Thursday, December 6, 2012

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, December 6, 2012


And Merry Christmas to you, too, Jarrod Niemann!

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14 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.humanevents.com/2012/12/06/is-anyone-serious-about-debt/

The “fiscal cliff” deal House Republicans and President Barack Obama are debating can be called many things — the “avoiding a political nightmare” deal or a “Yes, Mr. Obama, may I have another” deal — but please let’s stop referring to it as a “deficit reduction” deal.

We’ve yet to see a serious proposal on debt.

Actually, by proposing a tax increase for spending with no real corresponding cuts, the president has been arguing for growing deficits.

(And with a priority on “fairness” over prosperity, any chance of easing the $16 trillion national debt through an economic boom in the near future is improbable.)

When you cut through the coverage, in fact, you’ll also find that the second most pressing item on the president’s agenda — after tax hikes on the wealthy and small businesses — is winning the unlimited authority to raise the country’s debt limit.

(*NOD*)

Obama — who personally sat down with CEOs at the Business Roundtable to press his case — argues that having a cap on debt, rather than unlimited debt, is a “bad strategy” for the nation.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

After that, much of the deceptive “savings” or “cuts” offered by Obama were already coming from the winding down of campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan — this itself supposedly temporary spending that is now baked into the baseline.

(*SNORT*)

Similarly, Americans may also remember our “one time only” stimulus bill. That dramatic bump in spending is also now a forever spending baseline. The imagined “savings” from that kind of accounting is very much like the “savings” a person might realize after someone steals their car but is nice enough to throw them a couple of dollars for bus fare home.

But all of Obama’s pro-debt expansion policies don’t excuse Republicans for calling their own proposal a “credible” $2.2 trillion plan on “deficit reduction.” Even if we were to concede for a moment that the plan would cut the debt, by the time we realized $2.2 trillion in savings, the Congressional Budget Office projects that debt as a share of GDP will have reached 100%. By 2035, we’re looking at 200%.

* LISTEN... FOLKS... I PRAY EVERY DAY FOR BOEHNER'S DEATH... FOR MCCONNELL'S DEATH...

* FOLKS... I KNOW IT SOUNDS TERRIBLE... BUT THESE PEOPLE - AND MANY OTHERS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ISLE - ARE DESTROYING MY COUNTRY. IF THEY WERE DEAD... THEY COULDN'T CONTINUE TO DESTROY MY COUNTRY!

Or put it this way: The entire Republican plan would only pay down the $220 billion in net interest the United States owes on its debt every year.

(Well, if by some miracle that interest stayed at $220 billion. Which it won’t.)

(*SNORT*)

The Republicans’ offer also contains $800 billion in new “revenue” garnered from tax reform — partially from closing loopholes on the wealthy — which surrenders to the notion that “revenue” rather than “spending” drives the deficit.

* NEED I REITERATE MY VIEWS ON TAXES...??? (FLAT WITHIN PROGRESSIVE BANDS WITH CLEAR FLOORS AND CEILINGS.)

The Republicans’ offer has $300 billion in cuts to discretionary spending over 10 years. Well, the U.S. government’s outlays in October alone were $304 billion.

* FOLKS... DO YOU SEE WHY I WANT THEM DEAD...?!?!

The GOP offered $600 billion in 10-year health care cuts through Medicare and Medicaid, which is less than Obama was willing to risk as seed money for ObamaCare.

(*SNORT*)

Then again, the president’s new budget only reduces Medicare and Medicaid spending by $340 billion over a decade. Democrats have no interest in reform.

(*SIGH*)

* AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH...

Our potential unfunded liabilities, what our government has promised to spend on entitlement programs in the future and won’t have money to pay, are estimated to total anywhere from $87 trillion to $100 trillion. That doesn’t even include ObamaCare’s unseen costs.

Fiscal cliff? We’ve already taken that dive.

