News Today

Republicans claim that the proposed Health Care Reform Bill does little more than add to our government’s deficit and represents government intrusion into our health care system.

I guess it just sounds a little funny to me, these claims coming from many of the same G.O.P. lawmakers who just six years ago approved a major Medicare expansion that was not paid for and added tens of billions of dollars to the federal deficit.

That 2003 program, pushed through by a G.O.P. controlled Congress and White House, will cost at least a half-trillion dollars over 10 years. Also since the party of newly found fiscal responsibility didn’t introduce any new taxes or spending cuts to pay for the expansion, that cost has been added straight to the federal debt.

Can we get an explanation for this?

“It was standard practice not to pay for things,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question.”

$500 billion dollars added straight to the deficit just wasn’t a big deal six years ago? It was this kind of thinking that has gotten us in the mess that we find ourselves in now.

Hatch, George Voinovich, Olympia Snowe and other G.O.P. lawmakers defended the 2003 vote, saying the program had done a lot of good, but it’s still hard to clear away the stench of hypocrisy. 24 of the 40 Republican Senators who stand in opposition to the current health care reform bill, mostly for fiscal ‘principles’, had no problem supporting a completely unpaid for medicare expansion under George W. Bush’s administration.

“As far as I am concerned, any Republican who voted for the Medicare drug benefit has no right to criticize anything the Democrats have done in terms of adding to the national debt,” said Bruce Bartlett, an official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

He made his comments in a Forbes article titled “Republican Deficit Hypocrisy.”

From the article:

Even with a deceptively low estimate of the drug benefit’s cost, there were still a few Republicans in the House of Representatives who wouldn’t roll over and play dead just to buy re-election. Consequently, when the legislation came up for its final vote on Nov. 22, 2003, it was failing by 216 to 218 when the standard 15-minute time allowed for voting came to an end.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary events in congressional history. The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principled Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-SPAN cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.

Among those congressmen strenuously pressed to change their vote was Nick Smith, R-Mich., who later charged that several members of Congress attempted to virtually bribe him, by promising to ensure that his son got his seat when he retired if he voted for the drug bill…

The bill would pass, with a final vote of 220 to 215. In the end only 25 Republicans voted against the bill and all but 16 Democrats voted no. The gross cost of that bill will be more than either of the current health care bills being considered in the House and Senate. Give the Democrats some credit too, at least they paid for their bill (unlike their G.O.P. counterparts in 2003), and according to the CBO it will not add a cent to the deficit in ten years.

Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/19/republican-budget-hypocrisy-health-care-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091225/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_deficit

A fallacy, a farce, undemocratic and suicidal — These were the words that Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez used to describe the 2009 Copenhagen meetings.

Rodriguez threw out multiple accusations, most directed at President Obama, for the better part of an hour and a half in a Monday news conference.

“At this summit, there was only imperial, arrogant Obama, who does not listen, who imposes his positions and even threatens developing countries,” said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez was angry because the agreement that was reached was negotiated behind closed doors and doesn’t require emission cuts from major polluters. Last weekend former Cuban President Fidel Castro blasted Obama’s speech in Copenhagen, calling it “deceitful, demagogic and full of ambiguities.”

The angry rhetoric aimed at the United States shows how quickly tensions between the U.S. and Cuba have risen during Obama’s administration. Shortly after taking office Obama eased travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans, and Obama spoke of a possible ‘new beginning’ with the island neighbor.

Fidel Castro had seemed to be a fan of Obama, but that honeymoon appears to be over. The elder Castro wrote last week that Obama’s “friendly smile and African-American face” hides the true intentions of the United States.

Additionally, there is currently an American citizen being detained in Cuba. His name has not been released but he was arrested on Dec. 5 while working as a U.S. government contractor.

Raul Castro, Fidel’s younger brother who took power in 2008, told the Cuban parliament that the man was arrested for “distributing illegal satellite communications equipment.”

