Friday, March 19, 2010

Life in "Progess" City - Cleveland edition

From the "progressive" utopia of Cleveland, where there hasn't been a conservative in city government since it was knee deep in glacier....................

I like my hometown, but I must admit that New York has problems: high taxes, noise, traffic. Forbes magazine just ranked my city the 16th most miserable in America. Ouch! Of course, that makes me wonder: What's America's most miserable city?

Cleveland, says Forbes. People call it "the Mistake by the Lake. " Cleveland, once America's sixth-largest city, has been going downhill for decades.

Why do some cities thrive while others decay? One reason is that some politicians smother their cities with the unintended consequences of their grand visions, while others have the good sense to limit government power.

In a state that already taxes its citizens heavily, Cleveland's politicians drown businesses in taxes.

One result: Since 2000, 50,000 people have left the city. Half of Cleveland's population has left since 1950.

But the politicians haven't learned. They still think government is the key to revitalization. While Indianapolis privatized services, Cleveland prefers state capitalism. It owns and operates a big grocery store, the West Side Market. Typical of government, it's open only four days a week, and two of those days it closes at 4 p.m. The city doesn't maintain the market very well. Despite those cost savings, the city manages to lose money running the market. It also loses money running golf courses—$400,000 last year.


I'm willing to give $50 to the first liberal who can give me an example of something liberals run that actually works. By works, I mean delivering a product or service in a cheaper, faster, more effective means than the private sector.

More.....

Life in "Progress" City - Los Angeles edition

From the "progressive" city of Los Angeles, who hasn't had a conservative in city government since Thag first used tar from the Lebrea tar pits to seal his cave floors..........

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's appointees at the Department of Water and Power took the first step Thursday toward imposing electric rate increases of up to 28%, despite complaints from neighborhood activists and business groups.

On a 4-0 vote, the board agreed to increase the cost of electricity by 0.8 of a cent per kilowatt hour, the first of four increases planned over the next year to help the nation's largest municipal utility cover its financial commitments and continue Villaraigosa's plan for securing more renewable power.

DWP commission President Lee Kanon Alpert said he feared that inaction would be greeted unfavorably by leaders of Wall Street companies, who could respond to a 'no' vote by reducing the utility's bond rating.

Such a move would add $70 million to $80 million each year to the agency's borrowing costs, DWP officials said.

"What's very striking to me is the risk and potential of harm that will come to this department and our ratepayers if we do not approve this," he said.

The City Council must now decide whether it wants to conduct its own review of the proposal, which would otherwise take effect. Council members Eric Garcetti, Jan Perry and Dennis Zine said they want to do so.

Backers of the plan called it a major step away from coal power, which makes up 44% of the DWP's energy portfolio. Coal has been less expensive but is a huge polluter. Opponents said the increases would hurt businesses and families already hard hit by the recession.


No really, people want to pay more for electricity; especially businesses. They want the city of LA to clean itself up so much that they'll probably leave to give them the space to do it ie Detroit.

What's so "progressive" about higher utility costs?

More.....

There goes John Galt

So let me ask Mr./Ms. Smart "Progressive". Does making it more expensive to have employes in this country make it more or less likely that our unemployment rate will go down anytime soon?

Read this release from Caterpillar............
Dow Jones reported Friday that Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) claims the health-care overhaul legislation being considered by the U.S. House would increase the company's health care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.

Caterpillar, the world's largest construction machinery manufacturer by sales, said it's particularly opposed to provisions in the bill that would expand Medicare taxes and mandate insurance coverage.

The company said these provisions would increase its insurance costs by at least 20%, or more than $100 million, just in the first year of the health-care overhaul program.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Gregory Folley, vice president and chief human resources officer of Caterpillar, said "We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors. We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we've raised throughout the year."


What makes this even better is that the Chinese will be loaning us the money to float these programs. Where will China get the money? From companies like Caterpillar who will be moving their plants, their jobs, and their money there.

Thanks reader Jeremy for the link.



November is Coming

Tom Perriello (D-VA)- If You Don't Tie Our Hands, We Will Keep Stealing.flv

Frank Luntz: The Unabomber Has a Higher Approval Rating Than Members of Congress

But how would we get a Cabinet member......

