My Book More Relevant Now and Rebranding Democrats
Though the words Conservative and Capitalist are in the title, the booklet is non-political in nature.
If you find my Memo efforts of interest and maybe even challenging , whether you agree or not with what I write and/or post, then consider this a personal appeal to support my effort to raise money for The Wounded Warrior project. Buy my book expressing my thoughts on raising children.
Please make your check for $10.99/copy to Paul Laflamme for a soft cover version and deduct half the cost as a donation to The Wounded Warrior Project. (Add $2.50 for postage and handling.)
If you want a pdf version you can download the cost is $5.99.
Along the lines of something I wrote previously about Conservatives who are so hide bound they are impractical.
They either do not know the concept of 'half a loaf' or if they do, do not believe it. (See 1 below.)
---
Missiles continue to rain down on Israel from Gaza and Netanyahu is conflicted by the upcoming election and responding and possibly starting a wider war.
Various new Jihadist factions are taking advantage of his hesitancy.
The IDF knocked out the Syrian mortar battery which had been sending stray shots into the golan heights after warning Assad.
What is looming is a possible three front attack on Israel from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
If the Arabs think they will hurt Netanyahu's election chances I believe they will have miscalculated as war breaks out again as Israel first defends itself then goes on the offense. Stay tuned. (See 2 below.)
---
Some skinny on Obama's new cabinet. Obama really never relied much on his cabinet except for Treasury, State and Justice Department. (See 3 below.)
---
Marc Faber has been cautious if not downright negative for quite sometime. (See 4 below.)
Meanwhile Mort Zuckerman points to a problem that Obama is unwilling to talk about. Most jobs are producing less income than previously. (See 4a below.)
From an economic standpoint these are critical factors that must get resolved:
a) Government is spending more than it is taking in by way of tax receipts.
b) The Fed, therefore, must monetize this additional spending and that means more printing of money.
c) The cost of living is going to go up for all American families and their income is not growing rapidly enough thus, tax receipts are under pressure and the gap between spending and government income is not likely to close. In fact I suspect it will soon begin to widen.
d) If we do not get our economic house in order, eventually the bond market will demand higher interest rates and at some point American debt may not be considered a safe investment putting pressure on the dollar and then we could begin to experience a surge in inflation.
e) More federal regulations are going to have a very negative effect on corporate profits and psychologically and will continue to place pressure on executive decisions to spend money for capital improvements etc.
f) For these main reasons and some I have not even noted, it is imperative that Congress and Obama come to a resolution regarding a realistic budget that places us on a positive slope towards debt reduction that has teeth.
It appears Obama may wish to muscle Boehner believing that the election gave Obama a mandate to do what he wants to do, ie. raise taxes and not make comparable spending cuts.
Boehner, on the other hand, probably cannot get his members to agree to tax increases, even if they take the form of loophole closings, unless they get contemporary spending cuts. Furthermore, I suspect Republicans will press for a reversal of drastic defense spending cuts preferring entitlement spending be curtailed.
These are the various Gordian Knots that must be resolved.
---
Michael Barone, who was as wrong as I was on the election , does a review. (See 5 below.)
Meanwhile, there is much to commend Stella Paul's article. (See 5a below.)
And then there is the article on soul searching which really nails what happened. (See 5b below.)
---
Last Tuesday the Fat Lady sang but it turn out she sang off key. Stay tuned as the Affordable Health Care Act begins to bite, ie 'Obamascare.' (See 6 below.)
---
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)How We Got Screwed by Non-Voters, Libertarians, and “Principled” Conservatives
Yesterday I wrote that our failure to elect Mitt Romney could not be blamed on the man’s candidacy, as so many are now doing. I blamed the vanity of the country, that they would rather elect a pop-culture icon than a proven, tested leader.
I still stand by that being the primary cause of our defeat, but there is also the disheartening fact that Republican turnout this time around was three million short of John McCain’s numbers in 2008. If those 3 million people had voted in this election, Romney would have won the popular vote, though it is still unlikely that he would have won the electoral vote. So we cannot blame this statistic for his loss.
The only conservatives whom I have heard saying they would stay home on Election Day were Evangelicals who refused to vote for Romney because of his religion. It is likely that the majority of the 3 million who stayed home lived in heavily evangelical states–states Romney won regardless. For that reason, I do not think those three million absent voters cost us the election.
