The Republican Schism

1.  The Republican Schism

There is a data set within yesterday’s CNN poll that even CNN largely overlooked, but that explains so much of the current tension within the Republican Party.

Long after we are dead, pundits and political reporters will still talk about the Rockefeller Republicans vs. the Conservatives and other such archaic divisions that no longer exist except in the rhetorical habits of pretentious political reporters. The real division within the Republican Party now isn’t even between those who call themselves tea partiers fighting the establishment. “Tea party”, like “conservative” and “Republican”, has less meaning these days and I increasingly dislike using the word. Admittedly though, everyone would consider me one based on the general parameters of what the tea party is.

In any event, the real fight within the Republican Party now is between those who believe we actually are at the moment of crisis — existential or otherwise — and thereby must fight as we’ve never fought before and those who think the GOP can bide its time and make things right.

At this moment, this boils down to a fight largely between Main Street and the K Street/Wall Street Alliance within the GOP. This gets us back to the CNN poll and the data set even CNN really missed. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →

2.  The high cost of ObamaCare deception

President Obama’s Rose Garden press conference on the ObamaCare disaster featured a group of 13 human props, lined up on stage behind him to put a face on the alleged virtues of his health care scheme.  It turns out none of them had actually purchased an ObamaCare insurance plan, and only three of them had even completed the application process.

3.  MS Word’s Spell Check Still Flags “Obamacare”

Maybe that’s with good reason. The latest incriminating—well-written, too, I dare say—account I’ve read of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or “Obamacare”) is at MoneyMorning.

We’ve all read such accounts. They’re proliferating and coming, uh, “fast and furious,” from everywhere. I think it’s inevitable that, once the federal government corrects the glitches in its PPACA sign-up websites and people are actually able to apply for coverage, the rage at increased costs—required by law, no less—will become epidemic, and that rage will only grow when costs and taxes increase more next year, all as a result of the PPACA: all part of the plan.

Source: RedState, Erick Erickson Editor-in-Chief, RedState 10/22/13

Trickle Up Redistribution

How Washington Really Redistributes Income

The renowned money manager goes back to school to explain how entitlements are helping the Baby Boomers rip off future generations.  by James Freeman WSJ

Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He's a member of the 1%—make that the 0.001%—one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don't hear out of Washington. It's how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller's generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z.

"I have been shocked at the reception. I had planned to only visit Bowdoin," his alma mater in Maine, he says. But he has since been invited to multiple campuses, and even the kids at Stanford and Berkeley have welcomed his theme of generational theft. Harlem Children's Zone President Geoffrey Canada and former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh have joined him at stops along the tour.

Mr. Druckenmiller describes the reaction of students: "The biggest question I got was, 'How do we start a movement?' And my answer was 'I'm a 60-year-old washed-up money manager. I don't know how to start a movement. That's your job. But we did it in Vietnam without Twitter and without Facebook and without any social media. That's your job.' But the enthusiasm—they get it."

Even at Berkeley, he says, "they got it. There is tremendous energy in the room and of course they understand it. I'd say it's a combination of appalled but motivated. That's the response I've been getting, and it's been overwhelming."

Movement or no, this is a good week to check in with Mr. Druckenmiller, as President Obama won the budget battle without policy concessions to break the federal debt limit and continue borrowing beyond $17 trillion. I last spoke to the Pittsburgh native and father of three daughters during the 2011 debt-limit brawl, and he created a stir by supporting entitlement changes as a condition of raising the debt cap.

This was not the Wall Street consensus. He also said that a "technical default," in which the government is a week or two late in making payments on its debt, would be "horrible" butnot "the end of the world" if it produced reforms that put U.S. finances on a sounder footing.

"Some characters in the administration have mischaracterized my view," he says now, in the conference room of his office high above midtown Manhattan. Then as now, he argues that major reform to protect future generations would be worth a short period of market turbulence.

"If there's something really big on the other side in terms of entitlement reform, it's worth using the debt limit. And God forbid even if you go a day or two over it in terms of interest payments," he says, the country would be better off "if and only if you got big, big progress on a long-term problem." Contemplating the recent Beltway debacle, he adds, "the problem with what we just went through is there was no big thing on the other side."

Not that Mr. Druckenmiller endorsed the most recent Republican strategy. "I thought tying ObamaCare to the debt ceiling was nutty," he says, and I can confirm that he was saying so for weeks before the denouement.

But he adds that "I did not think it would be nutty to tie entitlements to the debt ceiling because there's a massive long-term problem. And this president, despite what he says, has shown time and time again that he needs a gun at his head to negotiate in good faith. All this talk about, 'I won't negotiate with a gun at my head.' OK, you've been president for five years."  His voice rising now, Mr. Druckenmiller pounds his fist on the conference table. "Show me, President Obama, when the period was when you initiated budget discussions without a gun at your head."

Which brings him back to his thieving generation. For three decades until 2010, Mr. Druckenmiller ran the hedge fund he founded, Duquesne Capital. Now retired from managing other people's money, he looks after his own assets, which Forbes magazine recently estimated at $2.9 billion. And he wonders why in five years the massively indebted U.S. government will begin sending him a Social Security check for $3,500 each month. Because he earned it?

"I didn't earn it," he responds, while pointing to a bar chart that is part of his college presentation. Drawing on research by Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, it shows the generational wealth transfer that benefits oldsters at the expense of the young.

While many seniors believe they are simply drawing out the "savings" they were forced to deposit into Social Security and Medicare, they are actually drawing out much more, especially relative to later generations. That's because politicians have voted to award the seniors ever more generous benefits. As a result, while today's 65-year-olds will receive on average net lifetime benefits of $327,400, children born now will suffer net lifetime losses of $420,600 as they struggle to pay the bills of aging Americans.

One of the great ironies of the Obama presidency is that it has been a disaster for the young people who form the core of his political coalition. High unemployment is paired with exploding debt that they will have to finance whenever they eventually find jobs.

Are the kids finally figuring out that the Obama economy is a lousy deal for them? "No, I don't sense that," says Mr. Druckenmiller, who is a registered independent. "But one of my points is neither party should own your vote. And once they know they own your vote, you're not going to get any action on this particular issue."

When the former money manager visited Stanford University, the audience included older folks as well as students. Some of the oldsters questioned why many of his dire forecasts assume that federal tax collections will stay at their traditional 18.5% of GDP. They asked why taxes should not rise to fulfill the promises already made.

Mr. Druckenmiller's response: "Oh, so you've paid 18.5% for your 40 years and now you want the next generation of workers to pay 30% to finance your largess?" He added that if 18.5% was "so immoral, why don't you give back some of your ill-gotten gains of the last 40 years?"

He has a similar argument for those on the left who say entitlements can be fixed with an eventual increase in payroll taxes. "Oh, I see," he says. "So I get to pay a 12% payroll tax now until I'm 65 and then I don't pay. But the next generation—instead of me paying 15% or having my benefits slightly reduced—they're going to pay 17% in 2033. That's why we're waiting—so we can shift even more to the future than to now?"

He also rejects the "rat through the python theory," which holds that the fiscal disaster will only be temporary while the baby-boom generation moves through the benefit pipeline and then entitlement costs will become bearable. By then, he says, "you have so much debt on the books that it's too late."

Unfortunately for taxpayers, "the debt accumulates while the rat's going through the python," so by the 2040s the debt itself and its gargantuan interest payments become bigger problems than entitlements. He points to a chart that shows how America's debt-to-GDP ratio, the amount of debt compared with national income, explodes in about 20 years. That's where Greece was when it hit the skids, he says, pointing to about 2030.

Breaking again with many Wall Streeters but consistent with his theme, Mr. Druckenmiller wants to raise taxes now on capital gains and dividends, bringing both up to ordinary income rates. He says the current tax code represents "another intergenerational transfer, because 60-year-olds are worth five times what 30-year-olds are."

And 65-year-olds are "much wealthier than the working-age population. So the guy who's out there working—the plumber, the stockbroker, whatever he is—he's paying the 40% rate and the coupon clippers who are not working anymore are paying a 20% rate."

Ah, but what about the destructive double taxation on corporate income? The Druckenmiller plan is to raise tax rates on investors while at the same time cutting the corporate tax rate to zero.

"Who owns corporations? Shareholders. But who makes the decisions at corporations? The guys running the companies. So if you tax the shareholder at ordinary income [rates] but you tax the economic actors at zero," he explains, "you get the actual economic actors incented to hire people, to do capital spending. It's not the coupon clippers that are making those decisions. It's the people at the operating level."

As an added bonus, wiping out the corporate tax eliminates myriad opportunities for crony capitalism and corporate welfare. "How do the lobbying groups and the special interests work in Washington? Through the tax code. There's no more building plants in Puerto Rico or Ireland and double-leasebacks and all this stuff. If you take corporate tax rates to zero, that's gone. But in terms of the fairness argument, you are taxing the shareholder. So you eliminate double taxation. To me it could be very, very good for growth, which is a huge part of the solution to the debt problem long-term. You can't do it without growth."

Amid the shutdown nonsense, this week's debt-ceiling accord did create an opening for some reform before the next deadline early next year. So what should Republican reformers like Paul Ryan do now?

"I would go for something simple that is very, very tough for the other side to argue, for example, means-testing Social Security and Medicare," which would adjust benefits by income. He notes again his impending eligibility for a monthly government check.

"I don't need it. I don't want it. I could also make the argument that every health expert will tell you that wealthy people live 4.5 years longer than the middle class or the poor. So I'm going to get paid 4.5 years more than the middle class or the poor," he says. "It's not that many dollars, but I think it would be a great symbol in seeing exactly how serious they are."

But Mr. Druckenmiller is not sure, so soon after the failed attempt to defund ObamaCare, that Republicans should demand entitlement reform in exchange for the next debt-limit vote this winter or spring. "Maybe they need a break," he says. "I think a much more effective strategy would be for them to publicly shine a light on something so obvious as means-testing and take their case to the American people rather than go through the actual debt limit."

If Mr. Obama rejects the idea, "then we will really know where he is on entitlement reform." For this reason, Mr. Druckenmiller views means-testing as "really the perfect start—and it should only be a start—to find out who's telling the truth here and who's not."

Source: WSJ Weekend Interview of money manager Stanley Druckenmiller, by James Freeman, Updated October 18, 2013, 7:36 p.m. ET Stanley Druckenmiller: How Washington Really Redistributes Income  Mr. Freeman is assistant editor of the Journal's editorial page.  A version of this article appeared October 19, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: How Washington Really Redistributes Income.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303680404579141790296396688.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Comments:

Corporate tax should be zero.  The government is responsible for paying down its own debt within its own current revenue. If they monetize the debt, as they have in the past, it will destroy the dollar. Government spending must be cut in any event.  Mr. Druckenmiller’s analysis of generational suicide is correct.  The “greatest generation” did win World War II, but they also created these entitlement Ponzi schemes.

Government needs to reverse course, eliminate corporate tax, restrict immigration and remove its restrictions and let the private economy function. The private sector needs to be able to bring jobs back to the US and drastically increase production of everything we have to sell. Global demand suggests that we increase the production of coal, oil, natural gas, timber, minerals and food.  We have to work our way out of this hole.

Means testing won’t really save much money and it puts us on a slippery slope.  We must find an effective way to transfer the recorded social security payments of younger workers to investment accounts they would own. 

Government should get completely out of health care, insurance, banking, lending, education, energy and other inappropriate enterprises. Third-party payment for healthcare wastes too much money on bureaucracy.  Government subsidies in health care and education have made them unaffordable.  Ruined segments like health care and education need to be weaned away from government funding and reinvented.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

American Planning Assn & Agenda 21

Here it is… The Smoking Gun  by Tom DeWeese. The direct link between Agenda 21 and local planners

When the fight started against Agenda 21, those of us working to expose it were largely ignored by the main stream media and even the established Conservative movement and its media. Too far out there, they said, to be taken seriously.

Then, as more and more Americans began to experience the dire effects of Sustainable Development in their daily lives, suddenly our message began to take hold. Today, thousands of Americans have taken up the fight. And anti-Agenda 21 activists are storming planning meetings, demanding answers. State legislatures and even some county and city governments are passing legislation against it. It seems the Agenda 21 fight is everywhere.

So, now, proponents of the Sustainable Development policy are alarmed and working feverishly to counter our claims that such controls over local development and energy policy have their roots in international policy. In particular, our claims that these planning policies come from the UN’s Agenda 21, that was introduced to the world at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.

Their most often used description of Agenda 21 is an “innocuous, 20 year old document that has no enforcement power.” Continuously we hear that local planning programs, especially from such groups like the American Planning Association (APA) have no connection to Agenda 21 or the UN. It’s all local – or as the APA says in its document, Glossary for the Public, “There is no hidden agenda.”  In its “Agenda 21: Myths and Facts” document found on the APA website, the group goes to extreme measures to distance itself and its policies from Agenda 21, specifically saying “The American Planning Association has no affiliation regarding any policy goals and recommendations of the UN.”

Well, then it would be interesting to hear the APA explain this information found in one of its own documents from 1994. The document was an APA newsletter to its members in the Northern California (San Francisco Area). The article was a commentary entitled “How Sustainable is Out Planning, by Robert Odland. It was written just two years after the UN Earth Summit at which Agenda 21 was first introduced to the world. The document can be viewed here.

