Posted 1:19 PM by Liberty Lover

Fear of Rationing: Obama Asked For It, says Mickey Kaus.

So why not bill health reform as ... giving the uninsured and uninsured the care they need! Hey, there's an idea. In fact, why not simply say you're reforming health care to provide health security to all Americans, including the always-anxious middle class--instead of suggesting that you are funding care for the poor out of the hip replacements of the elderly affluent?

Why? Because we are not going to get "health security" from a top-down, government engineered scheme. We will get waiting in queues or outright denial of care because demand, bureaucracy, and cost will skyrocket at the same time.

Posted 1:06 PM by Liberty Lover

Social Engineering and Pork Barrel Spending Together Again:

. . . Tucked within is a provision that could provide billions of dollars for walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers’ markets.

. . . But advocates, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, defend the proposed spending as a necessary way to promote healthier lives and, in the long run, cut medical costs. “These are not public works grants; they are community transformation grants,’’ said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Senate health committee whose healthcare bill includes the projects.

As if the name itself contains magical elixirs. These people have an incurable case of Technocratic Porkulitis. Please, just leave us alone.

Posted 12:42 PM by Liberty Lover

Michael Kinsley on Health Care's Low-Hanging Fruit:

There are dozens of smallish, concrete reforms that we all could agree on and avoid a political cataclysm. There are two risks in comprehensive health-care reform. One is that it won't pass -- and a second failure would doom the project for decades. The second is that it will pass but won't work. These mini-reforms are almost sure to work. So why not try them first?

Why? The suggestions are top-down changes still based on the 3rd party payment system, with the 3rd party being insurance companies and governments. The core problems are that 3rd parties pay most of the bills which divorce the patient from the cost, employer-based insurance locks people into their jobs, and state-regulated insurance forces us to buy insurance products based on the regulations of the politicians in the state. Because of all this, we are prisoners of our jobs and the states in which we reside.

Posted 7:14 AM by Liberty Lover

Health Co-op's: What do Democrats have against profits? Trojan horse for gov't-run here.

Posted 6:59 AM by Liberty Lover

Swiss Resist U.S. Imperialism:

Switzerland said it would seize UBS AG data to prevent the U.S. Justice Department from pursuing a U.S. court order seeking the identities of 52,000 American account holders in a crackdown on tax evaders.

Here. Follow-up article here. Imagine being a customer of UBS. You chose UBS and Switzerland because of its privacy. Now the greedy hand of U.S. politicians threatens all that you worked for, plus this aggression is threatening the relationship between the two countries.

Posted 11:49 AM by Liberty Lover

Dr. Doom Strikes Again:

The June employment report suggests that the alleged green shoots are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure.

Nouriel Roubini.

Its almost as if we are being suffocated by too much government, but, na, politicians learned the New Deal facilitated the Great Depression didn't they?

Posted 7:57 AM by Liberty Lover

Race & Liberty in America (University Press of Kentucky), edited by Southern Illinois University historian Jonathan Bean reviewed by Damon W. Root:

Taken together, the documents collected in this volume present overwhelming evidence that classical liberalism deserves serious attention in any account of the American struggle for civil rights and a colorblind society. Rather than serving as the villains caricatured by Malcolm X, Manning Marable, and others on the left, classical liberals provided essential intellectual, political, moral, and financial firepower in the battles against slavery, Jim Crow, imperialism, and racial classifications. With Race & Liberty in America, these largely unsung heroes are finally getting some of their due.

Posted 12:23 PM by Liberty Lover

Howard Dean: Private Health Care Is Breaking Our Economy

Wrong!

All of Dean's assertions are based on terribly disfigured health care markets. His comments are a distortion of distortions. We have a mix of public health care, third party payments, and a little sliver of private health care where patients pay the actual bill.

Medicare and Medicaid pay about 50% of the bills.

Insurance is regulated by state governments, which limits them to a state-wide market. Insurance companies cannot spread costs over more policies sold and lower overall prices, and they must include coverage for procedures forced on them by state politicians.

Now, given the way Washington screwed up the housing and automobile markets, there is no certainty they would not screw up a nation-wide health insurance market also. But that is what we must try.

There are licensing restrictions on who can practice medicine, which limits the supply of labor to meet the demand.

Posted 8:08 AM by Liberty Lover

Streamlining Local Government:

Just days after Gov. David A. Paterson signed into law a bill making it easier to streamline local government, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo appeared at Islip Town Hall yesterday to unveil a new Web site that provides a tool kit for citizens on how to do it.

The Web site, located on the Attorney General's Web page, www.oag.state.ny.us, and at www.reformnygov.com, provides sample petitions, filing instructions and even a video tutorial on how to use the new law.

I have not checked the website but it sounds intriguing. Here.

Posted 7:43 AM by Liberty Lover

White House Open to Deal on Public Health Plan: It is more important that health-care legislation inject stiff competition among insurance plans than it is for Congress to create a pure government-run option, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said.

Fine, then let consumers choose their medical care and control their medical expenditures, and let insurance companies compete for their business nationwide.

Posted 7:06 AM by Liberty Lover

Budget Gap and a Reluctance to Fill It:

The budget office estimates that federal debt will reach $12 trillion by this fall and exceed $13 trillion by September 2010. Merely paying the interest on this year’s debt will cost taxpayers $565 billion, or 4 percent of the nation’s annual economic output.

It isn't only the dollar amount that is troubling. Also of major concern is the inability of politicians to identify and allocate resources that will do any good. First of all, there is disagreement about what to spend the money on: maintenance of existing jobs or projects that put unemployed people to work. Then there is the process of actually writing the legislation. Politicians had the opportunities twice and they blew it both times. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is the second stimulus. The first one was the agreement between the Bush administration and the Democratic congress to cut rebate checks over a year ago. Special interests have to have their say in the process.

As we saw with ARRA, Democrats believe any spending by government is pro-growth. Recall Obama's statement "What do you think a stimulus bill is?" he said. "That's the point."

Posted 8:07 PM by Liberty Lover

Why Goldman Sachs, GE, etc. are Behind Cap and Trade:

Waxman-Markey is not climate or energy policy, its a pillar in Obama’s attempt to build a European-style corporate state, where a clique of large unions, large corporations, and selected politicians run the state to their own mutual benefit.

Follow the links.

Posted 7:59 PM by Liberty Lover

Medicare's Mythical Administrative Cost Savings care of Megan McArdle:

These were all arguments advanced in favor of socialism. Contrary to popular conservative belief, socialists were not unfamilier with either the incentive problems of communism (people will not work hard if there's no benefit to doing so) or the Hayekian argument about the value of prices, aka the Socialist Calculation Problem. Rather, smart socialists thought that they could overcome these problems with a combination of status competitions (Hero of the Soviet Union, Second Class) and massive efficiencies gained by wringing all that fragmented, wasteful competition out of the system. Economists who would be ashamed to make these sorts of arguments about Proctor and Gamble or the used car market suddenly start parroting these things as if they hadn't been thoroughly discredited by the last seventy years.

Posted 7:37 PM by Liberty Lover

Nailing the Cause of the Financial Crisis is Thomas Sowell.

Written and video excerpts from his new book, The Housing Boom and Bust, here.

Posted 7:18 PM by Liberty Lover

Effect of Minimum Wage on Teenage Employment:

The current (June) unemployment rate for teenagers of 24% (data here, paid subscription required for full access) is within 1/10 of a percent of the all-time high of the 24.1% teenage jobless rate set back in November and December of 1982 (see chart above). The teenage jobless rate of 24% is more than double the national average of 9.5% for June, and for African-American teens the unemployment rate was almost 38%.

Those are scary numbers and they probably will get worse when the minimum wage increases later this month. Here's the history of MW increases.

Posted 7:00 PM by Liberty Lover

Low Union=High Growth; High Union=Low Growth:

From 2003 to 2008,the aggregate gross domestic product (GDP), in constant, chained 2000 dollars, for the states with the lowest share of workers under union monopoly control increased by a healthy 17.3%. In these 10 states, as of 2003 4.7% or less of private employees were forced to accept a union as their monopolybargaining agent. Meanwhile, the real GDP of the country as a whole grew by just 12.7%. And in the 10 states with the highest private-sector unionization, aggregate output grew by just 9.9% -- roughly 57% as much as in the lowest-union-density states (see chart above).

Link to article.

Posted 6:26 PM by Liberty Lover

Bret Stephens on Robert McNamara and Obama:

McNamara, who died yesterday at 93, will go down as a cautionary tale for the ages, and perhaps none more than for the Age of Obama. Whatever else distinguishes JFK's New Frontier or LBJ's Great Society from Barack Obama's "New Foundation," this too is an era of soaring rhetoric, big plans and boundless self-regard, issued by an administration convinced it can apply technocratic, top-down solutions to huge and unpredictable systems -- the banking, auto and health-care industries, for instance, or the climate. These are people deeply impressed by their own smarts, the ones for whom the phrase "the best and the brightest" has been scrubbed of its intended irony.

Excellent stuff.

Posted 8:05 AM by Liberty Lover

Long Island, NY Gun Sales Increase:

The national jump in gun sales is mirrored on Long Island, as gun sellers report increased sales and police departments in Nassau and Suffolk counties record an increase in pistol applications and permits issued.

This statement by the White House is not comforting to gun buyers, and sounds too much like legalese with loopholes:

However, White House spokeswoman Moira Mack said in a statement that Obama's "administration is committed to protecting the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own and use guns while stopping firearms traffickers and keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists and others prohibited from owning them."

Here.

Posted 7:28 AM by Liberty Lover

Democrats Look to Europe for Governance: Democratic allies "report" about the conditions in European countries to build political momentum for their ideas in the U.S. Looks like France is the country of choice.

Up first is Jonathan Cohn "reporting" in The Boston Globe on health care in France and the Netherlands.

Next is Nelson D. Schwartz in The New York Times (via CNBC) "reporting" on stimulus projects in France.

Posted 8:07 PM by Liberty Lover

Peter Suderman: "Joe Biden Says You Can't Spend Stimulus Money on Frisbee Golf".

How about midnight basketball?

Posted 6:55 PM by Liberty Lover

Progress on GM Bailout?

. . . The comments in a conference call with reporters were the first from the White House after a federal judge approved a plan brokered by the Obama administration that would create a new GM by selling the automaker's best assets out of bankruptcy.

Absent a successful appeal of that decision, the deal to create a reorganized GM under the 60 percent ownership of the U.S. government could close as soon as this week. . . .

An initial public offering that would take the newly private and reorganized GM back into public ownership could happen as soon as the first half of 2010 if the stock market is "decently robust," Rattner said.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

Posted 6:51 PM by Liberty Lover

California Bonds Downgraded: "Fitch Ratings cut its rating on California's long-term general obligation bonds Monday to "BBB," two notches above speculative grade, citing the state's budget and cash crisis." Here.

Posted 3:01 PM by Liberty Lover

BETTER HEALTH CARE REFORM, care of Michael Tanner:

. . . . So what exactly would a free-market approach to reform look like? Quite simply, it relies on those time-tested building blocks of marketplace efficiency: competition and choice. . . .

For tax purposes, employer-provided insurance should be treated as taxable income. To offset the increased tax, workers should receive a standard deduction (or in some plans, a tax credit) for the purchase of health insurance, regardless of whether they receive it through their job or purchase it on their own. . . .

Unfortunately, consumers are more or less held prisoner by their state's regulatory regime. It is illegal for that hypothetical New Jersey resident to buy the cheaper health insurance in Kentucky. On the other hand, if consumers were free to purchase insurance in other states, they could in effect "purchase" the regulations of that other state. A consumer in New Jersey could avoid the state's regulatory costs and choose, say, Kentucky, if that state's regulations aligned more closely with his or her preferences.

Go.

Posted 11:46 AM by Liberty Lover

P.J. O'Rourke on Transportation and Politics: Video. "With politicians its all about control. . . . Politicians hate cars . . . because cars make people free."

Posted 11:37 AM by Liberty Lover

NEW GOP AD: Yeah, get a new non-southern, neutral-accent narrator. The youngest voters who support Obama on fiscal policy might want to re-check his labor policy because that high minimum wage prices you out of a job. Try this thought experiment. If there was no minimum wage, would businesses post more help-wanted signs? Probably, then at least you can get to speak with someone and negotiate a wage rate. Now, you cannot negotiate with anyone because there are no jobs.

Also, the ad for the new Congressional Motors automobile is airing.

Posted 9:45 AM by Liberty Lover

Unemployment: Another 467,000 jobs lost in June and 9.5% unemployment.

Don't worry, help is on the way! The minimum wage is being forced up this month to $7.25 from $6.55 per hour. That may entice people to look for jobs but if employers have no reason to hire, those people are likely to be frustrated.

What other commerce-inhibiting restrictions are out there? Let's try uncertainty in general; higher costs from a $1 trillion health-care bill; higher energy costs from the cap-and-tax bill; new restraints on consumer lending and credit cards in the financial reform bill; new tariffs and threats of trade protection; limits on compensation; higher federal, state, and local taxes; and the possibility of easier unionization.

Feeling inspired? Those animal spirits stirring?

Posted 9:22 AM by Liberty Lover

Blind as Bats: Congress's Travel Tab Swells

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

Exposed here. Naturally, the documents politicians file do not disclose the extent of their expenses.

Posted 9:16 AM by Liberty Lover

NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg: "What's legal in Albany sometimes defies imagination." Conflict of interest? I report. . .

Posted 9:01 AM by Liberty Lover

Senate Health Plan fines people for not buying health insurance. And:

In a conference call with reporters, Dodd said the revised bill had brought "historic reform of health care" closer. He said the bill's public option will bring coverage and benefit decisions driven "not by what generates the biggest profits, but by what works best for American families."

Without the prospect of profits you get no products or services. Further, American families need their employers to make profits so they can pay the employees who comprise those American families.

The whole approach these people are taking is wrong. Their theories have been tried in several other countries and those countries are trying to get out from under the problems they dug for themselves. They are all dominated by political decisions and bureaucratic administration.

We need health care that is like all the other products and services we buy: driven by us, our needs, our buying patterns, with us in control our of own budget.

Posted 5:41 PM by Liberty Lover

Greg Mankiw: Protectionism takes a new twist.

Posted 1:05 PM by Liberty Lover

Billy Mays, Free Market Hero:

Smug journalists just cannot accept capitalism. Mays sold “as seen on TV” products like OxiClean detergent and Mighty Putty; products that he believed in and backed with a money-back guarantee. And people apparently loved the products, since Mays sold an estimated billion dollars worth of goods. He enriched himself by persuading people to voluntarily give him money. His customers got goods they hadn’t known they'd wanted. In practicing capitalism, Mays was more of a “public servant” than the regulators who claim to serve us by restricting it.

John Stossel.

Posted 12:05 PM by Liberty Lover

NYC Tea Party: Instapundit has links here, and here is a website.

Posted 12:01 PM by Liberty Lover

Is entrepreneurship declining in America? TigerHawk. I'd also add when government (federal, state, local) provide services such as medical care or financial advice new businesses decline because they are not providing that. The government entity has supplemented private commerce.

Posted 11:15 AM by Liberty Lover

Why Isn't America Hiring? Jobs aren't languishing despite the government's best efforts. They're languishing because of them. Jerry Bowyer.

Posted 9:59 AM by Liberty Lover

Take That Credit Card Customers, er, Companies!

Seems politicians' desire to sock it to credit card companies is backfiring. Who would have thunk it?

Reaction from politicians was typical. Here is the CYA claim:

Yesterday, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) once again requested that the Federal Reserve invoke its emergency powers to place a limit on interest rate hikes.

"This is what many of us feared about a law that didn't take effect right away," Schumer said. "It was never going to take this long for the credit card companies to get ready for the new reforms. Instead, issuers are using the delay in the effective date to wring more dollars out of their customers. It is against the spirit of the law, and it is just plain wrong."

No, you idiot. You know companies need time to change their computers, documents, and procedures.

Here is the good intentions reaction:

"Capricious actions like these are why Congress overwhelmingly passed, and President Obama signed, my credit card reform bill: to level the playing field on behalf of consumers," she said.

So you're the idiot who wrote this legislation. Thanks a lot. And you want to be elected Senator?

Here is the reality:

Bank executives had warned that the new law would force them to increase rates and fees because it would keep them from properly managing borrowers' risk. The argument is that if banks can't raise rates on riskier customers, they will have to raise rates on all.

Posted 9:49 AM by Liberty Lover

Cap-and-trade bill not likely to deliver promised jobs: The conceit of politicians is beyond the pale. They think they can engineer a greener future with millions of new green jobs. After all, they did such a good job engineering higher home ownership.

LET the American people choose the type of cars they wish to drive. LET Americans choose the type of energy they wish to consume, in short, LET American choose how to live their lives without being goosed or punished via government. Motivating editorial.

Posted 8:36 AM by Liberty Lover

Feds to check 652 businesses for illegal immigrants: From the company's perspective, inquires and mandates by government distract from running the business, from focusing on growing sales, from hiring plans. They are another set of tasks the employees must dedicate time to instead of tasks that grow the business. That means delays, missed deadlines, and slower hiring. In short, its bad for the economy.

Posted 5:30 PM by Liberty Lover

Destructive Destruction:

. . . Obama and his team seem sharply opposed to the view that creative destruction is a valuable economic force. They seem happy with what might be called destructive destruction -- the obliteration of value and wealth without any resulting positive change.

Creative destruction describes the painful effects of innovation and progress. Sometimes great inventions wipe out the existing economy, just as the Internet may be killing print newspapers. In other cases, economic failure clears the way for competition among inventive newcomers. In both scenarios, the nimble and inventive replace the calcified old guard, eventually moving economic welfare to a higher level.

Kevin Hassett.

The company may die or end up under new management, but some resources are still there and that is what needs new management or reorganization. With creative destruction the workforce, equipment, knowledge, patents, etc are made available to new managers with new ideas. With destructive destruction the organization ends up in stasis: it can't grow but it is subsidized in order to stay afloat.

Posted 12:52 PM by Liberty Lover

Upcoming Tea Parties here.

Posted 12:51 PM by Liberty Lover

Energy Leninism:

"The worse, the better," Vladimir Lenin is said to have observed. What Lenin meant was that the worse social conditions became in Russia, the more likely he and the Bolsheviks could foment a communist revolution. President Barack Obama's White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently updated Lenin's maxim, saying, "Never allow a crisis to go to waste."

Linkage here.

Posted 12:40 PM by Liberty Lover

Tea Party in Times Square:

If you're passing through Times Square around 6:30 tonight, don't be surprised by the rally in Mayor Mike's newly minted Crosswalk of the World.

Here.

Posted 12:10 PM by Liberty Lover

Firefighter case shows seamy side of racial politics says Michael Barone:

This is the sort of thing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described in the text as just the workings of politics. Writing in Slate, Yale Law faculty member Emily Bazelon goes further. She laments that the promotion test rewarded memorization and that it favored " 'fire buffs' -- guys who read fire suppression manuals on their down time." She is outraged that a fire department might want to promote firefighters who know more about suppressing fires, rescuing victims and protecting their colleagues rather than simply promote a predetermined number of members of specific racial groups whose self-appointed political spokesmen back the politicians in office.

Bazelon and Judge Sotomayor, who voted to uphold the city's decertification of the promotion test, are typical of liberal elites who are ready to ratify squalid political deals -- and blatant racial discrimination -- in return for the political support and the votes that can be rallied by the likes of Kimber. You supply the numbers on Election Day, and we'll supply the verbiage to put a pretty label on your shenanigans.

Posted 11:01 AM by Liberty Lover

How Dysfunction Helps the GOP: Frank may be correct to an extent but he misses the forest for the trees. Politicians exploit whatever situation they can. Budget surpluses from one administration turn into piggy banks for the next. A flat tax code gets drilled full of loopholes over time. Home ownership has its own salutary effects.

The point is government is a tool for politicians to advance their interests, especially getting votes. Frank suggests conservatives will screw up health care in some way to prove government-run health care does not work. That supposedly will boost their electoral prospects. But liberals are trying to use health care to buy votes too, via dependency on government programs.

Posted 10:17 AM by Liberty Lover

The Asian Miracle: Interesting book by Michael Schuman on the development of Asian economies.

The author compares post-war Japan in the 1940's with post-colonial America in the 18th century and Alexander Hamilton's plans. This is an apt analogy because both countries were trying to develop essentially from scratch. I'm not sure I buy the notion that manufacturing industries had to be protected. It just might be easier to utilize and organize resources when there are plenty of resources available, especially people. Someone can start a business by organizing people and giving them direction. People are plentiful and cheap to hire. By contrast, building a factory filled with sophisticated machinery takes skilled labor, which is in short supply. So a labor intensive industry is easier to develop and also acceptable by politicians who need to show jobs being created under their governance, just as there is today.

There is a difference between development of a country trying to develop from scratch and development of a country's economy that has already undergone some development. The beginning country might not even have an economy to speak of. In a developed economy with a developed labor market, competition for people is keen and labor can be more choosy. They are not as easy to organize.

By way of analogy, anyone can splash paint on a white canvas and call it art. But it takes an artist to start with a blank canvas, pay attention to the details to fill in the details, and create a masterpiece. This is not an argument for central planning with the artist as planner. The takeaway is that intricate details require decentralized trial-and-error, planning, and decision-making. Put yourself in the shoes of someone high up in a hierarchy trying to get something done by people who are 5 layers beneath him. He does not have the same information the lowest level people doing the work have.

As for macro growth rates, small countries, like small companies, can post impressive growth numbers because the starting numbers are small. Its easier to double revenues from 100 to 200 than it is from 1m to 2m.

Posted 10:52 AM by Liberty Lover

"Malaysia in major liberalisation drive":

Malaysia announced on Tuesday extensive economic liberalisation measures to attract foreign investments, including changes to its long-standing policy of giving preferential treatment in business to the country’s ethnic Malay majority.

The relaxation of controls on foreign investment would also curb the powers of the Foreign Investment Committee, which has been blamed for discouraging foreign investments with its lengthy approval process.

Meanwhile in the U.S., politicians continue centralizing power instead of liberalizing.

Posted 10:21 AM by Liberty Lover

IT ALWAYS ADDS UP TO GOVERNMENT for little Barack.

Posted 10:08 AM by Liberty Lover

PREPARING FOR TAX INCREASES: Politicians spend tax dollars irresponsibly and recklessly; to make themselves look like heroes and to buy votes; on hair-brained ideas and wars; bailing out auto companies, banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, state governments bled dry by public employee unions, other special interests and their own irresponsibility; on shared mandates, entitlement programs, and who knows what then they have the audacity to demand we pay for it! No. After this non-stop spending spree? They dug themselves into this hole and they need to climb out.

Democrats put out feelers here and here.

Posted 1:14 PM by Liberty Lover

Cap & Trade GOP Voting: Of the 8 Republicans that voted for this in the U.S. House only McHugh (NY-23) and Smith, C. (NJ-04) were not members of the moderate Republican Tuesday Group. 75% were members of TG.

Posted 12:49 PM by Liberty Lover

Carbongate:

A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill?

Here.

Posted 10:18 AM by Liberty Lover

Choice Restrictions are Inevitable in Health Care if politicians control the industry.

Here's another article about the U.K.'s NHS restricting IVF treatment to pregnant women between the ages of 39.5 and 40 years of age. (ht J. Goldberg).

Posted 10:06 AM by Liberty Lover

Health Care Silver Bullet? Michael Barone:

Then there are the assurances by Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag that by using the results of comparative-effectiveness research -- studies of the results of treatments in different regions and facilities -- we can easily identify the most cost-effective health care procedures and, using the power of government, force all practitioners to do things that way.

Right. So a procedure that is effective say, 80% of the time, leaves the other 20% to die. How about a policy that is effective 99% of the time? Its called individual choice and simply lets patients and doctors make the decisions.

Posted 9:06 AM by Liberty Lover

Stimulus II? The first one was a failure so the Obama administration wants to duplicate it. The Obama Democrats had their chance but they skewed the first one to please special interests rather then the general population. The second would be no different.

Further, Japan passed several stimulus packages and that left them with the dreaded "lost decade".

Here is the head of the White House council of economic advisors politicizing the Federal Reserve by saying its too early to raise interest rates. The Fed does not report to the president. It needs to stay independent of political interference.

Posted 8:38 AM by Liberty Lover

Coup In Honduras: If you want to know who the good guys are, read Mary Anastasia O'Grady's column. Excerpts:

Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution. . . .

The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

Here.

President Barack Obama said he was "deeply concerned" and called on all political actors in Honduras to "respect democratic norms." So, are the democratic norms the ones that got the ousted president elected in the first place or the ones that prevent him from changing the constitution? Is this a situation where you are judged by the company you keep? If so, The Obama administration is on Chávez's side.

Posted 10:25 AM by Liberty Lover

House Passes Bill to Address Threat of Climate Change: This legislation will do to the rest of the economy what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did to housing.

Posted 10:00 AM by Liberty Lover

On Globalization by Donald J. Boudreaux for the Fraser Institute of Canada.

Unquestionably, the people hurt most by trade barriers are the citizens of countries where such policies exist. Forced to prop up their countries’ inefficient producers, citizens of these countries end up paying higher taxes and consumer prices, while enduring reduced access to goods for sale on world markets. That’s why restricting trade just because other countries restrict trade is bad policy.

Posted 9:44 AM by Liberty Lover

"Paying for organs is properly banned in the U.S." says USA Today as part of an article about Steve Jobs' liver transplant, to which Don Boudreaux responds:

Although you suspect that Steve Jobs received special consideration to move to the front of the line of the many Americans seeking liver transplants, you agree that "Paying for organs is properly banned in the U.S." ("Wanted: organ donors," June 25).

What's proper about a policy that reduces the supply of life-giving transplant procedures and, thus, artificially raises the cost of such procedures? What's proper about condemning tens of thousands of people to lives of misery, and very often to premature death, when many of them would otherwise save their lives by agreeing to mutually beneficial exchanges with willing donors? What's proper about allowing real people to suffer real agony and real death simply to protect an aesthetic sensibility that is hostile to certain kinds of voluntary commercial contracts?

Far from being proper, this ban on organ sales is pitiless.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

If organ sales were a legal market, there would be less suspicion because people would be able to buy them and those transactions would be visible. When things are banned, transactions are by definition hidden and arouse suspicion.

Posted 9:14 AM by Liberty Lover

Misremembering Reagan: Ramesh Ponnuru has a strong piece on conservatives learning the wrong lessons from Reagan. I generally agree with the message but I think there is one missing insight.

The tight connection between Reagan’s agenda and the nation’s circumstances tends to elude us these days — so much so that we misquote one of his signature lines. Everyone remembers that he said in his first inaugural address that “government is not the solution, government is the problem.” Everyone forgets that the line began “In this present crisis.” He wasn’t saying that government was always “the problem,” let alone that it would always be the problem in the same way that it was in 1981.

I think that part is accurate as far as it goes, but the line following that explains why government is "the problem": "from time to time we been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self rule; that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well if no one can govern himself, who has the capacity to govern someone else?"

Republicans are competing with Democrats on progressive turf. A technocratic elite can socially engineer the right outcomes by using the levers of government on the people. And, they can also keep various groups of society mollified with programs targeted to these groups. This is the philosophical lesson behind that segment of the speech, and the disaster that tried to increase home ownership.

So it isn't only learning how to apply "characteristically conservative insights to the challenges of his time" as Ramesh puts it. There is a need to break the mindset that says politicians solve problems. Instead, government has to stop causing problems in the first place.

Posted 8:41 AM by Liberty Lover

Conservatives and Defense Spending: The Heritage Foundation created a chart showing how Obama is cutting defense spending as a percentage of GDP. But why is that the correct ratio?

They are saying defense spending should fluctuate as the economy grows and shrinks. You can see how defense spending continues to grow because the economy generally grows more then it shrinks. Politicians exacerbate this by defending factories in their districts and states, contributes to big government and high taxes, and acknowledges the progressive's vision of government as driver of economic growth.

There is no question the Federal government should spend money on this; the question is how much. The GDP ratio seems like the wrong measure. Shouldn't the spending level have something to do with threats?

Posted 8:09 AM by Liberty Lover

Fiscal Responsibility? More B.S. from politicians, this time from Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and George Miller (D-WA) about Democrats not being the party of deficits.

First of all, the partisanship undercuts their message. They seem more interested in attacking Republicans and tax cuts than in getting out their own message.

Second, letting people keep more of the income they earn is only a problem to greedy, perverted politicians who see any income as owned by them. Hence, cutting taxes is bad for the economy because those resources are directed by grubby people in the private sector instead of a technocratic elite.

Third, according to Deroy Murdock by way of Betsy McCaughey, one version of the Senate Democrats' health bill contains budgetary gimmicks they are trying to shed:

Page 353 calls for a new Prevention and Public Health Investment Fund budgeted at $10 billion per year through “fiscal year 2020, and each fiscal year thereafter.” Moreover, these sums “shall not be taken into account for purposes of any budget enforcement procedures including allocations under section 302(a) and (b) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act and budget resolutions for fiscal years during which appropriations are made from the Investment Fund.” In short, this creates yet another off-budget item that cannot be cut, and with no attendant revenue source. The proposed Retiree Reserve Trust Fund and CLASS Independence Fund also would sit “off budget” as brand-new, untouchable, unfunded liabilities. Fiscal responsibility be damned!

Posted 11:39 AM by Liberty Lover

What If Government Ran Health Care? Courtesy of Reason.tv.

Posted 9:34 AM by Liberty Lover

Unions’ Health Benefits May Avoid Tax Under Proposal: Here. The Democrats' entire agenda stinks of special interest favoritism. Right now the Democrats have a two-pronged strategy: 1) payback to their special interest groups for helping them; and 2) add more groups the their special interest client list. Nothing for the rest of the people.

Posted 8:28 PM by Liberty Lover

MICHAEL JACKSON, RIP: He was a giant and a legend in the field of entertainment. He inspired clothing designs and dance moves. He helped popularize music videos. The tabloid stories and bodily transformations later in his life do not diminish his accomplishments. You can read about them further in the Wiki link above. I enjoyed his music when he played with his brothers in the Jackson 5 and also as a solo artist.

Here's the words and video to Black or White.

Posted 10:50 AM by Liberty Lover

The Government Way, UK Version:

• 'Or, consider my grandmother, who had the misfortune to have a stroke on a Friday. I took her to Edgeware General Hospital, later closed down, and asked when the doctor would see her. They told me that the doctor would come on Tuesday. I asked if I could pay someone to see Grandma over the weekend, but the answer was that no one was there to be paid.'

• 'Doctors are less willing to take Medicare patients because of low government reimbursement rates, leading to longer waiting times for seniors. So seniors have a single-payer system with high costs and paltry service-not one that, in the president's words, provides "good, quality care for a reasonable price."'

• 'My father, a highway planner in England, was instructed to consider deaths of retired people in road accidents as "benefits," because their "consumption" was likely to exceed their "production."'

• 'My sister Leonora called me to say that her newborn baby might have spina bifida and that she had an appointment to see the specialist in six weeks. I asked why she couldn't get the answer sooner, and she replied that this was the first appointment available. I asked why she couldn't see a private doctor, and she said it wasn't fair to "jump the queue" and bypass the National Health Service.'

Thanks to Diana Furchtgott-Roth for the real life experiences.

