The 9-12 Project Permian Basin

From RedState this morning.  Article by Dan Perrin.

James Pethokoukis (Reuters) cites two examples of why America is well down the road of a banana republic economy. Our record debt levels and deficits, combined the fiscal fantasy land the White House and Congress work and live in are writ large in both examples.

First, the White House announces a $250 payment to every senior for inflation that didn’t exist. “In effect, a COLA was paid on inflation that no longer existed,” notes Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute.

Second, the White House in its desperate attempts to get its health reform passed, has tasked the all-too-willing Majority Leader Reid to walk the plank by convincing him to push a $247 billion portion of health reform as an off-budget item, in a separate bill, to be on the Senate floor this week before moving to the merged ObamaCare bill. Even the Washington Post editorial board said “Mr. Reid proposes not to pay for any of it, not even $11 billion, but simply to write a $247 billion IOU.”

Pethokoukis correctly notes the considerable spin associated with JPMorgan Chase economist Jim Glassman’s attempt to convince the world that the falling dollar should rightly be interpreted as a sign of “new economic optimism” because dollar flight means the world economy is getting better and the world is pulling its money out of a safe investment. Really?

Pethokoukis writes the dollar flight is likely exactly the opposite — the world is pulling its money out of a highly unsafe investment — examples one and two above show a White House and Congress which cannot help spending more and more, and piling up more and more debt — all the while insisting with passion and a strained voice that they really do care about the deficit and America’s debt and are for a strong dollar.

But the world is not fooled. America keeps spending and spending. When Speaker Pelosi announces that her ObamaCare bill is only $900 billion it feeds the perception that America’s Congress and White House are continuing to live off the Chinese and Japanese credit card — especially when the White House and the U.S. Senate Majority Leader tell the world that they will not increase the deficit under ObamaCare, but then want to spend $247 billion on health reform off-budget, so it does not count towards the deficit.

The credibility of the U.S. dollar is tied to the credibility of the fiscal discipline of the White House and the U.S. Congress. The world does not think either are credible is evidenced by the decline in the U.S. dollar. And as Pethokoukis says:

Two examples [the $247 billion off budget health spending and the $250 per senior check] — one ridiculously expensive, one just ridiculous. But both reveal a nation completely unwilling to deal with current trillion-dollar deficits or long-term shortfalls many multiples of that number.

 

What confidence should dollar investors have that America will really cut entitlement spending? Very little. Instead, we are more likely to see huge tax increases that could cripple productivity, or further dollar neglect, or a central bank that turns dovish on inflation. Or perhaps all three.

 

If Washington doesn’t care to support the dollar, why should investors?”

 

And on the front page of the Drudge Report you will find this little item, titled “We are ‘worried’ about weak dollar: Eurogroup chief” — after all, if you are Senator Reid, you can spend a quarter of a trillion dollars without counting it in the budget. Neat trick, huh?

Senator Gregg warned a few days ago that the U.S. could be headed towards a “banana republic situation” and Pethokoukis is simply pointing out two examples — the most expensive of which is happening now right now — of why we are well down that road.

Respectfully submitted,

Penny Crosson

It is vital that everyone contact the FCC NOW to show opposition to this atttempt to further control our freedom of speech and communication.  http://www.fcc.gov/contacts.html

If you follow the link for the article and read the comments at the end of the post (rather, if you can wade through the comments), you will see there are a lot of people out there who simply don’t understand the implications of this action.  Let me explain it very simply:  if government takes full control of the internet, which is what this is all about, it can further control the information available to us.  The government has already admitted that it controls very carefully what the mainstream media releases in the name of “news,” but so far has very little control over the internet.  It boils down to rescinding, removing, revoking, deleting, redlining, erasing – choose your wording – the First Amendment which protects our freedom of speech.  Without the First Amendment, the rest of the Constitution is null and void.  It is the basis upon which our nation, our government, was formulated.  Without it, and have no doubt that eradicating it is the first priority of this administration, without it we are on a very fast track toward socialism. 

Remember:

“In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.  Then they came for me, and by that time, there was no one left to speak for me.”  -  Rev. Martin Niemoeller, arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and sent to Dachau concentration camp until freed by the Allies in 1945

Act Now Against Net Neutrality

 From “RedState Morning” dated October 19, posted by Neil Stevens

http://www.redstate.com/neil_stevens/2009/10/19/act-now-against-net-neutrality/:

The time is coming that the left is going to begin its drive for Single Payer Internet, and so the time has come for us to fight back. Finland is gradually nationalizing the Internet and declaring use of other people’s Internet hardware a “right,” and the left is cheering. Obama’s “Internet Czar” does not hide the left’s hopes for an end to freedom and markets for Internet service.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, President Barack Obama, and the rest of the radical left want to use the Net Neutrality movement as the crisis that gives cover to sweeping big government action, allowing the FCC to pick winners and losers and dictate to private individuals and firms how their private property must be run, putting government bureaucrats in charge of the Internet.

