As President Obama said while campaigning to be President of the United States, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig!”  How true.  Yesterday President Obama reached for the lipstick to dab on four proposals suggested by the Republicans to the massive pig of a health care proposal clinging to life.  The four proposals are:

1. Use undercover medical professionals to conduct investigations to fight waste and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid and other Federal programs.
2. “Demonstrations of Alternatives” to the current malpractice mess.
3. Increasing doctor reimbursement for Medicare.
4. Expanding Heath Savings Accounts (HSA).

The pig smiled.  She thought she looked beautiful.  Just don’t try to put a bikini on her because, as President Obama famously said, she’s still a pig.  Let’s look at the President’s magnanamous attempt at bipartisanship in detail.

1)  Undercover Medical Professionals to Uncover Fraud

It is estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion is lost or stolen each year from Medicare and Medicaid.  This program has been in place for 40 years.  If those numbers are consistent over that period, that’s $4 TRILLION.  Gone. Stolen from you and me.  How much better shape would we be in if we had that money back?  That’s government efficiency for you.

The President of the United States is the chief law enforcement officer in the country.  The amount of Medicaid and Mediecare losses each year are four times the entire budget of the Department of Justice.  How’s this for a proposal?  Create a Medicare/Medicaid fraud unit within the FBI and fund it so that we can stop thses losses.  If you stop the fraud, it’s free money.  What you save in fraud should more than pay for the FBI funding.  Why take medical professionals and give them law enforcement duties.  Are you going to ask police to operate on you?  Mr. President it’s your job to enforce the laws and prevent this widespread fraud.  You don’t need a new act of Congress.  Just Do It!

2) Tort Reform –No; “Demonstrations of Alternatives” — Yes

Trial lawyers are one of the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party.  Do you think such “Demonstrations of Alternatives” will amount to anything other than hush money?  “Shut up , we’re looking into tort reform.”  The counter argument is that Americans have a right to their day in court when they have been injured.  True enough, and I am reluctant to arbitrarily limit their awards through a fixed dollar limit.  I would take aim squarely at the lawyers.

John Edwards, one-time Senator and presidential candidate, was involved in about 63 cases as a personal injury attorney and amassed a fortune of about $70 million.  In one particular case, he stood before the jury and took on the persona of a child in the womb crying out for oxygen to appeal to the emotions of the jury and win the case.  Oddly enough he voted against a ban on partial birth abortion.  Gee, in the once case it’s a child who can actually speak while still in the womb!  But on the other hand it is just a mass of tissue at birth that can be disposed of with the trash.  We have learned a lot about the moral character of John Edwards.  He is the poster boy for the old joke, “How do you know a lawyer is lying?  His lips are moving.”

Here is a simple solution to tort reform.  Fixed fees for attorneys and loser pays.  The lawyers should set their hourly rate and bill according to hours worked, not how much they can squeeze out of the jury.  The award should be for the benefit of the injured party, not the lawyer.  The second part is to prevent frivolous lawsuits.  The loser pays the legal fees of the winner.  The argument here will be that the tables will be turned and no one will sue corporations for damages because of the risk of paying their legal fees.  Right now lawyers are running a lottery fishing for lawsuits of any kind becasue they know that most corporations will settle for less than it would cost to defend the suit, even if they know they are right.  All customers of that corporation pay more for their products (e.g., drugs, medical devices) and the lawyer gets rich.  I am sure that if such a proposal as this gets passed a new market for “legal fee insurance” will open up where a plaintiff with a strong case can buy insurance to cover the cost of the other sides legal fees if they do lose.

3) Increasing Doctor Reimbursement for Medicare

So much for bending the cost curve down.  The real way to curtail spending on health care is to eliminate 3rd party payers.  (see It can be done).

4)  Increase Health Savings Accounts

These plans exist today, however, they are not all available across state lines (see It can be done).  I had such a plan in New York while employed by a company, but when I went out on my own I could not buy the same plan in New York State.  We don’t need ObamaCare, we just need states to allow these plans to exist within their borders or allow individuals to buy across state lines.

The Pig Lives!

Three of the  four Republican proposals that Presidident Obama likes don’t cost anything.  But he $1 trillion to $2 trillion health care castastrophe is still alive and until we slay that beast and start over we will go from a serious health care problem to a fiscal crisis and end up with both.  If you don’t believe me, read how the model for ObamaCare is working in Massachusetts.

In baseball they call it a brush back pitch, a high hard one.  It lets the batter know that they don’t own home plate, and if they try to get too comfortable there they may be inviting a little “chin music.”  Jim Bunning, Republican Senator from Kentucky and a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher with a perfect game on his resume, just gave the Democrats a brush back and they don’t like it one bit.

Out of Control Spending

You would have to be Rip Van Winkle not to know that spending is out of control  and America is speeding toward bankruptcy.  President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have tried to hoodwink the country by implementing what is called “Paygo” short for Pay As You Go.  The idea is that you cannot spend money without first funding it either through cutting speding somewhere else or raising taxes.  The last element is the real reason Democrats support it, so that they would be “forced” to raise taxes.  Here is how the Wall Street Journal described Paygo back in January.

The truth is that paygo is the kind of budget gimmick that gives gimmickry a bad name. As Mr. Obama knows but won’t tell voters, paygo only applies to new or expanded entitlement programs, not to existing programs such as Medicare, this year growing at a 9.2% annual rate. Nor does paygo apply to discretionary spending, set to hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010, or 40% of the budget.

The Democrats passed Paygo to appear fiscally responsible.  Jim Bunning merely called them on it.  He is not opposed to spending the money.  He has the courage, though, to stand up and say, Mr. President we’re broke, and we are accountable to the American people to be good stewards of the money they give us to run this government.

“If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. Senate,” he said. – Jim Bunning, Floor of the U.S. Senate, 3/1/2010

Immediately was heard much wailing an gnashing of teeth, that the lone Republican, had the temerity to challenge the “flexibility” of the Democrats to apply their rules willy nilly to tighten their grip on their power while trying to appear like the kindly nannies they really are.  Rules are passed to much fanfare in front of the cameras and then ignored with a scoff or a sneer, when they really mean something.

Gimmicks Instead of Guts

Democrats have proved uncapable of controlling their spending.  With the mad push of profligacy that came with winning the Presidency and both houses of Congress with large margins, they now find themselves unable to dial it back without an intervention or a rehabilitation program.  So they pass Paygo, and ignore it; convene a debt reduction commission and name Andy Stern of the SEIU union to it.  If that is not a clue to what’s coming I don’t know what is.  What does a labor union president know about reducing debt?  All they know how to do is take someone else’s money and put it in their own pockets, so you can bet their solution to the debt problem is taxing you to the eyeballs.

Rather than the scorn that is being heaped upon him, Senator Bunning deserves our thanks.  Find the money first, then spend it.  Enough of the IOUs.  We cannot afford this liberal spending binge.

Stand strong, Senator, the Tea Party Patriots hear you and help is on the way.

When will our President come to the realization that the government does not have any money save that which is provided by its citizens?  If he understood that, he wouldn’t have said this:

“Just as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children’s future to pay our way today, it would be equally wrong to neglect their future by failing to invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century,” Mr. Obama said at the White House.

Let me posit a translation: we shouldn’t borrow against our children’s future, so we should borrow against our children’s future.  And let me add another pet peeve and that is how the statists have redefined the word “invest”.  What they really mean is spend, but invest sounds so much more grown up.  However, most intelligent people understand invest to mean when you put your money into something with the belief you will get all your money back plus a premium.  You don’t invest in the stock market with the idea you will never see your money again and will subsequently put more money into it next year.  You invest in a house with the idea that you will sell it later for more money.  You don’t invest in a house if you expect it to go down in value.  But our elected representatives would have you believe that pouring money down a rat hole is an investment.

Immature and Irresponsible

Like a child caught standing over his mother’s prized china lying shattered on the floor, President Obama wants us to believe it’s not his fault, no, we are going to have trillion dollar plus deficits for the next ten years because of Bush and the Republicans.  He is one year into his presidency.  This is his budget, not Bush’s.  If he can’t handle the job he should resign and turn it over to, er, Biden?  Check that.  Perhaps he can just go watch television in the White House for the next three years and leave the rest of us alone.  Doing nothing would cause less damage than what he has planned.  He jacked up spending 24% and then “courageously” instituted a freeze on that spending for three years.  Think about it.  If I gave you a 24% raise on Monday and then came back on Friday and said, “Gee, I’m really sorry to have to do this, but times are really tough.  I’m going to have to freeze your new salary for the next three years.  Can you ever forgive me?”  Could you not burst out laughing?

We’re Going to Make Some Tough Decisions…Next Year

We are in a fiscal crisis, but don’t think for a moment you are going to see any tough decisions in an election year, particularly when so many Democrats are in danger of having to find jobs in the real world.  So this year is tough talk.  Next year we get busy!

Democrats or Republicans or maybe the Tea Party movement is going to have to act, sooner rather than later.  Here is how the federal government breaks down:

• Medicare and Medicaid — 33%
• Social Security — 21%
• Interest on the Debt — 8%
• Defense — 20%
• Non-Defense Discretionary — 18%

The first three items continue to grow with no signs of slowing and interest will really take off when the Fed stops the easy money program.  Defense can shrink as Iraq and Afghanistan stabilize, but not a lot as this is still job number one for the federal government.  So do you see the problem?  You can thank Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson for the first ticking time bomb above.  You can thank Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the second ticking time bomb.  You can now thank President Barack Obama for what is becoming the third ticking time bomb and that is without his Health Care, and Cap and Trade.

So how is President Obama going to “solve” this problem?  By tinkering with the last item, Non-Defense Discretionary spending.  But don’t worry, he will also tax those evil rich and make sure they pay their fair share.  But before he goes too far down that path I have a suggestion for him:

1. Listen closely to the Beatles song “Taxman“
2. Ask yourself why the members of the band moved to the United States?

High tax states like New York and California are finding that a significant number of their wealthy citizenry are moving to lower tax states, exacerbating those states’ fiscal problems.  If you look at the percentage of the population that pays the lion’s share of the taxes you will quickly see that if a relatively small percentage of the population, who can afford to live anywhere, actually decide to leave the United States of Tax the Rich, the resulting fiscal problem will be very, very severe. Obama can only poke his tax stick in that cage so long before he gets a nasty reaction.

We’re All Standing On the Third Rail

Social Security has been called the third rail of politics, but the reality is that we are all standing on the third rail trying to keep our balance and if anyone slips and touches the ground, we’re all fried.  We have to suck up the courage to address Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  If we can’t slow the growth of these programs so that they take a smaller amount of the budget pie each year, we are toast.  None of those programs is in the Constitution, but the liberals/progressives created them with empty promises of benefits without costs.  This should have been the first clue:

“Ida May Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.”

Ida May Fuller was the first recipient of monthly S.S. checks when she retired in 1940. She lived to be 100.

She almost got paid back in full with her first check. She got 926 times more than what she paid in. That’s a 92,600% return on “investment.” Not bad, huh?

She got back almost everything she paid in with her first check.  Instead of ringing alarm bells all over the country, politicians patted themselves on the back for the great system they created.  We sent Bernie Madoff to jail, why should Congress be exempt?  What Bernie Madoff did was child’s play in comparison.  Where he fell short was that he couldn’t force people to participate through payroll taxes, and he couldn’t print money.  So why is what he did criminal and what Congress is doing not?  He had to get his participants to voluntarily turn over their money.  He promised returns of 40% per year.  Ida may got 92,600% return on her investment.

Burn the Ships

There is the story of a general who landed on a beach to face an formidable enemy.  He ordered that the ships that brought them there be burned.  By doing so, he knew his men would fight ferociously because there was no escape, either they fought to win or they died.  Perhaps we should do the same with Congress and President Obama.  Fix Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid or you join Bernie Madoff in Cell Block “C”, for running a massive Ponzi scheme.  What has kept Congress from fixing this in the past is the fear of not getting reelected.  Let’s raise the stakes so that not getting reelected would pale in comparison to incarceration.  It’s time our elected officials started paying attention to the people and not their perks.  The disaster train is going downhill and picking up speed, headed for a cliff.  It’s time ALL politicians put the country first and fixed this problem that, after all, they created.  It’s fun to give out the goodies, but this is a crisis that cannot be shunned.  It must be dealt with head on.

In the midst of the financial meltdown the government and financial pundits argued that they had to rescue the big banks because they were too big to fail.  If we don’t save them, they could bring down the entire U.S. economy and in  turn the economy of the entire world.  Ignoring the history and responsiblity for how they got there, that could be a true statement that the government had to do something to avoid a worldwide panic.

The panic averted, many banks paid the money back with interest, are in the process of paying out massive bonuses and the Obama administration is twisting itself in self-righteous knots to tax them into humility.  Good luck with that.  While they target the banks, they are hands off on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, GM and Chrysler because to tax those basket cases would just be taking money from the left taxpayer pocket and moving it to the right taxpayer pocket.  If you look to the root of the problems of the fiscal meltdown you will find the government’s hand in almost every corner, but don’t expect this administration to try to get to the bottom of it.

Back Up, Go Ahead

There was an old Abbot and Costello routine where Abbot was guiding Costello in parking a car.

Costello asked what he should do and Abbot said, “Back up.”

Costello confirmed, “Back Up?”

To which Abbot replied, “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Go ahead?”

“No. back up.”

“Back up?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

I don’t know if the Obama administration is Abbot or Costello, but they are telling banks, “Lend more money.”  Then they tell the banks, we are going to raise taxes and take your money away.  Then they ask the bank, “Why aren’t you lending more money?”

Programs You Can Believe In

Medicare

It is estimated that Medicare loses about $60 Billion ANNUALLY in fraud.  That’s right about $60 billion of your tax dollars are stolen every year from this program.

“If you want to find Medicare fraud, the first place you should look is South Florida, where 60 Minutes and correspondent Steve Kroft were told it has pushed aside cocaine as the major criminal enterprise.” – 60 Minutes – Medicare Fraud: A $60 Billion Crime

While the Obama Administration pushes their health care program one of the ways of funding the program is through savings in Medicare fraud.  However, no one has been able to stop it.  Not Republicans.  Not Democrats.

First Time Home Buyer Credit

This wonderful new program was designed to help first time home buyers achieve the American Dream.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a genius to also achieve that criminal American Dream, fleecing the government.

It’s hard not to laugh when viewing the results of the federal first-time home-buyer tax credit. The credit, worth up to $8,000 for the purchase of a home, has only been available since April of last year. Yet news of the latest taxpayer-funded mortgage scam has traveled fast. The Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, recently told Congress that at least 19,000 filers hadn’t purchased a home when they claimed the credit. For another 74,000 filers, claiming a total of $500 million in credits, evidence suggests that they weren’t first-time buyers. – WSJ – First Time Fraudsters, 10/29/2009

The  IRS even had to admit that in an investigation they found 53 cases where IRS employees filed “illegal or inappropriate” claims for the credit.

Too Big To Govern

A new president is elected once every four years, but the vast government bureaucracy remains.  It is said that a president will only be able to address 3-4 top priorities in their term.  By the time they appoint executive department heads and the Senate approves them and they set about to figure out the departments they are in charge of, it is an enormous undertaking to try to make significant changes.  To try to curb fraud, to overcome the inertia of the entrenched bureaucrats who know they will outlast the appointee, and their friends in Congress who will probably be there as long, is just too tall an order to accomplish in a four year cycle.  Every time a new liberal takes over, their first order of business is to make the bureaucracy larger.  It does not work.  It will not work.

