The Balanced-Budget Amendment is Fool's Gold

From Renewed Reason Blog --

There is a renewed movement by many so-called conservatives for a balanced- budget amendment. The amendment supposedly would force our politicians to get our $17 trillion debt under control. We have been through this rodeo show before. The amendment is just a political farce for politicians who really don’t want to reduce the size of government.

The amendment will never reduce the size of our national debt. More importantly, the amendment will never reduce the size of government.

First, the amendment would never be enforceable. Isn’t the Senate already suppose to pass a budget and how many years did that take? Is the GOP going to file a case with the Supreme Court when the Democrats refuse to sign off on the supposedly balanced budget? Will the Supreme Court’s police squad force the Democrats to pass the budget? Will the Supreme Court even issue a decision in time?

Second, a balanced budget is just an illusion in Washington. Both parties regularly cushion their projections of revenue and hide the costs of government programs. In fact, the GOP House just passed an alleged balanced budget that increases spending by 3%! Magical. A balanced budget is a campaign tactic for courting voters who don’t think pass step one. As Murray Rothbard wisely noted,

As we all should know by this time, economists and politicians are experts at submitting glittering projected future budgets that have only the foggiest relation to the actual reality of the future year. It will be duck soup for Congress to estimate a future balance; not so easy, however, to actually balance it.

The only solution to limiting the amount of federal debt and, more importantly, the size of government is to get rid of its means to do both, the Federal Reserve. Without the Fed and its ability to print money out of thin air, the government could not increase in size but for increasing taxes on its consenting citizens or borrowing savings from a willing private sector.

At a minimum, the Fed’s ability to purchase treasuries must be eliminated. We always talk about the size of debt we owe to China. The size of China’s debt ownership doesn’t compare to the nearly $2 trillion in treasuries owned by the Fed. The Fed’s ability to purchase treasuries allows the government to grow its debt with little short-term consequences. Absent the Fed’s ability to purchase treasuries, interest rates would rise as the government borrowed more savings out of the economy. The government would be forced to pay its bills. The government debt simply could not grow to $17 trillion absent the artificially low interest rates maintained by the Fed.

The balance budget amendment is fool’s gold. If the politician boasts of supporting such an amendment but doesn’t talk about eliminating the Fed or its ability to purchase treasuries, the politician is just playing with you. Don’t be fooled.

Obama Acknowledges Tea Party was Right: Issues Another Delay

October 28, 2013

For Immediate Release

Contact: Marianne Gasiecki

State Co-coordinator (OH) - Tea Party Patriots

mansfieldteaparty@gmail.com

Obama Acknowledges Tea Party was Right

President Issues Another Delay

During the recent Continuing Resolution fiasco, the Democrats and media, along with GOP elitists, joined the chorus hurling insults at Senators Cruz and Lee. Citizens of the Tea Party movement were described as wacko, out of touch, idiots, unintelligent ideologues, frauds and several other colorful terms, regarding their attempt to delay the implementation of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). 

During this debate, President Obama dismissed warnings from his own Administration that the roll out of Obamacare will be a "train wreck". President Obama ignored the calls for a common sense delay of the Affordable Care Act - an effort to prevent millions of Americans who are not exempt, from being negatively impacted by its forced implementation. President Obama, the Democrats, media and Republican elite, instead spent their time labeling citizens of the Tea Party movement as extremists, accusing them of trying to blackmail the country. President Obama even allowed the government to "shut down".

Even in the face of these attacks, the citizens of the Tea Party movement stood their ground, calling for what is best for the American people. "Our requests were simple common sense - as 'all men are created equal', please do not fund and/or force Obamacare on American citizens that were not privileged enough to get the exemptions and waivers received by big labor, big business and Congressional staffers", said Ralph King, Tea Party Patriots State co-coordinator from Ohio.

"In putting their partisan agenda first, and acting like playground bullies, President Obama and the Democrats rebuffed all common sense requests made by the Tea party" said Marianne Gasiecki, fellow Tea Party Patriots State co-coordinator from Ohio. "While it is nice that the President and the Democrats are now acknowledging that the Tea Party was correct, from the beginning they should have been concerned with doing the right thing for the American people instead of stomping their feet like spoiled children, shutting down our national monuments and parks, and creating fear over a supposed government "shutdown".

The concerns recently expressed by the Democrats regarding the systemic failures of the Obamacare website, and President Obama now issuing yet another delay, prove that the initial calls to defund and delay were correct. Even with the affirmation of the Tea Party's stance, the citizens of the Tea Party movement take no solace in being proven right. We would rather have had President Obama and the Democrats initially do what was right for the citizens of this country, instead of putting on a show of petulant party politics that caused the government to slow down.

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Captain America:The Winter Soldier in Cleveland

Captain America:The Winter Soldier - due out next year - did some location filming in Cleveland. Here's a trailer including Cleveland footage. (If your browser has trouble with the video embed, click here for the YouTube video.)

Check out (or stop) at 
:58-59
1:0
1:09-1
1:42
1:44-48
1:58

Good fun.

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Common Core indoctrination plans, er, "lesson plans"

Efforts continue in Ohio to repeal Common Core "standards" in our schools. Here is an excerpt from a Townhall report on some of the reasons it's on our "to do" list:

Michael Schaus | Oct 28, 2013 - Aside from the obvious objections to allowing the creators of Healthcare.gov [to] get more involved in the education of America’s youth, a new reason to resist the creepily altruistic “Common Core” curriculum has surfaced. New Common Core teaching materials instruct second graders that land owners are intrinsically evil, that business owners are inherently greedy, and Saul Alinsky radicals are the saviors of the everyman. (Besides – and I know this should seem pretty obvious – do you really want the architects of a 17 trillion dollar debt teaching our kids things like basic math?) 

According to Fox news, a textbook company contracted to produce materials under Common Core State Standards is trying to teach students as young as second grade about economic fairness by praising unions, protests and labor leader Cesar Chavez, according to an education watchdog group.

. . . 

In addition to reading a glowing biography of the Marxist labor leader, students will be asked to evaluate the “scales of fairness” between wealthy landowners, and lowly [non-union] workers. 

“Fairness and equality exist when the scales are balanced,” teachers are prompted to instruct the students. They are then supposed to ask the students whether both sides, as presented in the plan, are equal, providing a correct answer of “no” in the teachers’ guide.

. . .Economic theories, wealth creation, John Smith’s concept of private property, market forces, and Chavez’s radicalism aside. . . There is still a pretty big question regarding why second graders would need to wrap their young brains around the concept of labor unions and so called “scales of fairness.” Quite frankly, putting any organized bureaucratic government agency in charge of disseminating such information to young children is chilling. And given the government’s tendency to view wealth creators merely as untapped tax-revenue sources, it’s unlikely that such lesson plans would be presented without anti-capitalistic bias. 

Once again the common core standards illustrate a decidedly creepy intrusion of politics into education from the highest levels. While education has been largely consumed by leftist philosophies for some time, the danger of Common Core is that this absorption of political activism in the classroom will now be pushed from the Federal level. 

. . . A painfully intense infringement on local control will await any districts that decide to adopt the Fed’s centrally planned concept of “education”. 

. . .

The rest of the article is here. 

Neutralize the Tea Party? But how do you control Sen. Ted Cruz?

The National Journal describes itself as “the most credible and influential publication in Washington” and “fiercely honest and scrupulously non-partisan.” Hmmm.

In an article entitled “Inside the Messy but Moneyed Republican Plan to Neutralize the Tea Party” [emphasis added], subtitled “The business-friendly GOP establishment is putting its cash to work in skirmishes across the country that might reshape the 2014 elections,” one reads phrases such as    

• wrecked the Republican brand
• ultraconservative ideologues
• [plan to run] attack ads against tea-party candidates for Congress
• the public's growing distaste for the [Tea Party] movement
• [Cruz, the] ringleader of the shutdown

No bias here, no polarizing turns-of-the-phrase, just move along. Former Ohio representative Steve LaTourette doesn’t much like Tea Party Patriots, either:

"Hopefully we'll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them."

Very nicely put. But here’s the crux of the matter:

“But how do you control Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican ringleader of the shutdown, who may not count enough friends on Capitol Hill to rename a post office but whose real power comes from outside Washington?” 

“Whose real power comes from outside Washington?” We’ll work for more of that!

Here’s more of Beth Reinhard’s Oct-24 article (h/t Gateway Pundit).

# # #

Michelle Obama - The First Lady of Crony Capitalism

Ignoring calls from within his own Administration that the implementation of Obamacare itself would be a train wreck, in mirroring his Presidency, the www.healthcare.gov website to sign up for Obamacare is turning out to be an abject failure as it appears this bullet train of a bust is having a hard time even leaving the Station.

Now with growing calls of concern over the website failures from the Democrats, and only after President Obama forced the government into a shut down to get his way, our petulant President is calling in the "best & brightest" to save the day!

But not before he allowed the First Lady of Crony Capitalism -- Michelle Obama - to allow her friends to feed at the federal trough....

From The Daily Caller --

First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998.

George Schindler, the president for U.S. and Canada of the Canadian-based CGI Group, CGI Federal’s parent company, became an Obama 2012 campaign donor after his company gained the Obamacare website contract.