The dangers of the administration’s Net Neutrality plans are not theoretical:

Innovation will suffer, and America will no longer house the leading edge of the Internet technology. Wealth will be redistributed, as cash-rich, massive market valued Internet firms will bully and get a free ride on capital-intensive, smaller market valued telecommunications firms. Government will be deeply entrenched and be a costly burden to anyone who conducts business or pleasure on the Internet. One of the drivers of American economic growth will be crippled in a time when we most need new jobs.

Last, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell warns of Internet censorship to come as Genachowski’s sweeping regulations would provide the basis for an Internet “Fairness Doctrine.” He sees what’s going on at the FCC and knows what it is capable of. Some conservatives have signed onto radical socialist groups like Save the Internet because they were led to believe that telecoms would censor them, when in fact they’ve jumped from the frying pan of big corporations to the fire of big government censorship. One can always get a new ISP in a competitive market if a particular firm becomes anti-Christian, anti-2nd Amendment, or anti-Republican in general. Choosing a new government is less practical.

Therefore, now is the time to act. We must tell the FCC to get its hands off of the Internet, allow competition to rule, and to protect the Internet from any threats to our first amendment rights. Everywhere government has taken an active role as Internet Nanny, such as in Australia or the People’s Republic of China, freedom and prosperity have suffered.

Please, Contact the FCC. Let’s flood the system letting them know our opposition to their plans. Google thinks we’ll believe their Orwellian formulation that an Internet under greater regulation will be more open. We know better. Let’s speak up.

Respectfully submitted,

Penny Crosson

Once the plan is fully phased-in (by 2019), a typical family of four would pay an extra $4,000 each year.

When combined with existing inflation, costs would rise from today’s $12,300 annual average to $25,900. Of that 111% increase, $9,600 is due to existing factors uncorrected by the legislation, and $4,000 due to additional costs created by the legislation.

For single persons, the differential is projected at $1,500 a year. Premiums would rise from today’s $4,600 a year to $9,600 overall.

Prepared by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), the new analysis was requested by AHIP—America’s Health Insurance Plans. It focuses on the leading plan pending in Congress, sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D, MT), which is scheduled for a Senate Finance Committee vote on Tuesday. The PWC report can be read here. 

The PWC projections track what The Heritage Foundation and many others have said about the legislation: It does not save money. It simply taxes those who have health coverage and uses the money to give care to others.

The White House is said to be livid. After all, President Obama’s claims that he makes care more affordable are exposed as a myth by the new study. Lawmakers claim the bill would “save” money, but that’s not true for those who have insurance. The only “savings” would be to those who receive government-paid health care and subsidies at the cost of higher prices for everyone else. (Even if the legislation “reduced the deficit”, it would do so by making citizens pay more, not by controlling government spending.)

Despite the enormous costs, estimates say 25-million people would remain uninsured under the Baucus bill. The new study also criticizes the Baucus plan for not placing tougher mandates and penalties on those who do not buy health insurance, which would help spread the costs (and create new customers for insurers). PWC reports higher costs would occur due to these parts of the bill:

• Requirements to cover pre-existing conditions with guaranteed-issue insurance
• The new tax created on so-called “high cost” health care plans
• The new taxes on medical devices and other segments of health care
• Reduction in Medicare payments, which care providers would offset by raising rates on their other patients.

The report will be denounced as a political attack by the insurance industry. But the real attack is Washington’s assault on our pocketbooks and our freedoms.

When Putin announced that Russia would no longer sell its oil and natural gas in dollars, there were the normal — its OK type statements from the financial world, and it was viewed by the Western financial cognoscenti as an anomaly.

However, since the Federal Reserve is printing an estimated $600 billion a year to give to bankers and brokers, who then buy U.S. Treasury bills to finance for our over-spending Federal Government with printed dollars — the value of the dollar drops due to the massive over supply.

Then, those countries holding the U.S. dollar as reserve currency start to speak up. They plead with the President and Congress to start balancing the budget and lowering the deficit.

Instead, President Obama and Congress has not decreased the deficit, it has grown four times it was under Bush, to record numbers — $9 Trillion — under President Obama and the Democratic Congress.

And President Obama, by pushing his trillion dollar health care plan is rubbing the world’s face in their concerns about U.S. spending. He simply does not care that the dollar is dropping and that the value of these country’s dollar holdings is also dropping. (read more: http://www.redstate.com/dan_perrin/2009/10/05/the-world-moves-against-the-dollar/)