Saturday, December 22, 2012

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., December 22 & 23, 2012


Starring my good friend...

 But since it's a weekend... let's do a twofer!

 Ya know what, folks... joy is joy! No one loves "tradition" more than moi, but whatever floats your boat works for me as well!

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7 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/the_sandy_pork_storm_MXnWh0F8ptUJzDff69z1dP

New York may be about to learn a rather painful lesson: When local leaders start getting too greedy, Washinton retaliates.

Recoiling at President Obama’s $60 billion request for Superstorm Sandy aid, Senate Republicans are coalescing around a much smaller package of $24 billion.

(*STANDING OVATION*)

Under this proposal, Congress would take a second look at the recovery effort in a few months to assess how much more federal aid would flow to the Northeast.

* JUST... LIKE... A... RESPONSIBLE... SANTA...! (CHECKING THE OL' LIST TWICE!)

While Democrats are in the majority in the Senate, House Republicans may well support the smaller aid plan.

As much as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are in need of aid, the reluctance to rubber-stamp a $60 billion package is understandable. Many items stuffed in are basic pork; they have nothing to do with rebuilding or, for that matter, Sandy.

To wit: $150 million for Alaskan fisheries; $8 million for cars for the Homeland Security and Justice departments; $2 million for the Smithsonian to repair roofs damaged before Sandy... and so on.

Perhaps part of the GOP pushback comes from Gov. Cuomo’s ho-hum response to the porking up of the bill. “It’s the practical realities of getting to 51 Senate votes," he said.

* IN OTHER WORDS... BRIBE OTHER STATES' FEDERAL LEGISLATORS TO SIGN ON TO "SUPPORT" NEW YORK IN EXCHANGE FOR PORK. POLITICS AS USUAL. SCUMBAGS...

Understandably, the many people suffering from Sandy’s impact don’t want relief handed out on the installment plan. But the fact is that the country’s broke and this may be the best way to get money to those who need it with minimum waste.

December 22, 2012 at 12:16 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324461604578191730298103410.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

* FOLKS... THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING. (AND IT'S NO JOKE!)

I live in a Los Angeles neighborhood called Hancock Park. It's a few miles south of the Hollywood sign and was sort of the Beverly Hills of the 1920s. You've seen it in the film "The Artist" — the houses are stately and well kept, the landscaping is lush and green. President Obama has been a frequent visitor to the 'hood, dropping in on the numerous $35,000-a-plate fundraising dinners that were held here during the 2012 election campaign.

But with the election over, and Christmas rapidly approaching, it's time to talk holiday gifts. The most coveted item in Hancock Park this year isn't another Mercedes-Benz in the driveway, a new lap pool, or even an ambassadorship to a nation that is relatively stable, glamorous and solvent.

No, many of my neighbors are hoping for an emergency generator. Why? Because we keep losing power. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a week.

So how is this possible, in a major American city that hasn't been hit by a natural disaster, in the year 2012?

* YA KNOW WHAT, MY FRIENDS... I'M GONNA LEAVE IT TO YOU TO FOLLOW THE LINK AND READ THE REST OF THE PIECE IN ORDER TO FIND THE ANSWER.

* THE SHORT ANSWER, THOUGH... (*PAUSE*)... AMERICA IS IN TERMINAL DECLINE.

December 22, 2012 at 12:16 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendrickson/2012/12/20/romney-and-ryan-didnt-cut-it-in-a-time-for-radicalism/

We live in radical times. How radical? Over $16 trillion of officially acknowledged debt—multiples of that if you count unfunded federal liabilities; a president with a Marxist-Leninist economic agenda; a Senate majority leader who refuses to pass a budget and will do his best to sabotage any meaningful restructuring of fiscally unsound federal entitlements, etc.

* YEAH, YEAH... I KNOW... "HE WHOSE NAME DARE NOT BE MENTIONED" IS RIGHT NOW SMIRKING AND SNORTING (ALA BILL!) AT CALLING OBAMA'S ECONOMIC AGENDA "MARXIST-LENINIST." HERE'S THE DEAL, HWNDNBM: OBAMA IS A FASCIST.

The Republicans don’t know how to respond.

* THAT'S BECAUSE MOST "REPUBLICANS" ARE AT BEST "DEMOCRAT LIGHT" RINOs.

(*SHRUG*)

Mitt Romney is a good man who probably would have made a great president in the 1950s, competently managing the executive branch at a time of balanced budgets. By temperament and philosophy, though, he was too moderate for the radical challenges facing us today. He had no radical plan to break our addiction to the deficit spending and entitlements that are bankrupting us.

Some thought Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan hinted at radicalism, but the much-ballyhooed “Ryan Plan” wasn’t radical. On the contrary, it was designed to shore up the entitlement state and still would add trillions more to the national debt.

* CHECK THE ARCHIVES HERE AT USUALLY RIGHT! I NOTED THIS TIME AFTER TIME! RYAN IS NO TRUE REFORMER. HE'S AT BEST A "BEARD" FOR THE BOEHNER/MCCONNELL RINOs.

Ryan’s plan to gradually reduce deficits over the course of a decade....

* NEED I SAY MORE...? "REDUCE...???" "REDUCE DEFICITS...???" MEANING... SUSTAIN DEFICITS...!!!!

For decades, the Republicans have let the Democrats set the agenda, expanding the power and scope of the federal government and spending far beyond federal revenues. The Republicans have been reactive, agreeing to the basic premises of the transfer society while generally trying to slow the rate of growth in spending (although Nixon and Bush II took the line of least political resistance and spent as merrily as any Democrat not named Obama).

* AS MY ONCE AND PERHAPS FUTURE FRIEND JOHN HICKS SIMPLY WON'T ACCEPT... (*SIGH*)... GEORGE W. BUSH WAS A PROGRESSIVE STATIST.

The result is that Republicans are too stingy for liberals and too profligate for true conservatives and libertarians.

(*SHRUG*)

These are radical times, but there is only one party in Washington playing a radical game with radical rules, and that’s why they are prevailing.

December 22, 2012 at 1:00 PM
William R. Barker said...

* FOUR-PARTER... (Part 1 of 4)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/12/20/is-president-obama-really-a-socialist-lets-analyze-obamanomics/

President Obama says that income taxes must be raised on the rich because they don’t pay their fair share.

The indisputable facts from official government sources say otherwise.

The CBO reports based on official IRS data that in 2009 the top 1% of income earners paid 39% of all federal income taxes, three times their share of income at 13%.

(*SHRUG*)

The middle 20% of income earners, the true middle class, paid just 2.7% of total federal income taxes on net that year, while earning 15% of income.

The bottom 40% of income earners, instead of paying some income taxes to support the federal government, were paid cash by the IRS equal to 10% of federal income taxes as a group on net.

Any normal person would say that such an income tax system is more than fair, or maybe that “the rich” pay more than their fair share. So why does President Obama keep saying that the rich do not pay their fair share?

The answer is that to President Obama this is still not fair because he is a Marxist.

* I STILL SAY "FASCIST" BETTER DESCRIBES THE PRESIDENT AND HIS CRONIES...

(*SHRUG*)

Notice that Obama keeps saying that “the rich,” a crass term implying low class social envy, don’t “need” the Bush tax cuts. That is reminiscent of the fundamental Marxist principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Good tax policy is not guided by “need.” It is guided by what is needed to establish the incentives to maximize economic growth. The middle class, working people and the poor are benefited far more by economic growth than by redistribution - that is shown by the entire 20th century, where the standard of living of American workers increased by more than 7 times, through sustained, rapid economic growth.

But President Obama’s tax policy of increasing all tax rates on savings and investment will work exactly contrary to such economic growth.

* HE... DOESN'T... CARE...

(*SHRUG*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 4)

It is savings and investment which creates jobs and increases productivity and wages. Under capitalism, capital and labor are complementary, not adversarial, exactly contrary to the misunderstanding of Marxists. More capital investment increases the demand for labor, bidding up wages to the level of worker productivity, which is enhanced by the capital investment.

Increasing marginal tax rates on savings and investment, however, will mean less of it, not more. That will mean fewer jobs, and lower wages, just as we have experienced so far under President Obama, with median household incomes (hello middle class) declining by 7.3% (a month’s worth of wages) during his first term, even faster after the recession supposedly ended in 2009.

* THOUGH WE'VE COVERED THIS FACT AD NAUSEUM YOU STILL MIGHT WANNA RE-READ THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH.

(*SIGH*)

That will only get worse in Obama’s unearned second term, which can only be explained as “democracy failure” analogous to “market failure.”

If the tax increases are limited to those who earn $1 million or more, I don’t know if that alone will be enough to create a recession, as I am certain would be the result with Obama’s original policy of targeting couples making over $250,000 a year, and singles making over $200,000. But there is so much in the Obama economic program that is contractionary. His second term promises enormous new regulatory burdens and barriers. The EPA is shutting down the coal industry, and Interior will join with it to sharply constrain oil production further, despite Obama’s duplicitous campaign rhetoric taking credit for the production produced by the policies and efforts of others.

I expect Obama’s EPA to burden natural gas fracking until it goes the way of the coal industry as well, stealing new found prosperity for many Americans.

All of this will sharply raise energy prices, which will be another effective tax on the economy.

Moreover, President Obama has said that a priority in his second term will be global warming, even though global temperatures have not been increasing for 16 years now...

(*SIGH*)

...and the developing world led by Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries), which are contributing to “greenhouse gases” at a much greater accelerating rate than the U.S., have rejected sacrificing any slice of their economies to that ideological phantom.

* DON'T PESTER THE LEFT WITH FACTS!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 22, 2012 at 1:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 3 of 4)

While even the Democrat Congress of Obama’s first term failed to adopt “cap and trade,” EPA is advancing with global warming regulations that will cost the economy trillions in still another effective tax.

(*NOD*)

Then there are the onrushing regulatory burdens of ObamaCare, including the employer mandate, which will require all businesses with 50 employees or more to buy the most expensive health insurance available. That will be an effective tax on employment. As Obamacare forces up the cost of health insurance, that will be still another effective tax increase on all employers already providing health coverage.

* AND BEYOND THAT... (READ ON...)

Hundreds of regulations still in the pipeline under the “Dodd-Frank” legislation are already forcing the financial sector to contract, and threaten the business and consumer credit essential to full recovery.

(*SIGH*)

In addition, few are adequately considering the longer term contractionary effects of the Fed’s current policy mischief.

(*RAISING MY HAND*) (*JUMPING UP AND DOWN*) I AM! I AM! I'VE BEEN! I'VE BEEN!

For years now, businesses and investments have been launched all over the country based on the near zero interest rates, and even below zero real rates, that Fed policies have perpetuated, along with the easy free money. When those rates inevitably rise back to normal, most likely after these Fed policies have resparked inflation...

(*NOD*)

* FOLKS... WE'VE DISCUSSED INFLATION HERE AD NAUSEUM. WE'VE ALREADY EXPERIENCED IT. IT'S GONNA GET WORSE, TOO!

...the basis for those businesses and investments will be gone, and many if not most will go into liquidation, which will be highly contractionary as well.

I am certain in any event that the Obama tax increases will result in less revenue rather than more.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 22, 2012 at 1:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 4 of 4)

Obama has been proposing to increase the capital gains tax rate by 58% on the nation’s job creators, investors and successful small businesses, counting his ObamaCare tax increases that take effect on January 1 as well the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. While his misleading talking points say there will be no tax increases for 97% of small businesses, that counts every Schedule C filed for every part time or hobby sole proprietorship, however marginal the earnings. The small businesses that would bear President Obama’s originally proposed tax increases earn 91% of all small business income, and employ 54% of the total private sector U.S. work force, as reported in Investors Business Daily on November 9.

Over the last 45 years, every time capital gains tax rates have been raised, revenues have fallen, and every time they have been cut, revenues have increased.

The capital gains rate was raised 4 times from 1968 to 1975, climbing from 25% to 35%. The 25% rate produced real capital gains revenues in 1968 of $40.6 billion in 2000 dollars. By 1975, at the higher rate, capital gains revenues had plummeted to $19.6 billion in constant 2000 dollars, less than half as much.

After the capital gains rate was cut from 35% to 20% from 1978 to 1981, capital gains revenues had tripled by 1986 compared to 1978. Then the capital gains rate was raised by 40% in 1987 to 28%. By 1991, capital gains revenues had collapsed to $34.4 billion, down from $92.9 billion in 1986, in constant 2000 dollars adjusted for inflation.

Obama’s capital gains tax increase next year will reduce capital gains revenues again as well.

* CAPITAL GAINS REVENUE FROM THIS MONTH SHOULD BE GREAT, HOWEVER!

(*SMIRK*)

Similarly, when President Bush slashed the income tax on corporate dividends, dividends paid soared, and revenues from taxation of those dividends soared along with them. With Obama’s tax on dividends reversing that Bush tax cut, those revenue gains will also be reversed.

Finally, those earning over $1 million are the most financially agile of all taxpayers. They can move, shelter, and transform income more easily than anyone else. Most likely, the number of American millionaires, or at least American taxpayers reporting a million in income, will plummet after the Obama tax increases, and so will income taxes paid by millionaires.

Of course, if the tax increases and other policies of Obamanomics push the economy back into recession, total federal revenues will decline rather than rise. Federal deficits and debt will soar further, along with unemployment and poverty, while jobs, wages and incomes decline further. That is what happened the last time federal economic policy followed the preferred prescription of the Washington Establishment, and also adopted a package of tax increases, in return for chimerical spending reductions... [back] when George H.W. Bush was President.

* OVERALL... THE BUSH FAMILY IS AN ABOMINATION.

Can such public policy malpractice make any sense?

President Obama says it is “fair” in his redistributionist sense of fairness. But what is fair about fewer jobs, lower wages, and higher unemployment, poverty, federal deficits, and national debt, at the price of higher taxes, for anybody?

What is fair is a flat tax, where everyone pays the same tax rate, which is true equality.

Under such a tax system, if you dear reader make 10 times what I do, then you pay 10 times what I do, not 20, 30 or 40 times, as advocated by so-called “progressives,” (a polite, Americanized term for Marxist).

If President Obama wants Warren Buffett to pay the same tax rate as his Secretary, he can adopt that flat tax, and the economy will boom. But President Obama seems to think that the increased dependence of further recession best suits his political interests, and those of the Democrat Party, rather than the independence fostered by a booming economy.

December 22, 2012 at 1:25 PM

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