As reported by the Washington Examiner in early October, the Department of Health and Human Services reviewed only CGI’s bid for the Obamacare account. CGI was one of 16 companies qualified under the Bush administration to provide certain tech services to the federal government. A senior vice president for the company testified this week before The House Committee on Energy and Commerce that four companies submitted bids, but did not name those companies or explain why only CGI’s bid was considered.

The Obamacare Meltdown

From A Line of Sight --

Amidst talks at the end of September about a government shutdown, the Obama Administration promised that the Affordable Care Act exchange websites would launch, as scheduled, on October 1st. The exchanges are the law's online marketplaces intended to enable consumers to sign up for the health insurance offered and regulated under the law.

In June of this year, critics of ObamaCare voiced their concerns that the exchange websites would not be ready by the October 1st deadline. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius dismissed those concerns, saying:

We have the next couple of months laid out with a very busy and engaged schedule to make sure that we're ready for the marketplace launch on Oct. 1, with open enrollment... It's a huge undertaking across the country, and I'm confident we're on track to get it done.

Despite Secretary Sebelius' confidence, the much-anticipated website's launch was nothing short of a disaster. Within hours of its launch, the site was unavailable in many states, with error messages asking people to check back in a few hours. Site visitors across the country complained they were unable to create accounts, set up passwords, or fill out the necessary web-forms. During an on-air demonstration in early October, MSNBC reporters attempted to sign up for ObamaCare, but gave up when it became clear the website was not functioning.

According to Millward Brown Digital, out of 3.72 million people who attempted to register in the first week, only 36,000 people were able to successfully complete enrollment.

The cost of the exchange website was originally expected to be $94 million, but in true big-government fashion, has ballooned to $292 million. Perhaps more shocking, it was revealed in mid-October that the websites were built using 10-year old technology. So, thanks to the expert planning of the Department of Health and Human Services, taxpayers have to pay nearly $300 million for glitch-prone, outdated technology.

Technical glitches aside, the real ObamaCare meltdown is with the law itself.

Even before full implementation, the law, like the website, is already crashing and burning. The law has failed to live up to any of the promises that Democrats made in 2009 and 2010.

One of the most glaring broken promises is that ObamaCare was a "jobs bill." Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously said in 2010 the health care bill would create 4 million jobs. Not only have those 4 million jobs failed to materialize, but now millions of Americans are witnessing the destruction of their 40-hour workweek or seeing their jobs disappear altogether. The law imposes higher fines for employers with 50 or more full-time employees, thus incentivizing businesses to scale back their hiring or move operations overseas.

When recently pressed about the destruction of the 40-hour workweek, Nancy Pelosi responded that the end of the 40-hour workweek is "a liberation" for the American people because they are now free to pursue their passions. Her "let them eat cake" elitism displays the profound disconnect between Washington, DC and the real world where Americans are struggling under ObamaCare.

Democrats also promised that ObamaCare would provide "universal" health insurance. In reality, even when fully implemented, the Congressional Budget Office expects approximately 30 million people will remain uninsured. That's a far cry from universal coverage.

Then there are the more serious broken promises, such as the ubiquitous promise that people would not lose their insurance. President Obama and Senate Democrats repeatedly made that claim when the bill was being debated in 2009. Just as many ObamaCare critics predicted three years ago, millions of Americans are now losing their insurance, either because their companies are dropping the plans and opting for the government-run exchanges, or because the plans are not "ObamaCare compliant" and the insurance companies are discontinuing them.

President Obama also promised early on that his signature health care law would reduce families' health insurance premiums by up to $2,500 per year. Many individuals who have managed to complete the exchange application have been shocked to learn that their premiums in the exchange would go up, in some cases as much as 300%. Those who are most affected, of course, are the younger, healthier people who will be forced to pay higher premiums to cover the costs of the chronically ill and older people.

It is no exaggeration to say that the exchanges are critical to the law's success. Without the exchanges, ObamaCare collapses.

The federal government, which was unable to build a functioning website – with three years and 300 million dollars – is the same government Americans are supposed to believe will be able to manage all aspects of their health care, from the insurance marketplace to setting prices for medical services.

Unlike the exchange website portals, which can be tweaked and improved, ObamaCare itself is an unmitigated disaster. The law is already wreaking havoc on America's economy, increasing health insurance prices, cancelling existing health insurance plans, and eroding Americans' job security.

Missed deadlines, blown budgets, and a failure to deliver. That describes more than the exchange websites; it is also true of the entire health care law's implementation. While the IT experts in DC scramble to get rid of the website's many bugs, serious reformers should recommit themselves to repealing this law before it does irreparable damage to the economy and health care industry.

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Shonda Werry is a policy analyst and researcher in Washington, DC. She is a contributing editor to A Line of Sight.