Reuters: “Obama favors renewing the tax cuts only for those at or below those level, saying the nation cannot afford to renew them for wealthier Americans.”
So the President who wasted a trillion dollars of our money now says we can’t afford not to tax more. It’s like a guy coming back from Vegas after blowing the family savings plus whatever he could put on credit, and telling his wife that they can’t afford gas for the car to take her to work.
A tea-partier is said to have said, “Keep your government hands off my medicare.” It looks like NPR now has its own version of that line:
“The proposal to prohibit public radio stations from using CPB grants to purchase NPR programming is an unwarranted attempt to interject federal authority into local station program decision-making,” NPR said, referring to its parent organization, Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Someone commented on the WSJ editorial, “A Deficit of Nerve : Obama’s commission has ideas that Republicans can use,” saying that many of the proposed budget cuts will kill people. My response:
Not making those cuts will kill people, too. Millions of lives could be at stake.
If we now have the histronics out of the way, maybe we can get down to serious discussion.
I agree with the editorial writers that there is much in the draft outline to build on. They makes the point that Canada doesn’t have a home mortgage interest deduction, yet has a higher rate of home ownership than we have. If this deduction can’t be zeroed out, I don’t know why it shouldn’t be reduced to say, $100,000 instead of the $500,000 suggested in the commission’s draft.
I also wish the commission had tackled the issue of health care reform. But it seems there were some taboo topics. According to the editorial:
More egregiously, the chairmen tiptoe around ObamaCare, which has led some on the right and left to claim that the commission is essentially endorsing the largest new entitlement in 40 years. We’re told the chairmen mostly dodged the subject because Democrats on the commission made that a nonnegotiable demand. A truly bold report would consider Congressman Paul Ryan’s model to make Medicare a defined contribution program. Instead, the chairmen settle for the familiar likes of “payment reforms,” which never work because of Medicare’s flawed political price-control model.
On that subject I posted the following comment:
Back in April, when setting up this commission, President Obama said everything needs to be on the table. But now we learn that the Democrats on the commission wouldn’t allow any health care reforms to be put on the table. It was non-negotiable. If they couldn’t accept the job they were commissioned to do, shouldn’t they have declined to serve on the commission, or if it was too late for that, resigned?
On the subject of taxes, I’m surprised they want to make our tax system more regressive by increasing the social security tax, of all taxes.
But there is one other item that would do more to reduce the budget deficit than any of their other proposals. Term limits would bring under control the budget distortions brought about by the power of incumbency. These limits wouldn’t need to be severe term limits to be effective.
We need a slogan: No justice, no peace.
Oops. Wrong slogan. It should be: No term limits, no tax hikes.
I’d say that if we eliminate ag subsidies (aka the root of all evil), zero out funding for NPR, and get a constitutional amendment to institute term limits for Congress, then we can think about a tax increase to get us out of our hole. If members of Congress are term-limited, we will have a better basis for trusting that they might really use new revenues for deficit reduction. Otherewise, that part should be just as non-negotiable as the Democrats’ refusal to reform our health care system.
Remember all of those articles from the early-mid Bush administration days asking, “Why do they hate us?” Now we’re beginning to understand:
(Reuters) – Germany’s undiplomatic outbursts against U.S. policy, calling it “clueless” before a G20 summit, show growing estrangement on economics as America’s focus shifts away from transatlantic ties to domestic challenges and Asia.
“The Atlantic is getting wider,” said Anton Boerner, head of Germany’s Foreign Trade Association, who spoke of a “creeping alienation” between America and Europe, which has been exacerbated by the global financial crisis. [URL]
And there’s a related headline on the same page:
Obama returns fire after China slams Fed’s move
So President Obama has been making business deals in India. No wonder capitalism gets a bad rap, if that’s how it works. I think it’s called crony capitalism when deals are made on the basis of connections.
He’s certainly not the first politician to do this. The last two governors of Michigan, one from each major party, have also acted as though this is appropriate behavior.
But if businesses can’t make these deals themselves without intervention from politicians (and what legitimate consideration could a politician possibly offer to sweeten the deal?) then it would seem that our news media need to be investigating. Maybe new laws and regulations are needed, or maybe bad ones need to be removed. But there is no news that any of that is getting done in the wake of the President’s visit.
I posted the following note in response to the WSJ article, “Bernanke Stands by Fed’s Moves.”
It’s time to retire the dollar as a unit of exchange. Instead, we should institute a new currency called the Bernanke. There is no need to design separate 1-Bernanke, 5-Bernanke, and 20-Bernanke notes. Those numbers are meaningless, anyway. Print the notes without numbers. Prices can be given in units like handfuls — 5 gallons of gas might cost you two fistsful of Bernankes. A car might cost you a hundred bushels of Bernankes. It doesn’t really matter, since they will be basically worthless.
A comment I posted in response to the WSJ article, “Geithner’s Push Opposed by APEC.“
This can’t be right. I thought George W. Bush was the one who engaged in a go-it-alone foreign policy, cowboy style, without concern for what our allies thought.
Has anyone ever seen Timmy Geithner and GWB in the same room together?
A problem in academia: Free expression is unregulated:
“It’s free expression, but nobody is walking through, regulating it,” she said. “They’re just letting it happen, and it’s not just racism, but gender, sexuality and religious discrimination.”
URL here.
As James Taranto explains: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the war room!” (I learned about this from Taranto’s Best of the Web Today.)
So far the election results are disappointing in that the polls seem to have been pretty much correct. I haven’t seen any results that knocked pollsters for a loop. It’s best when pollsters err by underestimating the liberal-conservatives, but any kind of messed-up progosis is a cause for joy.
This means voters are telling the truth when pollsters call. That isn’t the sign of a healthy democracy.
I think I may like this guy, even though he says he is a former executive director of the World Bank.
“FT, for the umpteenth time, it was not deregulation it was bad regulation.“