Clinton Retreads Can’t See Failure When It Smacks Them in the Face
I have a pretty low regard for Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel due his to policy positions during the Clinton administration. I guess I still held out some hope that fools like Emanuel would at least recognize their previous failures and learn from them. Alas, I was wrong.
See, Clinton-retreads like Emanuel still see NAFTA as some sort of rousing success - at least politically. While he’s incorrect the real point is that all of this is some sort of electoral game to him. Even though he can witness the havok his policies have wreaked on citizens around the country he still boasts of them as a “political victory”. Not only is he too ignorant to realize that it wasn’t a political victory but he’s also too cold-hearted to see how insulting such an argument is to the millions of people who’ve lost their jobs. This may all be a game for elitists like Emanuel but for everyone else it is real life and he was the main driving force for weakening the standard of living for working class families.
Enough of my rambling, I’ll let A Tiny Revolution take it from here:
Another Quick Note on Health Care “Reform”
I thought this was a good post from Yves over at Naked Capitalism about the current state of health care “reform”. Echos what I’ve been saying for some time albeit using a more coherent argument:
There ARE other Democrats Willing to Call BS When They See It
Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake is taking a ton of flak for co-signing a letter with uber-right winger Grover Norquist in demanding an investigation into Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual’s involvement in the Fannie/Freddie bailouts. Personally I think Hamsher should’ve avoided any appearance of teaming with Norquist as it just hurt her credibility with the left and only served to move the debate away from one of substance into one of emotion.
But her criticism and call for investigation is valid. Why Democrats continue to defend proven failures like Rahm Emanuel I have no idea. This is the same dipshit that ramrodded NAFTA through the House while claiming how many millions of jobs he was going to create - how’d that work out?
Here’s Hamsher’s latest post and I personally couldn’t agree more:
So, it’s not an issue of “personalities.” It never should be. It’s about principles. And principles aren’t pliant — you either have them or you don’t. You can’t just use them as a yardstick to measure the inadequacy of people you don’t like, and then throw them away when it comes to your “friends.”
Rahm Emanuel is destroying not only the Democratic majority but the Democratic Party. There isn’t enough pork in the world to hold his “Blue Dogs” in office with the legacy of bailouts that he has engineered, and that’s why his “big tent” is now collapsing in his wake. Parker Griffin, and now (possibly) Chris Carney, may blame Nancy Pelosi for their defections to the GOP, but that’s pure demagogurery. The mess they are fleeing — the corrupt back-room deals, the endless bailouts — belong to Rahm.
The ground is shifting. You can feel it. And the Rahm dead-enders have become no different than the Bush dead-enders, completely unaware that the President whose malfeasance they are defending on the basis that one must not “consort with Republicans” is the one who ran on — consorting with Republicans. It is knee-jerk authoritarianism in the extreme. Rick Warren is okay because Obama says so. Principles? Who needs them.
If Obama/Rahm want to triangulate against progressives (and they do), they’re not the only ones who can make cause with people on the other side of the aisle. If that’s what it takes to shake up the corporate domination of our political system, we’ve done it before and we can do it again. Because working within the traditional political order to support “progressives” whose conviction lasts only as long as it doesn’t matter just doesn’t seem to be working.
[...]
Fannie and Freddie are places that politicians of both parties put their friends and gave them a lot of money when they aren’t in office, just like Rahm Emanuel did from 2000-2001.The White House knows it can’t get approval for more TARP money through Congress, so the administration is going to double the commitment to Fannie and Freddie from $400 billion to $800 billion, and then they can use the money to buy up more toxic assets from the banks. With no Inspector General. No independent oversight. But they have to do it by December 31, because after that it requires congressional approval, which will never happen. So, if you’re going to stop it, you have to do it in the next six days. Not a lot of time, especially given the media black hole between Christmas and New Years.
Of course, if it’s just corrupt when Republicans do it, but fine if it’s your BFF, no worries
You know it’s nice to see somebody with a little clout on the left saying the same shit I’ve been saying for the better part of a year now. It was getting lonely out here - maybe there is some hope left for the Democratic Party. But a party run by Clinton retreads and proven failures is not one I’m willing to support. And it damn sure isn’t “Change” no matter how many times you try to convince yourself otherwise…
Barry Real Estate Continues to Loot Fort Wayne Taxpayers
Here’s a question for 2010 - how many times will we see redevelopment director Greg Leatherman tell us that Barry Real Estate is making progress on their promises to build something at the Harrison Square site before even his most staunch advocates at city council begin to laugh?