“The United States won’t quit trying to destroy the revolution,” Castro said. “In the past few weeks we have witnessed the stepping up of the new administration’s efforts in this area.”

Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091221/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_us_obama
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iAmsicW8N2RLyDMGseghZNrEpiNgD9CNDPIO0

Is it possible that we’ve overreacted with this whole terrorism thing?

In the last twenty years there have been exactly two Islamic terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, with less than 3,000 total fatalities. I don’t mean to make light of what happened on either of those attacks but…

In response to the two terrorist attacks we’ve launched invasions, created vast new bureaucracies, shredded the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Conventions, compounded regulations, spent hundreds of billions of dollars and disrupted travel and commerce.

By changing our lifestyle, by giving up our freedoms, rights and privacy… aren’t we letting the terrorists win?

I say this because a couple sections of the Patriot Act are up for renewal. Three provisions will expire on December 31,

* The Records Provision
* The Roving Wiretaps Provision
* The Lone Wolf Provision

Committees in both the House and Senate have already approved renewal bills, but the House version includes much stronger civil liberties protections. As Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute pointed out, “the successful investigations since 9/11 — only a few of which actually involved “plots” for attacks in the U.S. — appear to have depended a lot more on good human intelligence and informants in the community than broad new surveillance powers.

These provisions appear to do little except allow the government to spy on innocent people and collect private data, which is why they should expire. Urge your Congressmen to vote against renewal. Or at least favor the House bill, H.R. 3845, as opposed to the Senate’s S. 1692. The House bill…

* Increases the government’s burden of proof for the Records and Roving Wiretaps powers
* Eliminates the Lone Wolf Provision
* Reigns in the FBI’s non-expiring but often-abused National Security Letters powers

If you, like me, are a friend of Liberty, then I urge you to sign up for this Downsize DC petition. Send your Congress a message:

“I am not afraid of terrorism, and I want you to stop being afraid on my behalf. Please start scaling back the official government war on terror. Please replace it with a smaller, more focused anti-terrorist police effort in keeping with the rule of law. Please stop overreacting. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all terrorist acts. I accept that. I am not afraid.”

Sources:
https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/77
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10705

Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Those are the words of Senator Barack Obama during a 2006 debt-ceiling debate. That was over $2 trillion ago.

This week Congress will once again vote to raise the national debt ceiling, this time by another $2 trillion, to a total of $14 trillion. That $2 trillion will buy Congress one whole year.

This is the same Congress that chastised President Bush for being one of the most fiscally irresponsible leaders our nation has ever had. I had to agree with them then, but now there’s a new sherriff in town. They’ve taken an $800 billion deficit and made it $1.4 trillion within months.

Since taking over Congress in 2007 the Democrats have increased the federal debt limit by 39%, with another 15% to come after Congress passes this next vote. According to White House estimates by 2019 the cost of paying the interest off of from all of this spending will be more than the total cost of all nondefense discretionary programs (education, transportation, etc…).

I don’t really care to point fingers or pick sides. Obama has had a hand in it, Bush had a hand in it — the economic crippling of our future generations has been quite the successful bi-partisan effort. The point is it has to stop. This level of spending is unsustainable.

Mark my words, it will be bad if we don’t. Forget recession, say hello to depression and the possible collapse of U.S. dollar. And if we do indeed get to that point you can kiss the U.S. status as a symbol of freedom and hope in the world goodbye.

Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598392286210188.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion

In which Michael Steele looks like that creepy guy at the office who always violates your personal bubble.

White House tells Harry Reid to give Joe Lieberman what he wants for health bill.

Now it’s a party, Al Gore arrives in Copenhagen.

Wells Fargo to sell shares to repay TARP funds, the last major financial institution to do so.

Finally, the LA Times has an interesting piece on Bill Moyers, who will be leaving his PBS show ‘Bill Moyers Journal’ in April.

All too often in the American politicals, voters are classified into two main demographics — Liberal and Conservative. However, the infighting going on right now in both parties serves as an example for why this isn’t a very accurate way to portray voters in the United States.

That’s why I wanted to invite you guys to take the world’s smallest political quiz. Who knows, you might even surprise yourself.

The quiz is very simple. Ten easy questions about your political beliefs, with possible answers of agree, in the middle (or don’t know) and disagree.

Personal Issues

1. Government should not censor speech, press, media or Internet.
2. Military service should be voluntary. There should be no draft.
3. There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults.
4. Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.
5. There should be no National ID card.

Economic Issues

1. End “corporate welfare.” No government handouts to business.
2. End government barriers to international free trade.
3. Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.
4. Replace government welfare with private charity.
5. Cut taxes and government spending by 50% or more.

Now total up your points. You get 20 points for every answer you agreed with, 10 for every in the middle, and 0 for every disagree. Next, using the chart at the top of the page, take your total for the Personal Issues and pair it up with your number. Do the same for Economic Issues and where the lines intersect is where your political ideology stands.

The red dot is my score and would imply that I am a left leaning libertarian. How did you fare? Did you surprise yourself or reaffirm what you already knew?

Centrist — Centrists espouse a “middle ground” regarding government control of the economy and personal behavior. Depending on the issue, they sometimes favor government intervention and sometimes support individual freedom of choice. Centrists pride themselves on keeping an open mind, tend to oppose “political extremes,” and emphasize what they describe as “practical” solutions to problems.

Right (Conservative) — Conservatives tend to favor economic freedom, but frequently support laws to restrict personal behavior that violates “traditional values.” They oppose excessive government control of business, while endorsing government action to defend morality and the traditional family structure. Conservatives usually support a strong military, oppose bureaucracy and high taxes, favor a free-market economy, and endorse strong law enforcement.

Left (Liberal) — Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded “safety net” to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

Libertarian — Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

Statist (Big Government) — Statists want government to have a great deal of power over the economy and individual behavior. They frequently doubt whether economic liberty and individual freedom are practical options in today’s world. Statists tend to distrust the free market, support high taxes and centralized planning of the economy, oppose diverse lifestyles, and question the importance of civil liberties.

Source:
http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

Editors Note: This is part three of the News Today mini-series “It’s not working, and we’re running out of money to throw at it”, which is an attempt by yours truly to demonstrate productive ways that the country can reduce its spending. The first edition was the War on Poverty, and the second was the War on Drugs.

As America pushes itself towards greener pastures, with all the debate over cap and trade and global warming truths and myths, one of the issues that has gotten pushed to the back-burner has been our excessive consumption of fossil fuels.

When I was in grade school, along with the hole in the ozone (which is largely ignored now), this was one of the big issues that we were educated on. It’s a pretty important issue, as well. Gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels are not going to be here forever. How much longer is an issue that is up for debate, but one thing is for sure. If we wait too long to transition off of them then the rapid change could be devastating to our economy and our citizens.

You thought $4 a gallon was bad? Once oil becomes harder and harder to find you can expect prices at the pump to go dramatically above that. This would undoubtedly lead to a crippling economic crisis.

Some estimates put that date just 50 years away, others give us 150 years. The estimates of 150 years assume that new technology will allow us to tap into reserves that are currently untouchable. That new technology requires funding though, which would likely drive up the overall cost and not give consumers much relief at the pump (consider McCain’s off-shore drilling plan, which would have lowered gasoline prices by one whole penny over a seven year period). Why spend that money and funding on a doomed industry?

Even if we ignore the fact that these resources aren’t renewable, it’s pretty easy to see how our reliance on oil financially hurts Americans. The equation goes like this: Decreased production (which we’ve had since the 1980’s) + increased reliability on foreign production (which we’ve been doing for decades now) = more money spent by Americans that goes directly out of America.

There has been some progress on the issue. The Obama administration’s decision to upgrade the government fleet of cars with hybrids and more fuel-efficient cars, for one, helped lower one of the largest gas bills in the country. Still, 85-95% of our energy consumption comes from the burning of fossil fuels, around 60% of which is used for transportation. No way around it, this is simply unsustainable.

Stephanie B, who is a rocket scientist (how cool is that?) and runs a great blog by the way, summed it up pretty perfectly in her latest Soapbox Sunday post:

“Improving energy efficiency represents money we don’t spend. Period. It’s energy we don’t use and money we don’t pay indefinitely. A solar array represents energy you won’t be using from now on. What’s not to love about that? What’s the down side? The only disadvantages to alternate energy sources are their technical immaturity and production cost, both of which could be drastically improved with increased demand.”

Sources:
http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/fossil.htm
http://rockets-r-us.blogspot.com/2009/12/soapbox-sunday-do-your-homework.html
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/fossilfuels.htm
http://www.pronetworks.org/index.php/blogs/post/green_energy_why_not

Tsk tsk tsk…

I know I picked on you a couple times before Bobby Jindal, and as you slid further away from relevance I let up. But this one I have to open up about. Why? Because ever since I saw Ace Ventura Pet Detective as a child I’ve been a Miami Dolphins fan.

Anyways, Jindal, in an interview with a New Orleans radio station, predicted the Saints would do an unprecedented event in football history.

“I’m predicting we’ll go, not only undefeated, but all the way through the Super Bowl — something that’s never been done before,” Jindal said in the interview. “I think the Saints are going to set a national record right here.”

Check your facts, Bobby. It has been done before, by the Miami Dolphins.

Anyway, Harvey Greene, the Dolphin’s senior vice president of media relations wrote an e-mail to politico to clear up Jindal’s fumble.

“With all due respect to Governor Jindal, our fans in Louisiana and elsewhere will be disappointed to learn that he forgot about the most accomplished team in NFL history -– the 1972 ‘Perfect Season’ Miami Dolphins,” wrote Greene.

“They are the only team in league annals to go undefeated and win a championship, posting a perfect 17-0 record, including a win in Super Bowl VII,” he continued. “We wish the Saints, and the Indianapolis Colts, who are also undefeated, the best of luck in their attempt to match our undefeated season, and we will be the first to congratulate either team if they accomplish that feat. But until then, we remain the only perfect team in NFL history, an achievement our players and coaches rightly are proud of.”

You’re damn right :)

Source:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30351.html

When I began thinking about making this mini-series, the drug war was one of the first things that popped into my mind.

Everyone has a stake in ending the war on drugs. Whether you’re a parent concerned about protecting children from drug-related harm, a social justice advocate worried about racially disproportionate incarceration rates, an environmentalist seeking to protect the Amazon rainforest or a fiscally conservative taxpayer you have a stake in ending the drug war.”
–Drug Policy Alliance Network

. . .

The Money

The government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars at the federal, state and local level trying to make America “drug-free.” Even with all of this money spent, drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are cheaper and easier to get than ever before.

The trafficking of drugs is an international multi-billion dollar business. Government estimates say $60 billion dollars a year will be spent on illegal narcotics in America alone. This figure has actually gone down since the 1980’s, but part of that can be attributed to the drugs becoming cheaper.

In 2006 the government spent more than $1 billion fighting the drug war, but by the White House’s own admission traffickers have had little problem meeting America’s market demands. With an in-demand product and tax-free income, don’t expect that to change anytime soon, either.

“The average drug trafficking organization, meaning from Medellin to the streets of New York, could afford to lose 90% of its profit and still be profitable,” says Robert Stutman, a former DEA Agent. “Now think of the analogy. GM builds a million Chevrolets a year. Doesn’t sell 900,000 of them and still comes out profitable. That is a hell of a business, man. That is the dope business.”

Corruption

When this much money is involved, corruption and scandal are bound to follow. One needs to look no further than the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program to see the consequences of funding the drug war.

A 2002 report by the ACLU identified seventeen different scandals involving Byrne-funded anti-drug task forces in Texas alone, with charges ranging from falsifying government records, witness tampering, fabricating evidence, false imprisonment, stealing drugs from evidence lockers, selling drugs to children, large-scale racial profiling and even sexual harassment.

The worst case happened in the town of Tulia, Texas where 16 percent of the town’s black population was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to decades in prison, even though the only evidence against them was the uncorroborated testimony of one white undercover officer (who had a history of racism).

Some of those citizens spent over four years in prison before being pardonned. Which brings me to another point.

Impact on the prison system

More people are incarcerated for drug charges in the United States than all of western Europe’s prisoners (for any charges) combined. At $25,000 a year per prisoner (not including legal costs, this is just to house the prisoner) you can see how this is getting out of hand.

Do we really need to spend $50,000 over two years to house someone because they were caught with a bag of marijuana, mushrooms or cocaine?

But illegal drugs kill people

Most deaths caused from drug related violence can be attributed to the fact that the drugs are illegal, not the drugs themselves. As for overdoses, well this is really a minute statistic. Compared to the big players (alcohol and tobacco), illegal drugs just don’t make much of a dent. Marijuana is virtually impossible to overdose on, but even heroin and cocaine don’t come close to killing as many people as alcohol, tobacco, or even prescription pain killers.

———————————————————-
Drug Users Deaths per Year Deaths per 100,000
———————————————————-
Tobacco 60 million 390,000 (a) 650
Alcohol 100 million 150,000 (b) 150
Heroin 500,000 400 (c) 80 (400)
Cocaine 5 million 200 (c) 4 (20)
———————————————————-

Prohibition breeds violence

So the drug war definitely isn’t working, and we can’t afford to keep spending such a large amount of money to uphold the system we currently have in place. There’s an even more sinister twist to the war on drugs, though. It actually actively promotes violence.

By making drugs illegal, we are handing a tax-free and highly profitable industry to criminal organizations. The result leaves us with little or no way to regulate the drugs being consumed and gives a lot of power to some very bad people.

People like Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, who has been blamed for thousands of deaths of people in Mexico and the United States. Guzman recently made it onto the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s richest people with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.

Is the risk of someone on your block using drugs really worth making men like Guzman among the most rich and powerful people in the world?

Solutions

We need to take a long, hard look at both the social and economic costs of fighting this war. We aren’t cutting into the demand for drugs, we haven’t been able to stop the suppliers and in the process we’ve promoted corruption, violence and a whole lot of wasteful spending.

The Obama administration has made it a point to shift the efforts of the drug war, putting more of an emphasis towards treatment for individuals and even trying to stop the use of the phrase “war on drugs.”

This is not enough though. We can’t afford to keep pushing the status-quo. Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

Sources:
http://www.justice.gov/dea/index.htm
http://www.drugpolicy.org/drugwar/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124225891527617397.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/47945.php
http://answers.ask.com/Society/Government_and_Law/how_much_does_it_cost_to_house_a_prisoner

Hilarious discussion here between Peter Schiff, Alan Binder and James Bullard….

Best part is at the three minute mark, after Schiff has already made his crack at Bernanke.

Binder: The second minor correction I’d like to make is that Ben Bernanke got a lot of things right.

Schiff: What?

Binder: What?

Schiff: Yeah what, name one!

Binder: Um, I don’t think we have enough time.

Schiff: I mean, he said that there was no housing bubble… and then when he said that ‘well if we have a decline in the housing market it’s not going to have a meaningful impact on employment.’ I mean, he said that the sub-prime mortgage problems were contained, that we didn’t have to worry about it… I can’t think of one thing that he got right!

Source:
Awesome site, check it out - http://www.humblelibertarian.com/