Particularly is this so if the president of the opposition party refuses to lead believing a continued campaign of obduracy will promote his ability to spend with abandon while enhancing the likelihood of the other party's self destruction?
Furthermore, even if the opposition can construct and deliver a coherent message of rational fiscal restraint what is the chance it will have coinage in an environment of imprudent progressivism? After all, once a variety of constituents are formed they must be continually nourished by ever more patronage and political obfuscation.
Big government is assuredly here to stay. A message of smaller government will not obtain. Thus, can the ultimate role of fiscal conservatives make better that which they philosophically oppose because it is inherently unstable and doomed to fail? Not an inspiring challenge.
Where all of this ultimately leads is anyone's guess but it cannot be sustained without dire consequences.
Yes, nations can go bankrupt - witness Greece - and even if not financially certainly morally. As the less productive eventually outnumber the more productive what will sustain the society economically? The numbers just do not work.
Entitlement spending is the root of our fiscal imbalance not the income side of the equation. Logic dictates a growing economy is better able to float more ships than a declining one.
Until that fact becomes evident and drives policy there is little hope for our nation beyond further economic attrition, diminished world influence and moral decay.
Welcome to the New Year! (See 1,1a and 1b below.)
The Poles did what we cannot. How sad. (See 1c below.)
The Poles did what we cannot. How sad. (See 1c below.)
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What was doomed from the beginning has now failed. (See 2 below.)
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Is 'Obamascare' on life support? (See 3 below.)
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Our State Department has always been full of dry rot. Now that Obama has selected Kerry will it be full of beans? (See 4 below.)
For sure unemployment numbers are full of beans! (See 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)Rampage Shootings: It's the Moral Decay of Society, not Guns
It should come as no surprise that the rate of mass shootings at schools and in other public places is increasing. The surge has nothing to do with guns, which have been widely available in the U.S. for years. Gun control laws have been increasing. Instead, there is a direct correlation between the increase in violence and the gradual degradation of morals, ethics and parenting. We are cultivating mental illness in our society.
Parents are allowing television and video games to increasinglybabysit their children, even though both have become full of gratuitous violence. A New York Times study of rampage killers found that six of them were into violent video games. Researchshows that violent video games and television desensitize people and promote aggressive behavior, despite claims to the contrary. A research scientist at the University of Michigan found that television was responsible for 10% of youth violence. Parents today are neglecting their children, and when things don't go well, rushing to get divorced instead of trying to work things out first. Children suffer emotionally when their parents fight or split up. Parents are ignoring their children so much they don't even see the warning signs that something might be wrong. The New York Times study found that 63 of 100 rampage killers had made threats of violence before the event.
Parents are no longer taking their children to church, where they would learn stability and morals. Fewer than 20% of Americans now regularly attend church. Every year there are 3000 fewerchurches across the U.S, even though the population is growing. God and morality have been taken out of the public schools and replaced with political correctness and non-judgmentalism. “Public virtues” are no longer taught in today's schools. People who do not attend church are more likely than churchgoers to have stress and to be less optimistic about the future. When parents split up and there is no father to take the children regularly to church, the children are much less likely to become regular churchgoers than if their mother regularly takes them.
The New York Times study found that at least half the killers in 100 rampage attacks showed signs of serious mental health problems. 48 killers were formally diagnosed with mental illness, often schizophrenia. The mentally ill used to be kept in hospitals, where they were not a danger to others. Beginning in the 1950s in California, the ACLU successfully filed lawsuits to take the mentally ill out of hospitals, known as “deinstitutionalization.” By the 1980s, most state-run mental health hospitals had closed.
Now, most of the mentally ill are out on the streets or in prison. The laws have been changed to state that the mentally ill cannot be hospitalized until they've already attacked someone. As a result, more mentally ill people are incarcerated than in hospitals, with the seriously mentally ill three times more likely to end up behind bars than hospitalized. More than half of all people in prison report that they have mental health problems, and more than 40 percent of the seriously mentally ill have been in jail or prison. A study at the University of South Florida found that the highest users of criminal justice and mental health services were 97 people who had been arrested 2,200 times. It is ludicrous that those 97 people are not contained for their safety and others in mental health hospitals.
The 22-year old Oregon shopping mall gunman who killed two people earlier this week is sadly typical of the rampage murderers the decay of society has spawned. He had this written on his Facebook page, "I'm the conductor of my choo choo train. I may be young but I have lived one crazy life so far." One of his friends said he raised himself; his mother died at childbirth, he never met his father, and he left his aunt's home at age 14.
The left will use the high level of emotion stirred up by this past week's two rampage killings to push through new gun control laws. Liberal New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called upon President Obama to enact tougher gun control laws immediately after Friday's mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. Yet demanding more gun control laws will not solve anything. Gun control advocates have already increased the number of laws around the country requiring background checks, waiting periods for purchases, and tracking of firearms. Many of the rampage killers obtained guns illegally. If they can't obtain guns, deranged individuals will find other ways to commit mass murders – by setting fires, making bombs or running people over with vehicles. One day after the shootings in Connecticut, a man in Beijing stabbed 22 primary school students with a knife.
The left should not be allowed to dominate the dialogue after these tragic events with a red herring argument for gun control, in order to sneakily distract Americans from blaming them for what they have wrought. Americans who believe in traditional values must speak up and denounce the degradation of society's morals as the root of the problem behind these rampages, or the tragedies will continue to escalate.1a)Is the growing federal debt a looming attack similar to Pearl Harbor? Will Obamanomics lead to the empowerment of the rich and poor, at the expense of the middle class? Find out on this Trifecta.
1b)The Failures of Democracy (an Ode to Aristides)
By Jeremy Egerer
Oh, what America could do with an Aristides of Athens!
Of humble birth but possessing a virtuous spirit, Aristides championed order and decency against both foreigner and citizen, rich and poor alike. His triumphs too numerous to mention in so short a space, it must suffice to recall a few: how he exposed corruption in government -- however close to him it lay; his defense of due process not simply for friends, but for criminals and enemies; his admirable conduct on the field of battle, defending Greece against the barbaric Persians; his forfeiture of pride in relinquishing the generalship to a more capable commander, and the subsequent unity of Athens in a turbulent time. Athens had her share of honorable men, for which she has become well-known; but above them all in the pursuit of justice, perhaps, was Aristides (see Plutarch's eloquent account).
But like Israel slew her prophets when the light of virtue shone upon her people's darkened and wicked hearts (Matt 23:29-39; 2 Chron 24:20-22), Athens soon came to regret the presence of Aristides, the jealousies of men being aroused by possession not just of wealth and fame, but of all good things visible and invisible. Themistocles, an archenemy from youth, an opponent born amidst a youthful romantic rivalry, having the popular support of the poor but the character of the disreputable, soon kindled the public's jealousy and called for Aristides's banishment. Such an exile served as a popular punishment for those whom Athens believed possessive of too much greatness for a democratic state. And perhaps, regarding Aristides, Athens was right, though not in the way they believed -- for Athens was in Aristides's case undeserving.
Plutarch records that Athens gathered to discuss the matter, and votes were recorded on potsherds. Aristides, being a humble man and living in righteous poverty, was mistaken by an illiterate man for a common citizen and was asked in a brutish manner to spell "Aristides" upon the sherd -- an open vote for banishment. Taken aback by such a request, Aristides asked what exactly the citizen had suffered at the hands of such a man. "Nothing," the ignorant man replied. "I'm just tired of hearing him called 'The Just' all the time." Then, turning the other cheek as Jesus Christ would ages later command, the hero kept his peace and wrote his own name upon the sherd.
And so was Aristides banished from Athens -- noble, just, humble Aristides. And let us be honest about the matter: how many faithful, how many virtuous, how many heroic leaders has democracy so dishonorably discarded? How many times has she chosen the swindler, the ignorant, and the unjust instead of the Godly and the righteous? Democracy isn't known for wisdom, or for continuity of thought; it doesn't always formulate the most noble of plans, and then perpetuate them across generations; it doesn't defend any particular rights, other than majority preference. Rather, democracy oftentimes smothers genius -- and other times, impatiently complaining that her desires haven't been met, abandons the most meritorious of people and plans.
We have all met men of ignoble character and horrible taste; could we sanely expect that a democracy, a composition of the imperfect characters and fickle tastes of men, could without frequency commit the objectionable? A quick glance at our most popular artists, filthy singing prostitutes and practically illiterate thugs, should easily grant an answer contrary to American pride: that our tastes are too often deplorable.
Wherein, then, does democracy's value lie? It exists neither in good taste nor in perpetuity of thought, nor in morality itself, but rather in knowing that the structure of every government is laid upon the foundation of the unwilling (mankind being aware, however uncomfortably, that without subjection of evil to righteousness, and the foolish to the wise, order cannot triumph over chaos), in its relatively superior ability to prevent the abuse of the majority. It makes a million monarchs within a single territory, and dilutes will and impulse amongst the masses.
Yet history records that even in its defense of the majority, democracy -- a spirit of liberty subject like mortal man to birth, strength, decay, and death, to the changing tides of necessity and constitution, to man's strengths and weaknesses alike -- must live and die, tower and crumble. Democracy shines brightly when men are good, when in vigilance they educate themselves and their children of unalienable duties and the pursuit of honor, when they shun coveteousness and by self-restraint obey the laws of nature and of nature's God. Locke never spoke more correctly than when he defended not simply majority rule, but majority rule according to the defense of unalienable rights, the punishment of true evil, and the reward of true good (Second Treatise of Government, sect. 135-136). But supposing by democracy injustice prevails; supposing the populace become lenient upon evils, because they cannot bear their own punishment; supposing they vote in ignorance, and legislate absurdities, punishing the righteous and driving away the productive, eventually the cries of both the just and unjust ring so loudly that the reins of government are taken from the people, and order is established by an immensely preferable dictator. When the majority cannot protect themselves from their own depravities, democracy is no longer viable.
The democratic supremacy of an evil populace dwindles in an hourglass passing not sand, but blood. For noble Plato spoke correctly when he said there must exist justice within even bands of thieves, or else they could not remain a band, the peace of the unjust being ever fragile, whatever they call it, even in momentary unity against goodness. And when national factions abound, and every citizen's eyes are turned upon his neighbor's wealth, and the anonymity of a large state obscures the confiscatory hand, then there exists no justice even amongst citizen-pirates. And it may truly be said that in those days, when any may be made a victim by the mob, the fear of neighbors surpasses that of the despot, and a nominal liberty takes the official form of tyranny. As the prophet Habakkuk once spoke to Israel, the law is powerless, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore perverse judgment proceeds.
Perhaps it is time to kiss democracy goodbye -- a solemn farewell to an aged lover -- and expect that in her place will arrive a young, cruel, cold mistress, alive not with the beauty and innocence of youth, but with its most ignorant, ugliest, unbridled passions. For such is the fate of the ignorant, the un-Godly, the unjust, the swindlers, the covetous; men whose minds are possessed in selfishness and vanity, who neglect the highest passions for the baser. For if America's passion is for football and not her Creator; if she reads Fifty Shades of Grey instead of the Bible or Locke or Edwards; if she rallies for free contraception and mocks chastity, and riots for welfare and denies property rights; if she defends divorce more than she cherishes fidelity; if she gives her children to the state instead of raising them herself; if she prefers debt to solvency, liberty in vice to duty and virtue, hating even those who refuse approval of her misdeeds, then democracy is bidding us goodbye. The only question which remains is how long she will stay.
And Aristides, if nobility be the reason you were exiled, then may we be shown the door alongside you.
Jeremy Egerer is a convert to biblical conservatism from radical liberalism and the editor of the Seattle website www.americanclarity.com.
