In The Name of The Children

The Totalitarian Ethics of California’s Public Sector Unions

The latest scam to keep pension reform off of the ballot

By Steven Greenhut, Reason Magazine, February 24, 2012

In my last column, I documented how California’s pro-union Attorney General Kamala Harris provided an unfair and dishonest title and summary to a pair of pension reform initiatives submitted to her office, thus effectively killing the measures. Last week the unions tried—and almost succeeded—with an even nastier stunt designed to undermine democracy.

In San Diego, unions are fearful of a new pension reform measure referred to by supporters as Comprehensive Pension Reform, or CPR, that has qualified for the June 2012 ballot. Instead of simply gearing up to fight this political battle, the unions petitioned one of those ridiculous commissions that most Californians have never even heard of, the Public Employment Relations Board, which is unfriendly turf for taxpayers. The union said placing the initiative on the ballot amounted to an unfair labor practice, and PERB called for an injunction to stop the election until it could complete its sham proceedings.

In essence, the unions and this unelected board insist that the people of San Diego have no right to vote on pension reform. This is just the latest reminder of the totalitarian ethics of a public-sector union movement that doesn’t care about anything other than protecting its benefits.

“Never in the history of this state ... has there ever been a requirement to meet and confer over a citizens’ initiative placed on the ballot by voter signatures,” wrote city attorney Jan Goldsmith in a toughly worded letter to PERB. Pension reform advocate Carl DeMaio, a councilman and mayoral candidate, criticized PERB's assault on Californians' constitutional rights. Fortunately, a judge agreed with the city, but expect the unions to head back to court if their campaign against CPR fails.

The unions that dominate Sacramento are not about to let any serious reform take place given that real reform—especially in light of frightening new unfunded pension liability numbers—means that the days of millionaires’ pensions (one would need millions in the bank to receive the amounts commonly received by recent California government retirees) eventually have to end. Unions don't mind undermining the public's right to vote. They don't care if our taxes go through the roof and businesses flee the state. They don't care if services are slashed. They want their money.

Reveal rest of post >>

Britain Raises Taxes on 1%, Less Revenue Received

David Cameron's Tax Lesson

A 50% tax rate yields less revenue than advertised

WSJ Editorial, February 23, 2012

Speaking of higher taxes (and President Obama always does), there's news from once fair Britannia.

Preliminary figures out this week show that Britain's 50% top marginal income-tax rate may have reduced tax revenue from top earners by as much as 5%, compared to the old 40% top rate. Tax revenue from those filing self-assessments due January 31 was down some £500 million versus last year.

So here's a puzzle for Prime Minister David Cameron: Is this an example of fairness—or another predictable policy own-goal?

The U.K. tax year runs from April to April, and self-assessments, together with any tax due, must be turned in by the following January. So this January's numbers are a first look at the effect of the 50% tax rate, put in place by the previous Labour government in its last days and kept there by the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition headed by Mr. Cameron.

That tax hike was the first increase in the top marginal rate in Britain (which kicks in at £150,000 a year) since then-Chancellor Nigel Lawson cut it to 40% from 60% in the late 1980s. The argument for the higher tax is that "rich bankers" are responsible for the economic crisis and should pay for the clean up. Or, as Mr. Cameron likes to put it, those with the "broadest shoulders" should bear the heaviest burden.

What this week's numbers teach, however, is that Britain's richest taxpayers are simply shifting their incomes, or themselves, offshore, or deferring income, or otherwise arranging their affairs to avoid the confiscatory new top tax rate. Maybe that's unfair, too—the rich are usually better at protecting their assets—but it's the predictable consequence of a tax rate whose animating purposes are envy and spite.

There's a lesson here for the Obama Administration, not that it is likely to heed it any more than Mr. Cameron.

Gay?

What if You Lie?

California Asks Judges: Gay or Straight? 10:36 AM, FEB 24, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER In order to make sure gays and lesbians are adequately represented on the judicial bench, the state of California is requiring all judges and justices to reveal their sexual orientation. The announcement was made in an internal memo sent to all California judges and justices. Sir Terence Etherton has succeeded in  becoming the first openly gay judge to  be sworn in as Lord Justice of Appeal (UK) “[The Administrative Office of the Courts] is contacting all judges and justices to gather data on race/ethnicity, gender identification, and sexual orientation,” reads an email sent by Romunda Price of the Administrative Office of the Courts. A copy of Price’s memo was obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.  “Providing complete and accurate aggregate demographic data is crucial to garnering continuing legislative support for securing critically needed judgeships,” Price writes. The process of self-revealing one’s sexual orientation is an element of a now yearly process. “To ensure that the AOC reports accurate data and to avoid the need to ask all judges to provide this information on an annual basis, the questionnaire asks that names be provided. The AOC, however, will release only aggregate statistical information, by jurisdiction, as required by the Government Code and will not identify any specific justice or judge.” Philip R. Carrizosa of the executive office of communications at the Judicial Council of California, the Administrative Office of the Courts, confirmed the authenticity of Price’s email regarding gender identification and sexual orientation to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “Yes, the e-mail is authentic and accurate,” Carrizosa confirmed in an email. “The original bill, which simply provided for 50 new judgeships, was amended in the Assembly in August 2006, to address concerns that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was not appointing enough women and minorities to the bench. In 2011, Senator Ellen Corbett expanded the reporting requirement to include gender identification and sexual orientation.” California state senator Corbett, the Democratic majority leader from the San Francisco suburb San Leandro, could not immediately be reached for comment. Price’s email also reveals that the Administration Office of the Courts (AOC) is asking for this personal information because of the new law. “For the past five years, the AOC has been required to collect and release aggregate demographic data relative to the ethnicity, race, and gender of justices and judges, by specific jurisdiction, on or before March 1 of each year. This requirement is associated with efforts to obtain new judgeships.” But as a result of Corbett’s 2011 California bill, the office has “expanded the collection and release of aggregate demographic data to include gender identification and sexual orientation.” Therefore, Price explains, judges and justices must reveal their “sexual orientation,” in addition “to their race/ethnicity [and] gender identification.” Price parenthetically adds, “The AOC has gender data for all judges and justices.” The AOC asked all recipients of the email to “please complete an online questionnaire by Friday, February 17, 2012.” Price made herself available if justices or judges preferred to provide the required information over the phone.

What Does This Chart Mean?

I think it means HALF of Americans don't pay income taxes
but demand more and more freebies as part of their "rights."

Oh, To Retire Safely

44.8% Dividend Drench

Retirees dependent on dividends will be placed under pressure and those who look to be more conservative with their investments will be "bubbled" into riskier assets.  At least abortion will be secure...which is nice ("Caddyshack").

Obama's Dividend Assault

A plan to triple the tax rate would hurt all shareholders.

WSJ Editorial, February 22, 2012

President Obama's 2013 budget is the gift that keeps on giving—to government. One buried surprise is his proposal to triple the tax rate on corporate dividends, which believe it or not is higher than in his previous budgets.

Mr. Obama is proposing to raise the dividend tax rate to the higher personal income tax rate of 39.6% that will kick in next year. Add in the planned phase-out of deductions and exemptions, and the rate hits 41%. Then add the 3.8% investment tax surcharge in ObamaCare, and the new dividend tax rate in 2013 would be 44.8%—nearly three times today's 15% rate.

Keep in mind that dividends are paid to shareholders only after the corporation pays taxes on its profits. So assuming a maximum 35% corporate tax rate and a 44.8% dividend tax, the total tax on corporate earnings passed through as dividends would be 64.1%.

In previous budgets, Mr. Obama proposed an increase to 23.8% on both dividends and capital gains. That's roughly a 60% increase in the tax on investments, but at least it would maintain parity between taxes on capital gains and dividends, a principle established as part of George W. Bush's 2003 tax cut.

With the same rate on both forms of income, the tax code doesn't bias corporate decisions on whether to retain and reinvest profits (and allow the earnings to be capitalized into the stock price), or distribute the money as dividends at the time they are earned.

Of course, the White House wants everyone to know that this new rate would apply only to those filthy rich individuals who make $200,000 a year, or $250,000 if you're a greedy couple. We're all supposed to believe that no one would be hurt other than rich folks who can afford it.

The truth is that the plan gives new meaning to the term collateral damage, because shareholders of all incomes will share the pain. Here's why. Historical experience indicates that corporate dividend payouts are highly sensitive to the dividend tax. Dividends fell out of favor in the 1990s when the dividend tax rate was roughly twice the rate of capital gains.

When the rate fell to 15% on January 1, 2003, dividends reported on tax returns nearly doubled to $196 billion from $103 billion the year before the tax cut. By 2006 dividend income had grown to nearly $337 billion, more than three times the pre-tax cut level. The nearby chart shows the trend.

Shortly after the rate cut, Microsoft, which had never paid a dividend, distributed $32 billion of its retained earnings in a special dividend of $3 per share. According to a Cato Institute study, 22 S&P 500 companies that didn't pay dividends before the tax cut began paying them in 2003 and 2004.

As former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill explained at the time: "The recent change in the tax law levels the playing field between dividends and share repurchases as a means to return capital to shareholders. This substantial increase in our dividend will be part of our effort to reallocate capital to dividends and reduce share repurchases."

And that's what happened. An American Economic Association study by University of California at Berkeley economists Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez examined dividend payouts by firms and concluded that "the tax reform played a significant role in the [2003 and 2004] increase in dividend payouts." They also found that the incentive for firms to pay dividends rather than sit on cash helped "reshuffle" capital from lower growth firms to "ventures with greater expected value," thus increasing capital-market efficiency.

If you reverse the policy, you reverse the incentives. The tripling of the dividend tax will have a dampening effect on these payments.

Who would get hurt? IRS data show that retirees and near-retirees who depend on dividend income would be hit especially hard. Almost three of four dividend payments go to those over the age of 55, and more than half go to those older than 65, according to IRS data.

But all American shareholders would lose. Higher dividend and capital gains taxes make stocks less valuable. A share of stock is worth the discounted present value of the future earnings stream after taxes. Stock prices would fall over time to adjust to the new after-tax rate of return. And if investors become convinced later this year that dividend and capital gains taxes are going way up on January 1, some investors are likely to sell shares ahead of paying these higher rates.

The question is how this helps anyone. According to the Investment Company Institute, about 51% of adults own stock directly or through mutual funds, which is more than 100 million shareholders. Tens of millions more own stocks through pension funds. Why would the White House endorse a policy that will make these households poorer?

Seldom has there been a clearer example of a policy that is supposed to soak the rich but will drench almost all American families.  

Tolerance Will Be Beaten Into You

LinSanity

Tornados the Size of Earth On Sun

Nasa Captures Amazing Video

A tremendous tornado whirling across the surface of the sun was captured by a NASA satellite recently -- an amazing wonder of the solar system that may be as big as the Earth itself. 

 The video was recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a sun-watching satellite that has transmitted a series of stunning photos of solar flares in recent months. The new video shows darker, cooler plasma shifting back and forth above the sun's surface over the span of nearly 30 hours stretching from Feb. 7 to Feb. 8. 

 And the giant tornado may be as large as the Earth itself, with gusts of up to 300,000 mph, explained Terry Kucera, deputy SOHO project scientist and a solar physicist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. 

 “It’s about 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit -- relatively cool,” Kucera told FoxNews.com. After all, the sun’s corona is a whopping 2 million degrees, she explained. 

Such tornadoes (Kucera classed it a “solar prominence”) have been known of for decades; the European Space Agency's SOHO spacecraft captured evidence of them as early as 1996, mainly near the Sun's north and south poles at the time. And though they resemble their cousins here on Earth, they’re created entirely differently, Kucera said -- through magnetism, not pressure and temperature fluctuations.

“Those motions you see, it’s all just moving along the magnetic field somehow -- but we’re still looking to understand what’s happening with these things,” Kucera said. 

 The storm was created by competing magnetic forces, which pull the charged magnetic particles on the sun back and forth, creating a spinning mass of plasma that tracks along strands of magnetic field lines, NASA explained. 

The spinning top of the tornado is mesmerizing, but Kucera noted the span of the prominence as well. The long, ribbon shapes could span hundreds of thousands of miles, she said. 

“In total length, this could be dozens of Earths -- quite large,” she said. Such detailed, high-resolution recordings of the immense tornadoes was not possible until the launch of SDO. The satellite has several cameras on board that capture solar activity in different wavelengths and frequencies, all in the name of science. 

 “Each wavelength of light tells us something different,” she said.

 

Urgency of Now

Questions That Must Be Answered On Global Warming

1. How do we define and identify it?  Over what period of time?

2. What are our measurement tools and what are the limitations?

3. What political, social and financial incentives exist that might bias the "science"?

4. Is it, in fact, occurring?

5. To what extent is human activity to blame?

6. How accurately can we measure the future impact (negative and positive)?

7. Can we slow, stop or reverse the trend "in time"?

8. What are the social and economic costs (vs. the benefits) of taking such actions?

9. If the situation is in fact "dire," what to do with politicians that are not the "real-deal" or "true-believers"?

These questions went through my mind as I read the article below...

Obama losing financial backing of big S.F. donor

Carla Marinucci,Joe Garofoli

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Michael Macor / SFC

Susie Tompkins Buell, a co-founder of the Esprit clothing company and major supporter of Democratic candidates and progressive causes, is frustrated with the president's leadership.

San Francisco philanthropist Susie Tompkins Buell, one of the Democratic Party's most generous benefactors, is keeping her checkbook closed when President Obama holds high-priced California fundraisers this week.

"

I want to look him in the eye and say, 'Thank you so much' " for his work, said Buell, who expresses deep disappointment in the president's leadership on environmental issues, especially climate change.

With Obama's 2012 re-election campaign in full swing, "I would just love to write my big check ... or have a high-dollar dinner here" on his behalf, she said. "I can't."

Buell, a co-founder of the Esprit clothing company, has donated millions of dollars to Democratic causes and presidential candidates, including Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore and her good friend, Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the past 10 years, she has given $25 million to progressive political and charitable causes and has raised $10 million for candidates and committees, her office said.

But as Obama flies from Southern California to San Francisco today to vacuum up donations in the reliable Democratic ATM, Buell will attend neither of his $35,800-per-plate fundraisers in San Francisco, nor a fundraising rally at the Masonic Auditorium.

Buell is a loyal Democrat, but says she hasn't yet opened her wallet for Obama's campaign and probably won't anytime soon.

"I've just given so much money away, and I've never asked for anything," she said in an interview at her Pacific Heights home this week. Now, "I'm asking for something: He's got to be a leader."

Buell and her husband, Mark Buell, have long devoted energy and money to environmental causes such as the Go Green Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit designed to get young people involved in environmental causes. She said she is "very concerned that President Obama has not talked enough about this issue."

"I thought that he really did understand 'the urgency of now' on climate change," she said. "He has not been vocal enough ... and I want to encourage him to lead me."

Buell's glaring absence from Obama's fundraising events this week underscores the challenges the president has with his progressive base.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/15/MND61N71MS.DTL#ixzz1mcGDzMEn

LA Times: Voting System in Confusion

Why Are Liberals Against Showing Identification Before Voting?

One out of eight voting registrations is inaccurate, and about a quarter of those people eligible to cast a ballot are not even registered, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States.

The report describes a voting system in confusion, with about 1.8 million dead people listed on the rolls, some 2.8 million with active registrations in more than one state and 12 million with serious enough errors to make it unlikely that mail, from any political party or election board, can reach the right destination. In all, some 24 million registrations contain significant errors.

Intimidating Voters In Philadelphia during 2008 Election

Reveal rest of post >>

Waiting For Super Unions

School reformer urges California to change teacher tenure rules

LA Times, February 16, 2012

Former District of Columbia schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee urged a Los Angeles audience of educators and parents to pressure state leaders to change teacher tenure and seniority rules.

Featured in the movie about the state of education, Waiting for Superman

Her appearance Wednesday night before an enthusiastic crowd of about 600 marked the third of four appearances statewide for Rhee, who is attempting to build a base of influence in California.

Rhee’s 1-year-old organization, StudentsFirst, has worked in other states with governors and powerful legislators but not in California, even though her organization is based in Sacramento.

In her remarks and a question-and-answer session, Rhee took on “last in, first out” rules that govern teacher layoffs. She characterized this approach as “incredibly detrimental to students and schools,” because gifted, less-experienced teachers are put out of work while less effective teachers with more seniority get to keep their jobs.

“California is one of the few states left that mandates in state law that layoffs happen this way,” Rhee said. “What we’re going to have to do is get politically active.”

She added a glancing reference to Gov. Jerry Brown and state Democratic leaders: “It’s clear we’re not going to get invited in,” she said. “Are you guys ready for this?”

 

Brown has expressed skepticism about some of the more recent directions in education reform.

Rhee’s staff billed the L.A. event as part of a “listening tour,” but for the most part a largely appreciative audience at the Robert F. Kennedy Schools’ auditorium was content to listen to Rhee, and also to her husband, Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento.

“We don’t use data effectively to say who the best teachers are,” Johnson noted at one point.

In a Wednesday interview, Rhee explained some views that are unorthodox for a Democrat, such as supporting government-funded vouchers for students from low-income families to attend private schools.

“If you run a school system and your job is to preserve and defend the system, you should be anti-voucher,” she said. “But I could not find it in myself to look a mother in the eye and say, 'I’m going to force you to keep your kid in a failing school' " that might take five years to fix.

Rhee was criticized recently for avoiding questions about alleged cheating on test scores in the District of Columbia, the school system she used to run. On Wednesday, however, she said she fully supported an investigation that is now underway.

Stupid People Should Not Have Children

More Doctors 'Fire' Vaccine Refusers

Families Who Reject Inoculations Told to Find a New Physician; Contagion in Waiting Room Is a Fear

By SHIRLEY S. WANG, WSJ February 15, 2012

Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are "firing" such families from their practices, raising questions about a doctor's responsibility to these patients.

Medical associations don't recommend such patient bans, but the practice appears to be growing, according to vaccine researchers.

Dr. Allan LaReau in Michigan stops treating families who refuse to vaccinate their children. 'You feel badly about losing a nice family,' he says.

In a study of Connecticut pediatricians published last year, some 30% of 133 doctors said they had asked a family to leave their practice for vaccine refusal, and a recent survey of 909 Midwestern pediatricians found that 21% reported discharging families for the same reason.

By comparison, in 2001 and 2006 about 6% of physicians said they "routinely" stopped working with families due to parents' continued vaccine refusal and 16% "sometimes" dismissed them, according to surveys conducted then by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"There's more noise among pediatricians, more people willing to argue that it's OK to do this versus 10 years ago," said Douglas Diekema, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Diekema wrote the AAP's policy on working with vaccine refusers, which recommends providers address the issue at repeated visits, but respect parents' wishes unless it puts a child at risk of significant harm.

Most pediatricians consider preventing disease through vaccines a primary goal of their job. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and AAP issue an annual recommended vaccination schedule, but some parents ask if their child's immunizations can be pushed back or skipped altogether, pediatricians say.

It's hard to imagine an outbreak of smallpox today. But for centuries the deadly virus wiped out entire populations. WSJ's Christina Tsuei reports on how the discovery of vaccines (with the help of cows) eradicated the disease and led to the prevention of many other diseases.

While rates for several key inoculations in young children rose between 2009 and 2010, according to the CDC, lower immunization rates have been blamed as a factor in U.S. outbreaks of whooping cough and measles in recent years.

Parents often voice concerns about autism or that their child's immune system may be overwhelmed by too many vaccines at once. Worries about a link between vaccines and autism arose because some parents noticed their children regressed, or lost some skills, around the time of their vaccinations at two years of age.  Another concern centered on the former use of mercury as a vaccine preservative.

Numerous studies since have dispelled these concerns among scientists. Rather, scientists say, it is more likely that autism symptoms begin showing up around the same age children are vaccinated.

The rise in patient firings reflects another factor. As patients have become savvier and more willing to challenge doctors, physicians have become increasingly reluctant to deal with uncooperative patients, said Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, doctors may feel financial pressure to see more patients and so have less time to contend with recalcitrant ones.

Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are "firing" such families from their practices. Stefanie Ilgenfritz has details on Lunch Break.

For Allan LaReau of Kalamazoo, Mich., and his 11 colleagues at Bronson Rambling Road Pediatrics, who chose in 2010 to stop working with vaccine-refusing families, a major factor was the concern that unimmunized children could pose a danger in the waiting room to infants or sick children who haven't yet been fully vaccinated.

In one case, an unvaccinated child came in with a high fever and Dr. LaReau feared the patient might have meningitis, a contagious, potentially deadly infection of the brain and spinal cord for which a vaccine commonly is given. "I lost a lot more sleep than I usually do" worrying about the situation, he said.

"You feel badly about losing a nice family from the practice," added Dr. LaReau, but families who refused to vaccinate their kids were told that "this is going to be a difficult relationship without this core part of pediatrics." Some families chose to go elsewhere while others agreed to have their kids inoculated.

Pediatricians disagree about what their duty is to these families. "The bottom line is you should try to do whatever you can to maintain the family in the best care," said Michael Brady, chair of the pediatrics department at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and a member of the AAP's immunization committee. "If they leave your practice, they're probably going to gravitate toward another practice with unhealthy practices."

Other physicians say they rarely have had luck persuading vaccine opponents to change their minds.

David Fenner and his 20-plus colleagues at Children's Medical Group in Rhinebeck, N.Y., discuss vaccine concerns but ask families to leave if they don't comply by a certain point.

Dr. Fenner said he tells new families, "You've been bombarded with information before you came here, some accurate and some not." Iif a family refuses to vaccinate after a discussion of the issue, he tells them "there are so many things we're not going to see eye-to-eye on."

So far, the practice has fired a couple of families per year since it implemented the policy about five years ago.

Pamela Felice, who lives in an Atlanta suburb, had difficulty finding a pediatrician for her two children though they have waivers from a previous pediatrician exempting them from school requirements for immunizations. Her older child had gastrointestinal trouble and regressed development after receiving vaccines, she said, which she believes were related to the shots.

Ms. Felice received a letter from her pediatrician a few years ago stating that because the family chose not to vaccinate, it needed to find another doctor. She called four or five other practices but none would agree to an appointment after she told them she was opposed to vaccines. The family ended up with an elderly family doctor who said he had "seen it all" and was willing to treat the children if they got sick, Ms. Felice said.

"A doctor should feel obligated to discuss [potential vaccine] risks with any parent who wants to discuss them," said Ms. Felice.

Read More About Vaccines

Medical Journal Says Autism Study 'Fraud' (Jan. 6, 2011)
More Parents Seek Vaccine Exemption (July 6, 2010)
Book Review: The Shot Heard Round the World (March 26, 2011)

Live Off The Teat Of The Giant State

Seeing The Kraut-Man Sunday Night!