Posted 10:10 AM by Liberty Lover

Climate Bill: How can restrictions on commerce create anything but government jobs to bureaucratically administer the program? An increase in cost reduces quantity demanded.

Limits on emissions would create jobs for people that implement the limits but how many jobs and wealth will be lost by the limitations placed on the people producing and benefiting from the emissions? On net, we would lose jobs.

This is how progressives view the economy: someone loses and someone gains but both parties do not gain. That's now how it works to them and its up to them to choose sides. In reality, both sides normally gain. That is how business relationships are created. I buy milk because I wish to consume milk. I pay the grocer the price he requests and the grocer gives me the milk. I get the milk and the grocer gets my money. We agree, we benefit.

Posted 9:33 AM by Liberty Lover

Fight ATS Disease before it spreads all around the country. This disease is also known as governmentitis. Here.

Posted 12:39 PM by Liberty Lover

The Waxman-Markey Nightmare: Its another beast. At least the colors are pretty. This bureaucracy is what politicians always create. Its job security.

Posted 12:25 PM by Liberty Lover

Obamacare Infomercial: Report here. Quotes:

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

. . . Gibson read the president a letter from Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee expressing concern about the creation of a government-run health care plan. . . . "They're wrong," the president said, arguing that in a Health Insurance Exchange, the public plan would be "one option among multiple options."

Uh, a Health Insurance Exchange is just another bureaucracy that will decide who gets what care. It will be staff by government employees.

Posted 12:17 PM by Liberty Lover

Reynolds: HMM: Senators Worry That Health Overhaul Could Erode Employer Insurance Plans. I believe that’s what the White House intends, isn’t it? Rhetorical but the answer is still yes.

Posted 11:55 AM by Liberty Lover

Stop Waxman-Markey "cap-and-trade" Legislation:

If the U.S. only adopts Waxman-Markey, global warming would be reduced by a grand total of 0.2ºF by 2100. This is too small to even detect, because global temperatures bounce around by about this amount every year. For those who like to think more near-term, the amount of warming prevented by 2050 would be 0.07 of a degree.

On top of that, this thing contains tariffs. Here.

Posted 8:14 AM by Liberty Lover

With Government Spending Comes Controls and Rules:

Politicians have a responsibility for oversight and to impose limits on government spending. If they fail to do that they are being irresponsible with public money.

With spending comes rules, controls, and limitations. So why should that be any different for health care? Politicians have to control spending and therefore ration care or spending will skyrocket. The rationing will be done by politicians instead of you and your doctor. That is why spending is not the only criteria to use. If the government subsidizes insurance and pays for some amount of care, politicians will have to decide who gets what care. Patients and doctors will not make that decision and must live by the restrictions the government imposes on them.

Posted 8:01 AM by Liberty Lover

CHAVEZ STEPS UP ATTACKS ON JEWS: Bad news in Venezuela. Via J. Goldberg.

Posted 7:49 AM by Liberty Lover

Cato Live-Blogs ABC's Health Care with Obama: There are lots of comments and here's a few.

Alternative to government-run:

Michael F. Cannon: President Obama is dancing around the fact that he has only three tools for coming up with the money to cover the uninsured: (1) raising taxes, (2) eliminating medical services, (3) paying doctors less.

Thankfully, ABC was blunt about (1). Someone should hold Obama's feet to the fire re (2) and (3).

Of course, there's also (4) letting consumers control their health care dollars and choose their health plans, so consumers will make cost-conscious decisions.

Problems with government-run:

Michael D. Tanner: Following up on Cannon's comment. In Massachusetts they increased the number of people with insurance. Then when costs exploded, they ratcheted down on reimbursement to physicians. One result, waiting time to see an internist has nearly doubled.

Michael F. Cannon: Mr. President, you claim to have found $600 billion worth of inefficiencies that you want to cut from Medicare and Medicaid. If government health programs generate that much waste, why do you want to create another?

Posted 7:35 AM by Liberty Lover

Iran Revolt: I am not that well versed in Iranian politics so I cannot way whether Ahmadinejad's opponent for the presidency, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is a liberal reformer or not. As this article makes clear, its currently ugly over there and women are repressed.

Posted 7:04 AM by Liberty Lover

Reps. Frank and Weiner: Let's Bubble Condos

In a letter to the CEO's of both companies, Representatives Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Anthony Weiner warned that a 70 percent sales threshold "may be too onerous" and could lead condo buyers to shun new developments, according to the paper.

The legislators asked the companies to "make appropriate adjustments" to their underwriting standards for condos, the paper added.

Stop compounding the problems! No more bubbles, no more social engineering, no more bailouts!