However, what we can blame these non-voters for is the disgraceful fact that Romney lost the popular vote. The popular vote does not elect a president, but it does create a perception. Had those three million Republicans sucked up their sanctimony and gone to the polls, Romney would have won the popular vote, and it would have been a harder case to make that conservatism is a lost cause.
Our loss of the popular vote really damaged perceptions, for it now appears that voters prefer socialism to conservatism, even though the three million voters who stayed home were conservatives.
A more troubling case is that of Florida. Romney lost Florida by a mere 0.7 percentage points. And third-party candidates–by which I mean third-party candidates officially on the ballot and those who received write-in votes–received 0.9 percent of the vote. If those wasted votes (as indeed all third-party votes are a waste) had gone to Romney, he would have won Florida. This still would not have given Romney an electoral victory, but the perception would not have been so damaging.
If it were not for Libertarians and people voting third-party on some mutation of a principle, then there would not currently be as big a perception that conservatism and Libertarianism is so wildly unpopular when the other option is socialism.
At this point I would like to extend a hearty congratulations to Libertarians and non-voting conservatives: my friends, you’ve contributed to your Libertarian and conservative dreams now having no chance of ever being realized.
The Palestinian missile offensive from Gaza was still going strong Sunday night, Nov. 11, after two days and more than 110 rockets . For one, Hamas can’t bring all the Palestinian militias ranged against Israel under a single operational command center contrary to its claim. The most important groups, the Iranian-backed Jihad Islami, the various Salafi extremist factions - some associated with al Qaeda - and the Popular Front all cling to their independence of action. Any Hamas order to hold their fire, if it were given, would be disobeyed. This defiance is eroding Hamas’authority as rulers of Gaza.
Furthermore, Hamas and fellow terrorist group leaders believe Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is undecided about how to proceed in Gaza. They are counting on his being unable to bring himself to order a major military operation to cut them down to size and put a stop to the deadly cycle of a rocket barrage recurring every few days, year after year. And so the shooting goes on.
Military sources report Egyptian military intelligence chief Gen. Mohamed al-Assad entered the scene Sunday, Nov. 11 to try his hand at brokering yet another truce. He has his work cut out - not just to bring the Gaza government and Israel together, but also to line up the rival factions of Gaza in concurrence.
The Egyptian general knows from past experience that the best he can achieve is a tacit, fragile truce to which Hamas and Israel acquiesce silently on the principle of reciprocity: both sides must hold their fire and if the Palestinian go back to violence, the IDF will hit back.
Similar arrangements have rarely held up in the past beyond a few weeks at most. But this time, new elements have crept in. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his government, who until now stood in the wings of military activity, decided Sunday to pledge solidarity with the Palestinian missile jihad against Israel.
After all, the Islamist Hamas movement is dedicated by its charter to Israel’s destruction.
The view in Washington, which is involved in the chase for a truce, is that Haniyeh’s action promises that any ceasefire will be short-lived, measured in days rather than weeks. Gaza’s rulers are convinced they are well placed to exploit the Israeli prime minister’s irresolution as he goes into a campaign for reelection (on Jan. 22, 2013) by turning up the heat on Israel.
But Netanyahu has another kind of pressure to consider. The million-strong constituency of southern Israel may not let him get away with a temporary, fragile stoppage of the rockets that make their lives unbearable. They may make him pay for inaction at the ballot-box.
Netanyahu must also take into consideration that a major IDF operation in Gaza might risk igniting two more war fronts, should Hamas’ allies Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah come to its aid.
Regarding Syria, Israel fired a Tamuz guided missile 4 kilometers into Syria as a warning to Damascus that Israel would not tolerate ordnance from the Syrian civil war continuing to fall on Israeli Golan. It was a warning shot after a shell landed in Moshav Alonei Bashan.
Intelligence sources reveal Damascus sent back through UNDORF peacemakers a message of reassurance that the spillover into Israel would stop. Israel was given to understand that the mortar position responsible for the stray shell landing in the moshav had been silenced.