But have no fear, someday when we re-inflate the massive real estate bubble economy of the mid-2000’s then Barry Real Estate will step up and deliver on their promises. I know I say this every year but Barry Real Estate is a fiction of the largesse that took place in the real estate market. Their business is not sustainable in these economic times.
They are kleptocrats who flew in and bamboozled the locals into handing over their money with nothing to show in return. Con artists like these guys have been around as long as the trading of money itself. The best ones always leave you thinking that they are doing you a massive favor by stealing your money and that the pot of gold is just around the corner if only you have the patience to wait.
The city should fire these looters immediately and file suit against them. Let’s see how well their business does with that lawsuit hanging over them. I get the feeling they might actually get off their ass and do something if that were the case. Remember when Chris Schoen said he didn’t know how he would do it but he’d self-finance the building if he had to?
Why doesn’t anyone from the city thrown those words back on him? Oh yea, it’s because we don’t want to upset the charlatans - after all the pot of gold could just be around that corner…
Housing sales plunge in November
It is no surprise to me; nor should it be a surprise to the readers of this blog that November housing sales plunged.
The Government has been trying to artificially spur home sales by borrowing money (All of which we have to pay back with interest) and paying that money to first time homebuyers through a program that is rife with fraud.
As I have said for well over a year all this program has done is:
- Accelerate home sales, meaning that there will be dismal sales months ahead since the demand was pushed forward.
- Slightly prop up housing prices
- Create mortgages that will be far more likely to fail as people who have no business buying a home decide to buy a home in order to get up to $8000 paid to them from the US Government.
- Hurt the value of the dollar by causing the Federal debt to increase.
- Increase the Federal debt; thereby creating a massive burden for future taxpayers.
US Senate is trying to make my firm a lot of money
The Health Care Bill that is coming out of the US Senate creates a lot of accounting nightmares for Americans. This bill will end up making my CPA firm a lot of money over the next few years.
I oppose this stupid bill; however, I have to rant about a few of the stupid provisions in this post. First of all realize this monstrosity is not yet law; it has to be reconciled with the House Bill and some of these stupid provisions will likely be removed.
Many of the provisions listed below will make it more expensive to operate a business in the United States.
The first provision is a very damaging provision. Currently if you operate a business in the United States and pay a person who is not an employee $600 or more in a year you are required to issue that person a 1099. A 1099 is a form that reports to the IRS and the individual who received the payments the amount paid. 1099’s are required so that the IRS can attempt to ensure that people who are paid by businesses report this income on their personal tax return and hence pay income tax. Currently a 1099 is required unless you are paying a company rather than an individual. The Senate Health Bill changes that in January of 2012. It makes it so you have to issue 1099’s to everyone regardless of whether they are incorporated. This provision is an accountant job creation provision and will increase the cost of doing business in the United States. If enacted this provision will require all businesses to issue 1099’s to any person or corporation they do business with and pay over $600 in a calendar year. There are many ramifications of this:
WTF is Wrong with the Democratic Party?
The national democratic party is a goddamn disaster. I officially broke ranks last year when they decided it was good policy to support one of the most unpopular Republican presidents of all time in his last ditch effort to steal $750 Billion of taxpayers money and hand it to a bunch of Wall Street crooks, gamblers and morons.
Not to mention that Clinton-era “free trade” policies have led to millions and millions of job losses but are routinely supported by the Democratic party. They’ve also decided that continuing to kill a bunch of brown people hiding in caves is worth bankrupting the country over as well as watching thousands of our young people die.
Yet their idiocy seems to know no bounds. Now they’ve decided that the best way to tackle health care “reform” is to force everyone in the country to hand over their hard-earned money to a government-sponsored monopoly of private insurers - corporate communism at its finest. And if you have good insurance they will force you to pay an excise tax driving your cost up and your coverage down - brilliant!
They could’ve nixed the excise tax and passed the drug re-importation bill but no, as usual, they decided to jump into bed (did they ever leave?) with the pharmaceutical companies and continue to subsidize the rest of the world’s drugs while we can’t afford our own.
I have been a lifelong Democrat but this is no longer my Democratic party. This national party has become a grotesque albatross that needs to be put out of its misery. They are bought and paid for by every major corporate lobbying group in America. Their entire mission now seems to be to see how much money they can loot from taxpayers and transfer to their masters.
There are some good ones left and I wish them well but the rest have lost their way. As the adage goes:
In order to save the party, it became necessary to destroy it
Sadly, that appears the only option. It’s quite unfortunate that the opposition party is intellectually-bankrupt and generally beholden to a bunch of nut-jobs. Either way you go the ship is sinking fast…
Senate Democrats on the Verge of Colossal Mistake
Issuing a government-approved monopoly to insurance providers by mandating everyone buy insurance. Gee, that sounds like it will definitely bring costs down - what could possibly go wrong?
