes or cutting other essential government services.”

Ravitch notes that nearly one-quarter of all New York state residents - 4.5 million people - are on Medicaid.

* HMM... I WONDER HOW MANY LEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND CHILDREN OF LEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE ON MEDICAID...

In the 2010 fiscal year, local, state, and federal parties spent more than $50 billion on Medicaid in New York, far more than any other state in the union, and nearly 40% of New York’s 2010 budget of $132 billion.

New York spends more on Medicaid per capita than any state - double that of neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut, and 2.3 times that of California, the second-largest state in total Medicaid expenditures.

* BTW, NY'S POPULATION IS APPROXIMATELY 19.5 MILLION; CALIFORNIA'S 30 MILLION. (*SHRUG*)

Over the next four years, as the federal bailout of spendthrift states expires, Albany expects its Medicaid spending to increase by 18% a year.

New York has been one of the most aggressive states in taking advantage of federal matching funds in order to expand its Medicaid program, making it one of the most lavish in the country. Unfortunately, it has been politically easy to expand Medicaid during good times, but impossible to rein it in during bad times; indeed, during the financial crisis of 2008–09, the state actually expanded its Medicaid coverage, and Medicaid enrollment increased by 600,000.

Another problem, the transformation of Medicaid from a welfare program to an entitlement program, was a result of the passage of federal welfare reform in 1996.

When Medicaid was first instituted in 1965, nearly everyone eligible for Medicaid was already on welfare: that is, they were receiving direct cash assistance. After 1996, New York’s welfare rolls shrank dramatically, while its Medicaid rolls continued to expand. “Today,” writes Ravitch, “only one out of six New York children and adults receiving Medicaid services also receives cash assistance,” because most people on Medicaid are employed, albeit with below-average incomes.

A third problem is that Medicaid provisions such as “spend-down” rules and the doctrine of “spousal refusal” allow higher-income individuals to game the system and gain Medicaid eligibility, by rearranging their assets.

A fourth problem is that New York’s methods of reimbursing doctors and hospitals for Medicaid services is specified line-by-line in state law.

* AND OF COURSE THESE LAWS ARE LARGELY WRITTEN BY INCOMPETENTS AND CROOKS.

September 24, 2010 at 10:35 PM

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