Why Government Unions Are Proof That Democrats Have Become An Inherently Un-American Threat

FDR never wanted to see public sector unions.  FDR wrote:

“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.”

[Well, that hasn’t really come to pass now, has it?  FDR continues]:

“Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that ‘under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government.'”

Why did FDR say that?

Read this article from The Wall Street Journal and understand the inherent threat of public unions.  And then open your eyes:

It’s now official: In 2009 the number of unionized workers who work for the government surpassed those in the private economy for the first time. This milestone explains a lot about modern American politics, in particular the paradox that union clout with Democrats has increased even as fewer workers belong to unions overall.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported recently that 51.4% of America’s 15.4 million union members, or about 7.91 million workers, were employed by the government in 2009. As recently as 1980, there were more than twice as many private as public union members. But private union membership has continued to decline, even as unions have organized more public employees. The nearby chart shows the historical trend.

Overall unionism keeps declining, however, with the loss of 771,000 union jobs amid last year’s recession. Only one in eight workers (12.3%) now belongs to a union, with private union employment hitting a record low of 7.2% of all jobs, down from 7.6% in 2008. Only one in 13 U.S. workers in the private economy pays union dues. In government, by contrast, the union employee share rose to 37.4% from 36.8% the year before.

In private industries, union workers are subject to the vagaries of the marketplace and economic growth. Thus in 2009 10.1% of private union jobs were eliminated, which was more than twice the 4.4% rate of overall private job losses. On the other hand, government unions offer what is close to lifetime job security and benefits, subject only to gross dereliction of duty. Once a city or state’s workers are organized by a union, the jobs almost never go away.

This means government is the main playing field of modern unionism, which explains why the AFL-CIO and SEIU have become advocates for higher taxes and government expansion in cities, states and Washington. Unions once saw their main task as negotiating a bigger share of an individual firm’s profits. Now the movement’s main goal is securing a larger share of the overall private economy’s wealth, which means pitting government employees against middle-class taxpayers.

And as union membership has grown in government, so has union clout in pushing politicians (especially but not solely Democrats) for higher wages and benefits. This is why labor chiefs Andy Stern (SEIU) and Rich Trumka (AFL-CIO) could order Democrats to exempt unions from ObamaCare’s tax increase on high-cost health insurance plans. To the extent Democrats have become the party of government, they have become ever more beholden to public unions.

The problem for democracy is that this creates a self-reinforcing cycle of higher spending and taxes. The unions help elect politicians, who repay the unions with more pay and benefits and dues-paying members, who in turn help to re-elect those politicians.

The political scientists Fred Siegel and Dan DiSalvo recently wrote in the Weekly Standard about the 2006 example of former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine shouting to a rally of 10,000 public workers that “We will fight for a fair contract.” Mr. Corzine was supposed to be on the other side of the bargaining table representing taxpayers, not labor.

From time to time, usually requiring a fiscal crisis, middle-class taxpayers in the private economy will revolt enough to check this vicious political cycle. (See Scott Brown.) But sooner or later, the unions regain their political advantage because taxpayers have other concerns while unions have the most to gain or lose.

This is why most Democrats once opposed public-sector unionism. Such 20th-century liberal heroes as New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia and Franklin Roosevelt believed fervently in industrial unions. But they believed public employees had a special social obligation and could too easily exploit their monopoly position. How right they were.

As we can see from the desperate economic and fiscal woes of California, New Jersey, New York and other states with dominant public unions, this has become a major problem for the U.S. economy and small-d democratic governance. It may be the single biggest problem. The agenda for American political reform needs to include the breaking of public unionism’s power to capture an ever-larger share of private income.

The public sector unions and their power over the people was recognized to be an un-American and an inherent danger even by advocates of unions such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  We have only to look at Wisconsin and at what fascistic Democrats such as Community Organizer in Chief Barack Obama are doing in that state and others to see how right past Democrats like FDR were.

The things about economics and the economy that FDR believed in were wrong.  They were proven wrong in history.  That’s why the industrial unions that he adored have nearly vanished; they simply create too many impediments to a strong economy – particularly in today’s competition with countries like China that do not have “a union problem.”  And so Americans in our free market system decided long ago that it was better to have an actual job than it was to belong to a union and wonder why they had no jobs.

Modern Democrats, in desperation, turned to the very thing that they saw as an inherent un-American threat in the past.  They have to be hypocrites and liars because they have abandoned the very nature of their previous beliefs about the nature of the economy in a democracy.  Now public unions – once rightly an anathema – have become the foundation of their strength.  Big Union money constitutes more than TEN TIMES any Republican special interest money; and it obviously comes overwhelmingly from the public sector unions that FDR warned us about.

And in doing so, the Democrat Party has become an un-American and inherent threat themselves.

Jesus’ words in Luke 22:25 sum up Democrats and unions so well today: “Jesus said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.'”  Because liberals and unions literally take our money from our children and then tell us they’re doing it for our own good.  And the Democrats who take and take and take from us while calling themselves our “benefactors” today is hardly anything new.  And hardly anything Jesus approved of.

The Hindenburg Omen: How Long Before Americans Cry, ‘Oh, The Humanity!’ As Obama Policies Fail?

A cartoonist used the image of the Hindenburg to describe the ideologically-biased mainstream media’s horrified reaction to Obama’s plummeting poll numbers back in July 2009:

But now there is another, far more frightening connection between Barack Obama and the infamous Hindenburg explosion.

Obama aint going down quietly: he’s taking the entire American economy with him:

The Hindenburg Omen IS Scary, but So Are the Fundamentals
Posted Aug 25, 2010 01:37pm EDT by Aaron Task in Investing

After tumbling below 10,000 yet again Wednesday morning, the Dow rebounded to close above that psychologically important level and was slightly higher early Thursday. Still, fear in the market is being expressed by the continued rally in Treasuries and widespread chatter about an ominous sounding technical indicator: The Hindenburg Omen.

The Hindenburg Omen has a roughly 25% accuracy rate in predicting big market upheaval since 1987, meaning it’s far from infallible but isn’t inconsequential either. The indicator’s creator, mathematician Jim Miekka, compares the Hindenburg Omen to a funnel cloud that precedes a tornado in a recent interview with The WSJ. “It doesn’t mean [the market’s] going to crash, but it’s a high probability,” he said.

Complex and esoteric even in the world of technical indicators, the Hindenburg Omen is triggered when the following occurs, Zero Hedge reports:

• — The daily number of NYSE new 52-week highs and the daily number of new 52-week lows must both be greater than 2.2% of total NYSE issues traded that day.
• — The NYSE’s 10-week moving average is rising.
• — The McClellan Oscillator (a technical measure of “overbought” vs. “oversold” conditions) is negative on that same day.
• — New 52-week highs cannot be more than twice the new 52-week lows. This condition is absolutely mandatory.

These criteria have been hit twice since Aug. 12, prompting Miekka to get out of the market entirely, The WSJ reports. Judging by the recent market action, many others are following suit — or at least moving in the same direction.

Worry List Lengthens

As Henry and I discuss in the accompanying clip, there are a lot of reasons to be worried right now that having nothing to with The Hindenburg Omen, the “Death Cross”, Mercury being in retrograde or myriad other indicators cited by market pundits of various stripes.

More fundamental reasons to be concerned include:

It’s the Economy, Stupid: This week’s weak durable goods and home sales reports are just the latest in a string of desultory data. In sum, the macroeconomic data strongly suggest the job market isn’t going to improve anytime soon. And if the job market doesn’t improve, there’s really not much hope for a turnaround in housing, consumer sales or anything else really. Oh, and the stock market is still expensive on a cyclically adjusted P/E basis, making it more vulnerable to an economic slowdown.

Unusual Uncertainty: On July 21, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke testified on Capitol Hill that the Fed’s forecast called for real GDP growth of 3%-3.5% for 2010 and 3.5%-4.5% in 2011 and 2012. Less than a month later, the Fed announced plans to buy Treasuries again (a.k.a. “QE2”) and, as The WSJ reported this week, there’s a tremendous amount of dissention within the Fed about the ‘right’ policy prescription.

Financial Follies: Whether it’s renewed concerns about Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, more U.S. bank closures or reports of commercial developers walking away from properties, it’s clear the problems in the financial system were not resolved by various and sundry bailouts and government stimulus … not by a long shot.

Good Politics vs. Good Economics: S&P’s downgrade of Ireland’s debt and Greece’s revenue shortfall show the short-term perils of the austerity measures that have swept Europe. But promising to cut government spending and slash deficits appears to be a winning political strategy in America right now. Certainly, it’s a key message of Republican and Tea Party candidates, who appear to have the momentum heading into the November mid-term elections. But if Europe’s ‘PIIGS’ are any example, gridlock might not be so “good” for the economy this time around, much less the financial markets.

Of course, the “good” news here is that there’s so much to worry about and the markets typically are darkest just before dawn.

CEOs of large corporations see a mess created by Obama to blame for the malaise that we haven’t seen since Obama’s long-lost twin Jimmy Carter was president:

This week, Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Jim Tisch, CEO of Loews Corp. both blamed the President’s policies for creating an environment of “uncertainty” that is crippling America’s economy.

The Obama administration is “flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working,” Otellini said Monday in a speech in Aspen.

Higher taxes and more regulation add an additional $1 billion to building a semiconductor manufacturing plant in the U.S. vs. overseas, the CEO said.

As a result, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here,” Otellini said, warning of “an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe…this is the bitter truth.”

Loews’ Tisch made similarly themed comments in a Bloomberg interview on Wednesday. “Part of the problem is that business has very little confidence in what’s been going on and very little visibility,” he said.

But is it just CEOs?  Is it just big business?  Surely Obama’s anti-business policies are making things easier for the little guy, right?

Wrong:

For America’s Middle Class, the Hits Just Keep on Coming
Posted Aug 25, 2010 07:50am EDT by Aaron Task

A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled this week over the ICI’s report that equity mutual funds suffered net withdrawals totaling over $33 billion in the first seven months of 2010. Myriad reasons were cited for the trend, including a mistrust of stocks, the flash crash and an aging population. (See: The Next Bubble? Investors Flee Stocks in Droves In Favor of Bonds.)

Perhaps the biggest reason of all hasn’t gotten enough attention: Americans are making due with less and don’t have the money to put into stock funds, and many are taking money out of their investments to pay for basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter.

With wages stagnant for those who still have a job “a lot of people are having to tap into their nest egg to keep their living standards going,” says Damien Hoffman, co-founder of WallStCheatSheet. “A lot of people are living out of principal. There’s no other way to get around that.”

Fidelity’s recent report of a sharp increase in the number of 401(k) participants seeking loans or hardship withdrawals in the second quarter is further evidence of the disappearing middle class. “These are basically emergency ways to fund yourself. We think it’s a scary statistic,” Hoffman says. “Where is the middle class going to be if they draw down their 401(k)s drastically over course of next few years?”

Obama’s anti-business and profoundly socialist policies seek to punish business in every way he can.

A lot of Americans were probably happy with that in November of ’08.

But that was before they began to realize the truth that either all boats rise, or all boats sink.  Nancy Pelosi never drained the political swamp, as she falsely promised, but Barack Obama has certainly drained the ocean of economic opportunity (and very likely poisoned the bluebird of happiness, but that’s a crime for another day).  We need the rich, and the big businesses, in order to have jobs.  When they profit, the rest of us do.  And when they are demonized and attacked and regulated to death, the rest of us suffer, too.

Because name the last time a poor person hired you and gave you a good paying position.  If you’re a liberal, let me add, “It was never, wasn’t it, dumbass?”

It’s not really accurate to say that Obama is “anti-business”; he’s the MOST anti-business president ever.

A glance at Obama’s appointments and their actual world business experience should suffice to reveal how important business was to Obama.

Obama filled his administration with radicals out to “fundamentally transform America.”  And being the kind of man or woman who was oriented toward meeting payrolls and expanding businesses really didn’t need to apply.

And these eggheaded Marxists are seizing money from the private sector – and even from the future – and making terrible decisions about how to invest it.  We get turtle tunnels and monkey cocaine studies rather than infrastructure investment.  Had it been up to businesses as to how to invest the trillions of dollars that Obama pissed away, things would have been a lot better now.

I love the title from a US News & World Report article: “Obama’s Anti-Business Policies Are Our Economic Katrina.”  It’s written by Mortimer Zuckerman, who used to be a huge supporter of Barry Hussein, until he finally realized that “the One” was nothing more than a great big fart in the wind.

And even Obama’s own Democrat Party is now finally beginning to realize what a great big fart in the wind Obama truly is.  They hitched themselves to the Obama bandwagon; and now the wagon is burnt to ashes.

On November 4, 2008, the voters of the United States of America voted for national extinction.  And yet many are surprised that we’re now following in the footsteps of the Dodo bird.

ObamaCare Prescription For Health System Has Many Deadly Side Effects

I’m sure you’ve seen those TV ads for prescription drugs that are offered to treat a relatively minor problem, but then come with a long list of nasty side effects that make one wonder why anybody would take that drug.  The prescription seems far worse than the disease.

To put it in a nutshell, ObamaCare is rather like Saturday Night Live’s “Happy Fun Ball.”  It isn’t FUN like Happy Fun Ball, of course, but it does have that same list of toxic and deadly side effects that  just goes on and on.

A dramatic re-enactment of the SNL Happy Fun Ball commercial:

Happy Fun Ball, fun as it was, had just a few side effects:

Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.

Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.

Happy Fun Ball Contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.

Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.

Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:
Itching
Vertigo
Dizziness
Tingling in extremities
Loss of balance or coordination
Slurred speech
Temporary blindness
Profuse sweating
Heart palpitations

If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.

Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.

When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration…

Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.

Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.

Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime guarantee.

Happy Fun Ball

ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!

We have to worry about ObamaCare exploding, too, and taking our entire economy and society out with it.  ObamaCare will definitely accelerate to dangerous costs.  And we all KNOW it’s dangerous to taunt ObamaCare.

Heritage figured out that ObamaCare needed it’s own Happy Fun Ball sendoff-style commercial:

Here’s some of the ObamaBall side effects:

• Job loss
• Higher premiums
• Higher costs
• Higher taxes
• Medicare cuts
• Medicaid expansion
• Losing the plan you like
• Special backroom deals
• Small business penalties
• Denial of pre-existing conditions (until 2014, even for kids)
• Future government rationing
• Investment penalties
• Loss of state authority
• Higher deficits
• Higher debt
• Individual mandates with penalties

Kind of puts the side effects of Happy Fun Ball to shame, if you ask me.

Heritage has quite a bit more on the side effects of ObamaCare.

I’m sure you can’t wait to “bounce” through the 159 new federal agencies ObamaBall creates, or to ping-and-pong off the 16,500 new IRS agents ObamaBall will send reigning down on you.

That’s the kind of “fun” that ObamaBall promises.

Obama’s Backdoor Taxation And The Coming Consequences Of Obamanomics

Remember Obama’s ubiquitous campaign pledge that 95% of Americans wouldn’t see their taxes go up one single dime? Oops.

Reuters ran a story that they titled, “Backdoor Taxes To Hit Middle Class.”  The Obama administration whined, pleaded, threatened, and intimidated Reuters to the point that Reuters took the story down.

Fortunately, the International Business Times is running pretty much the story under the same title:

Backdoor taxes to hit middle class

By Terri Cullen
01 February 2010 @ 06:16 pm ET
Next Politics & Policy Article

NEW YORK – The Obama administration’s plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration’s Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 — though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a “patch” that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year’s levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy — the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;

* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;

* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;

* Individuals who don’t itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;

* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.

Notwithstanding that punishing the rich actually punishes the poor by punishing economic growth (the poor get their jobs because the rich create them, rather than vice versa), it was always a lie that Obama was only going to tax the rich.  People like me were pointing that out throughout the 2008 election campaign.

A couple examples:

Obama-Biden Will Come After Middle Class With Taxes

Obama WILL Raise Your Taxes And Your Living Costs

That Obama’s promise to tax only the rich was such a transparent lie that even the biased leftist New York Times reported on it.  The final paragraph in their article entitled, “Obama’s Pledge to Tax Only the Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say” reads as follows:

“There is no way we can pay for health care and the rest of the Obama agenda, plus get our long-term deficits under control, simply by raising taxes on the wealthy,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, a former Clinton administration budget official. “The middle class is going to have to contribute as well.”

The Wall Street Journal expressed the same point better (as usual) in analyzing Obama’s tax and spend demagoguery:

This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can’t possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama’s new spending ambitions.

The WSJ goes on to say:

as a thought experiment, let’s go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable “dime” of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

We voted for a liar based on the huge pack of lies he offered us.

If you actually believed Obama’s “hope and change” that you would be able to get a free ride as Someone Else picked up your tab forever, you are a genuine fool.

Joe Biden summed up the Obama populist demagoguery by suggesting that paying excessively high taxes was the “patriotic duty” of the rich – which basically means that the middle classes and the poor either aren’t patriots or that they have no patriotic duties.