1c)Leszek Balcerowicz: The Anti-Bernanke
Leszek Balcerowicz, the man who saved Poland's economy, on America's mistakes and the better way to heal from a financial crisis.
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
As an economic crisis manager, Leszek Balcerowicz has few peers. When communism fell in Europe, he pioneered "shock therapy" to slay hyperinflation and build a free market. In the late 1990s, he jammed a debt ceiling into his country's constitution, handcuffing future free spenders. When he was central-bank governor from 2001 to 2007, his hard-money policies avoided a credit boom and likely bust.
Poland was the only country in the European Union to avoid recession in 2009 and has been the fastest-growing EU economy since. Mr. Balcerowicz dwells little on this achievement. He sounds too busy in "battle"—his word—against bad policy.
"Most problems are the result of bad politics," he says. "In a democracy, you have lots of pressure groups to expand the state for reasons of money, ideology, etc. Even if they are angels in the government, which is not the case, if there is not a counterbalance in the form of proponents of limited government, then there will be a shift toward more statism and ultimately into stagnation and crisis."
Looking around the world, there is no shortage of questionable policies. A series of bailouts for Greece and others has saved the euro, but who knows for how long. EU leaders closed their summit in Brussels on Friday by deferring hard decisions on entrenching fiscal discipline and pro-growth policies. Across the Atlantic, Washington looks no closer to a "fiscal cliff" deal. And the Federal Reserve on Wednesday made a fourth foray into "quantitative easing" to keep real interest rates low by buying bonds and printing money.
As a former central banker, Mr. Balcerowicz struggles to find the appropriate word for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's latest invention: "Unprecedented," "a complete anathema," "more uncharted waters." He says such "unconventional" measures trap economies in an unvirtuous cycle. Bankers expect lower interest rates to spur growth. When that fails, as in Japan, they have no choice but to stick with easing.
"While the benefits of non-conventional [monetary] policies are short lived, the costs grow with time," he says. "The longer you practice these sorts of policies, the more difficult it is to exit it. Japan is trapped." Anemic Japan is the prime example, but now the U.S., Britain and potentially the European Central Bank are on the same road.
If he were in Mr. Bernanke's shoes, Mr. Balcerowicz says he'd rethink the link between easy money and economic growth. Over time, he says, lower interest rates and money printing presses harm the economy—though not necessarily or primarily through higher inflation.
First, Bernanke-style policies "weaken incentives for politicians to pursue structural reforms, including fiscal reforms," he says. "They can maintain large deficits at low current rates." It indulges the preference of many Western politicians for stimulus spending. It means they don't have to grapple as seriously with difficult choices, say, on Medicare.
Another unappreciated consequence of easy money, according to Mr. Balcerowicz, is the easing of pressure on the private economy to restructure. With low interest rates, large companies "can just refinance their loans," he says. Banks are happy to go along. Adjustments are delayed, markets distorted.
By his reading, the increasingly politicized Fed has in turn warped America's political discourse. The Lehman collapse did help clean up the financial sector, but not the government. Mr. Balcerowicz marvels that federal spending is still much higher than before the crisis, which isn't the case in Europe. "The greatest neglect in the U.S. is fiscal," he says. The dollar lets the U.S. "get a lot of cheap financing to finance bad policies," which is "dangerous to the world and perhaps dangerous to the U.S."
The Fed model is spreading. Earlier this fall, the European Central Bank announced an equally unprecedented plan to buy the bonds of distressed euro-zone countries. The bank, in essence, said it was willing to print any amount of euros to save the single currency.
Mr. Balcerowicz sides with the head of Germany's Bundesbank, the sole dissenter on the ECB board to the bond-buying scheme. He says it violates EU treaties. "And second, when the Fed is printing money, it is not buying bonds of distressed states like California—it's more general, it's spreading it," he says. "The ECB is engaging in regional policy. I don't think you can justify this."
"So they know better," says Mr. Balcerowicz, about the latest fads in central banking. "Risk premiums are too high—according to them! They are above the judgments of the markets. I remember this from socialism: 'We know better!'"
Mr. Balcerowicz, who is 65, was raised in a state-planned Poland. He got a doctorate in economics, worked briefly at the Communist Party's Institute of Marxism-Leninism, and advised the Solidarity trade union before the imposition of martial law in 1981. He came to prominence in 1989 as the father of the "Balcerowicz Plan." Overnight, prices were freed, subsidies were slashed and the zloty currency was made convertible. It was harsh medicine, but the Polish economy recovered faster than more gradual reformers in the old Soviet bloc.
Shock or no, Mr. Balcerowicz remains adamant that fixes are best implemented as quickly as possible. Europe's PIGS—Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain—moved slowly. By contrast, Mr. Balcerowicz offers the BELLs: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
These EU countries went through a credit boom-bust after 2009. Their economies tanked, Latvia's alone by nearly 20% that year. Denied EU bailouts, these governments were forced to adopt harsher measures than Greece. Public spending was slashed, including for government salaries. The adjustment hurt but recovery came by 2010. The BELL GDP growth curves are V-shaped. The PIGS decline was less steep, but prolonged and worse over time.
The systemic changes in the BELLs took a while to work, yet Mr. Balcerowicz says the radical approach has another, short-run benefit. He calls it the "confidence effect." When markets saw governments implement the reforms, their borrowing costs dropped fast, while the yields for the PIGS kept rising.
Greece focused on raising taxes, putting off expenditure cuts. They got it backward, says Mr. Balcerowicz. "If you reduce through reform current spending, which is too excessive, you are far more likely to be successful with fiscal consolidation than if you increase taxes, which are already too high."
He adds: "Somehow the impression for many people is that increasing taxes is correct and reducing spending is incorrect. It is ideologically loaded." This applies in Greece, most of Europe and the current debate in the U.S.
During his various stints in government in Poland, the name Balcerowicz was often a curse word. In the 1990s, he was twice deputy prime minister and led the Freedom Union party. As a pol, his cool and abrasive style won him little love and cost him votes, even as his policies worked. At the central bank, he took lots of political heat for his tight monetary policy and wasn't asked to stay on after his term ended in 2007.
Mr. Balcerowicz admits he was an easy scapegoat. "People tend to personalize reforms. I don't mind. I take responsibility for the reforms I launched." He says he "understands politicians when they give in [on reform], but I do not accept it." It's up to the proponents of the free market to fight for their ideas and make politicians aware of the electoral cost of not reforming.
On bailouts, Mr. Balcerowicz strikes an agnostic note. They can mitigate a crisis—as long as they don't reduce the pressure to reform. The BELL vs. PIGS comparison suggests the bailouts have slowed reform, but he notes recent movement in southern Europe to deregulate labor markets, privatize and cut spending—in other words, serious steps to spur growth.
"Once the euro has been created," Mr. Balcerowicz says, "it's worth keeping it." The single currency is no different than the gold standard, "which worked pretty well," he says. In both cases, member countries have to keep their budget deficits in check and labor markets flexible to stay competitive. Which makes him cautiously optimistic on the euro.
"It's important to remember that six, eight, 10 years ago Germany was like Italy, and it reformed," he says. Before Berlin pushed through an overhaul of the welfare state, Germany was called the "sick man of Europe." "There are no European solutions for the Italians' problem. But there are Italian solutions. Not bailouts, but better policies."
Why do some countries change for the better in a crisis and others don't? Mr. Balcerowicz puts the "popular interpretation of the root causes" of the crisis high on the list.
"There is a lot of intellectual confusion," he says. "For example, the financial crisis has happened in the financial sector. Therefore the reason for the crisis must be something in the financial sector. Sounds logical, but it's not. It's like saying the reason you sneeze through your nose is your nose."
