More government…less cancer?

Check out this article from Reuters today on a new National Cancer Institute report to the President on cancer-causing agents.

Americans are being “bombarded” with chemicals, gases and radiation that can cause cancer, and the federal government must do far more to protect them, presidential cancer advisers said on Thursday.

Although most experts agree that as many as two-thirds of cancer cases are caused by lifestyle choices like smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise, the two-member panel said many avoidable cancers were also caused by pollution, radon gas from the soil and medical imaging scans.

My God! Pollution, toxic chemicals and…I’m shocked…tobacco smoke cause cancer! No WAY! 

The report “urges” the President “most strongly to use the power of your office”.

Hurry! HURRY Mr. President! The public is being poisoned! You neeeeeeed to protect them! NOW!

So basically what we have here is 2 unelected doctors influencing major domestic policy in the direction of larger, more authoritarian government.

Don’t get me wrong, toxic pollutants in our environment that can cause cancer are bad. We should avoid them. Most people who are, you know, awake know these things already. For the people who don’t already know, go on TV and educate them (remember public service announcements? what happened to them?). Should there be fines/imprisonment for companies that are knowingly polluting the environment? Of course.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about politics.

Obama has been in trouble with his liberal base in recent months. They passed healthcare, but without the liberal-Holy Grail public option. Plus, his decision to allow new exploration for off-shore oil drilling (now compounded by the awful spill in the Gulf) has put him in the enviro-radicals doghouse.

As the article mentions, “the report has already delighted environmental groups”. The reason why is because this will now give the President cover to give even more unchecked power to the unelected behemoth bureaucracy known as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The EPA employs over 17,000 people and has an annual budget of over 10 billion. They enact, oversee and enforce a slew of programs that never get reported on, despite having an enduring reputation of being run be regulation-happy extremists. The EPA is without question the embodiment of radical, statist authoritarianism in our government.

Because just as in the debate on global warming / climate change / carbon emission / cap-and-trade, enviro-radicals think as long as they yell “science” loud enough, no one will bat an eye-lash. Of course the left has the market cornered on science, the right is full of religious, science-doubting lunatics!

Bull. In the article, Michael Thun, MD (Vice President of Epidemiology and Surveillance Research at the American Cancer Society), notes that the report ” restates hypotheses as if they were established facts” and that “its conclusion that ‘the true burden of environmentally (pollution) induced cancer has been grossly underestimated’ does not represent scientific consensus.”

Again, those who pollute with toxic chemicals and waste should be dealt with. However, this should be a law-enforcement issue, not a political one. We need to get away from the mindset that the federal government, particularly the Executive office, has to constantly do more in the name of protecting the public. That has its place on a limited scale, but as you know, “all power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Economists say Obama’s stimulus had no impact on job creation

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Check out this CNN/Money article from the other day, which details a survey by the National Association for Business Economics of its members who work in economic roles at private-sector firms.

About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower as a result of the $787 billion Recovery Act

Remember Obama’s big press conference on the stimulus? It wasn’t his big government takeover agenda, no. Rather, the vast majority of economists were saying it was necessary.

economists that I spoke to who indicated that given the magnitude of the crisis and the fact that it’s happening worldwide, it’s important for us to have a bill of sufficient size and scope that we can save or create 4 million jobs…although there are some politicians who are arguing that we don’t need a stimulus, there are very few economists who are making that argument.

So the economists were all wrong back then, huh?

No, there were plenty who were against it from the very beginning.

Taxes, tea and tyranny

This past week across the country, several “Tea Party” protests took place. Naturally, much of the media coverage of these protests focused on taxes, and for seemingly good reasons: the rally in DC was billed as the “Tax Day Tea Party”, one prominent event had a huge banner on-stage that said “Tax Revolt”, several Taxpayer advocacy groups were among the organizers / sponsors, and many of the speeches at the events focused or touched on the topic of taxes.

But the media attempted to paint the picture that the focus of the protesters’ ire is “Obama’s” taxes – presented as last year’s taxes (paid this year) – and that’s where things get a little tricky.

Now, it is true that a) Tea Party protesters don’t like Obama’s policies and his ideologies and b) as economic conservatives, they generally believe taxes should be lower.

However, the media seems intent to link those two elements in a simplistic, finite way. Basically, their goal seemed to be to point out that taxes have not gone up under Obama, and that, in fact, individual’s taxes for 2009 were relatively low. Most news outlets attempted to do this in more traditional journalistic ways. On her MSNBC show on the 15th, Rachel Maddow, of course, couldn’t help herself to smarmily beat her audience over the head with it: she sarcastically characterized the Tea Partiers’ general complaint as “President Obama and those commie Democrats in Congress have raised taxes sooooo much. Since they took over, taxes have just gone through the roof.”, and then going on to describe in detail how, in 2009, taxes “under Obama” were cut or historically low.

In either case, the not-so-subtle implication is that Tea Party protesters and their supporters are either misinformed, untruthful (in a politically or even racially motivated way), or just plain stupid.

The problem is, it’s a straw-man argument. X is true, so y necessarily follows. Only x is what’s not really up for debate.

For one, a recent poll of Tea Party protesters and supporters showed that many believe they currently pay a fair amount of taxes  (currently being the key word). What the poll also showed is that many have a problem with the way their taxes are spent, specifically, they feel that an unacceptable portion of the taxes are spent in a wasteful manner.

It’s not that the Tea Party and those of the same ilk have a problem with their 2009-2010 tax returns. I didn’t hear one sound bite from anyone giving a speech or being interviewed last week say that in this last fiscal year, the taxes they paid went “through the roof”. What they have a problem with is how the decisions of yesterday and today will virtually certainly impact their taxes in years to come.

As the media points out, the tax cuts in Obama’s stimulus are what created this past fiscal year’s relatively lower taxes this year. But the Tea Party was against the stimulus from the beginning, because they saw through it as one of Obama’s short-term, politically-motivated fixes to a long-term problem. Sure, taxes are lower today. The price of that is, by including billions of otherwise unfunded dollars to a bill (in that case, the stimulus), taxes will necessarily need to go up tomorrow.

The vast majority of Americans, no matter what their political bent, have no problem at all with paying a legitimate, fair amount in taxes. But it’s an issue that rightly should face unending scrutiny, because it may be the single most important element of the government-citizen relationship in our country. As the existence of today’s Tea Party movement reminds us, it was the very issue of taxation that in many ways directly lead to the American Revolution: “No taxation without representation” was the colonists’ rallying cry. In the Declaration of Independence, King George was, among other things, proven to be a tyrant “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent”.

And after all, it is now as it was then: since the government should be by, of and for the people, the very granting of the power to garnish a portion of one’s wages, the very fruit of one’s labor, to the government comes with an inherent caveat – the money better be spent wisely.

What the Tea Party (and every economic conservative) is looking at is the myriad ways they feel their (and future generations) tax dollars will have to be spent, based on recent policies (nearly all of which originated with the Democrats or under Obama/Pelosi recently). They are rightly concluding that taxes will be increased and/or mis-spent in the future, considering that:

– 47% of American households pay no federal income taxes. Despite how the New York Times tries to spin that, that’s a disturbing, unsettling fact on it’s own.

– State and local taxes are already high in some places, and forecast to explode nearly everywhere – mostly due Federal policies. States are going broke primarily because of unsustainable Medicare and Medicaid mandates. The only way for them to recoup those costs is through taxing the public – or get bailed out by the Federal government (either way, it’s the taxpayer’s dime).

– Corporations pay a large portion of the nation’s total tax bill. Do small businesses fall into the same “wealthy” category as that of huge multi-nationals and wealthy individuals, having to pay into the same top tax bracket? If it’s true, as I hear all the time, that “small businesses are the engine of our economy”, then shouldn’t they get extra breaks (and not just in short-term stimulus bills, but annually by law for the long-term)? Most people in the work force understand that, large or small, the more money their company has to pay the government, the less money there is for them to hire new workers or give them a raise. And when it comes to the economy, isn’t it all about jobs?

– New spending legislation recently passed (healthcare reform) or in the hopper (cap-and-trade) costing undisputed trillions of dollars we know we don’t have. Again, there’s only one source to pay these bills when they come due down the road.

– Social Security is broken. When it was instituted back in FDR’s days, people lived an average of 63 years. Social Security kicked in at 65. At the time, there were about 40 workers paying Social Security taxes for every 1 retired person. Today, people are living on average past 65, and the ratio of workers to retired people is nearly 2:1. Once all the baby boomers retire, and medical advances keep them alive longer, that ratio will be less than 1:1 on the workers side. The Social Security trust fund is forecast to run into the negative in the next 30 years or so. It’s simply an unsustainable system unless taxes to keep it afloat go up.

– About a week or so ago, Paul Volcker, the head of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, characterized the idea of instituting a European-style Value-Added Tax (VAT) as “not as toxic an idea” as was presumably once thought. The VAT tax is a tax on production and consumption – it generates a tax on a good or service at every stage of its life cycle, from production through consumption.

This CBS News article on the VAT disgustingly sums up the case for a VAT, and increases in taxes in general as such:

Americans as a whole did not squawk when spending rose during the Bush administration, and in electing Barack Obama, they voted for bigger government. At some point, the politics we have voted for have to be paid for. A VAT is likely to be part of the answer.

Ahh, right. Everyone who voted for Obama was knowingly voting for more taxes. So the spin is now, “C’mon, he told us things were going to change, you knew what that meant.” Unreal.

Taxation without representation was tyrannical. But just as wrong is its evil cousin, tyranny disguised in sheep’s clothing: taxation with misrepresentation.

Obama’s latest gaffe: It’s worse than you think

For some reason, everyone is missing the big point about Obama’s recent interview on Wall Street bonuses. The focus has been on him saying he does not “begrudge” execs from pulling in huge bonuses despite their companies losing money or needing to be bailed out. Despite the fact that he’s said the same thing many times, everyone is and has been pretty clear that he’s “shocked” and “outraged” that the practice has gone on.

But to me, it was the addendum to his comments that is the real telling element here. He went on in the interview to say that “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.” 

To me, this is proof of several things I’ve suspected for a while:

a) When pressured and off script, he has no internal censor to stop and not say how he really feels (see: quote to Joe the Plumber, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”).

b) He is an economic illiterate, at least when it comes to free markets and the contract system. The key word in the free market is “free” – as in freedom make decisions on one’s own – whether good or bad.

I’m pretty sure most CEO’s have it written into their contract that their “bonuses” are garaunteed under most circumstances.  Same thing for baseball players.

A free market works under the principles of supply and demand. If JPMorganChaseGlodmanSachsCitiWellsFargo whatever loses however many billion in one year, what or who is to say that some other CEO wouldn’t have done worse? Each of these companies has a board of directors. They know if their current top execs are doing a “good” job or not, and they know the other players in the industry who are out there they could go and get if they needed to. Boards don’t enjoy handing out bonuses when business is down. But maybe the current execs have plans in place to turn things around in the next couple of years. It would be irresponsible for a board to oust a top exec, or not pay them their contractually obliged bonus, for short-term results because they could be sued for breach of contract and lose the top talent to their competition. In a free market, a private company has the right to make whatever contractual obligations they like. If the shareholders don’t like how the business is run, they’ll dump them.

Professional athletes in the most popular sports operate much the same way. An owner owns his team – it’s his to run the way he wants. If an MLB owner wants a player badly enough, he’ll sign him to as high as he can afford a base salary and bonus plan that he wants to, to avoid the risk of losing that player to a competing team. An organization may need to boost ticket sales, so they might offer a free agent a contract with a bonus in it thatis dependant on how many home runs he hits. This might be, to an owner, just as or even more important that getting to the World Series. The point is, the owner is the only entity who has the right to make those calls. No external force has a better knowledge or understanding of their business state: whether ultimately proven right or wrong.

The other part of this is, why is he so surprised that baseball players who don’t win make so much money in the first place? This is a concept that I was able to grasp in junior high. Again, supply and demand. People like baseball, and they are willing to spend money on it. And collectively, a lot of money as it turns out. A guy doesn’t hit 40 home runs and go out on the free agent market and just say ‘I should be paid x million dollars now’ because that’s what he wants or thinks. He’s able to do that because more than one owner makes enough money to be able to afford that.

As the average working stiff knows, it’s not about what you deserve. It’s what someone is willing to work out with you. Is it fair? No. But it’s the system that has proven, over time, to work the best. That’s what Obama never did, and still doesn’t, get.

His O-liness’ hurry up and wait on Health Care: the beginning of the end in more ways than one?

Remember back last summer, when health care reform was urgent? We had “got to get it done” in ’09 or else?

Oh, but now, just 8 months later, “we should be very deliberate, take our time.”

Obviously the stunning loss in the Massachsetts Senate special election last month sent shock-waves through every facet of the Democrat party, and was a wake-up call to the Administration that the country did not want reform in it’s current Obamacare state. But that was just the cherry on top: The House and Senate versions of the bill were so far apart, they never would have been reconciled.

So what changed?

The President’s political expediency here is quasi-laudible but mostly deplorable. He’s listening to the American people now (it’s the economy, stupid), and reaching out to the center/right for ideas on how they can come together on “insurance reform” (which is what everyone meant when they wanted health care reform in the first place).

But why was it so urgent for Obama from the outset? Yes, millions of Americans have poor or no coverage (some of whom are actually even tax-paying legal citizens!).  The COBRA system is an abomination, and premiums and co-pays have risen dramatically. But most people who are gainfully employed are willing to pay a little extra for excellent care at the expense of, you know, going out to dinner once a week instead of twice (OK, in some cases, one vacation a year instead of two). Plus, the real problem of rising healthcare costs are directly related to Medicare and Medicaid – both are in the tank and private insurance companies keep having to bail them out (thereby passing the extra costs along to the patients). So why would taxpayers want a new system that increased government-run care? 

Obama obviously saw his enormous political capital after the election, and short-sightedly thought that any major social change legislation would have to come before this mid-term election year. But as it turns out, his long-term view on this was atrocious. Imagine instead if he focused soley on the economic crisis his first and second years.  Imagine the administration and Congress focused only on governing effectively – you know, prove they were good at their jobs. Maybe the Dems wouldn’t be horrified about their prospects in the mid-terms later this year, maybe they could have solidified their majorities. Maybe then they could have at least had a foundation upon which to pass health care in 2011.

In the campaign Obama went on and on about a new tranparency in government, that he would “change the culture” in DC. His actions on healthcare have proven his hypocracy. Multiple times he declared that the debates would be televised on C-SPAN, that there wouldn’t be any old-school shady back-room deals. Of course, the opposite transpired. He said he wanted to contain costs, but let Pelosi and Reid put together a trillion-dollar package.

So all this just underscores real hypocracy: “Change we can beleive in” was literally what won Obama the election. America’s vote wasn’t “Bush sucked”. It wasn’t “McCain is too old”. And it definitely wasn’t “Palin is too stupid”. It was the notion that the status quo was no longer acceptable.

Thinking Americans know that what is ruining us is not the warring ideologies of the left and the right; but that the lobby-dominated, union-strongarmed, military-industrial complexed, Fed deficit-running , out-of-control pension paying,  too-big-to-fail bank system is. They voted to change all that. And they viewed Obama, mainly because of his message, as the one who could deliver on it. 

Political expediency is exactly what the electorate did not want. They wanted leadership that had long-term solutions to long-standing problems. 

So the Obamacare disaster isn’t just a self-contained problem for the president in the short-term, or even the Dems in Congress in the mid-term. This display of utter lack of long-term vision and leadership could spell absolute doom for him in 2012: and maybe not just in the form of him losing to the Repuplican nominee in the general election. If next year (which is when the campaign will ramp up) unemployment is still in double-digits, housing is still a mess, or God forbid there is a disaster on our home soil – manmade or otherwise – that crumbles national morale further, his O-liness may suffer an unprecidented fall from grace whereby he doesn’t even get his party’s nomination.