Free Stuff

Bleeding Heart Valentine

Obama Deficit Spending: $17,000 per person — or about $70,000 for a family of four.

The Cost of Obama

Weekly Standard, February 14, 2012

President Obama’s fourth budget has now been released, which allows for a relatively full accounting of deficit spending during his four years in office. The picture isn’t pretty, but it is revealing.

According to the White House’s own figures (see table S-1 here for 2011 to 2013, and table S-1 here for 2010), the actual or projected deficit tallies for the four years in which Obama has submitted budgets are as follows: $1.293 trillion in 2010, $1.300 trillion in 2011, $1.327 trillion in 2012, and $901 billion in 2013.  In addition, Obama is responsible for the estimated $200 billion (the Congressional Budget Office’s figure) that his economic “stimulus” added to the deficit in 2009.  Moreover, he shouldn’t get credit for the $149 billion in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) repayments made in 2010 and 2011 to cover most of the $154 billion in bank loans that remained unpaid at the end of the 2009 fiscal year — loans that count against President Bush’s 2009 deficit tally.

Adding all of this up, deficit spending during Obama’s four years in the White House (based on his own figures) will be an estimated $5.170 trillion — or $5,170,000,000,000.00.

To help put that colossal sum of money into perspective, if you take our deficit spending under Obama and divide it evenly among the roughly 300 million American citizens, that works out to just over $17,000 per person — or about $70,000 for a family of four.

The previous record for most deficit spending during a presidency was set by President George W. Bush (see table 1.3 in the White House’s Historic Tables). During Bush’s 8-year administration, total deficit spending was $3.402 trillion. That’s a truly extraordinary and reckless sum. It’s also $1.768 trillion less than deficit spending in just four years under Obama. Per year, deficits under Bush averaged $425 billion. Per year, deficits under Obama (according to his own numbers) will average $1.293 trillion — or more than three times as much.

Because the gross domestic product (GDP) nearly always grows from year to year, the most favorable way to view Obama’s deficit spending is as a percentage of GDP. Surely he can’t look as bad in that light, right? 

Well, prior to Obama, our annual deficit spending had only exceeded 6.0 percent of GDP during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Except during those huge conflicts, our deficits had never exceeded 6.0 percent of GDP in any year — not during the Great Depression, not at the height of the Cold War defense buildup, not ever. But that’s no longer the case. During Obama’s four years in the White House (and, again, using his own numbers), annual deficit spending will average 8.4 percent of GDP.

That’s nearly double the average annual level of deficit spending under any other post-War president. As the following chart shows, this has truly been a historic presidency — more profligate than any other by far:

Media Matters Brown Shirt

Media Matters memo reportedly detailed plan to target Fox News staff

Liberal media watchdog group Media Matters once contemplated harassing Fox News employees with yard signs in their neighborhoods, hiring private investigators to dig into their personal lives and retaining a "major law firm" to study legal action against the network, according to a report Tuesday in the Daily Caller. 

Shown here is Media Matters CEO David Brock.

The report cited a September 2009 memo from Media Matters contributor Karl Frisch to Media Matters bosses David Brock and Eric Burns. 

It's unclear to what extent the organization, a 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofit group, followed through on the detailed suggestions, but they would appear to comport with Brock's early 2011 claim that he planned to prosecute a "war on Fox." 

The tactics floated by Frisch were likened to a "presidential-style campaign," one which he hoped would "discredit and embarrass the network." 

He suggested hiring "trackers" to "stake out" events with Fox News employees, sending "anti-Fox News literature" to employees' homes and even convincing director Michael Moore to make a documentary about the network. Frisch also suggested establishing a "front group" of shareholders to target parent company News Corporation. 

At least one of the ideas appears to have come to fruition -- a suggestion that Media Matters publish an anti-Fox News book under Brock's name. "The Fox Effect," co-written by Brock and the Media Matters organization, is due for release next week. 

The memo is the latest revelation in a Daily Caller series about Media Matters' campaign against Fox News. The online news outlet also reported that when ex-Politico writer Ben Smith wrote about Media Matters' "war" in 2011, he left out certain parts of a 2010 Media Matters planning memo. 

The memo, according to the Daily Caller, also suggested targeting the libertarian Cato Institute and conservative Heritage Foundation, as well as Republican officials like House GOP Leader Eric Cantor, and websites including Newsmax. 

Smith, who now works at the website BuzzFeed, has since posted most of the memo online, minus a five-page budget section that Smith said he never received.

A former Media Matters employee told the Daily Caller that several mainstream media reporters were known to reliably incorporate Media Matters items in their own reporting. Smith, the source said, would "take stories and write what you want him to write."

Politico frequently picked up Media Matters items in its articles, a rough list of which can be seen here.

Smith has defended his own work, tweeting that he's both "used ... & rejected tips from MM, just as from conservatives."

Politico continues to write about Fox News, as recently as Tuesday offering a top story on its web site about what it deemed a course correction leftward in Fox News' political reporting. The outlet's media blogger, Dylan Byers, who used to work for Smith, also wrote two rebuttals to the DC story on Monday suggesting that the piece and DC founder Tucker Carlson, a principal writer in the Media Matter series, did not back up the criticism of Politico with examples and was not accurately reporting the story. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/14/media-matters-memo-reportedly-detailed-plan-to-target-fox-news-staff/#ixzz1mNVBMZR2

PacMan

SUPER DNC Adage: 
If You Can't Beat 'Em With $1BB, Throw Out Your Principles

Still A Hero

Awful, Terrible, Despicable, Disgusting & Delicious


 To sum up: we knew he was a "horn dog," his behavior was "awful, terrible, despicable, disgusting," but it's "a lot of deja" worthy of a yawn even from a supposedly conservative columnist.

 Though "you can't defend it, "he's still a hero."

 Bear in mind that one of Alford's accusations was that this "hero" forced her to perform oral sex on one of his special aides. "But his image is still larger than all of that."

This from the very people who just a few months ago voraciously and savagely attacked former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain for unsubstantiated allegations concerning sexual harassment decades ago. He wasn't worthy to be president due to such allegations, but a former president forcing a 19-year-old to perform oral sex on one of his friends doesn't diminish his place in history the slightest bit.

Got that?

For More information about JFK and his "intern":
'Michael Carter' Teaches Intern How To Scramble Eggs

Happy Birthday

Education Matrix

Take the Red Pill

Vacuumus Americanus

Why the World Needs America

Foreign-policy pundits increasingly argue that democracy and free markets could thrive without U.S. predominance. If this sounds too good to be true, writes Robert Kagan, that's because it is. 

By Robert Kagan, WSJ Opinion February 11, 2012

History shows that world orders, including our own, are transient. They rise and fall, and the institutions they erect, the beliefs and "norms" that guide them, the economic systems they support—they rise and fall, too. The downfall of the Roman Empire brought an end not just to Roman rule but to Roman government and law and to an entire economic system stretching from Northern Europe to North Africa. Culture, the arts, even progress in science and technology, were set back for centuries.

Many of us take for granted how the world looks today. But it might look a lot different without America at the top. The Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan talks with Washington bureau chief Jerry Seib about his new book, "The World America Made," and whether a U.S. decline is inevitable.

Modern history has followed a similar pattern. After the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, British control of the seas and the balance of great powers on the European continent provided relative security and stability. Prosperity grew, personal freedoms expanded, and the world was knit more closely together by revolutions in commerce and communication.

With the outbreak of World War I, the age of settled peace and advancing liberalism—of European civilization approaching its pinnacle—collapsed into an age of hyper-nationalism, despotism and economic calamity. The once-promising spread of democracy and liberalism halted and then reversed course, leaving a handful of outnumbered and besieged democracies living nervously in the shadow of fascist and totalitarian neighbors. The collapse of the British and European orders in the 20th century did not produce a new dark age—though if Nazi Germany and imperial Japan had prevailed, it might have—but the horrific conflict that it produced was, in its own way, just as devastating.

If the U.S. is unable to maintain its hegemony on the high seas, would other nations fill in the gaps? On board the USS Germantown in the South China Sea, Tuesday.

Would the end of the present American-dominated order have less dire consequences? A surprising number of American intellectuals, politicians and policy makers greet the prospect with equanimity. There is a general sense that the end of the era of American pre-eminence, if and when it comes, need not mean the end of the present international order, with its widespread freedom, unprecedented global prosperity (even amid the current economic crisis) and absence of war among the great powers.

American power may diminish, the political scientist G. John Ikenberry argues, but "the underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive." The commentator Fareed Zakaria believes that even as the balance shifts against the U.S., rising powers like China "will continue to live within the framework of the current international system." And there are elements across the political spectrum—Republicans who call for retrenchment, Democrats who put their faith in international law and institutions—who don't imagine that a "post-American world" would look very different from the American world.

If all of this sounds too good to be true, it is. The present world order was largely shaped by American power and reflects American interests and preferences. If the balance of power shifts in the direction of other nations, the world order will change to suit their interests and preferences. Nor can we assume that all the great powers in a post-American world would agree on the benefits of preserving the present order, or have the capacity to preserve it, even if they wanted to.