Military sources note the battery may have been silenced but it was not pulled back. In fact it remains in the same position as before. Therefore, it stands ready to fire in the event of a decision in Damascus to resume firing shells into Israel. Netanyahu is keeping a weather eye on that sector, as well as the Gaza front.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Voting Conspiracy Theories Don’t Check Out
The Internet is filled with rumors that something must have gone terribly wrong in the vote counting for Mitt Romney to have lost. The most common thread begins with pointing out that Romney has received only 58.2 million votes, while even John McCain won 59.9 million votes in 2008. They often don’t mention that Barack Obama’s current vote total is 61.2 million — way down from the 69.5 million he won in 2008.
Before the conspiracy theories get up more of a head of steam, let’s wait for all of the votes to be counted. Washington State has only counted 57 percent of its votes. As of Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, California has over 3 million ballots left to count. Romney will no doubt take between 1 and 1.3 million of those. Douglas Johnson, a fellow at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government in California, says most of what he has seen on the Internet is based on very preliminary returns. He is “confident” that when all the votes are in that Romney will exceed the McCain vote totals of 2008.
That said, it’s clear that the vaunted Romney get-out-the-vote operation — dubbed ORCA — failed to deliver the goods. Blue-collar whites failed to turn out in expected numbers in key swing states, dragging down not just Romney but key Republican Senate candidates. An autopsy of just what went wrong is in order.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Obama’s Next Inner Circle: Who Will Fill the New Cabinet?
With Hillary Clinton and Tim Geithner bowing out, the guessing game has begun. From State and Treasury to the Pentagon, a look at the options—including Republicans.
Speculating on a team for President Obama’s second term is like working a jigsaw puzzle. Move Chief of Staff Jacob Lew to Treasury, which is widely anticipated, and you have to find the right person to fill Lew’s demanding job. As Obama reflects on his choices in the coming weeks, he will move people around within the administration wherever he can, reward loyalists when he can, and recruit a Republican or two to make good on his Election Night promise of reconciliation with the opposition.
“Obama needs to send a signal that what he said with regard to reconciliation is real,” says Republican strategist Brad Blakeman, who served in the Bush White House. “Bringing new people into the cabinet and to the White House provides the president with a new team to fight old battles from a new perspective.”
The top-tier cabinet posts get the most attention—Treasury, State, Defense, and Justice. Treasury seems settled. Early talk has faded about installing Erskine Bowles of Simpson-Bowles deficit-cutting fame. While his appointment would send a strong signal to the markets that Obama is serious about deficit reduction, the Democratic base wouldn’t be happy, and it’s too soon to start an argument with the folks who elected him.
Hillary Clinton says she will stay at State until her successor is confirmed. The two leading candidates are U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rice has taken a hit from her insistence on five Sunday shows days after the attack in Benghazi that it was the result of a spontaneous demonstration, which proved untrue. A Democrat with ties to the White House says: “Obama is feeling feisty. He wants her. She’ll get knocked around (in the Senate-confirmation process), but he thinks she can handle it.”
The intelligence community has taken responsibility for the talking points that Rice repeated, acknowledging they were “stale,” says former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. A report on the matter will be issued next month, and Crowley thinks that’s time enough to draw conclusions. If Obama goes ahead with Rice, that would test the political climate in the new Senate as well. “It’s one thing to hold up a judge, but when there are serious crises in Syria and Iran, holding up a secretary of state is another matter.”
Clinton and Panetta have agreed to stay until their successors are named and a smooth transition is in place. (Olivier Douliery / Corbis)
Rice has her critics and they support Kerry, who many say deserves the top post at State in return for his yeoman service on the Foreign Relations Committee. Appointing Kerry would open up his Senate seat and plunge the administration back into another contested Senate race potentially with freshly defeated Scott Brown, who could suit up for another run. The prospect of that contest would likely bring Gov. Deval Patrick out of the statehouse to hold the seat.
With both Kerry and Rice facing obstacles, a third name popped up in the chattering classes on Thursday: National Security Council adviser Tom Donilon, who could slide into State without a ripple. The problem with Donilon is that Obama likes a big personality in the job, think Clinton and Condi Rice, and Donilon is a behind-the-scenes kind of guy who rarely goes on television.
Leon Panetta is willing to stay on at Defense to shepherd the department through the fiscal cliff, and Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy, is a leading contender to succeed him. There’s never been a woman in that spot, and Flournoy is highly regarded. “She’s brilliant, smart as hell, has deep knowledge across the defense issues—personnel, weapons systems, strategy, she knows how to run the Pentagon, and she’s very well liked,” says a senior Democrat who doesn’t want to be quoted gaming out the president’s choices. Flournoy could also become national security adviser should Donilon move on.
Another contender: former Republican senator Chuck Hagel. Obama really wants to recruit Republicans, but there aren’t many that would be a comfortable fit. GOP Senator Richard Lugar’s name comes up as a likely ambassadorial appointment.
Several cabinet members have signaled their wish to stay in their posts at least for a while. They include Attorney General Eric Holder, who wants to be in place to mark the 50th anniversary of landmark civil-rights legislation passed in the ’60s. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will stay. Friends say that she would like to move over and become attorney general if Holder steps down, the kind of in-house transfer that Obama relishes.
Another contender: former Republican senator Chuck Hagel. Obama really wants to recruit Republicans, but there aren’t many that would be a comfortable fit.
An intriguing name circulating for secretary of energy is John Podesta, founder of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. Clean energy is his passion, and he would bring political smarts along with policy smarts. He was chief of staff during President Clinton’s second term.
Lastly, the Obama campaign staff can probably write their own tickets in the administration. The indefatigable Stephanie Cutter, who defended Obama on the cable news shows, could succeed David Plouffe at the White House should Plouffe leave. Jim Messina, the Obama campaign manager, is a potential contender to become chief of staff, but more likely, says a friend, “he’ll write a book and make a ton of money.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4
Marc Faber: Stocks Could Fall 20% From Peak
By Forrest Jones
)Stock prices could fall by as much as 20 percent from recent highs thanks to President Barack Obama’s re-election, which opens the door to policies hostile to the business community, said Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report.
An Obama victory will allow the president’s healthcare overhaul law take effect, which will herald in the arrival of tax hikes on investment income in the near future.
Meanwhile at the end of this year, tax hikes are scheduled to kick in at the same time as cuts to government spending, a combo known as a fiscal cliff that could send the country sliding into a recession next year if left unchecked by Congress.
Expect a compromise to involve some tax hikes given that Democrats control the White House and the Senate.
“Technically the market was weak already for a couple of months and we are in a downtrend and Mr. Obama’s economic policies are obviously not very good for an economic expansion, and I think businesses — small-business men and even medium-sized businesses — will be very reluctant to hire people given Obamacare,” Faber told Fox Business Network.
“I think what people are also concerned about are increases in capital gains taxes, so they are selling shares ahead of the implementation of these taxes.”
Many investors were expecting a win by Republican candidate Mitt Romney and were caught off guard when Obama won, which helped fuel a post-election selloff in the stock market, Faber added.
“He is not good for business and so stocks are selling off because the stock market is expecting a hard time for corporate profits and essentially economic weakness, which is reflected in a strong bond market and weak stock market,” Faber said.
“I think from the peak, the market will drop at least 20 percent. I think we will revisit the lows of June, the 1,266 on the S&P.”
The S&P 500 is currently trading around 1,390.
Market participants, meanwhile, caution that uncertainty leading up to the cliff will roil markets before, or if, a deal is cut to stave off disaster.
“The re-election of President Obama removes one uncertainty” for investors, economists Paul Ashworth and Paul Dales of Capital Economics wrote in an analysis, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
“But they are none the wiser about if, how and when Congress will deal with the colossal tightening in fiscal policy scheduled to occur early next year.”
4a)Zuckerman to WSJ: US Shifting Toward 'Part-Time, Low-Wage Work Force'
By Forrest Jones
The U.S. economy is changing for the worse by becoming more reliant on part-time workers, said Mort Zuckerman, chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy added 171,000 jobs in October, well above market forecasts for a gain of around 125,000.
In September, The U.S. economy added a net 114,000 jobs in September, though total employment rose by 873,000, largely due to a surge in part-time workers.
"For the first time, the U.S. economy has shifted in the direction of a part-time, low-wage work force," Zuckerman wrote in a Op-Ed appearing in The Wall Street Journal.
"The number of Americans now working part time has soared to 8.3 million — up 313,000 in the past two months alone."
The surge in demand for part-time workers reflects a lack of faith among businesses of all sizes.
"With economic growth declining or stagnant for quarter after quarter, many companies feel it is too risky to take on people full time."