The markets didn't "fail" but were distorted by bad policies. He mentions "too big to fail," the Fed's easy money, Fannie Mae FNMA 0.00% and the housing boom. Those are the hard explanations. "Many people like cheap moralizing," he says. "What a pleasant feeling to condemn greed. It's popular."
"Generally in the West, intellectuals like to blame the markets," he says. "There is a widespread belief that crises occur in capitalism mostly. The word crisis is associated with the word capitalism. While if you look in a comparative way, you see that the largest economic and also human catastrophes happen in non-market systems, when there's a heavy concentration of political power—Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge, many other cases."
Going back to the 19th century, industrializing economies recovered best after a crisis with no or limited intervention. Yet Keynesians continue to insist that only the state can compensate for the flaws of the market, he says.
"This idea that markets tend to fall into self-perpetuating crises and only wise government can extract the country out of this crisis implicitly assumes that you have two kinds of people. Normal people who are operating in the markets, and better people who work for the state. They deny human nature."
Gathering the essays for his new collection, "Discovering Freedom," Mr. Balcerowicz realized that "you don't need to read modern economists" to understand what's happening today. Hume, Smith, Hayek and Tocqueville are all there. He loves Madison's "angels" quote: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
This Polish academic sounds like he might not feel out of place at a U.S. tea party rally. He takes to the idea.
"Their essence is very good. Liberal media try to demonize them, but their instincts are good. Limited government. This is classic. This is James Madison. This is ultra-American! Absolutely."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)US-Iranian nuclear talks fail. Iran has plutonium for 24 Nagasaki-type bombs
The secret, one-on-one nuclear negotiations President Barack Obama launched with Iran have run into a blank wall. A senior Iranian team member, Mostafa Dolatyar, said Friday, Dec. 14 in New Delhi that the diplomatic process for solving the nuclear issue with Iran was in effect going nowhere, because the demand that Tehran halt its 20-percent enrichment of uranium “doesn’t make sense.”
He went on to say: “They [the world powers] have made certain connections with purely technical issues and something purely political. In so far as this is the mentality and this is the approach from 5 + 1 (the Six World Powers) - or whatever else you call it - definitely there is no end for this game.”
The phrase “or whatever else you call it” may be taken as Iran’s first veiled reference to the direct talks with Washington that were launched Dec. 1 in the Swiss town of Lausanne.
Mostafa Dolatyar is not just a faceless official. He is head of the Iranian foreign ministry’s think tank, the Institute for Political and International Studies, as well as a senior member of the Iranian team facing US negotiators in Lausanne. His remarks were undoubtedly authorized by the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who, through him, posted a message to Washington: If the enrichment suspension demand stands, the game’s over.
After more than 15 years of on-and-off, largely aimless, nuclear diplomacy with world powers and evasive tactics with the UN nuclear agency, Tehran is for the first time showing signs of impatience and not just is usual disdain. This is because two things have changed:
1. For all those years, Tehran availed itself of every diplomatic opening for protracted bargaining about its nuclear program for the sake of buying time, free of pressure, to push that program forward. Now, the Iranians are telling the US and Europe that they have arrived at their destination. For them, time is no longer of essence, as it may be for the West.
2. The second development was revealed on Dec. 5 by The Wall Street Journal in a short leader captioned “From Bushehr to the Bomb.” This revelation was not picked up by any other Western - or even Israeli - publication despite its sensational nature.
Drawing on US intelligence sources, the paper suggested that the withdrawal of 136 fuel rods from Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr in mid-October – on the pretext of wandering metal bolts – and the rods’ return in the last week of November “could have been a test run for the Iranians should they decide to reprocess those rods into weapons-grade plutonium.”
American, Russian and Israeli nuclear experts have always maintained that the technology for extracting plutonium from fuel rods was too expensive and complicated to be practical - and certainly beyond Iran’s capacity.
The Wall Street Journal begs to differ: “…experts tell us that the rapid extraction of weapons-usable plutonium from spent fuel rods is a straightforward process that can be preformed in a fairly small (and easily secreted) space.”
This means that Tehran can easily manufacture plutonium bombs without building a large plutonium reactor like the one under construction at Arak.
The paper goes on to reveal that, by this method, Iran could extract 220 pounds (just under 100 kilos) of plutonium, enough to produce as many as “24 Nagasaki-type bombs” – a reference to the World War II bombing of the Japanese city on Aug. 9, 1945.
One of those bombs – nicknamed “Fat Man” (after Winston Churchill) – is equal to 20 kilotons.
Military and intelligence sources note that if this disclosure represents the true state of Iran’s nuclear program, the game really is over. The diplomacy-cum-sanctions policy pursued by the West to force Iran to abandon enrichment and shut down its underground facility in Fordo has become irrelevant. So, too, have the red lines Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu drew so graphically before the UN Assembly on September 27.
What Mostafa Dolatyar was saying in effect is that Iran has outplayed its adversaries up to the game’s finishing line.
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3)Health Care Law Is Still Fighting For Its Life
A Commentary By Scott Rasmussen
Having survived the Supreme Court and the November elections, President Obama's health care law now faces an even bigger hurdle: the reality of making it work.
Implementation of any massive new program requires cooperation, something the health care law can't count on. Overall, just 46 percent of voters nationwide have a favorable opinion of the law, while 49 percent offer a negative view. The reasons are pretty much the same as they've been all along. Just 22 percent believe the law will reduce the cost of health care. Forty-eight percent believe costs will go up. By similar margins, voters expect the law to hurt the quality of care and drive up the federal budget deficit.
Overall, just 28 percent believe the health care system will get better over the coming years, while 50 percent expect the opposite. Most Democrats believe things will get better, but few Republicans or unaffiliated voters agree.
This skepticism might not matter except for the fact that the law counts on the cooperation of states to implement the federal plan. States were called upon to set up so-called health insurance exchanges that the president envisioned as a one-stop shopping place for health insurance products. However, the Dec. 14 deadline for states to sign up showed that fewer than half the states are willing to go along.
The federal government will have to run the exchanges in those states, a task few believe it is prepared to handle. The timetable is challenging, to say the least. These exchanges must be ready to accept patients by Oct. 1, 2013, and be fully operational by Jan. 1, 2014. If that's not enough, the federal exchanges will need to rely on cooperation from state agencies in places that have officially refused to cooperate.
If the president's health care law were popular, this kind of state-by-state resistance would provoke outrage and be dangerous to the politicians involved. But it has not. Only a third of voters nationwide even know whether their state has decided to open an exchange.
Fewer than half (46 percent) of the nation's voters want their state to set up an exchange, and voters are evenly divided between whether they want their governor to support or oppose implementation. Generally speaking, Democrats want their governors to be supportive; Republicans want their governors to resist; and unaffiliated voters are divided.
Last March, I wrote that the health care law was doomed regardless of what the Supreme Court decided. That still appears to be the case. With the re-election of the president and a Democratic Senate, formal repeal is not going to happen. However, the realities of implementation will provide many avenues for ongoing resistance. Some will be financial, as businesses and others evaluate their options. Some will be legal, as a number of cases continue to work their way through the courts.
But the biggest challenge is more basic. Voters want more control over their own health care choices than either the status quo or the president's law allows. Voters are OK with the requirement in Obama's plan forcing insurance companies to offer comprehensive coverage, but 74 percent think everyone should also have the right to choose between expensive plans that cover just about every imaginable medical procedure and lower-cost plans that cover a smaller number of procedures.
Giving consumers that kind of choice would be a popular reform. Giving them that kind of control over insurance companies would do more to reign in the cost of medical care than anything else.
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4)Source: Obama has chosen John Kerry as Secretary of State
BY MICHAEL SNEED
President Barack Obama has chosen Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to be the next secretary of state, a source has told Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed.
His replacement as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Sneed source said.
4a)More Phony Employment Numbers
Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) calls the government’s latest jobs and unemployment reports “nonsense numbers.”