The fifth paragraph of the article says, “Vice President Gore’s book, Earth in the Balanceaddressed many of the general issues of sustainability. Within the past year, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development has been organized to develop recommendations for incorporating sustainability into the federal government. Also, various groups have been formed to implement Agenda 21, a comprehensive blueprint for sustainable development that was adopted at the recent UNCED conference in Rio de Janeiro (the “Earth Summit.”)     

In one paragraph, this document brings together the APA, Agenda 21, the UN’s Earth Summit, Al Gore, Sustainable Development, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, NGO groups with the mission of implementing Agenda 21 and the description of Agenda 21 as a “comprehensive Blueprint” for Sustainable planning. It sounds like it came verbatim from one of my speeches!

A couple of paragraphs higher in the article, it says, “A common misconception is that sustainability is synonymous with self-sufficiency; on the contrary, sustainability must recognize the interconnections between different levels of societal structure.”  That “societal structure” is “social justice,” as described in Agenda 21. A visit to the PlannersNetwork.org, which the APA is a member, will find in its Statement of Principles this quote:

“We believe planning should be a tool for allocating resources…and eliminating the great inequalities of wealth and power in our society … because the free market has proven incapable of doing this.”

The United Nations blatantly advocates that Capitalism and private property rights are not sustainable and pose the single greatest threat to the world’s ecosystem and social equity.  And, while sometimes using different words, the APA is helping communities across the nation enforce these ideas, while swearing it is all a local idea, designed from local input.

As George Orwell masterfully put it in his epic novel “Animal Farm,” it’s become difficult to see the difference between the pigs and the farmers – or the APA and the UN.

Sustainable Development is not implemented in the open, as the APA claims, but in back rooms filled with the proper NGO organizations, which surround your elected officials and pressures their actions. In that way it is changing our American society and form of government, making government more powerful and more invasive in our daily lives. Sustainability is anti free enterprise, anti private property, and anti individual – and that’s why we oppose it.

Source:  American Policy.org- Tom DeWeese, June 5th, 2013 See more at: http://americanpolicy.org/2013/06/05/here-it-is-the-smoking-gun/#sthash.IjQU6j6A.dpuf

You Don’t Get To Keep Your Insurance

Georgia Business to Dump Employees into Exchanges and Pay Fine

Debbie and Larry Underkoffler, opened a boutique staffing agency in the middle of the Obama recession and have always taken good care of their employees, but thanks to Obamacare, they are forced into throwing them to the wolves.   They have 400 temporary workers and want to add another 200 this year, but buying them all an Obamacare policy is too expensive and they have decided to pay the $2,000 apiece fine for not providing coverage.

Although they only have 18 fulltime employees, under Obamacare rules, temporaries who work over 30 hours a week are eligible for coverage.  That would take them to about 200 employees and put them over the top and into mandatory coverage.

The Onderkofflers worked hard to build up their business.  “I would bake sourdough bread, and I made homemade strawberry jam, and deliver it to my prospects.  I would also deliver homemade cookies.”   And their 18 full time employees get generous healthcare benefits, which they will now lose since Obamacare does not allow a company to have different policies between full time workers and part timers. It looks like we will have to just pay the penalties.”

By paying the penalties, it will cost their business $400,000 a year which greatly diminish their profit margin, but not as badly as the 2 million it would cost to insure them.  Some call this an unintended consequence of the law, but I submit that this is exactly what the law was designed to do and once everyone is in the government exchange, they will convert it to a single payer system, like the ones that work so well in Canada and Great Britain.With a year’s delay in the employer mandate, they are hoping for some relief with the current rules but neither is optimistic.

“I haven’t seen any thus far. And certainly with the situation in Washington right now, they seem to be kicking the can down the road.”

Source: Redstatements.com, October 20, 2013 by Steven Ahle

Public Schools

Our citizenry did a better job of educating themselves before public schools were established.  What does that tell you ?    The public schools did a better job of educating the students before the creation of the Federal Department of Education.  What does that tell you ?   In the early days of rural schools, citizens took up a collection, built a school house and hired a teacher from one of the nearby private colleges, (think Anne of Green Gables Sequel). 

There are several glaring deficiencies in the public schools that can be addressed before we return to borrowing books and studying in our log cabins by candlelight.  They include inadequate content, inaccurate content, irrelevant content and politicization.  Schools have become indoctrination camps and institutions designed to ensure that graduates are not prepared to function as free citizens.  The basic academic skills are not effectively taught to all students.  It’s a “do it yourself” system.  Smart students with smart parents can navigate the system and survive. 

Teaching is now the largest labor union in existence.  It’s become a “jobs program”. Propaganda permeates the system and what was our Constitution and “free economy” is distained. 