The unemployment officially stood at 7.9 percent in October, much higher than pre-recession levels, but when factoring in part-time workers hoping for full-time work, the rate jumps to 14.6 percent.
Add to that, most new jobs involve low-wage positions and not the higher-paying value-added jobs the country needs to create.
In other words, the economy needs to add more finance, insurance and real-estate jobs and less food servers and waiters and waitresses.
"This underscores the difference between job quantity and job quality. When low-wage jobs are growing in number, mid-wage jobs are disappearing and higher-wage jobs are paying more, the result is a hollowed-out middle class," Zuckerman wrote.
"Looking ahead, the industries expected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to add the most jobs by 2020 — healthcare, social assistance and retail — are notorious for low-wage and insecure work. Many don't offer even minimum wage or overtime protection."
Other experts point out that even though monthly jobs reports are improving, they are nowhere near the rate needed for sustained improvement.
"Unfortunately the economy has close to 8 percent unemployment and to bring that down to 6 percent over 3 years you would have to create about 350,000 jobs a month," Peter Morici, a professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, told Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.
Revisions to previous jobs reports are also too miniscule to reflect sustained improvement in the labor market.
"No matter what number you take for the last several months — up, down, in between, first, third or seventh revisions — they all show too few jobs being created given the kind of fixe we are in and that the policies we are pursuing just don't work."
Other experts point out that presidential campaigns are hiring part-time workers to drum up support for President Barack Obama and his GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, which would account for the bump up in recent jobs reports.
"We have observed a large rise in part-time employment, which arguably hints of the sort of temporary, part-time hiring that is often associated with political campaigns," Joseph LaVorgna, an economist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note.
"In addition, we also observed a large +368k increase in employment of 20 to 24 year olds, arguably the demographic most likely to take part working on political campaigns. Indeed, we should note this was the second largest monthly increase in the history of this series." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)Obama Wins by Going Negative and Turning Out Base
Lukewarm. That's the feeling I get from the election numbers.
Turnout was apparently down, at least as a percentage of eligible voters. The president was re-elected by a reduced margin. The challenger didn't inspire the turnout surge he needed.
Every re-elected president since Andrew Jackson has won with an increased popular vote percentage. Barack Obama didn't. He won 53 percent to 46 percent in 2008. His numbers as I write are 50 percent to 48 percent over Mitt Romney. That could go up to 51 percent to 48 percent when California finishes its count, which took five weeks in 2008.
Obama owes most of his electoral vote majority of 332 to negative campaigning. His strategists barraged the target states of Florida, Ohio and Virginia with attack ads against Romney for months.
The ads took a toll. Preliminary figures show that outside the eight clear target states, Obama's percentage declined by 2.8 points. In the firewall states, it was down by only 1.4 points and in five other target states by only 2.1 points.
That enabled him to win those three firewall states by a total of about 250,000 votes. A 2.8 percent swing everywhere would have left him narrowly ahead in the popular vote and with 290 electoral votes.
That would have been similar to the 286 electoral votes George W. Bush won when he was re-elected by 51 percent to 48 percent. But turnout that year was sharply up, from 105 million in 2000 to 122 million in 2004. Turnout rose to 131 million in 2008. It looks to be about 129 million this year.
Examination of county election results suggests that the Obama organization did an excellent job of increasing black voter turnout in the central cities and Southern rural areas in the target states. It also did a great job of turning out Hispanics in metro Denver and Las Vegas, and non-Cuban Hispanics in Miami-Dade County and Osceola and Orange Counties around Disney World in Florida.
Blacks are unlikely to record larger margins for Democrats ever again. But the increased Hispanic margin for Obama poses a serious challenge to Republicans in years ahead.
The Obamaites were less successful in making gains in university counties in the target states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Virginia. Under-30 voter support for Obama declined from 66 percent to 32 percent in 2008 to 60 percent to 37 percent in 2012.
This was enough for Obama to win, though he trailed among over-30s by two points after carrying them by one point in 2008. Will the Millennials stay Democratic? The baby boomers cast equal numbers of votes for George McGovern and Richard Nixon in 1972, while their elders favored Nixon by nearly 2-1. But this year, boomers (now age 45 to 64) backed Romney. Youthful political attitudes don't always endure.
Currently, Millennials are hard-pressed to find jobs and heavy with college loan debt, and Obamacare leaves them subsidizing their elders. A generation that likes to create its own world is not in sync with policies that treat them as tiny cogs in giant machines. White Millennials backed Romney by 52 percent to 44 percent.
Then consider the results for the House of Representatives. Not many people split their tickets these days, but the discontented voters who re-elected a Democratic president also returned a Republican House, probably by a similar popular vote margin.
There's an interesting contrast here with 1996. Then, a Democratic president was re-elected by a wider margin, while House Republicans held onto their majority by just a few seats.
This year, the Democratic president was re-elected with a smaller majority, while House Republicans have won or are leading in 235 districts, the most they held between 1994 and 2006. Based on the latest count, they lost only seven seats, even though Democratic redistricting plans cost them 11 seats in California, Illinois and Maryland.
This despite the fact that almost every House Republican supported Paul Ryan's Medicare reforms, which were supposed to cost Republicans votes -- but didn't when they had a chance to explain that people over 55 aren't affected and that Obamacare cut $716 billion from Medicare.
So Obama owes most of his victory margin to negative personal campaigning, while Republicans held the House despite -- or because of -- their opposition to big-government policies.
The president claims a mandate because, as he said in 2009, "I won." But Speaker John Boehner has some basis for claiming a mandate, too, as the fiscal cliff negotiations begin.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner (www.washingtonexaminer.com), is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
The Democrats are masters of political language, and as you may have noticed, they just won. Basically, they have two tricks. They concoct a simple negative label for anything they want to defeat and then relentlessly shriek it in unison. You know the drill: "racist," "homophobe," "bigot," "right-wing lunatic," etc.
Then, they sanctify with positive language whatever lunacy they're in the mood to shove down our throats today. Consider the irrefutable beatific glow of "economic justice" and "social justice." Once something is defined as "justice," you're automatically the bad guy for resisting. What's wrong with you? Don't you want justice?
Thus, tomorrow if we all wake up and discover that Democrats are now demanding that squirrels be allowed to vote in the name of animal justice, you can be sure that in a few years time, squirrels will be voting. After several thousand screeching editorials, marches, rallies, rap songs, videos and Oscar-winning movies starring Tom Hanks as Bushy-tailed Ben, we'll all agree that animal justice is the next great frontier in civil rights and go nuts for squirrels.
So what can we do about it? Now that the regime is firmly entrenched and we've all been downgraded from citizens to dissidents, one of the few weapons that we may have left is our language. How about if we try using it and give them a taste of their own nasty medicine?
To start, my modest proposal is that we rebrand the Democratic Party as the Destructive Party. As you're about to see, this simple device is remarkably effective at changing the dynamics of a conversation. Immediately, the Destructive Party member is put on confused defense while you look benign and wise. Intrigued? Watch how it's done.
DESTRUCTIVE: Well, I guess Rush Limbaugh and all the other right-wing loonies were wrong. Obama crushed Romney just like we said.
YOU: Yeah, you're right. That was a brilliant victory for the Destructive Party.
DESTRUCTIVE: Limbaugh is eating dirt today!...Wait...The what party?
YOU: The Destructive Party. You know. The one that always destroys the economy. As soon as Obama won, the stock market crashed 400 points and 35,000 people were laid off.
DESTRUCTIVE: Come on. That had nothing to do with Obama winning. That's just a few rich employers trying to squeeze more profits by punishing their poor workers.
YOU: Well, that's what the Destructive Party always says, so that's why they always destroy the economy - and a lot of people's lives, too. Great going, Destructives!
Let's try another topic and see how it goes. Here you inject it into the conversation with a known Destructive, in order to mimic the Destructives' policy of politicizing everything.
DESTRUCTIVE: I've decided to put off knee surgery till after my sister's wedding.
YOU: Big mistake. Call your doctor right now and get the surgery on the books.
DESTRUCTIVE: You really think so? What's the hurry?
YOU: Obama and the Destructive Party won! That means ObamaCare is coming and they're about to destroy the best medical care system on the planet.
DESTRUCTIVE: No, they're not. They're not destroying anything; they're giving poor people access to care.
YOU: Then how come 45% of doctors say they're quitting or retiring early? I'm telling you, the Destructives won and they're about to destroy your knee, if you don't move quick. Get a surgeon while there's still a surgeon to get.
And now let's try something really tricky, attempting this gambit with a hot-button social issue.
DESTRUCTIVE: Lucy called from college and she said the kids were celebrating like crazy 'cause gay marriage passed. Isn't it wonderful?
YOU: Well, it's wonderful for Obama and the Destructive Party. It's fabulous for them.
DESTRUCTIVE: The Destructive Party? What on earth are you talking about?
YOU: Hey, didn't you see that Obama got elected by all those millions of single women? And that 43 percent of babies are born to single mothers now, and all those mothers vote for the Destructive Party?
DESTRUCTIVE: So? The Democrats are compassionate.
YOU: The Democrats are destroyers of families, because that means votes for them. Now gay marriage is one more way to destroy families. And Lucy won't think that's so compassionate when she wants to get married and start a family, and nobody's doing families anymore.
Do you see where I'm going with this? We have a simple, single message: Democrats are destructive. They destroy things. Lives, economies, families, health. Our message has the incomparable advantage of being true, while their messages are putrid lies.
The unavoidable fact is that Americans have now voted for tyranny. Millions of us are not ready to submit, but neither are we ready to go on tax strike and get hauled off to jail or to swarm onto the streets and playact revolution.
But maybe we can do what they've done to us for so many years and tactically deploy language against them. It's not comfortable for most of us to aggressively maneuver conversations, but nothing is going to be comfortable now.
And, in the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who's one of those Soviet dissident writers I suddenly find myself fascinated to read, "If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?"
Stella Paul's new ebook is What I Miss About America: Reflections from the Golden Age of Hope and Change, available at Amazon for just $1.99.
Barack Obama ushered in America’s first large-scale experiment in personality-cult politics. The experiment continues apace. Obama got reelected because he enjoys a degree of personal popularity disconnected from his record. No modern president has ever been returned to office with employment figures and right-rack-wrong-track numbers as poor as those Obama has achieved.
Obama couldn’t run on his record, which proved to be no problem—Americans didn’t vote on his record. According to exit polls, 77 percent of voters said the economy is bad and only 25 percent said they’re better off than they were four years ago. But since six in ten voters claimed the economy as their number one issue, it’s clear this election wasn’t about issues at all.
The president’s reelection is not evidence of a new liberal America, but rather of the illogical and confused experience that is infatuation. For multiple reasons, Americans continue to have a crush on Barack Obama even after his universally panned first term. No longer quite head over heels, they’re at the “I know he’s no good for me, but I can change him” phase. Whatever this means, it surely doesn’t suggest conservatives would be wise to move closer to policies that aren’t even popular among Obama supporters.
Why isn’t soul searching underway on the left? When the personality at the center of the cult leaves the stage in four years, Democrats will own his results without the benefit of his appeal. We can’t know quite what a second Obama term will bring, but if his first term is an indication, there’s little reason to expect his party will be crowing. The fiscal cliff is here but a whole landscape of steep drops comes next: the economic cliff (over which lies a possible double-dip recession), the Obamacare cliff (over which lies an unprecedented bureaucratic behemoth), the Iran cliff (over which lies a nuclear bomb), and so on. A precipice in every direction and a president who’s given us no reason to presume he can steer clear. Have Democrats stopped to wonder what initiatives they’ll have to defend when the dust settles in 2016?
Already Obama has signaled he’s continuing policies that don’t meet the moment. There’s the assurance of more taxes, of course. But that’s not all. On Friday, citing ecological concerns, the administration closed off 1.6 million acres of federal land in western states from planned oil shale extraction. An American energy boom lies in wait underground and Obama is determined to keep it there. Abroad, the groundwork is being laid to offer Iran a fanciful “grand bargain” in an effort to halt its work on a nuclear weapon. Think “Russian reset” with fanatical theocrats.
Perhaps Democrats are confident purely because of their stance on social issues. But as a tactical matter (principle and ideology are a different question), is doesn’t make sense for Republicans to fret over the culture and identity wars that have transfixed the left. Gay marriage as a presidential issue is off the table. The November election showed the future of that question lives at the state level, which is both a popular and conservative approach. Obama himself has said he’ll do nothing about it nationally. Multiple polls taken this year show opposition to abortion is at least as high as it’s been in 15 years. By 2016, the new class war will surely have wound down after Americans see that making the “rich pay their fare share” didn’t solve everyone else’s problems and in fact created new ones.
On immigration reform, of course conservatives should act. That was true before Obama’s reelection; it’s now inevitable. In the next four years, serious Republicans will offer policies aiming to give foreign workers a path to citizenship. Leaders like Marco Rubio have already gotten a brilliant head start.
It is in the nature of personality cults to fail at most things beyond generating and disseminating propaganda. This inability is the result of two things. First, the personality’s popularity is not results-driven. Since adoration hasn’t been earned by achievement but by the advent of charisma, why kill yourself trying to get results. Second, few people are willing to candidly critique the personality at the center of the cult, so there is little chance of course correction. None of this bodes well for Barack Obama. And for the country’s sake, let’s hope it’s wrong.
To effect a revolution in American politics, you have to set parameters that successors will be compelled to heed. FDR implemented programs that at least produced identifiable results before revealing their unsustainable flaws. Bill Clinton had no problem declaring the age of big government over because Ronald Reagan had ushered in a prosperous era in which this was so. What part of the Obama agenda will resonate when isolated from the Obama phenomenon? It’s too soon to say, but not too soon wonder.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)On Tuesday of last week the fat lady sang.
Now it’s over.
With the re-election of President Barack Obama, we are now assured that his signature legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), will indeed go into effect.
Having survived a challenge last summer before the United States Supreme Court from 26 states, including Georgia, that the law was unconstitutional, there are no more hurdles for the law to clear.
Like many others, state leaders in Georgia were awaiting the outcome of the Presidential election to decide whether to enact certain provisions of the law. Time has now run out- the PPACA is here and it is the law of the land.
One of the decisions to be made by states is whether to set up their own health insurance exchanges or to let the federal government set up and run the exchanges for them. This decision has to be made soon.
In fact, the deadline for informing the federal government of the state’s intentions related to state-run exchanges is this Friday, November 16th.
Late last week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to Governors informing them that states will have more time- until December 14th, an extra 28 days- to submit details for their state-run exchanges to the federal government.
However, the deadline to inform the federal government of the state’s intentions of running their own exchanges remains November 16th.
If a state fails to establish an exchange by January 1, 2014, the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary will establish and operate an exchange in the state.
Under the PPACA, health insurance exchanges are intended to make the purchasing of insurance more affordable and accessible.
The PPACA creates two different state-based exchanges.
-The American Health Benefit exchange- this will allow U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who do not receive employer based insurance or who do not qualify for public assistance to purchase an individual policy beginning in 2014.
-The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange- this will allow small businesses with up to 100 employees to purchase coverage beginning in 2014, with states having the option of allowing businesses with more than 100 employees to purchase coverage through the SHOP exchange beginning in 2017.
States will have the option of choosing to establish a single exchange serving both individuals and small businesses or they may establish separate exchanges.
Plans sold through an exchange must meet certain requirements and insurers are to offer four levels of coverage that vary based on premiums, out of pocket expenses, benefits beyond the minimum required and a catastrophic coverage plan.
The PPACA survived the Supreme Court challenge last summer by being classified as a tax. Now those companies with over 50 employees who don’t offer insurance coverage will have to pay a tax. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the employer mandate will cost businesses $52 billion in tax penalties from 2014 to 2019.
Critics contend that the cost of these tax penalties will ultimately be borne by workers through lower wages and fewer jobs, shareholders through lower profits and consumers through higher prices.
Of course, individuals without health insurance will be charged a tax as well.
The health insurance exchanges are a big part of the PPACA’s plan to have more Americans covered by health insurance.
Currently, those people at the poverty rate or below are eligible for Medicaid. With the PPACA, states can choose to expand their Medicaid roles to include those between 100% and 138% of the poverty rate.
Persons with incomes between 138% and 400% of the federal poverty rate will be eligible to receive premium subsidies to help them purchase coverage through an exchange. The subsidies will be on a sliding scale with such subsidies intended to limit out of pocket spending.
Critics also point to the cost of these subsidies- estimated to be $450 billion between 2014 and 2019- as harming the nation’s long term fiscal health by encouraging employers to drop coverage and perpetuating an already inequitable tax code.
Yes, the fat lady sang last Tuesday.
But for some reason I don’t think this is really over.
No comments:
Post a Comment