The Only Solution

The only solution is to make the federal government smaller.  It must be bold.  It must be dramatic.  Tweaking it at the margins will fail.  Entire departments must be shut down.  The Constitution should be the blueprint for this.  If the power is not explicit in the Constitution, shut it down and allow the states or local governments to take it up if they choose.  Then drastically cut taxes accordingly.  Let people keep their money and decide at the local level if they want that service or not.  Let every state try their own solution and each state can learn what works and what doesn’t from each other.  But this idea of pushing every solution up to the federal and let one size fits all be forced on everyone is, quite simply, madness.  We need less government and more liberty.

If I asked you a simple question, what government organization works well, what would you say?  Let’s take a look at two government organizations and compare their effectiveness and motivation.

The Military

Whether you support our troops on the battlefield or want them to always stay home in their barracks, most Americans will say the military does a pretty good job.  Why? That is, why are they effective, not just why do people think so?  Well, they put a lot of investment in training and technology.  They seem to have solved the problem of integration, being based on merit rather than racial prejudice.  These are all important things, but I don’ t they get to the core of the issue.  The key question is, what happens if they don’t do their job?  They die…they die, the guy beside them dies, their buddies die, and depending on the size of the conflict, their families and country may eventually die.  With that kind of motivation, race is not even secondary.  If the guy next to me has got my back and I have his, I don’t care what color he or she is.  We do it right, we live;  we don’t, we die.

The K-12 Teacher

K-12 education comes under fire in this country, and rightly so, for failing to produce an educated workforce.  In New York, for example we spend over $14,000 per student, per year on education, far above the national average of around $9,000.  Are students in New York 50% smarter than the country in general?  Hardly.  Is the nation as a whole turning out well educated students?  Sadly, no.

Our K-12 public schools are a government run monopoly.  So what happens to a K-12 teacher if they fail to do their job?  If they have been in the job long enough to get tenure, nothing.  They will get a raise like everyone else.  So what motivates them to turn out outstanding students?  I’ll wait.

Let me be clear that I don’t want to lump all teachers together.  They are many teachers who, by having what  I suppose is a strong moral streak,  do a great job because they want to teach.  Okay, so let’s look at the teaching profession where there is a group that does their best because they get satisfaction from doing a good job.  Now, some studies come out that say the way to improve results is smaller classroom size.  The teacher’s unions get behind it and eventually push it through.  So what does that mean?  If you cut the size of the class in half, you double the number of classes.  If you double the number of classes, you have to double the number of teachers and thus have to go deeper into the labor pool to find them.  Before you took this step, we can probably assume that all the self-motivated teachers were already on the job.  So the additional teachers are motivated by what?

Co -conspirators

That brings us back to the teacher’s unions.  When government’s come under pressure to cut educational expenses, the airwaves are soon flooded with the heart wrenching commercials pleading to restore the funding “for the children’s sake.”  What you don’t hear is the trailer that says, “This commercial paid for by the PTA,” or “This commercial paid for by the Association of Concerned Parents.”  No, what you typically hear is, “This commercial paid for by the X Teacher’s union, Joe Blow, President.”

Who do the unions really represent…really? The students? or the teachers?  They want the funds restored so that their membership is not hurt and their dues are not curtailed.  If their true concern was for the students, why not support school vouchers and charter schools?  They fight the former with a vengeance and the latter, if it is not union organized.

Let’s Not Pick on K-12 Education

Let’s look at other government areas.  Government is the only area where union membership is growing.  How many people relish going to their Department of Motor Vehicles?  How efficient is the Post Office?  Amtrak?  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a bonus compensation plan, which is a step in the right direction unless it leads to cooking the books and making extremely risky loans that lead to the near collapse of our economy.  How can we get this under control?

Controlling the Uncontrollable

Our government is trying to install a massive health care program that will cost a trillion dollars.  At the same time, tens of billions of dollars are stolen from Medicare every year and they can’t stop it.  Early this year, the Obama Administration passed a $787 billion stimulus package, spent $18 million to build a website to track it, and put Joe Biden in the role of watch dog.  How is that working out?  A recent report from ABC News, of all places, found that credit for creating jobs was given on the web site to Congressional Districts that do not exist.  A $1,000 grant was purported to have created 50 jobs.  The New York Times investigated and found that the $1,000 went to purchase a lawn mower.  It took from the time of the founding of the Republic until about the mid 1990s to accumulate $6 trillion in debt.  It has doubled since then, and it is projected to go from $12 trillion to $14 trillion by next year!

It cannot be controlled.  It is impossible to control.  The only solution is to cut the federal government down to size.  Take out the Constitution and read what the true function of government are supposed to be.  The military, absolutely;  the Post Office, yes it’s in there; coin money; establish patents and copyrights; establish the courts; control the District of Columbia; regulate interstate commerce; make treaties; give the State of the Union address.  That pretty much sums it up and everything else should be left to the states and local government or the people.

We should jettison all the rest and cut this government down to size and get out of debt.  Department of Labor–gone;  Department of Health and Human Services–gone; Deparment of Housing and Urban Development–gone; Deparment of Transportation–gone; Deparment of Energy–gone; Deparment of Education–gone; Deparment of Veterans Affairs–gone, rolled into the Department of Defense;  Deparment of Homeland Security–gone, rolled into the Department of Defense; Deparment of the Interior–gone; Deparment of Agriculture–gone.

The amount of money saved would be enormous.  Selling all the real estate and buildings would bring in more money.  We could then cut taxes to jump start the economy and run a surplus to cut the debt.  The next step would be to make it illegal for unions to organize government workers without a referendum approved by all the voters.  Side benefits would be less campaign money because there would be less government to influence.  Government would be more accountable to the people because it would be closer to the people, that is, at the state level or local level.  We can do this proactively, or wait until the government is bankrupt and we have to sell off the parts to the Chinese.

If you look at President Obama’s record on what he says one day and one he says later when reality sets in, are we really ready to believe him when he says,

“Whatever plan we design upholds three basic principles,” he said. “First, the rising cost of health care must be brought down; second, Americans must have the freedom to keep whatever doctor and health care plan they have, or to choose a new doctor or health care plan if they want it; and third, all Americans must have quality, affordable health care.”

He told us we absolutely had to pass his $787 Billion stimulus package or the unemployment rate would hit 9%, but if the package passed, the unemployment rate would be held to 8%.  It didn’t work.  Unemployment is at 9.1% and climbing.  He said bankruptcy for the auto companies would be disasterous for the economy.  After pouring billions into the auto companies, where are they?  In bankruptcy.  It is estimated that his health care “solution” would cost between $1 and $1.6 trillion. Why should we believe it?  What has he told us he would do that has actually come to pass?  North Korea?  Iran?

What confidence do we have that the government can do anything, other than national defense, better than private industry?  The postal service?  Amtrack? Farm subsidies? Earmarks? Speaking of healthcare what about Medicare and Medicaid?  In a report from March 2008:

“We need to act quickly and effectively to address Medicare’s fiscal health, including enacting the steps proposed in the President’s budget, which would postpone the insolvency date of the Part A trust fund for ten years,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.

A Modest Proposal

Before attempting to overhaul one-sixth of the U.S. Economy, why doesn’t the Obama Administration fix Medicare and Medicaid?  Show us your stuff Mr. President. Not your charm, not your winning smile. The campaign is over.   Prove that you can make these government programs work before you take on any more massive health care undertakings.

Something We Can All Look Forward To

President Obama announces His Budget Plan and the Stock Market Craters

President Obama got his $800 billion stimulus package off the launching pad and now we eagerly await the massive stimulus to come when people start seeing their taxes reduced in April by $8-$16 per week.  Stand back, the crowds could be euphoric and out of control.

With the ink barely dry on that package, President Obama rolls out the next attack on future generations of Americans.  His plan calls for the addition of debt so staggering that it may destroy the U.S. economy.  How long before the additional interest on the national debt starts growing so fast that we cannot pay it, let alone the principal?  In his budget he plans to add half a trillion to the national debt every year, and all of this is with some very rosy forecasts of 5% and 6% GDP growth.  Will someone please tell the rookie, that when you slam the most productive earners with more taxes, they tend to react by producing less.

“The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.”

The Reagan policies produced 25 years of unprecedented growth.  So the inexperienced President Obama is going to undo this because…?  The Democrats love to point to the economy during the Clinton years, but you have to look a bit more closely.  During the first two years of the Clinton’s time in office the economy was basically flat.  The economy didn’t really start moving until 1995.  What coincided with that?  Oh, yeah, the Republicans took control of Congress.  Taxes were cut and the economy took off like a rocket.

If you look at the term of George W. Bush, after 9/11 and the recession he inherited, he again cut taxes and the economy took off.  The stock market didn’t start it’s downward spiral until about six months into 2007.  What coincided with that?  Oh, yeah, the Democrats took control of Congress.  Coincidence?  You decide.

So now we have the new president deciding to trash the policies that have successfully grown the economy under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush.  At the same time he is going to saddle future generations with massive debt on top of a looming Social Security and Medicare bill coming due.

I consider myself an optimist, but for the first time in my life I am actually fearful that one man could destroy the U.S. economy in his first 100 days and rush this in under the guise of an emergency, where there is no debate, no time to read what is getting put into law, just slam it in and trust the the most inexperienced president in the last century that it will be all right.  Do you feel better now?

Can We Dump this Canard Over the Side?

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years.

This economic inequality hogwash is dishonesty at it’s peak.  The so-called economic inequality is a sign of the success of the economy.  Think about it, the economy has a floor but not a ceiling.  That is, your income cannot go below zero, but there is no limit to how high it can grow.  So as incomes rise higher and higher, yes, they are going to move further from zero.  This is like saying that air travel is worse today than when the Wright Brothers flew because planes fly higher now than they did in 1903!  So let’s pass a law that says airplanes can’t fly higher than 2,000 feet so we don’t have a great inequality in altitudes.

There is nothing stopping anyone from having that high income if they work hard, use their talents, and succeed.  America is not about punishing the successful.  Many who start out at the bottom move up.  Many who came here as immigrants start at the bottom.  If the Democrats want to improve the numbers, let them control the illegal immigration that is probably inflating the numbers on the bottom.  Let’s stop turning success into failure.  How many people would like to be like Bill Gates?  How many people think America would be better off if we were all like Willy Loman?

The Big Flameout

The Productive Ones Set Sail to More Favorable Tax Climates

Let’s suppose for a moment that the stimulus works and the economy takes off.  With what President Obama has in the works, and the massive taxes that he plans to impose on the top earners, and the carbon taxes he plans to levy on businesses that weill be passed along to the consumers in higher prices (there goes your $8 tax break), and the masive debt he is loading on future generations, the stimulus will soon flameout, and a bigger recession will follow.  This time we won’t able to borrow and spend our way out of it.  Tax cuts won’t matter because there will be no one earning anything to tax.  The wealthy will have packed up and moved to more favorable tax climates and Barack Obama’s historic presidency will have flamed out as well.

It couldn’t be more clear that the Obama adminstration should immediately begin the conversion from our convoluted tax code, to a flat tax that could be filed on a post card.  How can I make such a claim?

Well, Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee that writes the tax laws, seems to have forgotton to pay his income taxes on a villa that he owns in the Dominican Republic.  More recently we learn that Timothy Geithner, Obama’s nominee to be Treasury Secretary, didn’t pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for several years.  The Treasury Department includes the Internal Revenue Service which enforces the tax laws that Mr. Rangel’s Committee writes and collects the money.

So if the tax laws are so complicated that the individual in charge of writing the tax laws cannot understand them enough to follow them, and they are so complicated that the individual in charge of enforcing those tax laws, doesn’t understand what he is charged with enforcing, don’t you think it’s time we simplified the tax laws?  If these highly educated, very experienced, extremely intelligent people cannot comply with the tax code, what hope does the average Joe have?  Perhaps that is why it is estimated we spend $200 billion per year in tax compliance.  Couldn’t that money be more productively be employed elsewhere in the economy?

What do you think?