Our little place to talk about and share about life.
by Daniel
It was only about a year ago when Obama gave one of his speeches about how transparent spending bills would be. He wanted them to be seen and reviewed by as many people who wished, only so that they could be publicly debated in civil ways and that there wouldn’t be wastefull spending. Also, he didn’t want last minute pork-filled Omnibus bills for hundreds of pet projects. Well . . . what the heck happened?
HT to Townhall
by Daniel
Ron Paul, who has written books and bills calling to “End the Fed” finds himself as the new head on the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee.
CBS News reports:
Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, one of the most outspoken critics of the Federal Reserve, will lead a congressional panel next year with oversight over the central bank.
Paul, who wrote a book entitled “End the Fed,” told Bloomberg Television in an interview this morning that he will “not really, not right up front” push for an end to the Fed.
“But obviously that’s the implication,” he added. Paul said he will first focus on oversight.
In a Bloomberg report, Baucus had this to say:
House Financial Services chairman-elect Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican, selected Paul, 75, to lead the panel’s domestic monetary policy subcommittee when their party takes the House majority next month, the committee chairman said today.
“This is the leadership team that crafted the first comprehensive financial reform bill to put an end to the bailouts, wind down the taxpayer funding of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and enforce a strong audit of the Federal Reserve,” Bachus said in a statement.
Paul, in an interview last week, said he plans a slate of hearings on U.S. monetary policy and will restart his push for a full audit of the Fed’s functions.
“We are ready to hit the ground running, and I look forward to continuing our work in the next Congress,” Bachus said.
This will certainly be interesting to follow!
by Daniel
In the effort to help himself and his image, Obama calls upon Bill Clinton to the stump on the tax rate issue. Taking heat from many directions, it would serve Obama good to have a representative of the Democratic party, that is somewhat liked by the party, help ease the pressure. However, Obama puts Christmas Parties ahead of his duties and interupts Clinton and ditches him so as not to “keep the First Lady waiting.”
Just watch and see for yourself:
by Daniel
by Charles Krauthammer
Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 — and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years — which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?
If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I was so reviled that the Democrats banished the word from their lexicon throughout the 2010 campaign. And yet, despite a very weak post-election hand, Obama got the Republicans to offer to increase spending and cut taxes by $990 billion over two years — $630 billion of it above and beyond extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Continue reading . . .
by Daniel
by John Stossel
Of the 6 billion people on Earth, 2 billion try to survive on a few dollars a day. They don’t build businesses, or if they do, they don’t expand them. Unlike people in the United States, Europe and Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc., they don’t lift themselves out of poverty. Why not? What’s the difference between them and us? Hernando de Soto taught me that the biggest difference may be property rights.
I first met de Soto maybe 15 years ago. It was at one of those lunches where people sit around wondering how to end poverty. I go to these things because it bugs me that much of the world hasn’t yet figured out what gave us Americans the power to prosper.
I go, but I’m skeptical. There sits de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru, and he starts pulling pictures out showing slum dwellings built on top of each other. I wondered what they meant.
Continue reading . . .
by Daniel
by Ken Connor
As Congress’ lame duck session gets underway, the nation is watching to see if the Democrats will attempt to capitalize on their last few weeks of hegemony before a huge shift in power occurs. Foremost on the agenda are the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts. Happily for the middle class, there appears to be universal agreement that those cuts should be extended. The real contention lies with the question of whether or not to extend tax cuts to those Americans earning over $250,000 a year.
Aside from the obvious political implications of using the lame duck session to ram through a tax increase that would undoubtedly fail if put forward under the new Congress, there are two key issues at the heart of this debate. They represent different sides of the same coin: Taxing and Spending. When it comes to taxation, the real issue is how the federal government views the earnings of the American people. With regard to those earnings, does the government have an entitlement mentality? The second involves the American people’s view of government programs. Concerning such programs, do the American people have an entitlement mentality?
Continue reading . . .
by Daniel
by Thomas Sowell
Guess who said the following: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Was it Sarah Palin? Rush Limbaugh? Karl Rove?
Not even close. It was Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of FDR’s closest advisers. He added, “after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . And an enormous debt to boot!”
This is just one of the remarkable and eye-opening facts in a must-read book titled “New Deal or Raw Deal?” by Professor Burton W. Folsom, Jr., of Hillsdale College.
Ordinarily, what happened in the 1930s might be something to be left for historians to be concerned about. But the very same kinds of policies that were tried– and failed– during the 1930s are being carried out in Washington today, with the advocates of such policies often invoking FDR’s New Deal as a model.
Franklin D. Roosevelt blamed the country’s woes on the problems he inherited from his predecessor, much as Barack Obama does today. But unemployment was 20 percent in the spring of 1939, six long years after Herbert Hoover had left the White House.
Whole generations have been “educated” to believe that the Roosevelt administration is what got this country out of the Great Depression. History text books by famous scholars like Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., of Harvard and Henry Steele Commager of Columbia have enshrined FDR as a historic savior of this country, and lesser lights in the media and elsewhere have perpetuated the legend.
Continue reading . . .
by Daniel
by Michael Barone
Heading into what appears to be a disastrous midterm election, the Obama Democrats profess to be puzzled. The president’s record, they insist, is moderate, accommodating — if anything, overcautious. So why do most American voters seem to be angrily rejecting it?
That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is to say that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have increased government’s share of gross domestic product from 21 percent, where it’s hovered for the last several decades, to about 25 percent and have put the national debt on a trajectory to increase from 40 to 90 percent of GDP.
Voters have noticed — and don’t like it.
But, say the Obama Democrats, shouldn’t ordinary people — in particular, shouldn’t the blue-collar working class — be grateful to a government that tries to “spread the wealth” (Obama’s words to Joe the Plumber) in difficult economic times?
They used to be, the argument would go. In post-World War II America, voters regularly moved toward the Democrats in recession years.
There’s a difference, however, that has escaped Obama Democrats but perhaps not ordinary voters.
Continue reading . . .
by Daniel
by Thomas Sowell
Classic songs from years past are sometimes referred to as “golden oldies.” There are political fallacies that have been around for a long time as well. These might be called brass oldies. It certainly takes a lot of brass to keep repeating fallacies that were refuted long ago.
One of these brass oldies is a phrase that has been a perennial favorite of the left, “tax cuts for the rich.” How long ago was this refuted? More than 80 years ago, the “tax cuts for the rich” argument was refuted, both in theory and in practice, by Andrew Mellon, who was Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s.
When Mellon took office, there was a large national debt, the economy was stagnating, and tax rates were high, though the tax revenues were still not enough to cover government expenditures. What was Mellon’s prescription for getting out of this mess? A series of major cuts in the tax rates!
Continue reading . . .
by Daniel
by John Stossel
It’s raining! I don’t like it! Why hasn’t Congress passed the Good Weather Act and the Everybody Happy Act?
Sound dumb?
Why is it any dumber than a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which promised to cover more for less money?
When Obamacare was debated, we free-market advocates insisted that no matter what the president promised, the laws of economics cannot be repealed. Our opponents in effect answered, “Yes, we can.”
Well, Obamacare has barely started taking effect, and the evidence is already rolling in. I hate to say we told them so, but … we told them so. The laws of economics have struck back.
Continue reading . . .