Jobs & Debt Anyone?

indyfromaz|

Our Biden Momemt of the Week: “If I hear one more Republican tell me about balancing the budget, I am going to strangle them.”
He quickly added: “To the press, that’s a figure of speech.”
Yeah, that’s an evil thought isn’t it Joe.  Perish the Thought…
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Another great Moment: The debate between Richard “I lied about being in Vietnam” Blumenthal(D) and Linda McMahon.
When asked about how you create a job, he rambled on for over a minute and end up with praising government.
She did it in 19 seconds.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4359817/how-do-you-create-a-job/
By the way, it is expected by many economist that when the Unemployment figures come out on Friday that the rate will GO UP!
3 Trillion Dollars of Debt and nothing but Keynesian socialism to show for it!
Don’t worry, be Happy.
Hope and Change is still alive!. It’s a zombie corpse coming relentlessly to eat your brains, but it’s still alive!
Yes He can!!!
The Democrats have no idea how to create a job without a massive government bureaucracy run by them, which is probably why they ignore it so much.
WASHINGTON — Recovery.gov promised transparency on how the government spends every dollar of stimulus money, but there’s $162 million the website doesn’t disclose.
Recipients of 352 federal stimulus contracts, grants and loans have failed to report how they spent the money, the status of their projects or how many jobs were funded, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Despite orders from the White House to crack down, enforcement is spotty.
Gee, now that’s not transparent.
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From a Russian Webpage on “Global Warming”
Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.
The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe. (prime time russia)

I guess the Global Warming alarmist were too busy blowing up people they disagreed with in commercials to notice.
Then there’s Obama’s Global Warming Cops, The EPA.
Tough new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restricting greenhouse gas emissions will “slow construction nationwide for years” – but will only reduce global temperatures 0.0015 (15 ten-thousandths) of a degree Celsius in the next century.
“(D)uring this time, tens of thousands of sources each year would be prevented from constructing or modifying,” the EPA staff wrote. “In fact, it is reasonable to assume that many of those sources will be forced to abandon altogether plans to construct or modify. As a result, a literal application (of the permit requirement) to GHG (greenhouse gas) sources would slow construction nationwide for years, with all of the adverse effects that this would have on economic development.”
But the benefit of regulating mobile sources (aka Cars) is, also by the EPA’s own estimations, as little as less than two thousandths of a degree in temperature reduction over a century.
Meanwhile, Mother nature is doing it anyways. Gee, I wonder “Global Warming” (climate Change, et al) is a liberal socialist control scam?
And way to create some jobs there, guys!
If it walks like a liberal socialist duck, smells like a liberal socialist duck,it’s a liberal socialist duck.
Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) said, “In many instances, the EPA is overreaching its authority. Instead of operating within the law, EPA believes it can dictate to Congress that legislation needs to be passed for more government authority. And if Congress doesn’t act, it threatens to regulate anyway.”
“Every day, the EPA seems to demonstrate how vastly disconnected it is to the folks who feed us.”
Gee, where have we heard this about being “disconnected” before?
President Obama made a big show this week of installing solar panels at the White House, calling it a “commitment to lead.” It’s not. It’s feel-good political symbolism masquerading as a real energy policy.
One could almost feel the prickly sweater of Jimmy Carter descending over the White House as news of solar panels gracing the roof of the residence, as they once did in 1976, was announced Tuesday.
Back then, Carter made symbolic gestures like installing panels and wearing sweaters to set a personal example for conserving energy, while ignoring the shortages, gas lines, rationing and inflation that came with high energy prices.
Inexplicably, the current president is copying him.
According to the White House blog, the new panels are “a project that demonstrates American solar technologies are available, reliable, and ready for installation in homes throughout the country,” a claim which presumes that the only reason Americans aren’t buying them is their own stubbornness.
But in reality, the panels remain costly, and experts estimate the White House installation to cost $100,000. A price tag like that means such panels will remain a rich man’s plaything, no matter how much they demonstrate a commitment to green energy.
In the White House case, the panels also represent politics. Democrats have been desperate to enact a green agenda as midterm elections approach, having failed repeatedly as their proposals collided against economic reality. So instead of grinding the economy to a halt with an economy-killing cap-and-trade law, for now the White House will have to do with its symbolic solar panels.
As harmless as this symbolism may seem to some, it amounts to a substitute for a real energy policy.
As the president installs his solar panels at taxpayer expense, he isn’t doing what he could be doing: making a practical case for energy security, something that could come from development of domestic shale, offshore oil, natural gas, coal and other resources that the environmental lobby has put off-limits over the years.
The symbolic act also amounts to a planted flag for the radical green agenda instead of an energy agenda that serves the people.
To the White House, money is limitless and green technology every inch the equal to more efficient oil. In the real world, the viability of energy is determined by its cost and availability.
People won’t install solar panels just because the White House has them. They will do so if panels make the best business sense.
Unfortunately, this White House doesn’t require that.(IBD)
Because no one in this White House has any actual business experience. They are talking out of their Liberal Elitist Academic asses.
And we are the ones getting the fecal results.