They should pass the motherhood and apple pie parts of the bill, kill the mandates and go back to the drawing board…
Mike Sylvester’s plan for fixing the failed public education system in the United States
By any reasonable definition the public school system in the United States has failed as a whole. Our international ranking on education is abysmal.
In real terms (adjusted for inflation) we spend more than twice as much money on education as we did 35 years ago; that being said test scores have remained basically the same. All of this extra money has done nothing to improve student performance.
The United States spends the second most in the world per student on secondary education at $11,152 per student (Switzerland spends $11,334 per student). We continually hear that we must spend more on education. There is no reason to spend more money on our education system. We need to spend the money that we have already allocated on teaching children rather than on layers of bureaucrats, regulations, and administrators.
If I were King I would enact the following policies to help fix our education system:
- Immediately abolish the entire Federal Department of Education. This group of bureaucrats create piles of needless rules and regulations that prevent local school districts from innovation as well as cost the country hundreds of millions of tax dollars each and every year.
- Immediately suspend all Federal programs that subsidize Education in any way shape or form. (Read 1 above). Steps one and two would remove the largest barriers to educational innovation in this country. It would return control of the schools to the States and to local school districts. It would allows States and school systems to experiment with programs. Those programs that worked would soon be copied by other districts and States. One size does not fit all in education. The remaining steps would have to be taken by various states with each state implementing a system in accordance with the wishes of its citizens. I WOULD THEN DO THE FOLLOWING IN INDIANA WERE I KING:
- Implement a better teacher evaluation system that uses student performance as well as other factors to evaluate teacher performance. Teachers would be paid (or in the worst cases fired) based on their actual performance rather than their seniority.
- Evaluate schools in a meaningful way. Schools that fail need to have changes made in their Administration and each schools Administration should be held accountable for their student performance.
- Evaluate parental performance in a meaningful way. If a child has ten or more unexcused absences from school in a year than the County Prosecutor should bring charges against the parent. This should help ensure parents ensure their children attend school.
- Evaluate students in a meaningful way. Students who refuse to do their homework on a chronic basis, disrupt school on a chronic basis, etc. should be removed from the school system. Further schools should be allowed to discipline children and disruptive children should be removed from the class room. Education is a privilege not a right.
- Per a comment in a previous post (from a teacher I might add) I feel that students should NOT be able to obtain a driver’s license prior to their 18th birthday unless they have passed the 10th grade ISTEP exam. This would provide students a certain amount of motivation…
I think those changes would vastly improve our education system!
What do you think?
Mike Sylvester
P.S. Yes I know there would be funding issues. I think each State should funds their own education system. In Indiana I would like to see the state provide something like $5000 per student. I would like to see a flat rate per student with no exceptions!
Why do people read The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette?
As the readers of this blog know I cancelled my subscription to the JG quite awhile ago. I prefer the News-Sentinel. I get the NS every day of the week except Sunday; when I get the JG.
The Editorial in the December 13th JG was typical of the liberal JG and makes me sick to my stomach.
The article is called “ Address the real tax problem.”
As the readers of this blog know my firm prepares tax returns; heck we will prepare over 500 individual and over 200 corporate tax returns this next year.
The gist of the article is that Indiana does not have a progressive income tax. The JG is correct, Indiana does NOT have a progressive income tax.
Indiana instead has a proportional tax; meaning that each Indiana resident gets a few MINOR exemptions and then each Hoosier has to pay a 3.4% on their Indiana taxable income.
This system makes perfect sense; everyone pays the same percentage of their income in taxes.
The poor pay less than anyone else by this system since they make less to start with.
A progressive tax system instead penalizes the rich by making the rich pay a higher percentage of taxes than those who make less.
I feel that we need to make MORE people pay taxes; not fewer. Everyone utilizes State services so everyone should pay State income taxes.
The below example from the article really irritates me:
Per the JG a family with a single parent and two children making $17,165 per year has to pay a paltry $108 in Indiana income taxes.
The JG feels that $108 is too much for a family of three to pay.
Indiana should leave its tax system alone; it is one of the best things about the State of Indiana. The Indiana tax code is simple, it is fair, and it is proportional.
In fact the Federal Government should scrap their insane progressive tax code and adopt a system similar to Indiana’s.
Every American should have to pay income taxes.
Mike Sylvester
