The Battle of the Deficit Bulge Continues…….The 2012 Election Must Decide If the Marxists Win

The following opinion piece is from the Washington Examiner:

 

“To no one’s surprise, members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, a.k.a. the Super Committee, announced yesterday that it had failed to agree on a $1.2 trillion debt reduction plan. As a result, no additional spending cuts or tax hikes will go into effect this year. True, there are $1.2 trillion in mandated spending sequestrations that will begin to take effect in 2012, but these are almost guaranteed to be repealed by a future Congress. That being the case, it’s difficult not to view the whole super-committee process as a charade intended only to make it appear that Washington was “doing something” to control federal spending, and in the process protect the jobs of incumbents of both political parties.Meanwhile, Republicans on the Super Committee were right to oppose the new taxes their Democratic counterparts demanded as part of any deal. Nobody outside of Washington believes any additional revenues generated by higher taxes would be used to reduce the national debt. Every time in the recent past when conservatives agreed to such deals, taxes went up, but spending and debt never went down. In 1982, for example, President Reagan agreed to three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax hikes in 1982, but spending rose from $745 billion that year to over $1.06 trillion when Reagan left office. Years later, Reagan famously quipped, “I’m still waiting for those three dollars of spending cuts I was promised from Congress.”The reality is that Washington spends too much, not that it taxes the people too little. Raising taxes on “the rich” won’t fix this problem. Even if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, tax revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product would reach 21 percent by 2021, far above the historical 18 percent average. But spending is predicted to reach 26.4 percent of GDP that same year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Higher taxes mean only one thing — more government spending.Washington’s professional politicians have been trapped in public policy paralysis ever since President Obama and the Democratic Congress jammed Obamacare down America’s throat in March 2010. That led to the election of a Republican House in November 2010, but it didn’t break the gridlock because the Senate and White House remained out of the voters’ reach. This won’t change until voters replace the professional politicians in both parties who have clearly demonstrated in recent months that they aren’t up to the task of putting the nation’s best interests before their desire to stay in office.

Obamacare added over $1 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years, half of which was “paid for” by Medicare cuts that the government’s actuary says will bankrupt a quarter of all hospitals by 2030, and half by a tax increase of more than $500 billion. Despite the Democrats’ rhetoric about “everything being on the table,” it’s clear that, without Republicans caving on tax hikes, nothing remotely resembling spending cuts or entitlement reform was ever really on the Super-Committee table. It’s time to leave this charade behind, fund the government through next November, and then let the American people decide what kind of country they want in the 2012 election.”

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2011/11/only-election-can-break-washingtons-gridlock#ixzz1eSEOwIj3

Thomas Sowell ……. Liberal Land Ruinations Become National Disasters

Alice in Liberal Land

by Thomas Sowell    at   Investor’s Business Daily:

“Alice in Wonderland” was written by a professor who also wrote a book on symbolic logic. So it is not surprising that Alice encountered not only strange behavior in Wonderland, but also strange and illogical reasoning — of a sort too often found in the real world, and which a logician would be very much aware of.

If Alice could visit the world of liberal rhetoric and assumptions today, she might find similarly illogical and bizarre thinking. But people suffering in the current economy might not find it nearly as entertaining as “Alice in Wonderland.”

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the world envisioned by today’s liberals is that it is a world where other people just passively accept whatever “change” liberals impose. In the world of Liberal Land, you can just take for granted all the benefits of the existing society, and then simply tack on your new, wonderful ideas that will make things better.

For example, if the economy is going along well and you happen to take a notion that there ought to be more home ownership, especially among the poor and minorities, then you simply have the government decree that lenders have to lend to more low-income people and minorities who want mortgages, ending finicky mortgage standards about down payments, income and credit histories.

That sounds like a fine idea in the world of Liberal Land. Unfortunately, in the ugly world of reality, it turned out to be a financial disaster, from which the economy has still not yet recovered. Nor have the poor and minorities.

Apparently you cannot just tack on your pet notions to whatever already exists, without repercussions spreading throughout the whole economy. That’s what happens in the ugly world of reality, as distinguished from the beautiful world of Liberal Land.

The strange and bizarre characters found in “Alice in Wonderland” have counterparts in the political vision of Liberal Land today. Among the most interesting of these characters are those elites who are convinced that they are so much smarter than the rest of us that they feel both a right and a duty to take all sorts of decisions out of our incompetent hands — for our own good.

In San Francisco, which is Liberal Land personified, there have been attempts to ban the circumcision of newborn baby boys. Fortunately, that was nipped in the bud. But it shows how widely the self-anointed saviors of Liberal Land feel entitled to take decisions out of the hands of mere ordinary citizens.

Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner says, “We’re facing a very consequential debate about some fundamental choices as a country.” People talk that way in Liberal Land. Moreover, such statements pass muster with those who simply take in the words, decide whether they sound nice to them, and then move on.

But, if you take words seriously, the more fundamental question is whether individuals are to remain free to make their own choices, as distinguished from having collectivized choices, “as a country” — which is to say, having choices made by government officials and imposed on the rest of us.

The history of the 20th century is a painful lesson on what happens when collective choices replace individual choices. Even leaving aside the chilling history of totalitarianism in the 20th century, the history of economic central planning shows it to have been such a widely recognized disaster that even communist and socialist governments were abandoning it as the century ended.

Making choices “as a country” cannot be avoided in some cases, such as elections or referenda. But that is very different from saying that decisions in general should be made “as a country” — which boils down to having people like Timothy Geithner taking more and more decisions out of our own hands and imposing their will on the rest of us. That way lies madness exceeding anything done by the Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland.”

That way lie unfunded mandates, nanny state interventions in people’s lives, such as banning circumcision — and the ultimate nanny state monstrosity, ObamaCare.

The world of reality has its problems, so it is understandable that some people want to escape to a different world, where you can talk lofty talk and forget about ugly realities like costs and repercussions. The world of reality is not nearly as lovely as the world of Liberal Land. No wonder so many people want to go there.”

Green “Energy” Still in Pretense Stage

Seeming Green

from the National Institute for Policy Analysis:

“In recent years, it has become increasingly popular politically to tout one’s own policies as being the greenest of the green.  Rhetoric involving “green” jobs and sustainability has come to the forefront and symbolic shows of strength against climate change are on the rise as various countries’ politicians each want to demonstrate their own personal commitment.  However, this piecemeal exercise in which a random smattering of countries takes action is unlikely to change anything at all, says Bjørn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.

For example, the Danish government intends to expand wind power dramatically by 2020.  That is a significant gesture, but, since the country is part of the European Union’s emissions-trading scheme, it will mean absolutely nothing for global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.   It will simply make coal power cheaper in other EU countries.

• Indeed, costly emission cuts in Denmark and elsewhere are likely to lead to a partial relocation of CO2 emissions to more lenient countries, such as China (where production is less climate-efficient), and thus to an overall increase in global CO2 emissions.
• The EU has reduced its emissions since 1990, but, at the same time, it has increased imports from China, which alone has produced enough emissions to offset those reductions.

Politicians claim that a green economy will cost nothing, or may even be a source of new growth.  Unfortunately, this is not true.

• Globally, there is a clear correlation between higher growth rates and higher CO2 emissions.
• Furthermore, nearly every green energy source is still more expensive than fossil fuels, even when calculating pollution costs.
• Moreover, while green-energy subsidies generate more jobs in green-energy sectors, they also displace similar numbers of jobs elsewhere.

Many politicians are drawn to photo opportunities and lofty rhetoric about “building a green economy.”  Unfortunately, the green energy policies currently being pursued are not helping the environment or the economy.  More likely, they will lead to greater emissions in China, more outsourcing to India, and lower growth rates for the well-intentioned “green” countries.”

Source: Bjørn Lomborg, “Seeming Green,” Project Syndicate, November 14, 2011.

For text:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg78/English

For more on Environment Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=31

Romney Ad for New Hampshire Campaign

Video: Romney’s first TV ad

hits Obama in New Hampshire

 by Allahpundit    at HotAir

 

 ”This’ll go up on the air tomorrow to coincide with The One’s visit to NH to promote his jobs bill. It’s virtually indistinguishable from a general election ad, which fits with Romney’s strategy of positioning himself as the inevitable nominee by concentrating his attacks on Obama. I say “virtually,” though, because there is a telling difference here: In the voiceover, he attacks ObamaCare before talking about jobs. That makes sense in the primary, especially given his vulnerability among conservatives, but not so much next year.

 

Scandal at NEA Teachers’ Union Headquarters……..Where’s the Money?

Teacher Union’s Missing Funds: A Pattern of Stonewalling?

by RiShawn Biddle      RealClearPolitics

“Who stole more than $227,000 from America’s public school teachers? And how did the National Education Association fail to notice this for five years? These are among the questions that the nation’s largest teachers union refuses to answer.

Last year, the NEA reported to the U.S. Department of Labor that it lost $227,626 over a five-year period “due to the actions of two former employees.” The union didn’t discover the money was lost until April 2010.

After learning of the problem, the NEA let the two employees go. It didn’t press charges but rather “secured commitments from the two individuals to make full restitution.” According to its report to the Labor Department, less than half of those funds were recovered and the NEA may have had to file a claim with its fidelity bond carrier to recoup the rest. The union also took “an array of corrective actions,” it assures us.

Few of the NEA’s 3.2 million rank-and-file members have heard about this bit of news because the union buried it in a hard-to-find addendum to its Department of Labor-mandated 2009-2010 LM-2 filing. They most definitely won’t be able to find out which former employees stole the money, why the union took so long to discover the problem, or what specific steps have been taken to prevent this in the future.

They won’t find out because the NEA isn’t talking. Pressed for information by RealClearPolitics, the union phrased its “no comment” as a matter of privacy rights.

“The National Education Association is a private organization. As such, the NEA faces no obligation to make financial or employment records public beyond meeting the reporting requirements as provided for by law or subject to the governance documents under which the Association operates,” wrote senior press officer Sara Robertson in response to several queries.

For critics of the union such as Larry Sand, a former NEA member who now runs the California Teacher Empowerment Network, that isn’t nearly good enough. Sand argues that the union owes its members more than a perfunctory statement. “I would think that they would give more disclosure. These are forced dues. In 28 states, [the NEA] is taking their money,” he says.

When it comes to collecting rank-and-file cash, the NEA has few rivals. The union collected $397 million during its 2009-2010 fiscal year, more than the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, Service Employees International Union, or the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

A lot of what comes in gets spent quickly. Besides the $29 million it spends annually on political activity — on top of the $64 million it ladled out to political campaigns during the 2009-2010 election cycle — 433 NEA staffers earned at least $100,000 in annual compensation.

And the union will spend more. In June, members voted to increase annual dues by $10 in order to beat back school reformers and governors looking to curtail the union’s influence.

The NEA can be quick to accuse critics of imperiling the economic interests of its members. Earlier this year, the president of the NEA New Jersey chapter accused Gov. Chris Christie of trying to “raid the pension checks of retirees and the paychecks of middle-class workers” after he, along with the Democrat-controlled legislature, made teachers and other civil servants contribute more to their nearly free health care plans.

Has the union proved less than forthcoming about its own handling of members’ money? Sand says that the revelations about lost union funds are “in keeping with their modus operandi” of stonewalling and control.

He may have a point. Over the past two years, three NEA state affiliates have filed bankruptcy or been placed under the national union’s trusteeship. In 2009, the union aroused the ire of rank-and-file members in Indiana after it took control of the Indiana State Teachers Association, which collapsed after the health insurance program it administers became insolvent.

Members were particularly put off that ISTA waited until the day the NEA takeover was announced before disclosing that its mismanagement of the insurance fund — including investing as much as 87 percent of its portfolio in hedge funds — led to the collapse.

Nor were teachers happy with the $40 increase in their annual dues of $449 just to cover the insurance plan’s $67 million deficit. “[ISTA] always talked about how careful they were with that money, so I just can’t believe it,” Indianapolis teacher Brenda Wiley, who collects long-term disability benefits from the fund, told the Indianapolis Star.

Last year, the NEA seized control of its South Carolina affiliate. Members only got official word of the takeover in a column inside Emphasis, the union’s in-house publication. “Better late than never,” declared Mike Antonucci, whose Education Intelligence Agency reported on rumors of the takeover a month before the union quietly announced it.

Other financial management scandals have been percolating, including revelations that the NEA Member Benefits Corp. had been collecting fees from financial services firms to peddle those firms’ insurance plans and annuities to members. Two NEA dues-payers, Jerre Daniels-Hall and David Hamblen, filed suit when they learned the NEAMBC may have “improperly received” as much as $2 million from two firms to push an annuity plan on members.

The federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out the case on a technicality. But the union suffered an avoidable PR black eye by coming clean about the fees only grudgingly, when its hand was forced. As with annuities, so too with the missing funds.

The NEA relies in part on its credibility to help beat back cuts to teacher pay and benefits, and even to defend its threatened legal monopoly on collective bargaining in some states. Stonewalling on lost union dues doesn’t enhance the NEA’s persuasive powers.”

Union Folks Working the Streets in Wisconsin to Oust Governor Walker

Cigarettes for Illegal Signatures In Milwaukee

Proof that the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree: in Milwaukee, Occupiers are doing double duty getting signatures on petitions to recall Governor Scott Walker. In this video, you can see them recruiting young children to sign the recall petition, and then paying them off with cigarettes. Nice:

by John Hinderaker at PowerLine

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/11/cigarettes-for-illegal-signatures-in-milwaukee.php