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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (33401)	2/27/2009 11:24:08 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I'm sick of Obama blaming Bush for everything. Message 25448124 When you have nothing to sell you have to demonize.

To: ManyMoose who wrote (33401)	3/9/2009 11:56:06 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Who Pays for Cap and Trade? Hint: They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign. MARCH 9, 2009 Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups. Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program." Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating. The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them). But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast. Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked. Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers. Democrats say they'll allow some of this ocean of new cap-and-trade revenue to trickle back down to the public. In his budget, Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the "making work pay" tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay income taxes. But $400 for individuals and $800 for families still doesn't offset carbon's income raid, especially in states with higher carbon use. All the more so because the Administration is lowballing its cap-and-trade tax estimates. Its stated goal is to reduce emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, which assuming that four-fifths of emissions are covered (excluding agriculture, for instance), works out to about $13 or $14 per ton of CO2. When CBO scored a similar bill last year, it expected prices to start at $23 and rise to $44 by 2018. CBO also projected the total value of the allowances at $902 billion over the first decade, which is some $256 billion more than the Administration's estimate. We asked the White House budget office for the assumptions behind its revenue estimates, but a spokesman said the Administration doesn't have a formal proposal and will work with Congress and "stakeholders" to shape one. We were also pointed to recent comments by Mr. Orszag that he was "sure there will be enough there to finance the things that we have identified" and maybe "additional money" too. In other words, Mr. Obama expects a much larger tax increase than even he is willing to admit. Those "stakeholders" are going to need some very large bribes, starting with the regions that stand to lose the most. Led by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, 15 Senate Democrats have already formed a "gang" demanding that "consumers and workers in all regions of the U.S. are protected from undue hardship." In practice, this would mean corporate welfare for carbon-heavy businesses. And of course Congress is its own "stakeholder." An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would, and when they did Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade rebates would become even smaller. Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class. online.wsj.com

To: ManyMoose who wrote (33401)	4/13/2009 6:49:45 PM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

April 12, 2009 The Parallel Universe of Clinton and Obama By Alicia Colon In 1993, many of the citizens who voted for Obama last year were probably still in grade school. They can be forgiven for not remembering the early years '93-‘94 of the Clinton administration. Their parents, however, have either lapsed memories or are simply simple-minded. I well recall the euphoria at the Clinton inauguration. So many young people excited about having a youngish president who played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show and bravely told the MTV audience whether he wore boxers or briefs. American voters had no particular beef with George H. W. Bush other than he "lied" when he said "read my lips, no new taxes." One of my Democratic sisters admitted that she voted for Clinton because Bush was too old. I tried to empathize with the same political passion of the Clintonites by comparing it with my teenage exhilaration with JFK's election. But that scenario didn't wash because JFK had a background that lent credence to my infatuation. He was a military hero, a Pulitzer Prize winning author (we did not know at the time it was ghost-written), a U.S. Senator with a storybook albeit falsified family life. Clinton on the other hand was the governor of a state that ranked 49th out of 50 states in many important measures. He was a draft dodger who had protested in Russia when he was supposed to be studying in Oxford. The Rhodes Scholar's educational record there was never disclosed and Clinton also had a personal history that sparked rumors of sexual misadventures with various women. Nevertheless, Clinton appealed to the lowest common denominator of the American electorate who came out to vote for the man who promised to improve the economy that was proven not to be as bad as his campaign alleged. Just as Barack Obama's campaign misled the public and ran against his own ultra liberal record, Clinton ran as a centrist and won. Once in office however, his actions exposed his liberal bent and his allegiance to the left wing Democrats who laid low during his campaign. The man who loathed the military immediately cut the defense budget and laid the background for future attacks on the U.S. and its interests. Barack Obama has done the same in spite of the looming threats by Korea and Iran. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed. Clinton treated it as a criminal act rather than a national security threat. It has been argued that this sent a message to terrorists that the U.S. was a paper tiger. In Somalia, President George H. W. Bush had ordered U.S. troops on a mercy mission to assist the U.N. in the distribution of life saving food and medicine. This was largely successful but the region was a hotbed of militant warlord factions and the woefully inept Commander-in-Chief Clinton was in charge of a mission that encountered resistance. U.S. Commander Thomas Montgomery requested gunships and armored vehicles to give his men more security and offensive capability. Defense Secretary Les Aspin refused to send them because he wanted to avoid escalation of U.S. involvement in the region. Does the term Black Hawk Down mean anything to you? Co-president Hillary Clinton decided that she knew best how to raise our children and that we needed universal health care just like the Europeans have. She also decided that we really didn't need to know any of the details of the proposed plan and how much it would cost us. Her surreptitious handling of the health care issue led to the U.S. being sued by health care professionals and cost the U.S. nearly $300,000 in legal fees. The term "Hillarycare" became synonymous with heath care fiasco yet similar socialist programs are looming again in the Obama administration. Bill Clinton campaigned on cutting taxes for the middle class and raising them only on the upper class. The campaign succeeded in promoting class envy but as soon as Clinton became president he broke that promise weeks after taking office. Clinton also had a stimulus package of $60 billion that turned out to be mostly pork for socialist programs. Remember the defunct $64 million inner-city midnight basketball? Clinton's early missteps in governing the country cost the Democrats the control of Congress in 1994 and for the first time in 40 years, the Republicans became the majority party in both houses of the legislature. It would do well to summarize these mistakes and remind the Obama voters what they can look forward to next year. Hopefully Barack Obama will follow Clinton's return to the center under a Republican Congress. Thanks to the mainstream media, the electorate continues to credit the Clinton administration for the economic recovery for which the GOP Contract with America was largely responsible. If the GOP saves the economy again, it should expect the same ingratitude. americanthinker.com

To: ManyMoose who wrote (33401)	12/13/2009 2:56:03 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Congress Squabbles Over Debt Ceiling DECEMBER 12, 2009. By GREG HITT and COREY BOLES WASHINGTON -- Congress is playing brinkmanship over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, with each chamber insisting on adding controversial elements to the legislation that the other opposes. House Democrats said Friday they intend to add "pay as you go" budget rules to legislation that would raise the ceiling by $1.8 trillion and ensure the U.S. doesn't default on its debt obligations. Pay-go rules, a priority of conservative Democrats, require new legislation to be paid for with spending cuts or taxes. They are intended to make it harder for lawmakers to add to the already bloated budget deficit. "It is not an acceptable alternative for the U.S. to not pay its bills," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.). The pay-go proposal and increase in the debt ceiling could both be attached to separate legislation currently moving through Congress designed to fund Pentagon operations for the balance of the fiscal year. Such a move wouldn't be popular in the Senate. Moderate Democrats there are trying to use the debt-ceiling bandwagon to push a commission that would recommend ways to reduce the deficit and long-term debt. "That would be a problem, unless we can reach agreement," said Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.), who is pushing for the commission and opposes the pay-go move. The planned increase in the debt limit is among the final legislative priorities Democratic leaders are trying to close out before lawmakers leave town this month. The struggle is fraying Democratic unity and complicating efforts to push sweeping health legislation though the Senate. Behind the scenes, the White House is lobbying for the increased borrowing authority, as the government bumps closer to the existing $12.1 trillion borrowing cap. The debt ceiling is the cap -- set by law -- that limits overall borrowing by the federal government. The rapid growth in government spending has pushed the government close to the limit. Vice President Joseph Biden met privately Friday at his residence at the Naval Observatory with a group of Democratic senators in an effort to referee the dispute, said congressional aides. The pay-go proposal is a major priority of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of more than 50 fiscally conservative House Democrats. House Democratic leaders are counting on their votes when the Pentagon bill hits the floor, likely Tuesday or Wednesday. In addition to the debt limit, the bill is expected to include measures extending jobless benefits, among other things. Raising the debt limit always promised to be rancorous, given the political sensitivities of the deficit. House Republicans, who want to make the move as tough -- and public -- as possible, argue that Democrats are trying to hide the increase in legislation that pays for the armed services. "It is unconscionable for the Democratic majority to pile the debt limit increase on the backs of the American soldier," said Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.), a member of the House Republican leadership. Sen. Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) said lawmakers need to get serious about fixing fiscal problems. "The public is way ahead of Washington on this one," he said in a television interview. Mr. Bayh supports the Conrad commission proposal. "They know we can't keep maxing out the national credit card the way we have. And we've now bumped up against the ceiling on the credit card." —Jonathan Weisman contributed to this article. Write to Greg Hitt at greg.hitt@wsj.com and Corey Boles at corey.boles@dowjones.com online.wsj.com