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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (78621)	3/24/2010 4:28:35 PM
From: Jim S	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Good luck on getting any of those amendments to the floor of the Senate.

To: TimF who wrote (78621)	3/24/2010 11:27:10 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

Holman Jenkins, from today's WSJ: Now, Can We Have Health-Care Reform? ObamaCare doubles down on a failing system. "A certain kind of person—we get emails from them all the time—understands exactly nothing about the health-care debate, but thinks they know who the villain is: the insurance industry. "Barack Obama is not one of them. In the desperate hours he played to public ignorance. But from the beginning, the industry was his ally because he set out to solve its biggest problem—which is not the same as America's biggest problem. "We'll let Angela Braly, CEO of insurer WellPoint, take the story from here. She was recently hauled before Congress to justify her company's proposed 39% rate hike in California. She explained the source was two-fold: rising medical costs and healthier customers dropping their coverage, forcing the sick to pick up the tab. "Now this sounds like two problems, but for WellPoint and other insurers it's really only one problem. Once everyone is required by government mandate to buy insurance, the industry's survival is no longer threatened: It can just pass its skyrocketing costs along to customers. Once customers can no longer refuse to buy the industry's product, the problem of costs won't be fixed, but it no longer is the insurance industry's problem. . . . "For insurers, the check is in the mail: So watered down is the individual mandate that it must accelerate the industry's death spiral if not for the massive subsidies the government now has obliged itself to provide to keep the industry afloat and allow insurers to continue scalping their 15% off the top for serving as gatekeeper to a tax loophole. "When all is said and done, with unerring accuracy, ObamaCare has ended up doubling down on the system's existing perversities. . ." _______________ More at the link, including about the market distortions from the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance that are a big part of the problem, but no part of the present 'solution.'

To: TimF who wrote (78621)	3/29/2010 5:13:00 AM
From: Sully-	3 Recommendations Respond to of 90947

Yearning for the Good Old Days By John Power Line That is, the good old days before 2007, when the Democrats took control of Congress. A Goy and His Blog has pulled together a remarkable set of graphs documenting the economic progress that was being made before the Democrats took over in Washington, and the disaster that we have witnessed since. It isn't entirely their fault, to be fair. But most of it is. When the Republicans were in charge, disposable income was rising; click to enlarge: Employment was rising Then, of course, we have the unemployment rate, rising much faster than Obama's economic team predicted, well beyond the rate that the farcical "stimulus" bill was supposed to avert: Check out the site; there is much more. (Via InstaPundit.) Meanwhile, the bond market is beginning to rebel at the Democrats' fiscal insanity. Michael Barone asks: what do Berkshire Hathaway, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Lowe's have in common? Answer: they are all better credit risks than the federal government, and therefore can borrow at lower rates. Obamacare is a big part of the reason: <<< The bill will not lower deficits, but will raise them by $562 billion over 10 years. Treasury will have to borrow that money -- and probably pay much higher interest than it's paying now. Moreover, once the bill is fully in effect, the Cato Institute's Alan Reynolds points out, its expenses are likely to grow at least 7 percent a year -- significantly faster than revenues. At that rate, spending doubles every 10 years. No wonder that Moody's declared last week that the Treasury is "substantially" closer to losing its AAA bond rating. >>> The bond market doesn't trust the Obama administration, to put it mildly: <<< A long period of stability for the US government bond market showed signs of cracking this week as a lack of investor appetite for new debt sent the benchmark 10-year yield to its highest level since last June. For more than a year, analysts have been warning that record sized debt sales by the US Treasury were at odds with a 10-year yield sitting comfortably below 4 per cent. This week, the yield on 10-year notes jumped from 3.65 per cent to a peak of 3.92 per cent on Thursday. On Friday it was 3.87 per cent. ... The fact that German Bunds have outperformed both Treasuries and gilts in recent months highlights this increasing worry over public debt. Germany's budget deficit is much lower than the US and UK and inflation there is also expected to remain low. ... It hasn't helped that the US announced a big overhaul of its healthcare system this month, adding to worries about the scale of US spending. >>> It is amazing how much damage the Democrats have been able to do in only three years in power. PAUL adds: I'm skeptical of any suggestion that the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2007 had much to do with the economic downturn of 2008 depicted in the graphs and charts above. I agree that this takeover, coupled with the more important capture of the White House in 2009, has hurt the economy and will do so going forward, probably profoundly. .