He has made libertarians more popular than I have seen in my entire life.
Just how angry is the public with the country’s two leading political parties? Angry enough that the conservative, libertarian-leaning Tea Party movement is more popular than either the Democratic or the Republican parties, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The Republican Party maintains its net-negative favorable/unfavorable rating in the poll, with 28 percent viewing it positively and 43 percent seeing it in a negative light.
For the first time in more than two years, the Democratic Party also now holds a net-negative fav/unfav, at 35-45 percent.
By comparison, the NBC/WSJ poll shows the Tea Party movement with a net-positive 41-23 percent score.
Keep up the good work Obama. Maybe one of the political parties will be permanently replaced by a socially liberal economically fiscal libertarian leaning party. That would be awesome.
Over at the blog “Dude, with Keyboard”, their is a post that perfectly captures my position on global warming. While I highly suggest reading the full post, his conclusion serves as a nice summary.
Therefore all policy proposals beyond voluntary individual action and existing clean air guidelines should be placed permanently on hold until all the data has been reanalyzed and all research, all methodology, all computer code, and all coding standards are publicly available and put through a true democratic investigation if they are to be used to dictate public policy. Furthermore, the computer models must be set to some standards of predictive accuracy within a limited term time horizon (not less than 10 years) and must be able to accurately predict, within a reasonable margin of error, agreed upon global climate criteria as well the impact of large weather events. This must occur before any policy proposals are put into place. If this is too complex and too high a threshold to meet, then perhaps, we should stop pretending that AGW is a proven fact, that we have settled the question of man’s impact on the global climate and that we must limit economic prosperity to prevent a crisis whose scope we cannot accurately predict.
If you want your science to dictate policy your methods and data will be transparent and open to all. This is particularly true when your science is advocating for policies with massive economic consequences.
Reason has several good ideas for healthcare reform. If your legislation does not include any of these idea you are obviously not interested in reducing cost no matter what you may claim.
I think Glen Reynolds does a nice job of succinctly characterizing current healthcare reform:
Health care policy is suboptimal, but there is no “crisis.” Talk of a “crisis” is just a PR effort to get us to accept a different set of suboptimal policies that are more to the liking of certain interest groups.
Curious as to why the Obama administration is so ignorant of economics? The graph below shows the proportion of experience in the private sector of cabinet members appointed by their respective presidents.
Apparently the administration has promised to underwrite the development of oil reserves off the coast of Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
Its odd because democrats won’t allow for the development of our off shore oil reserves but they actively fund, with US taxpayer money, other countries oil reserves. Not sure what to make of this.
And the left wants us to pay the mother of all tax hikes to pay for universal healthcare which recent polls indicate only 35% of the citizenry support.
* An income surtax on taxpayers earning more than $500,000 a year,[1]
* An excise tax on high-cost “Cadillac” health insurance plans that cost more than $8,500 a year for individuals or $21,000 for families,[2]
* An excise tax on medical devices such as wheelchairs, breast pumps, and syringes used by diabetics for insulin injections,[3]
* A cap on the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance without offsetting tax cuts,[4]
* A limit on itemized deductions for taxpayers with a top income tax rate greater than 28 percent,[5]
* A windfall profits tax on health insurance companies,[6]
* A value-added tax, which would tax the value added to a product at each stage of production,[7]
* An increase in the Medicare portion of the payroll tax to 3.4 percent for incomes great than $200,000 a year ($250,000 for married filers),[8]
* An excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages including non-diet soda and sports drinks,[9]
* Higher taxes on alcoholic beverages including beer, wine, and spirits,[10]
* A tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage of up to 2.5 percent of their adjusted gross income,[11]
* A limit on contributions to health savings accounts,[12]
* An 8 percent tax on all wages paid by employers that do not provide their employees health insurance that satisfies the requirements defined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services,[13]
* A limit on contributions to flexible spending arrangements,[14]
* Elimination of the deduction for expenses associated with Medicare Part D subsidies,[15]
* An increase in taxes on international businesses,[16]
* Elimination of the tax credits paper companies take for biofuels they create in their production process–the so-called “Black Liquor credit,”[17]
* Fees on insured and self-insured health plans,[18]
* A limit or repeal of the itemized deduction for medical expenses,[19]
* A limit on the Qualified Medical Expense definition,[20]
* An increase in the payroll taxes on students,[21]
* An extension of the Medicare payroll tax to all state and local government employees,[22]
* An increase in taxes on hospitals,[23]
* An increase in the estate tax,[24]
* Increased efforts to close the mythical “tax gap,”[25]
* A 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures such as Botox treatments, tummy tucks, and face lifts,[26]
* A tax on drug companies,[27]
* An increase in the corporate tax on providers of health insurance,[28] and
* A $500,000 deduction limitation for the compensation paid by health insurance companies to their officers, employees, and directors.[29]
I am going to spend my time before this historic vote to highlight some very important numbers, so every member of this chamber understands what they are voting to advance. Make no mistake, our actions today will not be without consequences. History and our future generations will judge us on this. Here are some numbers:
· 0 – the number of provisions prohibiting the rationing of health care.
· 0 – the number of government-run entitlement programs that are financially sound over the long-term.
· 10.2 percent – our national unemployment rate, the highest in 26 years.
· 70 – total number of government programs authorized by the bill.
· 1,697 – times the Secretary of Health and Human Services is given authority to determine or define provisions in this bill.
· 2,074 – total pages in this bill.
· 2010 – the year Americans start paying higher taxes to pay for this bill
· 2014 – the year when this bill actually starts most of the major provisions of this bill
· $6.8 million – cost to taxpayers per word
· $8 billion – the total amount of new taxes on Americans who do not buy Washington-defined health care.
· $465 billion – Cuts in Medicare at a time when it faces a $38 trillion unfunded liability to finance more government spending.
· $494 billion – total amount of new taxes in this bill
· $2.5 trillion – the real cost of the bill
· $12 trillion – our total national debt
I want to be the Secretary Health of Human Services if this thing passes. Imagine the power I would have.
