Body Parts

ObamaCare Will Spawn a Federal VAT

ObamaCare is the law of the land. It is unstoppable now. It was probably unstoppable the moment Romney was nominated GOP presidential candidate. Romney created RomneyCare in Massachusetts when he was governor of that state. He never campaigned as if repealing or reforming ObamaCare was a top priority. This is probably the reason the Republican turnout was down from 2008 - the Tea Party folks stayed away, disappointed by the man who couldn't read what the midterm elections were all about.

Ok, what now? The big news is not the opposition of some states to ObamaCare, or whether some states will create insurance policy exchanges or leave this job to the Feds. The big news is about how ObamaCare will be funded. Despite all the taxes carried into law by ObamaCare, they are woefully inadequate for full funding. The real gold mine to fund ObamaCare is a European-style Value Added Tax. We have no such federal tax today. It is insufficiently unfamiliar to most voters that they won't wake  up to its character until it is law. The VAT would not require raising federal and state income taxes, so it avoids that dreary debate. And it has the attraction for all lawmakers of generating tons, and tons, and tons, and tons of money.

Obama has now put a VAT on the negotiating table (1, 2, 3). It's his secret lust.

What could be wrong with it?

The VAT is a greatly regressive tax. It is a tax on production at every stage of production. It is a tax on consumption. Everybody who purchases a refrigerator, or car, or living room carpet, would pay a tax on their purchase. Every manufacturer who builds and added value to these products would have a tax on the value they added to the products. Everybody means the poor as well as the middle class as well as the rich.

To offset the impact of the VAT tax on the poor and middle classes, Obama would say that these groups are receiving subsidies for health care that the tax is funding. He might call for additional federal welfare privileges to be paid by the VAT to make the tax palatable to the non-rich of America.

But, as I said before, three times in the past three years (4, 5, 6), a VAT is coming to America. If you voted for Obama's re-election, you voted for it. Bend over.

A Serial Killer Did It? O. J. Isn't Guilty of Two Slayings?

Un, huh, sure. I suppose that the presumed serial killer put O.J.'s DNA on the bodies and on the environment at the scene of the gruesome murders. I can imagine the encounter. "Hey, you, over there in the bushes, would you let me cut you and put some of your DNA on these two  bodies I crumpled at my feet?" "Why, sho' nuf' masta'. I is jus' some defuncky ex futboll playa' who' head gut bangd two much and I want to be impacayted in dis' dubble mudder!"

Uh, huh, sure. Of course, this is nonsense; especially since O. J. has already "confessed" to the crimes, "if I had done it, this is how I would have done it". Must be an author hoping to make some money in a slow publishing season. Maybe O. J. published the book

Israel, the Radical Islamists States Of the Middle East, and the Nature of Their War Against Israel

American MSM insist on describing, and implicitly interpreting with a pro-Palestinian bias, the military conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as an exchange of rockets that produce civilian casualties, meaning noncombatant casualties. This is clearly an effort to limit the ground in which Hamas' continual military assault on Israel can be described as  provocative and unethical. This interpretation is false. Hamas with the support of other radical Islamists, such as Iran and the Hezbollah, are engaged in a war of extinction of the Jewish state and extermination of its Jewish population. All segments of Palestinian society are engaged in this war. The Hamas military is not separate from the Gazan population, but integrated and dispersed throughout it. "Civilians", including "children" are collaborators, supporters, and participants in the Hamas "military's" assault on Israel. Think for a moment of the videos of young boys participating in attacks, parades, mobs we have seen in many videos of military ferment in the Gaza. The war between Israel and radical Islam is total war between a free democratic state and a totalitarian culture state. In a total war, the distinction between combatant and non-combatant is morally suspect and the line between them blurred and often erased. Any purported distinction reflects only the political ideological bias of the person who makes it.

Hamas Cashes Its Obama Promissory Notes

The escalation of Hamas' rocket attacks on Israel subsequent to Obama's re-election is the way Hamas cashes in Obama's promissory notes to the Muslim world. Four years of tolerance of radical Islam in deed, reluctance to intervene forcefully, if not with force, in Iran and Syria when reformers took to the streets and reform became rebellion, and open-handed outreach toward the enemies of Israel by our President has convinced radical Islam that Obama will not support Israel in any meaningful way if they attack the Jewish state.

And don't accept as the truth the media interpretation that Hamas' attacks now are the result solely of the Israel-Hamas/Gaza struggle or a Hamas gambit to obtain political advantage over the PLA. Hamas is supported by Iran. Iran wants to support the Syrian regime. What better way than to distract attention from Syria by prodding Hamas to start a military conflict with Israel. If Israel enters Gaza, watch for rockets from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and stray cannon shells from Syria forces into the Golan Heights. (And let's not forget that the world would be also distracted from the Iranian nuclear weapon issue.)

What will Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, do? That's not the question. The question is, what will the Muslim Brotherhood leadership of Egypt do, as it has supported Hamas and Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt surely doesn't want a military conflict with Israel; but it could get away with some limited engagements without risking its own sovereignty or the Brotherhood risking their political control. Despite the foreign aid from the US and the US military aid to the Egyptian military, which might be temporarily suspended, Egypt knows that Obama will not do anything to alienate one of the world's largest Muslim nations.

The Muslims have Obama in box. He created this situation. He walked into the Middle Eastern Arab tent and handed them his balls. Now they are squeezing. It would amusing, if it would not be possibly fateful for Israel and Jews, to know how long before Obama starts singing soprano.

Obama Wants Political Control of the State More Than He Wants Prosperity for the People

Obama's behavior during the Great Recession, his campaign for re-election, and his initial political stances in the  past week are all inexplicable if we assume that he approaches the presidency as President of all Americans. He doesn't. He approaches the presidency mainly with the ambition and intent of permanent political control of the state. If Trotsky was the master of The Permanent Revolution, Obama, child of the New Left, is master of the Permanent Political Campaign. This is not an original observation of mine, but other critics have failed to consider the implications of the notion of a permanent political campaign. A permanent political campaign exists above periodic elections and the election cycle. It exists as a permanent seige of the governing apparatus of the state itself. Obama ranks the political party as higher than the electorate, than the "people". As he is the personification of the political ideal, and that ideal is the absorption of the State to a political party of revolution, so he is by implication the personification of the state. L'etat, e'est moi, Barack. Why would Obama identify with the party? Because the party is the agency (in Marxist Leninist theory) of historical change (since the working classes can't be counted upon to do their part by themselves). When Obama said, just before the 2008 election, that he would transform America, this larger context of New Left values and ambitions is what he was signalling. And now it is here. With ObamaCare, it will persist after Obama leaves the presidency; it will be institutionalized as the political bureaucracy and Obama will control it no less than Putin controlled Russia while "out of power".

Re-Starting the GOP, How? The Party of Freedom and Liberty

The defeat of the GOP in the national election - loss of presidency, loss of seats in Senate and House - has prompted some political pundits to suggest what the Republican Party should/must do to regain political strength and not become doomed to permanent minority status. Here is my suggestion, based upon a historical tradition. The Republican Party began in the 1850s as the party of freedom and reaffirmed that position repeatedly throughout the next century and a half. Freedom of non-slave states from slavery, emancipation of slaves, economic freedom for expanding industry, opposition to segregation, opposition to lynching, freedom of contract, civil rights. As the New Deal agenda of economic security became the basis of the Democratic Party, especially with the destruction of the Southern Democrats and end of maintenance of segregation as a political program in the South, the Republican principles of economic freedom, social freedom, and liberty from government lost traction among the citizenry. What is economic freedom when you are too malnourished, ill housed, unemployed, poor, to exercise it? What is liberty from government, when the government is providing social welfare you (think) you need?

I believe that freedom and liberty are the two great principles for the Republican Party. The challenge is to make the principles relevant to the social constituencies and economic conditions of today. Surely, this challenge can be met. Milton Friedman devoted a brilliant lifetime to demonstrating that economic regulation and command economics constitute loss of personal freedom. He provides important texts to read. The basis of private property ownership as the basis of social freedom is also important. Wages, as distinguished from ownership, often feel and often in fact are wage slavery, not economic freedom. Economic ownership is a much stronger basis (ownership is, after all, a social relationship) for social freedom than living hand to mouth on wages.

Economic freedom and social freedom ought especially to be attractive principles to groups at the bottom of the economic and social ladder, such as immigrants and young people unable to rely upon their parents' money. Welfare dependency does not bring social and economic mobility, just minimal, basic welfare security. Ownership of property and business, entrepreneurship, investment, reaping profits, are the economic basis of the strength required for social and economic freedom. Try to protect yourself in the courts on a wage-earner's salary. Try to have  your children learn your values, when wages do not provide sufficient income to send  your kids to a private school that teaches your values. Try to exercise your choice of medical care for yourself and your family when you must rely upon Medicaid or Medicare, and don't have money for a health plan that covers choices you desire.

I can't recall a single tv ad for Romney that focussed on economic and social freedom and liberty.

Re-evaluating State and Local and FEMA Disaster Preparation for the Northeast

The difficulties that the Northeast has had re-establishing basic services to homes and local businesses and to serving evacuees prompt me to re-evaluate my initial evaluation that the state and localities were doing well in recovering from the storm. It is clear now that no governmental body or agency had prepared for a disaster of this scope. It is clear that FEMA was useless for days afterwards. Supposedly pre-positioned electricity generators were often not pre-positioned and not matched to the jobs they were supposed to do. There were no plans in place for gasoline stations and rationing. It was difficult to transition local public sector first responders, transportation, and utility services to become cleanup and recovery services. Why did the NYC subway authority have to bring in scores of small generators to pump out the subways and stations that were flooded? Why were adequate pumps not ready at reserve? Or even built into the system? 

The private sector was much better prepared. Major stores like Lowes, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart, major utility providers of electricity and gas, and major manufacturers, as of small home generators, were well prepared. The electrical utilities deal often with local storms that knock down trees on lines and topple poles. Their major problem was manpower; I heard in a radio news story today that thousands of line workers have been flown in from out of state to help Jersey Central electric. (Was that part of a prepared contingency plan or represented an emergency call at last moment?) Private charities were also prepared, e.g., Red Cross.  Given the photos of streets with common phone and electricity poles down, even as a new snow falls, a week after the storm passed is an indication of inadequate manpower reserves. 

The public sector by contrast appeared to have had no plans to deal with the need for a lot more manpower, the major need in the recover. Tens of thousands of men and women, equipped with axes and chain saws and trucks to haul away debris were needed. Where were they? The national guard was brought in, but to do what? There is much we don't know about medical and hospital services during the storm and in the week after. There is much we don't know about pre-positioning of medical supplies. We know that the private financial sector in Manhattan has, since 9/11, basically moved its backroom to, or installed duplicate facilities in, New Jersey and Connecticut, in case the island is struck by another terror attack. Has the medical system done the same? I don't think so; at least, I have not seen news about such a matter.

In all, it is now difficult to escape the impression that all governments of the Northeast were not  prepared for a disaster of this scope. If so, then they are not prepare for a wartime attack that inflicts similar damage. Or for a public epidemic. Indeed, for any public emergency of broad scope.

Time for an investigation of failures. Time for planning by state and local governments that takes into account regional disasters.

Obama Has Not Forgotten His Agenda, To Which I Say "Obstruct, Obstruct, Obstruct".

Obama's re-election and his agenda? It's the return of zombie politics. The ideologically dead rise up and stalk the living. To which I say:

Obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.

 

Hammered

I've been hammered. Not from drinking. I went out to Salted Pig with my wife and the Director of Marketing of our company for a mid-evening meal, while we awaited election results. I drank artisanal root beer and decaffinated coffee. My wife declined alcohol, too. Our marketing chief shuns the stuff. We were sober all eve. We got the news of Romney's defeat before we left the restaurant when my wife went to the web on her phone. I was less surprised than disappointed. Then, trying to sleep, instead of counting sheep, I began to enumerate the factors that will push up the misery index in Obama's next four years. Sleep came eventually, but when I woke in the morning, my face felt swollen and bruised. Slick Eddie the Street Smart President beat my face senseless.

Good Luck, Mitt, I Fervently Hope, Pray, That You Are Elected Today

Make Obama's presidency a parenthesis, as George Will put it, in the great Reagan curtailment of the progressive, regulatory, welfare state initiated by FDR and set onto the road to overt socialism by the New Left. It should be an irony of history that the Governor who brought state medicine to Massachusetts, already imposing price controls and already contemplating legally bonding physicians to practice in it as a condition of licensure, should dismantle ObamaCare and help install a free market based on patient choice to the nation. But ... so be it; I was never a big fan of irony, which is the empty calories of critical theory diets.