December 6, 2012 at 10:14 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/benghazi_blunder_cia_opts_for_cya_Keeszzytqnhl8I6iKXSJ3L

The United States has the world’s largest and (at $80 billion a year) best-funded intelligence services in the world — some 17 of them, in fact, including such lesser-known outfits as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which helped lead Seal Team Six to Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

How much bang we’re getting for our buck from the big dogs of the intelligence community, though, is another matter — as the recent Libyan fiasco so vividly demonstrates.

The deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were a moral and military disgrace, bespeaking a failure of nerve and judgment at the highest levels.

* FEW... AMERICANS... CARE...

With significant military assets just a couple of hours away, the men were left to die.

* FEW... AMERICANS... CARE...

Their deaths were a tragedy, but now the ensuing blame game threatens to devolve into farce.

* FEW... AMERICANS... CARE...

Ever since UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s ludicrous assertion that the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi (which now appears to have been a CIA station operating under flimsy diplomatic cover) was provoked by an amateur video that lampooned Islam, various elements of the IC have been scrambling to assign blame — and protect the White House.

* I'M ASSUMING "IC" STANDS FOR "INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY."

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 6, 2012 at 10:24 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

At various points, the CIA, the FBI and the useless Office of the Director of National Intelligence have either shouldered the responsibility or had fingers pointed at them for editing out references to al Qaeda’s role in the deadly assault from the unclassified talking points provided to Rice and others in the aftermath of the disaster. Most recently, the hot potato has landed back where it began — at CIA, which remains in organizational turmoil after the sudden resignation of its director, David Petraeus. According to a detailed report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, all references to terrorism were edited out by dozens of busy beavers in Langley:

“A detailed examination of how US assessments were turned into the talking points reveals a highly cautious, bureaucratic process that had the effect of watering down the U.S.’s own intelligence. The same process was slow to change conclusions when evidence shifted, in particular about links to al Qaeda and whether the attack grew out of a protest.”

According to the Journal, the report was deliberately watered down to protect the agency’s sources and investigative methods — as if it were top secret that CIA or the National Security Agency is constantly monitoring al Qaeda’s internal communications, or has agents embedded within terror cells.

Yet the talking points also included this fateful line: “The demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo.” Which we now know was a flat-out lie.

We expect our intel agencies to lie to our enemies — that’s part of their brief. But we don’t expect them to lie to Congress and the White House — which in any case had its own domestic political reasons for not wanting to ascribe the attack to al Qaeda.

But even “watering down” our own intelligence for bureaucratic CYA reasons is simply unacceptable. Unfortunately, it’s all too typical of the CIA — which has consistently bungled just about every major geopolitical development since it helped overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and engineered a coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz the next year.

Among other things, the agency failed to adequately assess the global threat posed by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and was caught by surprise when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later. And how about those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?

The Benghazi blunder illustrates why: While the Agency remains very good at collecting intelligence and providing payback against our foreign enemies, its in-house analysts are often too busy playing footsie with the Washington political and journalistic establishment to soberly and apolitically deliver the news.

So it’s no accident that another member of the IC, the Defense Intelligence Agency — which reports to the Pentagon — is beefing up its core of overseas “collection” agents as part of its new Defense Clandestine Service (announced back in April, but informally in existence for more than a decade).

(Essentially, the Pentagon now has a way to go around CIA if and when it feels the need for threat assessment unfiltered by a dysfunctional Langley bureaucracy.)

It’s a sad commentary on a once-proud agency that it’s no longer trusted by the folks who have to put the military’s muscle behind the analysts’ mouths.

December 6, 2012 at 10:25 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-politicians-who-bewitch-our-intelligence-with-language/2012/12/05/649000a0-3e48-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html

Even Jonathan Swift, who said that promises and pie crusts are made to be broken, might have marveled at the limited shelf life of Barack Obama’s promise of a “balanced” deficit-reduction plan — substantial spending cuts to accompany revenue increases. Obama made short shrift of that promise when he demanded $1.6 trillion in immediate tax increases and mostly unspecified domestic cuts.

(He also promised to cut $800 billion from 10 years of war spending that will end in two years, which is like “cutting” $800 billion by deciding not to build a ski resort on Mars.)

Year after year, the Democratic-controlled Senate, ignoring the law, refuses to pass budgets.

Year after year, Washington makes big government cheap by charging Americans only $6 for every $10 of government services, borrowing the difference.

Yet...

(*DRUM ROLL*)

... what supposedly is horrifying is a sequester that would cut less than 3% of federal spending over the next decade.

Or "horrible" Grover Norquist.

(*SMIRK*)

Although a surfeit of numbers are being bandied, a pertinent one is missing — the number of legislators who have pledged to Norquist not to raise taxes. The number is: Zero.

* YEP!

All pledges have been to voters.

* YEP!

Progressives lament the public’s distrust of the political class while urging many members of it to treat their promises as pie crusts.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 6, 2012 at 10:52 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Given progressives’ “principled” refusal to countenance entitlement reforms, the principal drivers of the fiscal imbalance will not be untouched even by raising, from 65, the age of Medicare eligibility. In 1965, the year this program was created, the average life expectancies of men and women at age 65 were another 13.5 and 18 years respectively. Today they are 19 and 21, and rising. Given modern medical — especially pharmacological — marvels, longevity often involves living with several chronic ailments that might have been fatal a generation ago. For liberals, however, no demographic or scientific changes need be accommodated.

(*SIGH*) (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Democrats insist that the manufactured unpleasantness due Jan. 1 is a crisis of insufficient revenue. But Jeffrey Dorfman, a University of Georgia economics professor, thinks arithmetic says otherwise. Writing for RealClearMarkets, he says that possible tax increases and spending cuts would reduce the current deficit by less than a third, leaving a deficit larger than any run by any president not named Obama.

At the end of the Clinton administration, when the budget was balanced (largely by revenue generated by commercialization of the Internet), annual federal spending was $1.94 trillion and revenue was $2.10 trillion.

* JUST AS A SIDE NOTE... THE BUDGET WASN'T ACTUALLY BALANCED. THESE NUMBERS UP ABOVE - AND THUS THE FALSE CLAIM - ARE BASED UPON SMOKE AND MIRRORS MATH HAVING TO DO WITH THE THEN SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUSES.

“Adjusting for inflation and population growth since the start of 2001,” Dorfman writes, “today’s equivalents would be $2.77 trillion and $3.00 trillion,” and a $230 billion surplus.

What is to blame for today’s huge imbalance? The George W. Bush tax cuts? The recession? Obama’s spending? Dorfman answers yes, yes and yes — but that “spending is the main culprit” because: Today federal revenue is $2.67 trillion (slightly less than “the Clinton equivalent”) and spending is $3.76 trillion, so we are spending $987 billion more than we would be if we had just increased Bill Clinton’s last budget for inflation and population growth.

“Philosophy,” said the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

The shrillness of “cliff” talk bewitches minds that should be skeptical about the supposed point of all this — deficit reduction. [T]he "cliff" can be dodged only by imposing tax policies that further darken the nation’s future, and government spending would continue to rise even under the sequester-imposed “austerity.”

* IN ENGLISH: "AVOIDING" THE "CLIFF" WILL SIMPLY MAKE THINGS WORSE.

December 6, 2012 at 10:52 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/333455/beyond-tax-cuts

The poverty of the Republican economic imagination is something to behold. Tax cuts are held up as the cure for everything from stagnant growth to high unemployment to lumbago. And, as it turns out, Mitt Romney was right in one way when he made that “47%” remark: People who are net beneficiaries of federal transfers are not very much excited by the possibility of tax cuts.

Ronald Reagan boasted of all the people of modest means he had taken off of the tax rolls, and he had good reason for doing so, but once you’ve taken the income tax out of a voter’s life, an income-tax cut is not the way to bring him into your party.