There are a number of ongoing problems with the released numbers. For example, the concurrent-seasonal factor adjustments are unstable. The birth-death model adds non-existent jobs each month that are then taken out in the annual downward benchmark revisions. Williams calculates that the job overstatement through November averages 45,000 monthly. In other words, employment gains during 2012 have been overstated by about 500,000 jobs. Another problem is that each month’s jobs number is boosted by downside revision of the previous month’s jobs number. Williams reports that the 146,000 new jobs reported for November “was after a significant downside revision to October’s reporting. Net of prior-period revisions, November’s seasonally-adjusted monthly gain was 97,000.”
Even if we believe the government that 146,000 new jobs materialized during November, that is the amount necessary to stay even with population growth and therefore could not be responsible for reducing the unemployment rate from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent. The reduction is due to how the unemployed are counted.
The 7.7 percent rate is known as the “headline rate.” It is the rate you hear in the news. Its official designation is U.3.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has another official unemployment rate known as U.6.
The difference is that U.3 does not include discouraged workers who are not currently actively seeking a job. (A discouraged worker is a person who has given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found.) The U.6 measure includes workers who have been discouraged for less than one year. The U.6 rate of unemployment is 14.4 percent, about double the headline rate.
The difference is that U.3 does not include discouraged workers who are not currently actively seeking a job. (A discouraged worker is a person who has given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found.) The U.6 measure includes workers who have been discouraged for less than one year. The U.6 rate of unemployment is 14.4 percent, about double the headline rate.
The U.6 rate does not include long-term discouraged workers, those who have been discouraged for more than one year. John Williams estimates this rate and reports the actual rate of unemployment (known as SGS) in November to be 22.9 percent.
In other words, the headline rate of unemployment is one-third the actual rate.
The drop in the November headline rate of unemployment from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent is due to a 20.4 percent increase in the number of short-term discouraged workers in November. In other words, unemployed people rolled out of the U.3 measure into the U.6 measure.
Similarly, a number of short-term discouraged workers roll out of the U.6 measure into Williams’ measure that includes all of the unemployed. Williams reports that “with the continual rollover, the flow of headline workers continues into the short-term discouraged workers (U.6), and from U.6 into long term discouraged worker status (a ShadowStats.com measure), at what has been an accelerating pace. The aggregate November data show an increasing rate of individuals dropping out of the headline (U.3) labor force.” In other words, the headline rate of unemployment can drop even though the unemployed are having a harder time finding jobs.
Similarly, a number of short-term discouraged workers roll out of the U.6 measure into Williams’ measure that includes all of the unemployed. Williams reports that “with the continual rollover, the flow of headline workers continues into the short-term discouraged workers (U.6), and from U.6 into long term discouraged worker status (a ShadowStats.com measure), at what has been an accelerating pace. The aggregate November data show an increasing rate of individuals dropping out of the headline (U.3) labor force.” In other words, the headline rate of unemployment can drop even though the unemployed are having a harder time finding jobs.
The U.S. government simply lowers the unemployment rate by not counting all of the unemployed. We owe this innovation to the Administration of Bill Clinton. In 1994, the Clinton Administration redefined “discouraged workers” and limited this group to those who are discouraged for less than one year. Those discouraged for more than one year are no longer considered to be in the labor force and ceased to be counted as unemployed.
If the U.S. government will mislead the public about unemployment, it will also
mislead about Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Russia, China and 9/11. The government fits its story to its agenda.
mislead about Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Russia, China and 9/11. The government fits its story to its agenda.
A government that wants to cut the social safety net doesn’t want you to know that the unemployment rate is 22.9 percent. A government that wants to cut the social safety net when between one-fifth and one-fourth of the workforce is out of work looks hard-hearted, mean-spirited and foolish. But if the government reports only one-third of the unemployed and presents that rate as falling, then the government can present its cuts as prudent to avoid falling over a “fiscal cliff.”
If the “free and democratic” Americans cannot even find out what the unemployment rate is, how do they expect to find out about anything?
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