Liberals talk about “fairness,” as though its somehow “fair” that nearly half the country pay should pay no federal income taxes at all, while 1% of the American people should be compelled to pay 40% of all federal income tax.  They think it’s “fair” that the top 1% of earners pay more in taxes than the bottom 95% of Americans COMBINED.

This is America, where you have the right to sit on your fat ass while someone else works for the bon bons you stuff in your face while you vegetate in front of the boob tube.  Why SHOULD you work when you can saddle that burden on Someone Else?

Rich people study harder in their formative years.  They postpone prosperity longer to pursue more college education.  They work longer hours.  They save more.  They pursue jobs that are more demanding and more stressful. They invest when others consume, and then consume some more, and then some more.  And when they finally start to achieve, Mr. or Ms. bon bon feels entitled to confiscate their prosperity and redistribute it to the do nots.

And that’s “fair.”

Well, under Obama, your “fairness” is going to come home to roost.

Obama is considered “anti-business” by a whopping 77% of investors. whose investments stimulate economic growth.  Obama has gone to war with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce whose businesses create jobs.  Obama has gone to war with the banks that lend money to businesses.

Many businesses simply afraid to hire new workers because of Obama’s new taxes and rules, and the sheer atmosphere of doubt that he’s created.

We  are descending into a command-and-control economy with the government pulling the strings, according to a study.  And that is going to have severe consequences.

On top of Obama’s approach of punishing and discouraging businesses and investment, Obama took the Democrat Marxist-based economic philosophy of redistributionism and ran with it so far down the field that we could never hope to pay for it by taxing the rich even if we sucked them all dry.

Obama is spending vastly more money as a percentage of GDP than FDR ever did.  All of this spending is doing little to stimulate the economy (and what little it IS doing is both artificial and temporary), and the American people are going to have to pay dearly for all this never-before-seen-in-the-history-of-the-human-race spending very shortly down the road.

Now Mr. Middle Class and even Mr. Minimum Wage is going to have to pay for Obama’s massive government excesses, too.  Or else the whole Ponzi scheme we call our federal government will fall apart.

This hearkens to the words of Michelle Obama:

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

I see those words, “Barack Obama will require you to work,” and I see a bunch of communist proletariats in a mandatory labor pool squatting over their forced labor.

I came across an article entitled, “A New Slavery: Forced Labor, the Communist Betrayal of Human Rights.”  Oh oh.  Barack Obama isn’t the first Marxist who ever decided to “require you to work.”

Obama has created such gigantic deficits through his gigantic “government as God” approach that we will have unsustainable trillion dollar deficits through 2020.

“Barack Obama will require you to work,” Michelle Obama assured us.  “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

That means no more boob tube and bon bons for you, Obama voters.  Get off your fat, lazy, worthless asses and work off your Dear Leader’s deficits.

Don’t wait for Obama to start a forced labor camp in your neighborhood.  “Move out of your comfort zones” and start one of your own.  Maybe you cold begin by collecting your family’s feces to produce Toebee (compost) like the other Dear Leader requires his people to do in North Korea.

Don’t Think ObamaCare Won’t Be A Giant Black Hole Of Debt

You will be hearing about the Democrats “paying” for their health care takeover.  Don’t believe it.  Again and again and again, Democrats have sold one health care boondoggle after another, claiming that it will “only” cost such-and-so.  They have a perfect track record — of failure to live up to their claims.

Health Costs and History
Government programs always exceed their spending estimates.

Washington has just run a $1.4 trillion budget deficit for fiscal 2009, even as we are told a new health-care entitlement will reduce red ink by $81 billion over 10 years. To believe that fantastic claim, you have to ignore everything we know about Washington and the history of government health-care programs. For the record, we decided to take a look at how previous federal forecasts matched what later happened. It isn’t pretty.

Let’s start with the claim that a more pervasive federal role will restrain costs and thus make health care more affordable. We know that over the past four decades precisely the opposite has occurred. Prior to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health-care inflation ran slightly faster than overall inflation. In the years since, medical inflation has climbed 2.3 times faster than cost increases elsewhere in the economy. Much of this reflects advances in technology and expensive treatments, but the contrast does contradict the claim of government as a benign cost saver.

Next let’s examine the record of Congressional forecasters in predicting costs.  Start with Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for the poor. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that its first-year costs would be $238 million. Instead it hit more than $1 billion, and costs have kept climbing.

Thanks in part to expansions promoted by California’s Henry Waxman, a principal author of the current House bill, Medicaid now costs 37 times more than it did when it was launched—after adjusting for inflation. Its current cost is $251 billion, up 24.7% or $50 billion in fiscal 2009 alone, and that’s before the health-care bill covers millions of new beneficiaries.

Medicare has a similar record. In 1965, Congressional budgeters said that it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Its actual cost that year was $90 billion. Whoops.  The hospitalization program alone was supposed to cost $9 billion but wound up costing $67 billion.  These aren’t small forecasting errors. The rate of increase in Medicare spending has outpaced overall inflation in nearly every year (up 9.8% in 2009), so a program that began at $4 billion now costs $428 billion.

The Medicare program for renal disease was originally estimated in 1973 to cover 11,000 participants. Today it covers 395,000, at a cost of $22 billion. The 1988 Medicare home-care benefit was supposed to cost $4 billion by 1993, but the actual cost was $10 billion, because many more people participated than expected. This is nearly always the case with government programs because their entitlement nature—accepting everyone who meets the age or income limits—means there’s no fixed annual budget.

One of the few health-care entitlements that has come in well below the original estimate is the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. Those costs are now about one-third below the original projections, according to the Medicare actuaries. Part of the reason is lower than expected participation by seniors and savings from generic drugs.

But as White House budget director Peter Orszag told Congress when he ran the Congressional Budget Office, the “primary cause” of these cost savings is that “the pricing is coming in better than anticipated, and that is likely a reflection of the competition that’s occurring in the private market.” The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services agrees, stating that “the drug plans competing for Medicare beneficiaries have been able to establish greater than expected savings from aggressive price negotiation.” It adds that when given choices “beneficiaries have overwhelmingly selected less costly drug plans.”

Yet liberal Democrats fought that private-competition model (preferring government drug price controls), just as they are trying to prevent private health plans from competing across state borders now.

The lesson here is that spending on nearly all federal benefit programs grows relentlessly once they are established. This history won’t stop Democrats bent on ramming their entitlement into law. But every Member who votes for it is guaranteeing larger deficits and higher taxes far into the future. Count on it.

You should notice the bit about the prescription drug benefit passed under Bush, because Democrats have routinely demonized it.  They claim that Republicans didn’t even TRY to pay for it, but merely increased the deficit.  That is for the most part true, but at least it a) relied upon the private sector to provide the benefit, and b) didn’t socialize the entire economy in the process.  Democrats argue that, unlike Republicans with the prescription drug benefit, they are trying to “pay” for their plan.  Just as right now I am flapping my arms and trying to fly out of my chair.

As much as Democrats want to demonize the Bush prescription drug benefit, it remains the anomaly as being the ONLY government health care program that ran under budget, as opposed to ten times budget.

We can’t allow the Medicare system to collapse, as it is on the verge of doing.  Too many elderly people who don’t have recourse to anything else are counting on it.  But the gigantic hole of red ink is proof that we never should have started this program until we truly counted the cost.  Had the government not foisted Medicare upon us, the private market would have solved the problem better.

Anybody who thinks we can save one giant government program by creating an even more giant government program is a fool.  It is the mindset of one who believes the best way to get out of a hole is to dig deeper and faster.

The health care plan that the Democrats are envisioning will be a FAR greater black hole of debt than anything this country has ever seen.  Because it is FAR more ambitious, involves FAR more people, and involves a FAR greater takeover of the US economy.

And, incredibly, the Democrats are literally using the argument of the skyrocketing deficit to enact something that will massively increase our deficits.

Their mindset is the same mindset that deals with our exploding debts by constantly raising the debt ceiling so we can keep on borrowing and borrowing and borrowing.  That fixes the problem, doesn’t it?

We are facing the largest federal deficits since World War II.  That should really scare you, because in World War II, it was AMERICANS who held that debt by purchasing war bonds.  Back then, Americans actually saved their money.  Quite different from these days, when we routinely go into debt to buy a lot of crap that we don’t need.  Today it is CHINA who holds our debt.  So as we begin to contemplate the $800 billion a year in interest payments that we will soon be paying, we realize that we are no longer our own masters.

If that isn’t bad enough, consider this: at the end of World War II, the United States had the greatest manufacturing and industrial base the world had ever seen.  Today, we have only a tiny fraction of that former capability.  In addition to being a debtor nation, we are also a “service” nation.  You don’t spend your way out of debt; you don’t even service your way out of debt.  You produce your way out of debt.  We have long since lost the capability to do that.

Finally, the debts accrued during World War II were debts that were a) necessary and b) temporary.  That, also, is no longer true today.  Our World War II debts were the result of our war of necessity against the greatest evil humankind had ever seen; the debts we are experiencing today are the result of our war against our children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children as we demand more and more benefits at somebody’s else’s expense.

As a result of American power following World War II, the U.S. dollar became the fundamental world currency, and English became the official lingua franca of the global economy.  Tragically, as a result of the rapid American collapse, the U.S. dollar is now on the verge of being expunged from the global stage, and English is increasingly not being spoken even in America.

Obama WILL Raise Your Taxes And Your Living Costs

There was an interesting exchange during the debate last night:

“He has voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year,” McCain said.

“That’s not true, John. That’s not true,” Obama said, interrupting him.

But it IS true.

“Barack Obama has voted in support of higher taxes 94 times in just 3 years, including higher taxes for Americans making just $42,000 a year. If voters consider Barack Obama’s record of opposing tax cuts and his outspoken proposals to raise taxes on family savings, Social Security and small businesses — this latest campaign promise lacks a single shred of credibility.”

Despite Claiming He’d Lower Taxes For Middle Income Americans, Obama Voted In Favor Of The Democrats’ Budget – Which Would Raise Tax Rates For Americans Earning $42,000 Or More:

Obama Voted Twice In Favor Of The Democrats’ FY 2009 Budget Resolution. (S. Con. Res. 70, CQ Vote #85: Adopted 51-44: R 2-43; D 47-1; I 2-0, 3/14/08, Obama Voted Yea; S. Con. Res. 70, CQ Vote #142: Adopted 48-45: R 2-44; D 44-1; I 2-0, 6/4/08, Obama Voted Yea)

In Obama’s new version of an economic plan (he’s had so many my eyeballs start rolling), Obama claims to reduce taxes for 95% of Americans (the actual figure is only 81% by Obama’s own figures).  And over 40% of Obama’s “95%” figure actually already don’t pay federal income taxes – which means that it is merely a welfare-like transfer payment.

The result of reducing the rax rate paid by the rich has both increased federal revenues and even raised the ratio of taxes paid compared with income earned.  Lowering taxes has provided an incentive to invest and build wealth, which has in turn raised revenues and increased the percentage of taxes paid by the rich relative to other income classes.

Barack Obama – who IS last years’ winner of “Most liberal US Senator” award – is a tax and spend liberal.  He has $800 billion in new spending projects.  When the wealthy react to his tax increases by sheltering their money, who is he going to come after next?  He’s going to come after you.  He’s already come after you before -94 times in just 3 years, in fact.

When you tax the rich, they find it profitable to shelter their assets.  Not only will the rich pursue tax sheltering activity, but their very focus will shift from making money to avoiding taxes.  That means less investment; which means less investment capital; which means less jobs.  When the housing finance crisis is already freezing investment capital, do you really want Obama in charge of the economy?

Furthermore, Obama will raise your costs.  He has repeatedly attacked John McCain for wanting to lower taxes on corporations.  Obama has promised to raise taxes on corporations – which already pay the 2nd highest tax rate in the world.  He will raise taxes on small businesses, as well.

The fact that he has forced to acknowledge that raising taxes might be a bad idea in a recession means nothing.  He won’t be able to help himself once he’s in office, with a Democratic Congress pushing him.  He won’t stand up against them for the simple reason that he’s never stood up against Democrats.  Obama makes a big deal about the fact that McCain has voted with Bush 90% of the time.  But Obama votes with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time.  A Barack Obama presidency would look little different from a Nancy Pelosi presidency.

What will happen when businesses find themselves paying taxes?  Does anyone seriously think that prices won’t increase to keep up with their increased operating costs?  Does anyone seriously think that jobs won’t be cut in order to reduce costs?

John McCain mentioned Ireland, whose economy has boomed since they reduced their corporate tax rate to 11%.  The U.S. rate is 35%.  Which would you rather pay?  Can you seriously blame businesses for relocating or “outsourcing” given such disparities?

If Barack Obama is elected President, he will try to tax the rich.  But as the rich shelter their money, and as corporations cut back their operations, relocate, or outsource to recover their desired profit margins, the American people will see their Faustian bargain go south on them very quickly.