* AND AS YOU KNOW, I DISAGREE WITH REAGAN'S LOGIC - THOUGH I UNDERSTAND IT. REAGAN WAS NO DOUBT ULTIMATELY OPPOSED TO A FEDERAL INCOME TAX IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND THEREFORE HE FELT THAT SINCE HE COULDN'T GET IT REPEALED FOR EVERYONE, GETTING IT (EFFECTIVELY) REPEALED FOR SOME AMERICANS WAS BETTER THAN NOTHING. ME...? I FEEL THAT AS LONG AS YOU'RE GONNA HAVE AN INCOME TAX... OR A SALES TAX... OR ANY TAX... IT MUST BE APPLICABLE TO EVERYONE. YES... I'LL ACCEPT A PROGRESSIVE "LADDER," BUT THE "FLOOR" CAN'T BE ZERO.

[T]he economics of tax rates is deep, but the politics of tax rates is right on the surface: Tax-cut proposals are politically inert among voters not directly exposed to the taxes to be cut. Reagan’s success is the modern Republican’s burden. But conservatives have a great deal to offer the country other than tax cuts.

The first and most important thing they have to offer is fiscal rectitude.

Note that I wrote conservatives, not Republicans.

* YEP... I NOTE THAT!

The unified Republican government under George W. Bush, whatever its other virtues, spent money like nobody’s business, and that generation of Republican leaders managed to singlehandedly destroy the party’s reputation for fiscal restraint.

The major driver of deficits going forward is of course entitlement spending (80%), and Republicans have some excellent ideas about entitlement reform. But it would be wrong to write off the rest of the budget as small ball: 20% of the greatest Leviathan the planet has ever seen is still a lot of green, and there are very good economic and political reasons for going after it.

No, euthanizing Big Bird is not going to balance the budget, but there is a strong case to be made against having state-run media in a free society. Foreign aid is a minuscule fraction of federal outlays, but there is a strong case to be made against shunting funds to people who are, pardon us all for noticing, indistinguishable from our declared enemies. Eventually, that money adds up to something — and so does the messaging.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 6, 2012 at 11:41 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The Right complains of “crony capitalism” and the Left of “corporate welfare,” but in the majority of cases we’re talking about the same thing: favoritism for politically connected businesses, often enacted through the tax code but also present in other federal activity.

* YEP!

This stuff costs a great deal of money — and it is bad for the economy in that it keeps capital and energy locked up in enterprises that are viable only because they are in part sustained by politics.

Corporate welfare makes markets less efficient, stifles competition, and undermines innovation — and makes the country pay for the privilege. There is no need to let the Left and the ideologues who want to abolish patents dominate the conversation about corporate welfare: An enterprising Republican looking to build a name for himself would not have very far to look for an issue that both bolsters the party’s reputation for fiscal responsibility and provides much-needed evidence with which to answer allegations of Republicans’ thrall to Big Business.

And unless the Republican party is ready to go the full Rothbard and declare itself an anarcho-capitalist outfit (this I do not recommend), it should work to discover a few areas of government in which it finds value beyond those engaged in the sometimes necessary but never profitable business of bombing the tar out of dusty little countries harboring fanatical savages.

(*NOD*)

Most of the work done by organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control constitutes a legitimate public good. Encouraging research at institutions such as the CDC or DARPA, as well as supporting university-based science and technology research, is one of the best uses a federal dollar ever sees. Republicans who want to be in favor of something rather than against something might take a look at that.

* MAYBE... TO AN EXTENT... BUT BEWARE THE SLIPPERY SLOPE! "UNIVERSITY WELFARE" ISN'T NECESSARILY SUPERIOR TO "CORPORATE WELFARE." AND AS WE KNOW, "NON-PROFIT" JUST MEANS NON-PROFIT TO STOCKHOLDERS - THIS USUALLY TRANSLATES TO INSIDERS REAPING VALUE VIA "EXPENSES" (SALARIES, BENEFITS, PERKS, PENSIONS, PAYOUTS, BLOATED HIRING AT BLOATED SALARIES...) RATHER THAN STOCK AND BOND HOLDERS REAPING PROFITS. (SEE WHAT I'M SAYING...? I'M HIGH-LIGHTING THE WORD GAMES PLAYED.)

We are in the early stages of an energy renaissance, which will produce many excellent opportunities for manufacturing, heavy industry, technology, and related fields.

* MAYBE. MAYBE NOT. IT ALL DEPENDS UPON HOW MUCH POWER THE LEFT GIVES OVER TO THE ENVIRONMENTALIST EXTREMISTS.

(*SHRUG*)

We also remain a world leader in the original mass-production business: farming.

* YES... BUT HOW MUCH DO WE GIVE AWAY...? WHAT PERCENTAGE OF FARMING IS SUBSIDIZED...??? FOLKS... IT'S NOT LIKE WE TREAT FOOD AS OPEC TREATS OIL.

(*SHRUG*)

If tax cuts are the best [Republicans have] got, they’re done.

December 6, 2012 at 11:41 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/334819/two-kind-michael-tanner

For all those who think that our deficit is caused by a dearth of revenue, consider this thought experiment:

In 2012, the federal government will spend $3.56 trillion.

As recently as fiscal year 2001, President Clinton’s last budget, federal spending amounted to just $1.9 trillion.

If spending since 2000 had simply increased at the rate of inflation plus population growth, spending this year would have been less than $2.69 trillion.

* SO WHY NOT TAKE AS THE GOP POSITION THAT THEY'LL SUPPORT SPENDING OF $2.69 TRILLION AND NOT A PENNY MORE...???

Our budget deficit this year, despite those Bush tax cuts and a recession-driven decline in revenue, would have been just $241 billion, compared with an actual deficit of more than $1.1 trillion.

* SOUNDS LIKE THIS WOULD BE PROGRESS...

To continue this thought experiment, if this inflation- and population-adjusted spending path from 2001 continued to 2022, spending in 2022 would be only $3.61 trillion, compared with the $5.51 trillion the current baseline predicts.

* DO AWAY WITH BASELINE BUDGETING!

* DON'T INCREASE SPENDING FOR INFLATION AND POPULATION GROWTH... THIS WILL SHRINK GOVERNMENT FAIRLY PAINLESSLY!

The president’s proposal does not reduce spending at all.

There are no net cuts, not even in the Washington sense of reductions from the baseline.

The few programmatic cuts he recommends, most of which lack specifics, are offset by other spending increases.

All that spending means that, if the president gets every bit of the $1.6 trillion in new taxes he has asked for, we would still add $6 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years, and run a $661 billion deficit in 2022.

Moreover, since there are so few specifics in the president’s proposal, these estimates likely underestimate the amount of spending, debt, and deficits it would incur.

Republicans have countered with an offer that is better — but not by much. Republicans suggest spending $1.4 trillion less than the current baseline over ten years.

* FOLKS... DO THE MATH... (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)... IF THE PRESIDENT GETS HIS WAY AND ADDS $6 TRILLION TO THE NATIONAL DEBT OVER THE NEXT TEN YEARS... WHILE THE RINOs GETTING THEIR WAY MEANS ADDING $4.6 BILLION TO THE NATIONAL DEBT OVER THE NEXT TEN YEARS!

* BOEHNER... MUST... DIE...!

* MCCONNELL... MUST... DIE...!

* FOLKS... HAVING BOEHNER AND MCCONNELL IN CHARGE OF THE GOP MEANS THAT AT BEST... PEOPLE LIKE US HAVE ONLY THE CHOICE OF FIRING SQUAD OR HANGMAN'S NOOSE.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 6, 2012 at 1:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

[N]either the president nor Republicans are offering any serious structural reforms to entitlements, especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

* THAT'S JUST WRONG. TEA PARTY REPUBLICANS HAVE! IT'S THE REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT THAT HASN'T!

Those three programs alone constitute 44% of federal spending this year, and by 2022, they will amount to more than 54% of the federal budget. Worse, the real explosion of entitlement costs takes place just outside the ten-year budget window currently being debated.

(While entitlement changes will appear to have only a moderate impact on this budget deal, failure to reform these programs will guarantee an unsustainable growth in federal spending over the long term.)

Social Security, for example, ran "only" a $165 billion deficit this year...

* AND AGAIN FOLKS... THE AVERAGE AMERICAN HAS NO IDEA THAT SOCIAL SECURITY WENT UPSIDE DOWN SEVERAL YEARS AGO...

(*SIGH*)

...and in part this is due to the “temporary” payroll-tax cut that some now want to make permanent. But even beyond the shortfall that cut produces, Social Security was $53 billion in the red this year.

* READ THE ABOVE AGAIN, FOLKD...

(*SIGH*)

By 2022, Social Security deficits (technically, redeeming the bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund) will consume $345 billion in general revenues. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. According to the latest report of the Social Security Trustees (page 15), the present value of the program’s unfunded liabilities is $20.5 trillion.

* FOLKS... THERE IS NO TRUST FUND. THERE ARE NO SAVINGS. THERE'RE ONLY I.O.U.'s THAT MUST BE REDEEMED BY... (*DRUM ROLL*)... YET MORE BORROWING AND DEBT!

Medicare’s impact on the budget is even worse, in both the short and the long term. This year alone, Medicare will add some $300 billion to the federal deficit.

According to the program’s trustees, its unfunded future liabilities run to more than $42 trillion.

(But that is actually a best-case scenario that assumes a significant decline in health-care costs and the success of several cost-control measures that are part of ObamaCare. If those savings don’t materialize, Medicare’s liabilities could easily run as high as $90 trillion or more.)

And federal Medicaid spending is expected to rise from $253 billion this year to more than $592 billion by 2022, driven in large part by ObamaCare’s expansion of the program. And then... after that... Medicare spending really takes off!

In response to this looming entitlement cliff, President Obama has offered an additional $340 billion in Medicare cuts (relative to the rate of growth) over ten years. Some of these proposals are legitimate ideas for cost savings, such as reducing the government’s responsibility for bad debts that hospitals and nursing homes have failed to collect from patients, and charging higher premiums to high-income Medicare beneficiaries. But cuts of less than $35 billion per year are not going to make a dent in the program’s long-term liabilities.

More important, the president makes no structural changes to the program itself, meaning that the skyrocketing growth will continue virtually unabated.

And Social Security and Medicaid...? The president’s proposal takes them both completely off the table!

As elsewhere, Republicans do a bit better on entitlements, but only because the president has set the bar so low. The Republican proposal would reduce "the rate of growth" in federal health programs...

* WHAT... A... FUCKING... SICK... JOKE...

Proposals such as raising the eligibility age to 67 reduce spending by less than most people realize in the short term (approximately $150 billion over ten years, in this case), but do lock in substantial savings over the longer term. Still, Republican plans fall far short of the restructuring envisioned under, say, the Ryan budget.

* AND THE RYAN BUDGET WAS ITSELF A FUCKING JOKE!

[W]e can expect to be far poorer as a nation in the future.

December 6, 2012 at 1:18 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/06/apple_manufacturing_macs_will_be_made_in_usa_tim_cook_says_in_interview.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content

* FOLKS... (*PAUSE*)... SOME GOOD NEWS!

In a pair of new interviews, Apple CEO Tim Cook said his company will start manufacturing Mac computers in the United States next year.

"Why can't you be a 'Made in America' company?" NBC's Brian Williams asked Cook in an interview that will air tonight.

Cook began by noting that Apple does make the iPhone's engine in the United States, and the glass comes from Kentucky. Then he added, "We've been working for years on doing more and more in the United States. Next year, we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States."

(*HEARTFELT CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

When Williams asked how much more Apple products would cost if they were manufactured entirely in the United States, Cook replied, "Honestly it's not so much about price, it's about the skills, etc. Over time there are skills that are associated with manufacturing that have left the US. ... It's a concerted effort to get them back."

* YEP! THE PRICE ARGUMENT HAS ALWAYS BEEN WAY OVERSOLD! AND THE LOSS OF SKILLS REALITY... THAT'S BEEN LARGELY IGNORED. GOD BLESS YOU TIM COOK!

Cook made similar comments in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel. "We're really proud of it," he said of Apple's plans to bring Mac manufacturing onshore. "We could have quickly maybe done just assembly, but it’s broader because we wanted to do something more substantial. So we’ll literally invest over $100 million. This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people, and we’ll be investing our money."

He didn't specify which Macs the company would make in the United States. But the news seems to dovetail with recent tech-blog rumors that some new iMacs are labeled "Assembled in USA."

* YES!

* YES...! YES...!! YES...!!!

For years Apple has manufactured most of its products in Asia. Whether the shift to domestic production is a blip or the start of a trend remains to be seen. Rising labor costs in China have been making U.S. manufacturing more attractive in general in recent years.

December 6, 2012 at 1:30 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.creators.com/opinion/thomas-sowell/fiscal-cliff-notes-part-ii.html

* BY DR. THOMAS SOWELL

One of the big advantages that President Obama has, as he "plays chicken" with the Congressional Republicans along the "fiscal cliff" is that Obama is a master of the plausible lie, which will never be exposed by the mainstream media — nor, apparently, by the Republicans.

A key lie that has been repeated over and over, largely unanswered, is that President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" cost the government so much lost tax revenue that this added to the budget deficit — so that the government cannot afford to allow the cost of letting the Bush tax rates continue for "the rich."

It sounds very plausible and constant repetition without a challenge may well be enough to convince the voting public that, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives does not go along with Barack Obama's demands for more spending and higher tax rates on the top 2%, it just shows that they care more for "the rich" than for the other 98%.

What is remarkable is how easy it is to show how completely false Obama's argument is.

That also makes it completely inexplicable why the Republicans have not done so.

The official statistics which show plainly how wrong Barack Obama is can be found in his own "Economic Report of the President" for 2012, on page 411.

(You can look it up! You may be able to find a copy of the "Economic Report of the President" for 2012 at your local public library. Or you can buy a hard copy from the Government Printing Office or download an electronic version from the Internet.)

For those who find that "a picture is worth a thousand words," they need only see the graphs published in the November 30th issue of Investor's Business Daily.

What both the statistical tables in the "Economic Report of the President" and the graphs in Investor's Business Daily show is that (1) tax revenues went up — not down — after tax rates were cut during the Bush administration, and (2) the budget deficit declined - year after year - after the cut in tax rates that have been blamed by Obama for increasing the deficit.

Indeed, the New York Times reported in 2006: "An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year."

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 6, 2012 at 10:43 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

While the New York Times may not have expected this, there is nothing unprecedented about lower tax rates leading to higher tax revenues, despite automatic assumptions by many in the media and elsewhere that tax rates and tax revenues automatically move in the same direction - [which] they do not.

The Congressional Budget Office has been embarrassed repeatedly by making projections based on the assumption that tax revenues and tax rates move in the same direction. This has happened as recently as the George W. Bush administration and as far back as the Reagan administration.

Moreover, tax revenues went up when tax rates went down as far back as the Coolidge administration - before there was a Congressional Budget Office to make false predictions!

The bottom line is that Barack Obama's blaming increased budget deficits on the Bush tax cuts is demonstrably false. What caused the decreasing budget deficits after the Bush tax cuts to suddenly reverse and start increasing was the mortgage crisis. The deficit increased in 2008, followed by a huge increase in 2009.

[I]t is sheer hogwash that "tax cuts for the rich" caused the government to lose tax revenues.

The government gained tax revenues, not lost them!

Moreover, "the rich" paid a larger amount of taxes and a larger share of all taxes after the tax rates were cut!

That is because people change their economic behavior when tax rates are changed, contrary to what the CBO and others seem to assume, and this can stimulate the economy more than a government "stimulus" has done under either Bush or Obama.

Yet there is no need to assume that Barack Obama is "mistaken" about the way to get the economy out of the doldrums.

His top priority has always been increasing the size and scope of government.

If that means sacrificing the economy or the truth, that is no deterrent to Obama.

That is why he is willing to play chicken with Republicans along the fiscal cliff.

December 6, 2012 at 10:43 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/06/exclusive-fema-teams-told-to-ightsee-as-sandy-victims-suffered/

Hurry up and wait.

That’s what first responders were left to do after being deployed by FEMA to assist in the storm-ravaged areas in the initial days after Sandy...

A FEMA worker who spoke to FoxNews.com described a chaotic scene at New Jersey's Fort Dix, where emergency workers arrived as the storm bore down on the Atlantic Coast. The worker said officials at the staging area were unprepared and told the incoming responders there was nothing for them to do for nearly four days. “They told us to hurry, hurry, hurry," the worker, who works at the agency's headquarters in Washington and volunteered to deploy for the storm recovery effort. "We rushed to Fort Dix, only to find out that our liaison didn’t even know we were coming.”

“The regional coordinator even said to us, ‘I don’t know why you were rushed here because we don’t need you,'” said the worker, who spoke out of frustration with the lack of planning and coordination following the devastating storm.

After arriving in New Jersey, the worker and others waited for three full days and parts of another, even as reports dominated the television of the devastation and suffering wrought by the storm...

When they asked for assignments, they couldn't believe the response, according to the worker. “They told us to go to the Walmart nearby or to check out the area but told us to stay out of the areas affected by the storm,” the worker said. "If our boss back at headquarters had not been alerted and didn’t make a push to get us assignments, the people running the show on the ground level would have just kept us sitting in the barracks.”

* SO FAR... ANONYMOUS SOURCING. NOT THE SORT I TEND TO PLACE MUCH STOCK IN. HOWEVER... (READ ON!)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 6, 2012 at 10:57 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

In a Nov. 3 email obtained by FoxNews.com, an administrator back in Washington urged the regional team to get his people into the field after learning they were idled..

"My people are being told to go sightseeing," the e-mail reads. "They may have a mission in 2-4 days .... I am asking them to reach out to contacts there that may be able to use their expertise ... We will continue to seek these opportunities as otherwise these personnel resources will be wasted ... Please advise way ahead ..."

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Told of the worker's complaints, a FEMA official acknowledged that there were delays in getting responders out into the field but said the time was mostly spent firming up training and accommodations.

(*SMIRK*)

“I’m not going to say we couldn’t have done better,” Michael Byrne, a FEMA federal coordinating officer, told FoxNews.com. “I can understand the emotional commitment. They want to jump right in and start with the effort. I feel the same way. “The time was used to find the best place for them and for quick-training," he said. "There were logistical challenges but we have been fully engaged in the areas since then.”

* UH-HUH... (READ ON!)

But that didn't jibe with the account of the worker, who said the much-maligned agency seemed more organized during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“When there’s disaster, every second counts," the worker said. "That clock starts ticking once the storm makes landfall. “I worked in Katrina and Katrina was run better than Sandy.”

Even after FEMA workers were finally sent out from Fort Dix, many did not have useful information to convey to victims, said the worker. “They are put out in the field and they don’t know what to tell people," the worker said. "Survivors will fall through the cracks.”

* LISTEN... AGAIN... I WANT THIS WHISTLEBLOWER TO GO PUBLIC. WITHOUT THAT... (*SHRUG*)

* STILL... DO I TEND TO BELIEVE WHAT IS BEING REPORTED? YEP. I DO.

The agency has come under fire from residents and elected leaders, including Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who represents some of the hardest hit areas in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. He recently told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that FEMA is not prepared to respond effectively to disasters, especially in urban areas. "Hurricane Sandy should be a major wake-up call,” Nadler said. "When disaster strikes, our densely populated urban areas and economic centers must be able to recover quickly."

December 6, 2012 at 10:57 PM

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