Adverse Selection

indyfromaz|

The leftists are all in a tizzy. A tizzy of their own making mind you.
But they’ll never see it that way. Because it was done “for the children” and the Insufferably Morally Superior Left doesn’t care about reality in their fantasies and delusions of “fairness” and “equality” in their own minds.
It makes them “feel good”.
Here’s a little lesson the Left refuses to hear about reality:
People who buy insurance often have a better idea of the risks they face than do the sellers of insurance. People who know that they face large risks are more likely to buy insurance than people who face small risks. Insurance companies try to minimize the problem that only the people with big risks will buy their product, which is the problem of adverse selection, by trying to measure risk and to adjust prices they charge for this risk. Thus, life insurance companies require medical examinations and will refuse policies to people who have terminal illnesses, and automobile insurance companies charge much more to people with a conviction for drunk driving or if you get into an accident (or if your neighbors are idiots you’re going to pay more because of a more adverse selection–that’s why “my rates keep going up but I haven’t caused any accidents”).
It describes a situation where an individual’s demand for insurance (either the propensity to buy insurance, or the quantity purchased, or both) is positively correlated with the individual’s risk of loss (e.g. higher risks buy more insurance), and the insurer is unable to allow for this correlation in the price of insurance. This may be because of private information known only to the individual (information asymmetry), or because of regulations or social norms which prevent the insurer from using certain categories of known information to set prices (e.g. the insurer may be prohibited from using information such as gender or ethnic origin or genetic test results). The latter scenario is sometimes referred to as ‘regulatory adverse selection’.
And regulatory adverse selection is what we have in droves in the Insufferably Morally Superior Left Health Care Cramdown.
And the little superior moralists are shocked and applauded that the insurance industry would actually follow these principle laid out above and not just roll over and kiss their morally superior asses and do  “the right thing for the children” and as they are told like a good little doggie.
Health plans in at least four states have announced they’re dropping children’s coverage just days ahead of new rules created by the healthcare reform law, according to the liberal grassroots group Health Care for America Now (HCAN).
The new healthcare law forbids insurers from turning down children with pre-existing conditions starting Thursday, one of several reforms Democrats are eager to highlight this week as they try to build support for the law ahead of the mid-term elections. But news of insurers dropping their plans as a result of the new law has thrown a damper on that strategy and prompted fierce push-back from the administration’s allies at HCAN.
The announcement could lead to higher costs for some parents who are buying separate coverage for themselves and their children at lower cost than the family coverage that’s available to them.
“We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds and decided to refuse to sell child-only coverage,” HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome said in a statement. “The latest announcement by the insurance companies that they won’t cover kids is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.
“Instead, they should reverse their actions immediately and simply follow the law. If the insurance companies can casually turn their backs on sick children now, who will they abandon next? This offensive behavior by the insurance companies is yet another reminder of why the new law is so important and why the Republicans’ call for repeal is so misguided.”
Health plans and state insurance commissioners in July raised concerns that the new rules could lead some insurers to stop children-only coverage because families could wait until their children get sick to buy coverage.
Days later, the Obama administration issued regulations clarifying that insurers would still be able to establish enrollment periods in accordance with state law.
“To address concerns over adverse selection, issuers in the individual market may restrict enrollment of children under 19, whether in family or individual coverage, to specific open enrollment periods if allowed under state law,” the Department of Health and Human Services clarified.
The issue had largely dropped out of sight since then, but insurers including WellPoint and CoventryOne have announced in recent days that they’re dropping children’s coverage in California, Colorado, Ohio and Missouri, according to HCAN. (The Hill)
I guarantee this is only the beginning. Trust me.
But the Insufferably Morally Superior Left will just sit there and be “appalled” and kick and scream and whine and moan “they aren’t doing what we told them to do whaaaahh!!!”
Then go to their government buddies and pass more regulations to have their way.
I say a new term in a headline recently that fit, LAWFARE. Waging a war by lawsuits and REGFARE, waging war by regulation.
That’s the Insufferably Morally Superior Left in a nutshell.
As I said repeatedly and often during the Health Care debate, it’s about the government and leftists wanting total control of who lives and who dies and you dependent on them for everything. Period. End of Story.
They want private insurance gone. But private insurance is not going quietly.
That would be a moral hazard.
In insurance markets, moral hazard occurs when the behavior of the insured party changes in a way that raises costs for the insurer, since the insured party no longer bears the full costs of that behavior. Because individuals no longer bear the cost of medical services, they have an added incentive to ask for pricier and more elaborate medical service—which would otherwise not be necessary. In these instances, individuals have an incentive to over consume, simply because they no longer bear the full cost of medical services.
And does this not sound like ObamaCare to you??

You Can Lie with Spin

Government these days isn’t about making the hard choices. It’s about making the choice that will sell, either to “your base” (thus ignoring everyone else) or by spin (which is inevitably deceitful) because it will benefit you or one of your “sides” interests.

They write 2000+ bills they won’t read. But expect everyone to follow.
They can’t be bothered to read SB1070, at a minimalist 16 pages.
Much easier to just play on people fears, anxiety,biases, and divide and conquer.
And when that doesn’t work, just lie.
Then there’s the politician favorite phrase these days, “I misspoke”.
No, we have it on tape or audio.
But they “misspoke”.
Then you get stuff like this:
President Barack Obama, fresh from a win on a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulations, on Saturday urged Congress to take up his proposal for a $90 billion, 10-year tax on banks as the next step in reform.
Obama wants to slap a 0.15 percent tax on the liabilities of the biggest U.S. financial institutions to recoup the costs to taxpayers of the financial bailout.
“We need to impose a fee on the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer assistance at the height of our financial crisis — so we can recover every dime of taxpayer money,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.
He does realize that a tax on business is passed onto the consumer right?
He doesn’t care. It sounds good.
It plays to his anti-capitalist base and the “wall street” anger that has been ginned up.
The fact that Congress in the 1990′s set up the roots of this problem and the Government agency in charge of monitoring them were too busy with Porn is not a matter for discussion.
And one of the biggest players in this whole mess, Fannie and Freddie were and are  ignored should be a sign.
Alinsky, Rules for Radicals:
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.
Daniel Foster at the conservative National Review Online argues that the bill is filled with unnecessary or useless measures.
“There is much in the bill that has nothing to do with ‘Wall Street’ or the root causes of the crisis (i.e. debit card and interchange fee rules),” Foster writes. “There is little in it that will ‘reform’ too big to fail or change the incentives for the kind of behavior that led to the crisis (implicit subsidies and bailout authority galore); and it was a ‘compromise’ mostly between Democrats.”

Then you have VP Joe Biden, a one man gaffe machine:
VP Biden ran into an ice cream shot owner (in his shop) who aked him to lower the taxes and he called the guy a “smartass”
And it gets better:
Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy Friday, telling an audience of supporters, “there’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession.”
Appearing at a fundraiser with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) in Milwaukee, the vice president remarked that by the time he and President Obama took office in 2008, the gross domestic product had shrunk and hundreds of thousands of jobs had been lost.
“We inherited a godawful mess,” he said, adding there was “no way to regenerate $3 trillion that was lost. Not misplaced, lost.” (CBS)
Andrew Langer, The Daily Caller:

Ultimately, with election victory comes the responsibility of governance. That responsibility requires grappling with the excruciating problem of making tough choices. This is something all elected officials face at some time or another, and it is the caveat for anyone interested in pursuing a political career. Problems ensue when political leaders abdicate their responsibilities—and a case can be made that such abdication is an abuse of the public trust. And when it comes to domestic policy, there is no more important issue than the creation of a government’s annual budget.
For the past three years, there has been a disturbing trend of federal legislators essentially punting their responsibilities—whether it comes to oversight of federal agencies, understanding the constitutional implications of legislation, or, at its most basic, actually reading legislation being voted upon. This seemingly fundamental misunderstanding of the role of legislators in our republic has resulted in an unprecedented outpouring of public ire, from Tea Parties to very public “dressing downs” of congressmen at Town Hall meetings.
Congress should have gotten the message, yet as proof they are deaf to their constituencies, leaders in the House have recently done—or not done—something stunning. Congressional leaders have decided that they are unable to even propose, let alone pass, a federal budget this year.
They have ostensibly done this while they await the decision of President Obama’s “Deficit Commission,” a convenient fiction created to give cowardly Democrats the “cover” necessary for a tax increase following the 2010 elections. It is not their fault, they will argue when they eventually do propose a budget. They were forced to do this because of the recommendations of the commission.
It is an excuse that doesn’t hold water. Congress has the responsibility for the budget, which means that the majority party has the responsibility for getting it prepared and shepherded through the system and passed. It is, in fact, statutorily mandated. But without any consequences, the law has about as much real power as a Las Vegas illusionist: it’s great theatre, but it really doesn’t do what it claims.
The problem is that more and more government entities (including state and local governments) are shifting these powers to unelected commissions. While some might call it mere “punting”—moving the power to some other group of individuals—it’s more accurately a form of political surrender; the functional equivalent of throwing in the towel because, well, the job is just too darn hard, and, in an election cycle, these guys want the title but they don’t want the responsibilities to go along with it.
Spending and size of government are the two top issues going into this fall election, with healthcare reform playing a role in both. Voters not only are fed up with out-of-control spending, they’re genuinely fearful of the potential economic instability runaway spending creates. Controlling that spending is infinitely more complicated when government officials refuse to release a budget detailing just how that money is being spent. It was, interestingly enough, the continued secrecy of national budgets that brought Gorbachev to power as the Soviet Union’s last premier—and opening up those budgets to greater scrutiny one of the hallmarks of his Perestroika program. How ironic, then, that more than two decades later, America is moving in that direction—an entirely wrong direction—when it comes to budgets.
Americans are tired of cowardly politicians. They are tired of being lied to, of having polls say one thing and do quite the opposite. They are hungry for real leaders—leaders who mean what they say and say what they mean. Leaders who are willing to make the tough choices, like Gov. Chris Christie in New Jersey.
Whether it’s trying to shift responsibility or surrendering to the difficulties of governance, either way the result is the same: Americans’ government grows larger without anyone exercising fiscal restraint. Political leaders raise taxes to try and pay for their inability to control spending. Overall we all suffer. Unfortunately, in this case, waiting until January 2011 might just be too late.

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• The deficit will reach a stunning $1.5 trillion this year. Even after the recession ends, trillion-dollar deficits will persist, causing the national debt to double by 2020.
• Excessive spending—not low revenues—accounts for 92% of deficits by 2014 and 100% by 2017.
• Solutions that “split the difference” between tax hikes and spending cuts doesn’t really address the source of the problem: spending.
• Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest costs will surge by nearly $2 trillion by 2020. By comparison, the cost of extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts is 85% less at $404 billion.

Tax Increases Are Not the Solution

• Raising federal income taxes to pay for entitlement spending would require rates to double by 2050 and continue to rise thereafter.
• Balancing the budget with tax increases alone would increase the tax burden from an average of 18% of the economy to 30% by 2055.
• Layering on a value added tax (VAT)—a new national sales tax—would create a huge drag on the economy and family budgets.
• A VAT would cause the price of everything to rise by 15–20%. By 2019, 44 cents of every dollar would go to the federal government, compared to 15 cents today.

Tax Hikes Have Harmful Economic Consequences

• Tax increases take money from families and businesses, lowering savings and investment and killing jobs. This is especially harmful in the current economic climate.
• Future generations—who can’t yet vote—will be stuck paying the higher taxes and inheriting lower standards of living that go with it.
• Any new federal income taxes would be on top of state and local taxes, such as income, property, excise, fuel, and sales taxes.
• A VAT would become a cash cow for Congress to fund new spending and open the door for continued, stealthy rate increases.
• Twenty of 29 developed economies with a VAT have increased rates since passage. Denmark leads, having increased their VAT from 15 to 25% since it was enacted.

Congress has been mismanaging taxpayer dollars for decades. Can Washington really be trusted to use new revenues to close the deficit gap, or would they just spend the money on new programs? (heritage.org)

I would say no.
When you can just “misspeak” or “The previous administration…” or “the party of no” or just demonize someone else, why bother.
It is much easier to spend than to be responsible.
After all, it’s not the politician’s money.
It’s yours.
And you’ll always be there for them so why should they worry.