Monthly Archives: August 2009

Democrats Already Using Ted Kennedy’s Death To Push ObamaCare

Democrats, Healthcare, Politics

Well, that didn’t take long at all:

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed Wednesday to push through embattled health reform legislation this year following the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, who called the effort “the cause of my life”.

“Ted Kennedy?s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration,” Pelosi said in a statement.

President Barack Obama’s sweeping plan to provide health insurance to all Americans, the top domestic priority of his administration, has met with stiff public and political opposition amid concerns over the costs of the plan and the role of government in providing medical care.

Pelosi, one of Obama’s top Democratic allies, was reminding Americans that reforming the health care system was a cause dear to the heart of Kennedy, who died late Tuesday after losing a long battle with brain cancer.

“Sadly, Senator Kennedy left us exactly one year after he inspired the nation with his speech of optimism, vitality, and courage at the Convention in Denver,” she said.

And Robert Byrd, the remaining geriatric Senate basket case, has this to say:

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the only senator to have served longer than the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), mourned his friend Wednesday, saying his “heart and soul weeps.”

Byrd said he hoped healthcare reform legislation in the Senate would be renamed in memoriam of Kennedy.

“I had hoped and prayed that this day would never come,” Byrd said in a statement. “My heart and soul weeps at the lost of my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend, Ted Kennedy.”

Byrd’s wistful statement focused on the work accomplished with Kennedy during decades together in the Senate, and called on the healthcare bill before Congress to be renamed in honor of Kennedy.

“In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American,” Byrd said.

Dear lord, people, at least let the body cool down.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

Inflation Causes Misallocation of Production

Credit Crisis, Currency and Monetary Policy, Economics, Fiscal Policy, Government Waste, Monetary Issues

The spike in car buying has caused automakers to ramp up production (via John Stossel):

Many auto industry analysts and dealers expect sales volumes to fall now that the program is over. They worry that many people who took advantage of the program were merely accelerating purchases they would have made later in the year.

If that’s true, the premature sales could hurt automakers, which increased production in the third quarter to replenish clunker-depleted inventories that had already grown low because of factory shutdowns over the summer.

Cash for Clunkers is essentially an inflationary policy. This is a policy well described by Adam Smith Milton Friedman, with the exact same consequence:

In a dynamic world demands are always shifting, some prices going up, some going down. The general signal of increasing demand will be confused with the specific signals reflecting changes in relative demands. That is why the initial side of faster monetary growth is an appearance of prosperity and greater employment. But sooner or later the signal will get through.

As it does, workers, manufacturers, retailers will discover that they have been fooled. They reacted to higher demand for the small number of things they sell in the mistaken belief that the higher demand was special to them and hence would not much affect the prices of the many things they buy.

The government has arbitrarily and falsely increased demand for a specific good (new cars). They’ve done so by throwing money at it (a locally inflationary policy) and the automakers are ramping up production in response to what they THINK is a more stable recovery. But they may soon find, as Adam Smith Friedman predicted, that they have been fooled.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

An Aristocracy of Talent, and the Triumph of Markets

Business, Culture, Economics, Free Trade, Theory and Ideas

This is possibly the single best business document I have ever read; and I mean that with no hyperbole. It is also the single most libertarian document I have ever seen applied to a large corporate environment.

You HAVE TO read this.

Chris Byrne
I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com

Obama: You’re doing a heck’uva job, Bernie

Credit Crisis, Currency and Monetary Policy, Doublespeak, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Economics, Fascism in America, Government Incompetence, Hubris, Inflation, Monetary Issues

Continuing his George Costanzaesque presidency, Obama has decided to reappoint Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke to another term on the Fed.

Here’s what Obama had to say:

Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom; with bold action and outside-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic freefall

I thought it might be useful to take a look at some highlights of this Solon, this central – planner whom George Bush put in charge of the money supply:

Of course, as usual, Obama is dead wrong: the Federal Reserve’s actions have actually prolonged the downturn, made it worse, and have laid the foundations for an even bigger crash down the road.

Monetary Base of U.S. Dollar

In the days before the election, I told many of my fellow Massachusetts residents that Obama was not so much a break from George Bush as a continuation of his worst policies. I am sorry to say that he has been proving me right since. And this is yet another nail in the coffin of an administration that is showing itself to be even more incompetent than the Bush presidency.

tarran
I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.
https://thelibertypapers.org/author/tarran/

The “Logic” Of The Left

Quote of the Day

Why is Obama having so much trouble getting cap’n’tax, health care reform, and his other policies through? Apparently, it’s because he’s just too good at solving problems (emphasis added):

Rahm Emanuel famously said that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. But the Obama administration made the mistake of effectively managing the financial emergency when they entered office. They faced a serious threat, but they never let it become a serious crisis. As such, the normal laws of political gravity never lifted, and everything went on pretty much as normal, albeit with the Federal Reserve sitting atop a much-larger balance sheet. The political dynamic right now is a lot closer to the mid-90s than the mid-30s.

If this isn’t tortured logic, it’s certainly been subjected to enhanced interrogation.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/
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