Constant fiddling with the structure of government schools will not fix the problem.  There may be some advantages to charter schools, magnet schools and smaller school districts, but in the end, the model has to change.  Too much money has been spent on buildings, with no regard to outcomes.

In the end, our graduates need to find jobs they can do.  Liberals are not alarmed, as they have managed to figure out how to eliminate those jobs.    

The best curriculum model is where the student figures out what he or she needs to learn, and then goes about researching it on-line.  It must involve parents whose job it is to find out what the on-line sites are teaching.  Homeschoolers learn more in half the time Public school students spend in class.  Homeschooled kids are less affected by the current destructive popular culture.  Internet technology has rendered the live lecture and cutting down trees to make books unnecessary. 

Too much time is spent by teachers in public schools on behavioral indoctrination and control.  In the old days, the cure for a bully was to punch him or her in the nose.  This is no longer allowed.  If a kid was weird, he or she would find their own kind.  Now weirdness tolerance is required. 

The basics include reading, writing and applied math.  What you read and write about and do math for should mirror what you should know to function as an adult.  Beyond that, you should know about the different jobs you could do after you graduate, what they pay and what further skills and experience you need to acquire to get these jobs.   Lastly, you need to identify what you love to do and see if you can get a job doing that.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Dems Move To Take Up Amnesty

(Breitbart) - On Thursday, President Obama took to the White House podium to triumphantly announce the end of the government shutdown. In doing so, he proclaimed that he wanted to push forward with other legislative priorities, including a budget, immigration reform, and the long-stalled pork-laden farm bill.

“In the coming days and weeks, we should sit down and pursue a balanced approach to a responsible budget, a budget that grows our economy faster and shrinks our long-term deficits further,” Obama stated. Historically, “balanced” has been code for tax increases.

Obama then pushed on to immigration reform: “Number two. We should finish the job of fixing our broken immigration system.” Naturally, he blamed the Republican House for stalling his preferred immigration bill.

Finally, Obama called for the farm bill to be passed: “Number three. We should pass a farm bill, one that American farmers and ranchers can depend on, one that protects vulnerable children and adults in times of need, one that gives rural communities opportunities to grow and the long-term certainty that they deserve.” And, disingenuously, he called for negotiations.

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) echoed Obama, saying, “I look forward to the next venture, which is making sure we do immigration reform.” On Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that Obama wanted immigration reform “more than anything else” during his second term. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) said that he trusted that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) would cave on immigration: “Once again, the speaker for the majority party is going to be placed in a position of deciding whether he’s going to put country before party and get something done. We just need a few courageous Republicans to stand up and say they’re ready.”

Republicans, however, pushed back. “It’s not going to happen this year,” said Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID). “After the way the president acted over the last two or three weeks where he would refuse to talk to the speaker of the House…they’re not going to get immigration reform. That’s done.”

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/17/Obama-push-immigration-farm-bill

Comments:

Our immigration laws are not broken.  Enforcement of those laws is broken.  Like the Constitution, Liberals refuse to comply, so they say it’s broken or outdated.  They think that by ignoring enforcement they can deny the law exists.  I don’t think so.  I think they should go to jail for violating the Constitution.  I think the rule of law is broken.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Lawless Government

Border Agents: Illegal Activists Assaulting Officers, No Charges Being Brought

(Breitbart) - (LOCAL 2544) — Apparently 18 USC 111 still only applies if an agent sustains serious injuries. How many times has the AUSA asked “How badly is the agent injured?” when presented with a case of impeding or assault on a federal officer?

No serious injury sustained by an agent almost always = no prosecution. That has been a running joke for many years (along with the ridiculous threshold amounts of dope to trigger a prosecution).

So when dozens of “protesters” impede, resist and otherwise interfere with Border Patrol agents and the carrying out of our duties, what happens? Nothing. They get a little pepper spray, they act like they have pulled off some heroic deed, they are attended to by the fire department, they get their picture in the paper and they walk away with no citations and no criminal charges.

And does that encourage further lawlessness and put us in a bad position as we try to do our job? Absolutely. It emboldens these types of people and puts us in danger. Impeding law enforcement should be a serious no-no.

Protest some other way, but not by interfering with an active enforcement operation and creating a dangerous atmosphere where someone could be badly injured or killed. Why weren’t these people arrested and charged?

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/15/Border-Agents-Illegal-Activists-Assaulting-Officers-But-No-Charges-Being-Brought

Comments:

Selective enforcement undermines the rule of law. Our Federal government is leading the way to ensure that thugs go free.  The injured agent should take legal action to restore the law.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader