Thursday, March 15, 2012

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, March 15, 2012


Well, folks... another day in the Age of Obama.

God help us all...
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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/03/15/morning-bell-a-budget-to-save-the-american-dream/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

America’s fiscal condition is dauntingly dismal. The national debt is well on its way to $17 trillion, 13 million Americans are out of work, and the country is stuck in the slowest recovery in the post-war era.

* RECOVERY...?!?! ARE THESE PEOPLE HIGH...??? HOW CAN IT BE A "RECOVERY" WHEN GAS - IN NEW JERSEY - IS RUNNING $3.59/GAL. AND A POUND OF BOARS HEAD ROAST BEEF AT THE DELI IS $12.99 LB.?

Despite Washington bleeding taxpayers dry with reckless overspending, the U.S. Senate has not passed a budget since nearly a year before Apple released the original iPad...

* YEP! IT'S BEEN WELL OVER 1,000 DAYS SINCE THE U.S. SENATE UNDER THE "LEADERSHIP" OF HARRY REID HAS ACTUALLY PASSED A BUDGET!

* FOLKS... DAMN BUSH ALL YOU WANT; I'LL JOIN YA! BUT... BUT... REMEMBER THAT THE DEMS TOOK OVER BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS FOLLOWING THE 2006 ELECTION! 2007... 2008... 2009... 2010... THESE WERE YEARS THE DEMS CONTROLLED BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS - WITH A DEM PRESIDENT ALL THROUGH 2009... 2010... 2011... 2012...

* FOLKS... THE DEMS TO THIS DAY STILL CONTROL BOTH THE SENATE AND THE WHITE HOUSE! AS INCOMPETENT AS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE RINO CONGRESSES OF HIS FIRST SIX YEARS IN OFFICE WERE, THEIR INCOMPETENCE DOESN'T HOLD A CANDLE TO WHAT THE DEMS HAVE GIVEN US SINCE THEY'VE BEEN IN POWER!

* ANYWAY, FOLKS... THE MAIN REASON I "NEWSBITE" THIS PIECE IS TO SHARE WITH YOU THE FOLLOWING LINK: http://savingthedream.org/about-the-plan/plan-details/

* IT'S THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION'S "10 YEAR PLAN" TO GET THE BUDGET UNDER CONTROL. AS PATHETIC AS THAT SOUNDS... NO ONE IN THE GOP LEADERSHIP IN CONGRESS SEEMS TO BELIEVE IN "2 YEAR PLANS" OR EVEN "4 OR 6 YEAR PLANS."

* AGAIN, FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... I FEAR VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY ANSWER.

March 15, 2012 at 10:22 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/world/asia/taliban-call-off-talks-as-karzai-urges-faster-us-transition.html?_r=1&hp#

Prospects for an orderly withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan suffered two blows on Thursday as President Hamid Karzai demanded that the United States confine troops to major bases by next year, and the Taliban announced that they were suspending peace talks with the Americans.

* O-BAM-A! HIL-LAR-Y! O-BAM-A! PAN-ET-TA! O-BAM-A! HIL-LAR-Y! O-BAM-A! PAN-ET-TA!

Getting talks started with the Taliban has been a major goal of the United States and its NATO allies for the past two years...

* WHAT...?!?! YOU THOUGHT THE GOAL WAS TO DEFEAT THE TALIBAN... DESTROY THE TALIBAN? (*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)

* FOLKS... EVERYTHING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TOUCHES BECOMES A CLUSTER-FUCK. AND IN THE MEANTIME... MORE AMERICANS KILLED... MORE AMERICANS CRIPPLED... MORE MONEY WE BORROW FROM THE CHINESE SQUANDERED IN AFGHANISTAN.

* CHANT IT WITH ME, FOLKS! O-BAM-A! HIL-LAR-Y! O-BAM-A! PAN-ET-TA! O-BAM-A! HIL-LAR-Y! O-BAM-A! PAN-ET-TA!

March 15, 2012 at 10:49 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://news.investors.com/article/604303/201203141303/oil-abundant-in-the-united-states.htm

When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump.

"Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling," he said. "America still has only 3% of the world's oil reserves." Which meant, he said, that the U.S. couldn't affect global oil prices.

* FUCKING IDIOT!

It's the same rhetoric President Obama is using now, as gas prices hit $4 again, except now he puts the figure at 2%.

"With only 2% of the world's oil reserves, we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices," he said. "Not when we consume 20% of the world's oil."

The claim makes it appear as though the U.S. is an oil-barren nation, perpetually dependent on foreign oil and high prices unless we can cut our own use and develop alternative energy sources like algae.

But the figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains!

In fact, far from being oil-poor, the country is awash in vast quantities — enough to meet all the country's oil needs for hundreds of years!

The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire world's proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration. But as the EIA explains, proved reserves "are a small subset of recoverable resources," because they only count oil that companies are currently drilling for in existing fields.

When you look at the whole picture, it turns out that there are vast supplies of oil in the U.S., according to various government reports. Among them:

At least 86 billion barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf yet to be discovered, according to the government's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

About 24 billion barrels in shale deposits in the lower 48 states, according to EIA.

Up to 2 billion barrels of oil in shale deposits in Alaska's North Slope, says the U.S. Geological Survey.

Up to 12 billion barrels in ANWR, according to the USGS.

As much as 19 billion barrels in the Utah tar sands, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Then, there's the massive Green River Formation in Wyoming, which according to the USGS contains a stunning 1.4 trillion barrels of oil shale — a type of oil released from sedimentary rock after it's heated.

* To be continued...

March 15, 2012 at 11:57 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

A separate Rand Corp. study found that about 800 billion barrels of oil shale in Wyoming and neighboring states is "technically recoverable," which means it could be extracted using existing technology. (That's more than triple the known reserves in Saudi Arabia!)

All told, the U.S. has access to 400 billion barrels of crude that could be recovered using existing drilling technologies, according to a 2006 Energy Department report.

When you include oil shale, the U.S. has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research - enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for about the next 200 years, without any imports!

And even this number could be low, since such estimates tend to go up over time.

Back in 1995, for example, the USGS figured there were 151 million barrels of oil in North Dakota's Bakken formation. In 2008, it upped that estimate to 3 billion barrels to 4.3 billion barrels — a 25-fold increase. (Now, some oil analysts say there could be as much as 20 billion barrels there.)

And USGS in 2002 quadrupled its oil estimate in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve.

To be sure, energy companies couldn't profitably recover all this oil — even at today's prices — and what they could wouldn't make it to market for years. But from the industry's perspective, the real problem with domestic oil is that the government has roped off most of these supplies.

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, for example, put a huge swatch of land off-limits to drilling. And in 1982, Congress blocked access to most of the oil in the Outer Continental Shelf. Much of the oil on federal lands is also off-limits.

"This is not a geological problem — it's a political problem," said Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research. "We've embargoed our own supplies."

March 15, 2012 at 11:57 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/15/us-oil-reserves-idUSBRE82E0UM20120315

Britain has decided to cooperate with the United States in a bilateral agreement to release strategic oil stocks...

(*HEADACHE*)

* ONCE AGAIN OBAMA IS POLITICIZING U.S. ENERGY POLICY.

* FOLKS... WE'RE EXPORTING OIL! THE PROBLEM ISN'T LACK OF SUPPLY! ALL THIS WILL DO IS SIPHON OIL OUT OF THE STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE WHICH WAS PURCHASED AT A MEDIAN PRICE FAR BELOW TODAY'S PRICES AND THEN IN THE FUTURE WE'LL RESTOCK THE STRATEGIC OIL RESERVE VIA MORE EXPENSIVE OIL PURCHASES FINANCED WITH DEFICIT SPENDING!

A formal request from the United States to the UK to join forces in a release of oil from government-controlled reserves...

* FOLKS... WE'RE TALKING UNREFINED OIL... EMERGENCY STOCKS... AND AGAIN... THE PROBLEM ISN'T LACK OF SUPPLY!

The United States has sold crude oil directly from the SPR, which holds 696 million barrels at the moment - enough to meet domestic demand for about 37 days - only a handful of times, almost always in conjunction with the IEA.

* IEA STANDS FOR INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY.

Previous emergency oil drawdowns, the latest last year, have been coordinated by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) to meet its mandate to cover substantial supply disruptions on the world oil market. Libyan oil production was closed for much of last year during civil war. The IEA so far has declined to coordinate a broader release among its 28 industrialized members...

* BECAUSE THIS ISN'T A SUPPLY/DEMAND PROBLEM...!!!

"The Obama administration can only take so much political pain from rising gasoline prices, which pose a serious threat to the economy and the president's re-election," said Bob McNally, a former White House energy adviser and head of U.S. energy consultancy Rapidan. "SPR use is more a matter of 'when' than 'if.' The administration strongly desires international support and coordination from other strategic stock holders, but is encountering stiff resistance from some IEA members who think strategic stocks should only be used for severe supply disruptions," McNally said.

(*SMIRK*)

"At the moment there is no need to use it (strategic reserves)," IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven said at an industry conference in Kuwait on Wednesday.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* FOLKS... OBAMA CARES ABOUT OBAMA - NOT ABOUT WHAT'S BEST FOR AMERICA.

March 15, 2012 at 12:38 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/13/romney-fication-of-health-care-reform/?page=all#pagebreak

Half a decade into its health reform experiment, Massachusetts is flailing under unsustainable health costs.

Absent change, the Bay State offers a preview of what the rest of the country has to look forward to.

In 2006, then-Gov. Mitt Romney assured his constituents that “the costs of health care will be reduced” if his health reform package passed. President

Obama made essentially the same assurances prior to the passage of his reform package, pledging that it would “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family.”

Mr. Romney’s promise has proven false. And there’s little doubt that Mr. Obama’s will end up similarly untrue.

Massachusetts [present] Governor, Deval Patrick, just exhorted legislators to overhaul the way the state pays for health care. He’s pushing for an end to the traditional arrangement of compensating doctors and hospitals for each service they provide.

It’s not yet clear what will replace this “fee-for-service” payment system. But there’s growing support for a “global budget” model, under which primary care physicians would receive annual lump sums for each of their patients - regardless of how little or how much care they needed.

* AND WHAT ABOUT THE SPECIALISTS... THE DOCTORS YOU ACTUALLY NEED ONCE YOU'RE ACTUALLY SICK... REALLY SICK?

(*SIGH*)

The move toward global budgets highlights the failure of Massachusetts’s 2006 health reform plan to make health care more affordable. Because the Bay State’s plan served as the template for President Obama’s health reform package, the consequences of that failure could soon be felt nationwide.

A new report from researchers at the University of Minnesota details the magnitude of Massachusetts’ health reform catastrophe. They interviewed more than 3,000 state residents in 2010 and found that “Massachusetts continues to struggle with escalating health care costs, reflecting the decision to defer addressing costs in the 2006 legislation.”

The study revealed that the share of insurance premiums for family coverage paid by the average worker jumped more than 10 percent since 2006. Half of respondents said that they were spending more on health coverage in 2010 than 2009. And a quarter weren’t confident that they could afford care the following year.

About 1 in 4 respondents reported delaying treatment because of concerns about cost. That share is up from 2006.

And 1 in 5 adults had problems paying medical bills - the same percentage as in 2006. “There was no sustained improvement in problems paying medical bills,” the researchers wrote.

Some policymakers believe that global budgets are the answer to this problem. Because doctors would receive a flat annual fee for each patient, they’d have a direct financial incentive to keep their patients healthy - or more cynically - to limit the care they provide.

That’s exactly what has happened in Canada, which implemented such budgets in the 1970s.

Last year, Canadians were waiting to receive more than 941,000 procedures. The average total wait time between referral from a primary care physician and treatment by a specialist reached 19 weeks in 2011. That’s more than double the wait time in 1993.

If global budgets take root in Massachusetts, residents can look forward to similar waits for necessary care.

March 15, 2012 at 2:12 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/obama-in-your-tank/87740/

“Obama Defends Energy Policies” is the headline over a Reuters dispatch in respect of gasoline prices. It reports on the president’s launch of what the British wire service characterizes as “the most comprehensive defense to date of his energy policies.” It says the president is “pushing back against election-year attacks from Republicans” who say his energy policies “are to blame for high gas prices that are eroding his popularity with voters.”

The problem with all this is that it’s not the energy policies that are driving up gasoline prices. It’s the monetary policies, and if the Republicans can’t manage to get that point into focus, it’s hard to see how they can put the rest of the monetary debate to their advantage.

* WELL, IT'S BOTH, ACTUALLY, BUT CERTAINLY I AGREE WITH THE AUTHOR'S PRIMARY POINT.

We’ve been making this point for months now.

* UMM... I'VE BEEN MAKING THIS POINT FOR YEARS! (*GRIN*)

The fact is that priced in specie — gold or silver — the value of gasoline has been plunging.

We made this point in April last year, after Mr. Obama used his weekly radio address to declare that to rectify rising gasoline prices there was, as he put it, “no silver bullet.” Our point was that a gallon of gasoline was selling at the time for fewer grains of silver than it was selling for when Mr. Obama (or, for that matter, Mr. Bush) had acceded to the presidency.

Gasoline at the pump was selling for a sixth of an ounce of silver when Mr. Obama was sworn in. Today, the value of the same gallon of gasoline has fallen to less than a 10th of an ounce of silver. Measured in gold, the value of gasoline has also been plunging.

In other words, it’s not the gasoline that’s been going up. It’s the dollar that’s been going down.

Americans, however, don’t hold their money in gold or silver. They generally hold their money in accounts denominated in dollars, and the dollar has been getting weaker. It is the view of the Sun that this fact lies at the bottom of the grim feeling that has swept the country under President Obama, the lingering sense that we are falling behind.

* WE ARE FALLING BEHIND!

We are all for energy policies that maximize the incentives to explore and produce our own oil and gas. But that alone is not going to bring relief to the misery Americans have felt during the Obama presidency until a restoration of sound money.

This is not the kind of issue that the Republican candidates can deal with in a glancing way.

Mr. Romney has vowed to replace Chairman Bernanke at the Federal Reserve.

* ACTUALLY... PERRY FIRST CALLED FOR BERNANKE TO BE REMOVED. GINGRICH TOO HAS LONG FAVORED FIRING BERNANKE. IF MEMORY SERVES ROMNEY WAS "LATE THE THE PARTY" ON THIS ISSUE. (*SMIRK*)

Mr. Gingrich has vowed to establish a gold commission, chaired by no less a pair of luminaries than James Grant, who edits the Interest Rate Observer, and Lewis Lehrman, who, with Congressman Ron Paul, wrote a famous dissent from the recommendation of the Gold Commission of the 1980s to stick with fiat money.

(*ENTHUSIASTIC APPLAUSE*)

This issue, if it is to be made to resonate with the voters, will have to be pressed at ever turn, including every time Mr. Obama gets confused and tries to characterize the high number of dollars gasoline is fetching at the pump as [something having nothing to do with him and his policies].

March 15, 2012 at 2:25 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.freeenterprise.com/health-care/health-care-free-isnt-free

ABC News reports that the Democratic Party is mailing flyers to millions of women touting the benefits of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA):

“You may now get many of your preventive care services for FREE,” reads one DNC flyer in big bold lettering. “Without co-pays, thanks to America’s New Health Care Law,” it adds in highlighted text.

Free? Really? One response comes to mind with this propaganda: TANSTAAFL. "There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch."

Despite the administration's assertions - there is no “free” health care. Someone has to pay for these services: either the employer through higher insurance premiums due to mandated coverage; or taxpayers through subsidized health insurance exchanges created by the PPACA.

And speaking of taxpayers, a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the costs of the PPACA came out yesterday. It found that the estimated costs of the PPACA have almost doubled.

Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner writes: President Obama's national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.

The CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. (That's because we now have estimates for Obamacare's first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law.) (Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn't overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then.)

Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we're likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised.

We’re only at the beginning of implementation of the PPACA. Many regulations have to be written, including the establishment of “Essential Health Benefits” that insurance policies will have to include to be eligible to be offered in exchanges. These cost estimates will likely increase.

Health coverage doesn’t grow on trees and doesn’t magically appear on your doorstep.

“Free” health care isn’t free, and those who spout that are letting politics trump economics.

March 15, 2012 at 5:47 PM

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