Working for Uncle Sam comes with some great perks, like job stability, posh benefits packages, and in many cases, average salaries that are higher than what the same job pays in the private sector.

That's why Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is irked that nearly 100,000 civilian federal employees owe the IRS $962 million in back taxes. He thinks they should pay up or be fired.

Chaffetz has introduced a bill that calls for the federal government to "ferret out" civilian employees who have "seriously delinquent tax debt" and prevent the hiring of other tax delinquents.

More than 3 percent of the 2.8 million federal civilian employees owed the Treasury unpaid federal income taxes in 2008, according to the IRS. If you include retirees and military service members, the numbers go from nearly 100,000 up to 276,000 current or former workers who owe $3 billion in taxes.

No word on whether Charlie Rangel would resign or not..........

More.....

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Robert Reich: What An Honest President Would Say About Health Reform

Another broken promise

The forced march to pass ObamaCare continues, and all that matters now is raw politics. But opponents should go down swinging, and that means exposing such policy debacles as President Obama's 11th-hour decision to apply the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to "unearned income."

That's what savings and investment income are called in Washington, and this destructive tax wasn't in either the House or Senate bills, though it may now become law with almost no scrutiny.

For the first time, the combined employer-worker 2.9% Medicare rate would be extended beyond wages to interest, dividends, capital gains, annuities, royalties and rents for individuals with adjusted gross income above $200,000 and joint filers over $250,000.

That would lift the top capital-gains rate to 22.9% as the regular rate bounces back to 20% from 15% when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year. The top rate for dividends would rise to 42.5% when the Bush income-tax rates expire. The White House plan also raises the ordinary Medicare payroll tax by 0.9 percentage points for the same filers, bringing it to 3.8%. ...

Stephen Entin and colleagues estimates that the investment tax would depress GDP by about 1.3% and reduce capital formation by 3.4%, and thus reduce the after-tax incomes of everyone not paying the tax directly in the neighborhood of 1.1% to 1.2%. Labor productivity and wages would fall across the board, while the lost government revenues from the more-sluggish economy would offset the expected receipts. ...

This two-tier tax also fundamentally and probably irrevocably alters the social insurance model that has governed Medicare for more than a half-century. Medicare is supposed to be a universal entitlement with at least some connection between the taxes paid on wages in return for benefits. The investment tax, and the apparatus of ObamaCare financing more generally, severs this link by redirecting Medicare's "dedicated" revenues toward a new entitlement.



More at tax Prof.........

Why I'm a conservative #1

The thing that distresses me most about this whole health care travesty is what in the hell are the democrats thinking when they're about to unleash the largest government entitlement program in history when we're already drowning in debt.

I've been surfing the liberal webs the past couple of weeks and you can't find a word about this issue anywhere. It's like it's not a concern in the slightest; we'll just print more money.

Do these people watch the news? Can't they see the collapse of Greece and other European countries as a result of generations of unfunded promises? Can't they see the horrible mess California is in as a result of the over commitments of the nanny state? Can't they see the rest of our states being burdened with the $2 trillion dollar unfunded pension liability they cannot possibly pay?

And liberals are supposed to be the smarter ones?

So now we're getting ready to strap on our collective bomb vests just in time for Moody's to send out the alert for downgrading the US treasury debt...............

The country’s top-notch credit rating is in danger of being downgraded, Moody’s is warning—and if a ratings agency that completely failed to predict the financial crisis is sounding the alarm, we should all be afraid.

Here’s how you know the massive amounts of debt compiled by the Bush administration, and the even greater debt loads promised as part of Barack Obama’s agenda, is reaching crisis proportions: Even the Wall Street bond-rating agencies are now sounding the alarm bells.

At issue is a report issued by Moody’s Investors Service that says the triple-A rating on U.S. government debt might someday be a thing of the past. The triple-A rating is, of course, an opinion, but one that carries a lot of weight in the bond markets. It is Moody’s belief that the chances the U.S. federal government will default on its debt are zero and that investors who hold U.S. bonds are guaranteed their full interest and principal payments.

More.....

HELLO! Is there a liberal reading any of this shit?

So Steve Driehaus, you can go down in history as being one of Hugo Pelosi's thugs who decided to kill America or you can show some real courage and actually do what's right for the country by voting this health care fiasco down. Either way, you're going down in history.....

NCAA picks


How do you know that the NCAA is run by democrats. Because the public is clamoring for an NCAA playoff in football so much that they're going to appease us all by expanding the basketball tournament by 32 teams.

Soon, everyone will get a trophy just for showing up.

None the less, I don't know if it's age, the fact that UC's been horrible the past five years, the absolutely horrible NBA style of officiating, or the overall crappy style of play in college basketball but I just can't get all that enthused by the tournament this year.

None the less, I've got a tournament submission for our family pool.

Don't ask me how or why but somehow Notre Dame ended up in my final four. I think that 500th tax return is getting to my brain. Just remember, I did predict that my vote for John McCain would be four more years of Bush and we got it.

Tournament questions and comments to ponder. ......

Did the tournament committee just decide to let Duke walk into the final four?

Does every player on Duke's team appear to have that extra chromosome; given the enlarged foreheads?

Coldplay still sucks.

Can we avoid hearing the terms bubble, dance, Cinderella, for just one weekend?

In which game will John Calipari piss down his leg?

Will this be the tournament Gonzaga gets a stake in the heart?

Watch the games and enjoy yourself. I'm back to work.

The public option at work

A four month "Nightline" investigation into Medicare fraud makes one thing perfectly clear: this is a crime that pays and pays and pays. The federal government admits that a staggering $60 billion is stolen from tax payers through Medicare scams every year. Some experts believe the number is more than twice that.

Fraudulent pharmacies, clinics and medical supply companies seem to pop up like mushrooms in South Florida, the area widely considered to be ground zero in the fight against a crime that requires little training and involves few risks.

Former car mechanics and drug dealers, bus boys and clerks can be involved in individual scams, taking tens of millions of dollars every year from the government program designed to provide health care to the nation's elderly. As one government official told "Nightline," having a Medicare license is having a license to steal.

The victims of the schemes? American taxpayers.


More.....

Life in "Progress" State

From the state of Washington where there hasn't been a conservative in state government since Ug won the local cave drawing contest for best short story.............

Effective April 16, Walgreens drugstores across the state won't take any new Medicaid patients, saying that filling their prescriptions is a money-losing proposition — the latest development in an ongoing dispute over Medicaid reimbursement.

The company, which operates 121 stores in the state, will continue filling Medicaid prescriptions for current patients.

In a news release, Walgreens said its decision to not take new Medicaid patients stemmed from a "continued reduction in reimbursement" under the state's Medicaid program, which reimburses it at less than the break-even point for 95 percent of brand-name medications dispensed to Medicaid patents.

Walgreens follows Bartell Drugs, which stopped taking new Medicaid patients last month at all 57 of its stores in Washington, though it still fills Medicaid prescriptions for existing customers at all but 15 of those stores.

Doug Porter, the state's director of Medicaid, said Medicaid recipients should be able to readily find another pharmacy because "we have many more pharmacy providers in our network than we need" for the state's 1 million Medicaid clients.


Right....... because we all know that everyone's interested in losing money.

What's so "progressive" about providing less "choice"?

More...

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Republican vs. Democrat Women

The apocolypse is near

How do you know when the end of the world is near?

When the AP takes one of their 14 fact checkers off of Sarah Palin long enough to report this........

Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print.

Premiums are likely to keep going up even if the health care bill passes, experts say. If cost controls work as advertised, annual increases would level off with time. But don't look for a rollback. Instead, the main reason premiums would be more affordable is that new government tax credits would help cover the cost for millions of people.

Listening to Obama pitch his plan, you might not realize that's how it works.

Visiting a Cleveland suburb this week, the president described how individuals and small businesses will be able to buy coverage in a new kind of health insurance marketplace, gaining the same strength in numbers that federal employees have.

"You'll be able to buy in, or a small business will be able to buy into this pool," Obama said. "And that will lower rates, it's estimated, by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you're currently getting. That's money out of pocket."

And that's not all.

Obama asked his audience for a show of hands from people with employer-provided coverage, what most Americans have.

"Your employer, it's estimated, would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent," said the president, "which means they could give you a raise."

A White House press spokesman later said the president misspoke; he had meant to say annual premiums would drop by $3,000.

It could be a long wait.

Read the rest.........

Cafferty on Pelosi






My sentiments exactly

Virginia Tea Party Group Attempt to see Cong Gerry Connolly (D-VA11)

Obama Is Going To Pay For My Gas And Mortgage!!!

This guy has been in for how many months and I'm still paying my damn mortgage.

Where's the love?

Schoolhouse Rock- How a Bill Becomes a Law

It bears repeating for too many of our representatives

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

PolitiZoid - Obamafeld

Four more years of Bush

Remember all that campaign spew about transparency & openness and ending all the back door Bush dealings?

Apparently, W is still in office......

WASHINGTON – Federal agencies haven’t lived up to President Barack Obama’s promise of a more open government, increasing their use of legal exemptions to keep records secret during his first year in office.

An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

Among the most frequently used exemptions: one that lets the government hide records that detail its internal decision-making. Obama specifically directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.

Major agencies cited that exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.

So Mr. Obama topped President Bush’s record for a full year in just nine months.

Departments used the exemption more even though Obama’s Justice Department told agencies to that disclosing such records was "fully consistent with the purpose of the FOIA," a law intended to keep government accountable to the public



At what point in time will liberals call out this guy for the Bushman he is?

More....

Economics 101: Learning From Sweden's Free Market Renaissance

Life in "Progress" City - Cleveland edition

Schoolhouse Rock- How a Bill Becomes a Law

They must have forgot about the Slaughter Solution when they taped this.

But this is a reminder for Steve Driehaus in case he forgot.

President Obama: "I'm here because of Natoma"

When tax cheats run the Treasury

You get this on February 8th..............

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the U.S. is in no danger of losing its AAA debt rating even though the Obama administration has predicted a $1.6 trillion budget deficit in 2010. “Absolutely not,” Geithner said, when asked in an ABC News interview broadcast yesterday whether a downgrade is a concern. “That will never happen to this country.”

Then reality kicks in on March 15...............

March 15 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. and the U.K. have moved “substantially” closer to losing their AAA credit ratings as the cost of servicing their debt rose, according to Moody’s Investors Service…

Under the ratings company’s so-called baseline scenario, the U.S. will spend more on debt service as a percentage of revenue this year than any other top-rated country except the U.K., and will be the biggest spender from 2011 to 2013, Moody’s said today in a report. “We expect the situation to further deteriorate in terms of the key ratings metrics before they start stabilizing,” [Managing Director of sovereign risk at Moody’s in London] Cailleteau said. “This story is not going to stop at the end of the year. There is inertia in the deterioration of credit metrics.”


But hey let's add a a little more to the deficit and pass an GINORMOUS health care bill.

Who said that liberals were smarter?

More.....

Monday, March 15, 2010

Obama stumping for healthcare with Gov. Strickland

From Third Base Politics

Valerie Jarrett: Why Obama Being "Womanly" is a Good Thing

Political science for dummies

Thanks reader Bernie......

DEMOCRAT

You have two cows.

Your neighbor has none.

You feel guilty for being successful.

You push for higher taxes so the government can provide cows for everyone.

REPUBLICAN

You have two cows.

Your neighbor has none.

So?

SOCIALIST

You have two cows.

The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST

You have two cows.

The government seizes both and provides you with milk.

You wait in line for hours to get it.

It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.

You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.

Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pour the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.

You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.

You are surprised when one cow drops dead.

You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.

Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You go on strike because you want three cows.

You go to lunch and drink wine.

Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.

They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.

Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.

Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows but you don't know where they are.

You break for lunch.

Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.

You drink some vodka.

You count them and learn you have five cows.

You drink some more vodka.

You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.

The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION

You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.

You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.

You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION

You have two cows.

They go into hiding.

They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION

You have two bulls.

Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION

You have one cow.

The cow is schizophrenic.

Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.

The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.

The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.

The cow asks permission to be cut in half.

The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION

You have a black cow and a brown cow.

Everyone votes for the best looking one.

Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.

Some people vote for both.

Some people vote for neither.

Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.

Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION

You have millions of cows.

They make real California cheese.

Only five speak English.

Most are illegal.

Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.