Take the issue of democracy. For several decades, the balance of power in the world has favored democratic governments. In a genuinely post-American world, the balance would shift toward the great-power autocracies. Both Beijing and Moscow already protect dictators like Syria's Bashar al-Assad. If they gain greater relative influence in the future, we will see fewer democratic transitions and more autocrats hanging on to power. The balance in a new, multipolar world might be more favorable to democracy if some of the rising democracies—Brazil, India, Turkey, South Africa—picked up the slack from a declining U.S. Yet not all of them have the desire or the capacity to do it.

What about the economic order of free markets and free trade? People assume that China and other rising powers that have benefited so much from the present system would have a stake in preserving it. They wouldn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Reveal rest of post >>

Nada es Gratis

Particularly Your Liberties

First time ever: American Administration Dictates Private Companies Must GIVE AWAY a Product

Immaculate Contraception 

An 'accommodation' that makes the birth-control mandate worse.

WSJ Opinion, February 11, 2012

Here's a conundrum: The White House wants to impose its birth-control ideology on all Americans, including those for whom sponsoring or subsidizing such services violates their moral conscience. The White House also wants to avoid a political backlash from this blow to religious freedom. These goals are irreconcilable.

So you almost have to admire the absurdity of the new plan President Obama floated yesterday: The government will now write a rule that says the best things in life are "free," including contraception. Thus a political mandate will be compounded by an uneconomic one—in other words, behold the soul of ObamaCare.

Under the original Health and Human Services regulation, all religious institutions except for houses of worship would be required to cover birth control, including hospitals, schools and charities. Under the new rule, which the White House stresses is "an accommodation" and not a compromise, nonprofit religious organizations won't have to directly cover birth control and can opt out. But the insurers they hire to cover their employees can't opt out. If that sounds like a distinction without a difference, odds are you're a rational person.

Say Notre Dame decides that its health plan won't cover birth control on moral grounds. A faculty member wants such coverage, so Notre Dame's insurer will then be required to offer the benefit as an add-on rider anyway, at no out-of-pocket cost to her, or to any other worker or in higher premiums for the larger group.

But wait. Supposedly the original rule was necessary to ensure "access" to contraceptives, which can cost up to $600 a year as Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray wrote in these pages this week. The true number is far less, but where does that $600 or whatever come from, if not from Notre Dame and not the professor?

Insurance companies won't be making donations. Drug makers will still charge for the pill. Doctors will still bill for reproductive treatment. The reality, as with all mandated benefits, is that these costs will be borne eventually via higher premiums. The balloon may be squeezed differently over time, and insurers may amortize the cost differently over time, but eventually prices will find an equilibrium. Notre Dame will still pay for birth control, even if it is nominally carried by a third-party corporation.

This cut-out may appease a few of the Administration's critics, especially on the Catholic left—but only if they want to be deceived again, having lobbied for the Affordable Care Act that created the problem in the first place. The faithful for whom birth control is a matter of religious conviction haven't been accommodated at all. They'll merely have to keep two sets of accounting books.

The real audience for this non-compromise are the many voters shaken that the White House would so willfully erode the American traditions of religious liberty and pluralism, most of whom don't adhere to anti-contraceptive teachings. On a conference call with reporters yesterday, a senior Administration official not known for his policy chops claimed that the new plan was "our intention all along" and that the furor is nothing more than partisan opportunism. Hmmm.

We couldn't recall any spirit of conciliation when the birth-control mandate was finalized in January, so we went back and checked the transcript of that call with senior Administration officials. Sure enough, back then they said that the rule "reflects careful consideration of the rights of religious organizations" and that a one-year grace period "really just gives those organizations some additional time to sort out how they will be adjusting their plans."

A journalist asked, "Just to be clear, so it's giving them a year to comply rather than giving them a year to in any way change how they feel or the Administration to change how it feels." Another senior official: "That is correct. It gives them a year to comply."

Yesterday's new adventure in damage control and bureaucratic improvisation makes the compliance problem much worse. There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they recoup the costs indirectly. Why not do that with all health benefits and "bend the cost curve" to zero? The shape of the final rule when the details land in the Federal Register is anyone's guess, including the HHS gnomes who are throwing it together on the fly to meet a political deadline.

One major problem will be how the rule applies to large organizations that self-insure. Arrangements in which an employer pays for care directly and uses insurers to manage benefits and process claims (not to take on insurance risk) account for the majority of the private market. In these cases there isn't even a free lunch to pretend exists.

***

As reporting by Bloomberg and ABC this week has made clear, the contraception mandate was fiercely opposed within the Administration, including by Vice President Joe Biden. The larger tragedy is that none of them objected to government health care, which will always take choices away from individuals and arrogate them to an infallible higher power in Washington. Who was it again who claimed that if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan?