Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institution interviews Dr. Thomas Sowell, noted economist, historian, and philosopher on his new book ‘Basic Economics’ and today’s economic situation and why we are where we are.
The interview is chock full of food for thought.
Thanks to the Hoover Institution for producing this interview, Peter Robinson for asking the questions, and Dr. Sowell for sharing your genius and book, Basic Economics, with us.
Listen to all the reporting and hand wringing over the thought that the new House majority party is out to repeal Obamacare. As though something terrible will happen. Actually, passing Obamacare, or more correctly, shoving it down our throats, is precisely why there is a new majority party in the House. It’s not that Americans would not like improvements in health delivery and health insurance in this country. It’s just that they did not ask for and do not want THIS solution.
The alternative exists that will deal with those ten percent of Americans that don’t have and for some reason do not want health insurance. It will do it without ruining the health insurance industry and the plans for the other 80 or 90 percent of Americans and their employers that are just fine with their current situation and the plans they have. The alternative is not a budget buster. Nor does it take your choice away or make your health care decisions for you. That alternative is H.R. 3400
Unlike Democrat-care, the Republican alternative would not impose fines on workers or employers, require cuts in Medicare, increase taxes, require a new government bureaucracy, require a “government health insurance” option nor add $1 trillion or more to the national debt.
Pulled this out of the archives . . .
At the beginning of President Obama’s speech to the joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2009 a truism was spoken about “comprehensive” (that’s political-speak for government-controlled) health care.
President Obama said “A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session.”
The truism that seems to escape Democrats is that for 65 years, they continue to ignore the will of the people. That socialized medicine is one thing that Americans do not want, and it’s time to move on. If the president really believes what he is saying, then he ought to be confident enough to also say that if his plan does not increase the availability and quality of care and the debt, and does not decrease the cost, then he will scrap his version of health care reform before his term ends and enact H.R. 3400, the Republican alternative.
Regarding President Obama, you have a decision to make. Is he lying about there not being a Republican alternative, or is he that far out of touch that he doesn’t even know it exists? Which one works for you?
Besides, if you take the president at his word, it should be President Obama calling for its repeal. He said he would not sign a health care reform bill if it did not bring down costs or if it increased the debt. By any account, Obamacare has not lived up to what he promised. Do you still trust what President Obama says? It’s a rhetorical question.
The American people already answered that one. And it’s time for a change. H.R. 3400, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, ought to be the course of action to take where actual health care reform (as opposed to deform) is concerned. Whatever comes out of it, it ought to be something that the American people want, not what a bunch of idealogues high on government-run health care want. An idea that has been rejected routinely for 65 years.
Actually, it is considered censorship here too, although the political Left will disagree. Freedom, especially freedom of the press and freedom of speech has been diminished in Hungary.
Hungary’s recently elected right-wing government has introduced a law demanding — under threat of fines and even shut-down — that news sources be “fair and balanced,” to borrow a phrase from a US news network.
But it doesn’t stop there.
[T]the agency created to determine whether news outlets are in compliance is stacked with political allies of the prime minister and would essentially have the freedom to punish news outlets as it sees fit.
The EU gets it and does not approve. Brings into question the notion that Hungary is not representative of the EU.
The law has raised concerns among Hungary’s European Union partner countries, particularly given that the country will assume the EU’s rotating presidency on January 1. Germany, in particular, has questioned whether Hungary can now be considered a legitimate representative of European values.
Media included in the law is TV, daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and internet sites. The whole nine yards. What is particularly amazing is that it wasn’t that long ago that Hungary was in the communist bloc where there was no freedom of the press. What are they thinking?
Link: In the Middle of Europe, a Democracy Introduces Press Censorship
Hearken back to 2008. The government’s budget (yeah, they had one back then) was what it was. The debt was what it was also. Since that time, we’ve seen what we were told were ‘bailouts’ for various and sundry items that were going to save the economy from collapse. Instead, what happened was that the size of government grew.
Now, the president’s Deficit Commission dutifully omitted the part about going back to where we were in 2008, as if the new bloated government was the new starting point to work on decreasing the debt. They, through this sleight of hand, have assumed the massive growth in government in the last two years as a given, instead of the temporary booster shot that the bailouts were sold to us as being.
Putting aside all the minutiae and detail, the crux of the proposal comes down to two points: capping federal government expenditures at 22% — and eventually 21% — of GDP, and capping revenues at 21% of GDP.For virtually all of the Clinton and G.W. Bush years – and during all the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon years – federal expenditures ranged between 18 and 20% of GDP.
The more important problem is on the revenue side. According to Office of Management and Budget figures, federal revenues have NEVER reached 21% of GDP. In fact, only in Bill Clinton’s final year in office – and during WW II – did revenues even exceed 20% of GDP. During the whole time from 1960 through 2008, federal tax revenues almost always fell between 17 and 19% of GDP, only occasionally rising above 19% (chiefly in Clinton’s second term) or below 17% (G. W. Bush’s first term). Even President Obama’s FY 11 Budget has federal revenues rising only to around 19% of GDP by 2015. So the 21% “cap” represents two full percentage points of GDP above what we have experienced even during historically “high” tax environments.
The next project for the new congress (remember we still don’t have a 2011 budget) is whether or not to raise, I said RAISE, the debt ceiling. That is a process that allows Washington to put us further into debt. It is also the process that will codify and approve the smoke and mirrors of the stimulus spending as being temporary, to being the new bloated state and size of our government as being permanent.
Question is will the American people see it this way? When Obama says we need to cut spending, he means that after increasing spending by orders of magnitude that we should be content with that, keep the size and reach of government where it is, and then we shouldn’t be spending any more.
Which brings us to ‘put our money where your mouth is’ day. Will congress acquiesce to the current size of government and all the bureaucracy that goes with it or will they say NO to raising the debt ceiling? If they approve raising the debt ceiling, will they follow up with the drastic cuts needed so we will not have to raise our grandchildren’s debt again?
Here is something else to ponder. No matter the spin about spending out there, our national debt has now surpassed, or on its way to soon surpass, our GDP. Put simply, we’re spending, and continue to spend, more than we make.
Link: What Am I Missing?
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the hemisphere’s idiot, kept the heat up and bolstered his domestic street creds by refusing to accept Larry Palmer as our U.S. ambassador. Palmer is the White House nominee for ambassador who is awaiting Senate confirmation.
In response, the Obama administration revoked the visa of the Venezuelan ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez who was out of the country at the time. Great move by the State Department and the President. What we have down there in Venezuela, aside from a maniacal communist dictator, is another Kim Jong Ill of the West that is building his political career on hating the United States and supporting all sorts of things that can ultimately bring harm to the United States.
Both sides have shown firmly entrenched stances and no willingness to compromise in the past week as the U.S. government revoked the Venezuelan ambassador’s visa in response to Chavez’s refusal to accept the chosen U.S. envoy.
“Much of the cooperation between the United States and Venezuela in recent years has involved lower-level and lower-profile individuals and agencies than the ambassadors, so the immediate fallout will be limited,” said Shannon O’Neil, a fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
“But this latest round of escalating tensions ends any hope for calmer relations or more expansive cooperation. Demonizing the United States remains too important a political foil for Chavez,” O’Neil said.
This news account does not say what input Sec. of State Clinton had in the decision, but I’m reminded of a James Carville quote, when he said ‘if Hillary gave [Obama] one of her balls, they’d both have two.’ Regardless of how it came about, Obama did the right thing.
After interviewing Sajjad Qaderzadeh in October, two German journalists were jailed and remain in custody. Sajjad is the son of the woman who is sentenced to death by stoning. The German journalists were arrested for ostensibly journalizing without permission.
On this New Years Day, I’m so thankful that I was born in America.
Happy New Year from the land where Freedom and Liberty were born, and need preserving.
I got your Mummers RIGHT HERE!
WPHL-TV 17 has been broadcasting the Mummers Parade for years. That’s good if you live in the Philadelphia TV market area. But there are a few other markets outside of Philly that will also be broadcasting the parade.
From their website . . .
The 2011 Philadelphia Mummers Parade will broadcast in the following markets/channels;
Philadelphia: WPHL 9a – 5p & 8p – 10p
New York: WPIX – will carry 2.5 hrs hours on THIS TV (Channel 11.3) 1p – 3:30p
Maryland, Washington, D.C.: WDCW – will carry the parade on their primary station (Channel 50) 2p – 5p
York, Lebanon, Lancaster, Harrisburg: WPMT – will air the full parade on 43.2 10a-5p
Web Video:
For those outside those markets, web video of the entire Mummers Parade will be available on an hour delay at the following url:
But of course they are. What do you think the whole redistribution of wealth thing is about? In her column this week, Ann Coulter did some research into the giving habits of some prominent democrats and republicans. In her usual witty way, she hits another home run.
LIBERALS GIVE ‘TIL IT HURTS (YOU)
by Ann Coulter
December 29, 2010
Liberals never tire of discussing their own generosity, particularly when demanding that the government take your money by force to fund shiftless government employees overseeing counterproductive government programs.
They seem to have replaced “God” with “Government” in scriptural phrases such as “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)
This week, we’ll take a peek at the charitable giving of these champions of the poor.
In 2009, the Obamas gave 5.9 percent of their income to charity, about the same as they gave in 2006 and 2007. In the eight years before he became president, Obama gave an average of 3.5 percent of his income to charity, upping that to 6.5 percent in 2008.
The Obamas’ charitable giving is equally divided between “hope” and “change.”
George W. Bush gave away more than 10 percent of his income each year he was president, as he did before becoming president.
Thus, in 2005, Obama gave about the same dollar amount to charity as President George Bush did, on an income of $1.7 million — more than twice as much as President Bush’s $735,180. Again in 2006, Bush gave more to charity than Obama on an income one-third smaller than Obama’s.
In the decade before Joe Biden became vice president, the Bidens gave a total — all 10 years combined — of $3,690 to charity, or 0.2 percent of their income. They gave in a decade what most Americans in their tax bracket give in an average year, or about one row of hair plugs.
Of course, even in Biden’s stingiest years, he gave more to charity than Sen. John Kerry did in 1995, which was a big fat goose egg. Kerry did, however, spend half a million dollars on a 17th-century Dutch seascape painting that year, as Peter Schweizer reports in his 2008 book, “Makers and Takers.”
To be fair, 1995 was an off-year for Kerry’s charitable giving. The year before, he gave $2,039 to charity, and the year before that a staggering $175.
He also dropped a $5 bill in the Salvation Army pail and almost didn’t ask for change.
In 1998, Al Gore gave $353 to charity — about a day’s take for a lemonade stand in his neighborhood. That was 10 percent of the national average for charitable giving by people in the $100,000-$200,000 income bracket. Gore was at the very top of that bracket, with an income of $197,729.
When Sen. Ted Kennedy released his tax returns to run for president in the ’70s, they showed that Kennedy gave a bare 1 percent of his income to charity — or, as Schweizer says, “about as much as Kennedy claimed as a write-off on his 50-foot sailing sloop Curragh.” (Cash tips to bartenders and cocktail waitresses are not considered charitable donations.)
The Democratic base gives to charity as their betters do. At the same income, a single mother on welfare is seven times less likely to give to charity than a working poor family that attends religious services.
In 2006 and 2007, John McCain, who files separately from his rich wife, gave 27.3 percent and 28.6 percent of his income to charity.
In 2005, Vice President Cheney gave 77 percent of his income to charity. He also shot a lawyer in the face, which I think should count for something.
In a single year, Schweizer reports, Rush Limbaugh “gave $109,716 to ‘various individuals in need of assistance mainly due to family illnesses,’ $52,898 to ‘children’s case management organizations,’ including ‘various programs to benefit families in need,’ $35,100 for ‘Alzheimer’s community care — day care for families in need,’ and $40,951 for air conditioning units and heaters delivered to troops in Iraq.”
(Rush also once gave $50 to Maxine Waters after mistaking her for a homeless person.)
The only way to pry a liberal from his money is to hold tickertape parades for him, allowing him to boast about his charity in magazines and on TV.
Isn’t that what Jesus instructed in the Sermon on the Mount?
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do … But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:2-4)
In my Bible, that passage is illustrated with a photo of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
At least the hypocrites in the Bible, Redmond, Wash., and Omaha, Neb., who incessantly brag about their charity actually do pony up the money.
Elected Democrats crow about how much they love the poor by demanding overburdened taxpayers fund government redistribution schemes, but can never seem to open their own wallets.
The only evidence we have that Democrats love the poor is that they consistently back policies that will create more of them.
“Great video: head of GOProud interviewed by retarded person on MSNBC,” the Bend Over network. Oh, or rather the Lean Forward network. Filling in on the Ed Shultz show, aka the Mike & Ed show, host Chenk Uygur says Republicans hate gays. If Christopher Barron was black, Chenk Uygur would have said Republicans hate blacks too.
It is fun to watch Christopher Barron, the head of GOProud, make mincemeat out of that stereotypical jerk.
And in the quid pro quo department comes this gem that garnered zero mention in the media. It apparently has been scrubbed from the Department of Labor’s website. If it’s not there, does that mean it never happened? Screenshot below tells the story. Thanks to Red State for their diligence in being the watchdog on this story. You won’t find it anywhere else.
Isn’t it amazing why too, no one has ever questioned what business it is or should be of the government to support labor unions? They are a business just like any other. But, instead of taking them over, the Obama administration is more concerned with helping them grow by advancing The Employee Free Choice Act, now commonly called ‘Card Check.’
And so it was that last week, President Obama met with union leaders and ‘[T]alked about creating good jobs for the American people, and how the partnership with labor unions is essential to growing our economy and continuing our recovery.’
President Obama is the last person on the planet who believes that labor unions create jobs or grow the economy. And that some partnership with them (aside from giving them controlling interest in Chrysler) is essential to growing the economy. Considering that labor unions constitute only 12.3% of the workforce, down from 20.1% in 1983 when comparable records were first available, it is obvious that the president is looking for ways to pay them back for their huge campaign contributions and political activism in support of the Democrat party’s agenda. Labor unions won’t create jobs or continue a so-called recovery in the same way that the stimulus money has not created jobs or stimulated the private sector economy.
Looking at which side Obama’s bread is buttered on, it is revealing to see that union membership rate for public sector (government) workers is 37.4 percent, and only 7.2 percent in the private sector. Is it any wonder why Andy Stern is the most frequent visitor to The White House?
Check this, from Red State . . .
In light of the NLRB’s attacks on business this week, this little piece is striking, as it is the epitome of why the economy still sucks unemployment remains high.
The U.S. Department of Labor, which has become akin to the Ministry of Workers’ Councils, regularly issues a newsletter via e-mail and posts it on the Ministry’s website. This week, among other items touted, was this little gem on union bosses meeting with President Obama to discuss growing the economy and the government-union partnership.
[Screenshot below the fold just in case…well, you know.]
Obama, Solis and Labor Leaders
President Obama, Secretary Solis and key White House staff met last week with a dozen leaders from several national labor unions to discuss ways to work together to strengthen the economy. The group talked about creating good jobs for the American people, and how the partnership with labor unions is essential to growing our economy and continuing our recovery. The president and the labor secretary also highlighted critical steps that the administration has taken and pledged to continue to work closely with organized labor in the coming months on important economic issues.
It’s funny that the administration still refuses to admit that unions are the antithesis of private-sector job creation. In fact, it seems the only way unions create jobs is to buy politicians who steal other people’s money, then reward the union bosses with taxpayer dollars and government-approved discrimination.
Links: