>>I guess you need to cite proof of this other than your profound hope for it to be true to validate your irrational loathing of the man.
>>You really do come across as an erudite birther....
Well, I think this is a pretty good description of the Obama:
"i-am-here-to-help-rob-you-while-i-utter-rubbish-wrapped-in-flowery-language-spoken-with-forked-tongue-with-enough-sincerity-to-pass-lie-detector test socio-fascist wastrel"
And I, sad to say, voted for him... But I have watched actions, and those count more than words, which mean next to nothing.
His Nobel prize will not save me the additional 40% added to my electric bill that the CEO of my electric co-op says that my bill will increase due to cap and tax.
I find he has done nothing to reverse the patriot act, and in fact has enhanced it to some degree.
His Fed and his congress are debasing our currency, and trashing our savings. Folks must resort to speculation to save what they have worked a lifetime for. A repeat of strategies needed during Wiemar.
His health plan will be suicide for the democratic party once folks find out what they will be paying -- the caps at $35,000 of gross income for a single and $55,000 for a family of 3 are 13% of gross income as annual premium payment... which will be paid out of after tax dollars, after: payroll tax, rent, food, car payment, gas, electric, and whatever the deductible and copay that is required. Where do you think these folks will get the money?
You can read some details here:
cbpp.org
Do you think maybe at the moment, folks think its like social security or medicare, just a small bill? Think again. They are not paying attention. That will change when they get the bill.
Why do you think the drug industry and insurance industry have ponied up 150 million to run ads in favor of the plan? Follow the money.
The "too big to fail banks" run the government... They have been rescued for the moment, but they are still making large bets with derivatives against highly leveraged capital and their depositors savings... and will expect to be rescued again, bonuses and all... there has been no reform. Who do you suppose appointed Geithner, Summers, and re appointed Bernanke?
The bankers have been rescued, and we are all (in the US) scripted to pay for it, either in increased taxes or the inflation tax.
Here is something to read from Cumberland, directly on point:
Cumberland Advisors
614 Landis Avenue Vineland NJ 08360-8007
1-800-257-7013 cumber.com
Ed Yardeni on Policy
October 8, 2009
Note to readers: Ed Yardeni opened his daily missive today with the text below. We requested permission to reproduce it here and thank Ed for giving us the same. Ed has written it better than my draft so I scrapped mine and am pleased to be able to share his words with our readers. Full story at www.yardeni.com.
“Why are so many members of Congress supporting and pushing for so many policies that make no sense? The Employee Free Choice Act won’t give workers more free choice. The economic stimulus bill passed in February isn’t reviving employment. Healthcare reform may soon cover all Americans with health insurance, but there will be less care for those who are currently covered, and it will drive up the overall cost of healthcare. Cap-and-Trade won’t stop the accumulation of greenhouse gases. Pushing for these half-baked measures at this time, and all at the same time, makes even less sense if the goal is to get the US economy out of recession.
However, doing what’s best for the economy and the general public doesn’t seem to be the goal of our leaders in Washington. Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, said as much earlier this year when he said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before.” Could the corollary be: “Keep the crisis going for as long as possible until you get everything on your wish list?”
I can’t believe that’s the game plan of any of our fine leaders. They are all among the best and the brightest in our country. Surely they know that the policies they are promoting make no sense. How can any of them say with a straight face that the so-called “public option” will increase competition in the health insurance industry? Why not just deregulate the industry if the goal is to increase competition? If the public option makes sense for healthcare, why not do it in every industry? Why not have a public option in the auto or banking industry. OK, bad examples, but you get my drift.
So how can we make sense of all the nonsense? The nonsense all makes lots of sense once we recognize that parochial special interest groups have seized our government. There are no special interest groups pushing for taxpayers, consumers, or entrepreneurs. These people are all too busy to organize politically to protect their interests. The people who attended the Tea Parties on April 15 could only stay for an hour during their lunch break before going back to work.
OpenSecrets.org has a revealing website which tracks the top 100 all-time political donors from 1989-2010 (linked below). There are several unions on the list. The most successful unions represent state and local employees. They have lots of members and have won extremely generous benefits for themselves, at the expense of taxpayers, who don’t enjoy the same benefits from their employers in the private sector. Second on the donors list is the American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees. Seventh and 15th are the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Unions in private industries haven’t fared as well as those in the public sector. What do they want? More members. That’s why unions such as the Teamsters Union (11th) and the AFL-CIO (31st) support the Employee Free Choice Act. The Service Employees International Union (9th) is a big supporter of the Democrats and is pushing hard for ObamaCare. (It has also had strong ties to ACORN.) This union represents lots of health care workers. As municipal workers have shown, it is easier to get what you want when you are negotiating with politicians than with company managements.
Number 4 on the top donor list is Goldman Sachs. What do they want? Whatever they can get! Right now, they are all for Cap-and-Trade. At least that is the conclusion of Matt Taibbi’s over-the-top diatribe against Goldman in the 7/2 Rolling Stone. He ends his article with the following accusation: “And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits--a booming trillion-dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.”
There are plenty of other companies in the top donor list. Number 1 is AT&T, followed by Goldman (4th), Citigroup (13th), Altria (19th), UPS (21st), Microsoft (26th), Time Warner (27th), JP Morgan (28th), Morgan-Stanley (30th), Lockheed (32nd), Verizon (33rd), FedEx (34th), GE (35th), and Bank of America (40th). What do these companies want? Mostly to be left alone. In “Money for Nothing,” Fred McChesney ably describes a model of “rent extraction,” the political process of paying politicians off so that they don’t hurt your business. It's the political protection racket.
In “The Logic of Collective Action” and “The Rise and Decline of Nations” Mancur Olson observed that as nations prosper, narrow special interest groups proliferate. They favor policies that redistribute national income in their favor, even though they didn’t earn it. These policies harm economic growth, but since the costs are diffused throughout the whole population, there will be little public resistance to them. Hence as time goes on, and these distributional coalitions accumulate in greater and greater numbers, the nation burdened by them will fall into economic decline. Does this sound familiar?
Of course, special interest groups have always been a major part of the American political process. Indeed, the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution mostly with the aim of subjecting “factions” to a system of checks and balances. The system seems to be breaking down. This is evidenced by the ballooning of the structural federal deficit. Without a balanced-budget amendment, the special interest groups have gone on an unprecedented spending spree. They figure they can all get what they want by voting for each other’s 1000-page appropriations bills. What about the Bond Vigilantes? Why aren’t they protecting the rights of their constituency? They’ve been silenced by the Fed, which is giving them the choice of buying more bonds or earning zero in the money markets.”
We thank Ed for giving us permission to share this essay with our readers. We would add that readers may wish to consult and old and classic text entitled “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers” by Paul Kennedy. We still peek into it from time to time. 2009 is one of those times.
David R. Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, email: david.kotok@cumber.com |
