My Political Quotations and Commentaries Directory and Log
---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Political/PoliticalQuotationsCommentaries.htm
Russia skewers US election as undemocratic, ‘the
worst in the world’
Julian Pecquet ---
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/russia/265689-russia-skewers-us-election-as-undemocratic-the-worst-in-the-world
We can only dream of having better elections modeled after those in Russia.
President Obama must have run a great campaign
considering the tremendous numbers he put up in numerous big cities. Over in
Philadelphia, he was lucky enough to get 90% percent turnout in some districts
with
over 99% of the vote.
"What Luck! Obama Won Dozens of Cleveland Districts with 100% of
the Vote" ---
http://www.punditpress.com/2012/11/what-luck-obama-won-dozens-of-cleveland.html
Across Philadelphia, GOP poll inspectors were
forcibly (and illegally) removed from polling locations. Coincidentally (or
not), Mr. Obama received "astronomical" numbers in those very same regions,
including locations where he received "over 99%" of the vote.
"Fraud in PA: Obama Got Over 99% of Vote at Polls Where GOP
Inspectors were Removed; Turnout Somehow "30%" Above Gov't Numbers," ---
http://www.punditpress.com/2012/11/fraud-in-pa-obama-got-over-99-of-vote.html
247,713 votes cast among 175,554 registered voters
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2957852/posts
Colorado Counties Have More Voters Than People ---
http://colorado.mediatrackers.org/2012/09/04/colorado-counties-have-more-voters-than-people/
Charles Darwin, who died, in 1882, received 4,000 write-in votes in Georgia
---
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/09/us-usa-campaign-georgia-idUSBRE8A813W20121109
To add insult to injury, Darwin was a British citizen.
Outlawed are food donations to homeless shelters because NYC can’t assess
their salt, fat and fiber content
CBS Report on March 19, 2012: Outlawed are food
donations to homeless shelters because the city can’t assess their salt, fat and
fiber content.
NYC just does not have enough inspectors to read the contents labels on cans and
bottles.
I don't know if this ban was relaxed after Hurricane Sandy hit NYC, but I doubt
it.
Half of Romney Supporters Just Want to See MSNBC's
Chris Matthews Cry Like a Baby
David Letterman
Putting the squeeze on Hardball.
US Spends as Much in Iraq Now as During Combat Operations
---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/nightwatch/2012/11/01/us_spends_as_much_in_iraq_now_as_during_combat_ops
I don't know that there were ever any promises of declared
"peace" being cheaper than declared war.
We need a really big war or natural disaster for significant surges in
employment
If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were
planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien
threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that,
this slump would be over in 18 months.
Nobel Laureate and Princeton Keynesian Paul Krugman
Video: U.S. Economy Needs Space Aliens ---
http://nation.foxnews.com/economy/2011/08/15/new-york-times-krugman-us-economy-needs-space-aliens
But Romney lost and Obama won. The limits of their
power have been cruelly exposed, and the reelected president now owes them
nothing. Did I mention that Elizabeth Warren is going to the Senate — a Senate
that will be substantially more progressive and less Wall Street friendly than
before?
Nobel Laureate and Princeton Keynesian Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/wall-streets-bad-investment-decision/
"Post-Sandy rebuilding boost for US economy," by Ed Crooks,
Financial Times, November 4, 2012 ---
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0a6e74a6-26b2-11e2-9109-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2BKBoPKb6
The storm that ravaged the north-east coast of the
US last week will hit economic growth in the final quarter of 2012 but will
boost it in the first half of next year, company executives and economists
say, creating some positive momentum for the winner of this week’s
presidential election.
Continued in article
Notice too that to the extent that social issues
played in this election, they played in favor of Democrats. Gods, guns, and gays
didn’t swing voters into supporting corporate interests; instead, human dignity
for women swung votes the other way.
Paul Krugman, "The Real Real
America," November 8, 2012 ---
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/the-real-real-america/
The Most Powerful Man in America
"How Nate Silver Won the 2012 Presidential Election," by Dorie Clark, Harvard
Business Review Blog, November 7, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/how_nate_silver_won_the_2012_p.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Jensen Comment
I wonder what Nate's predictions are regarding when drug dealers will take full
control of Afghanistan?
I think the probability is 100% since whatever side wins in Afghanistan the
country will be run by drug dealers with ignorant wives.
The situation is that many of Nate Silver’s
attackers don’t really know what the hell they are talking about. Unfortunately,
this gives them something in common with many of Nate Silver’s defenders, who
greet any objection to his standing or methods with cries of 'Are you against
SCIENCE?
Nobody is Perfect, Including Nate Silver ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver#Criticism
In January 2010, journalist and blogger
Colby
Cosh wrote that "I hope, though I doubt, that Nate Silver’s performance
during the stretch drive of the
Massachusetts special Senate election will finally lead to him being
downgraded from 'All-seeing HAL-9000-esque quantitative wizard' to 'Just
another guy with a computer'....Silver, with his revolutionary disregard for
everything but the polling numbers, was still arguing as late as Thursday
afternoon that Coakley was the clear favourite; he changed his mind at
midnight that evening and acknowledged that Scott Brown had a puncher’s
chance."[128]
In November 2012, Cosh wrote " The situation is that many of Nate
Silver’s attackers don’t really know what the hell they are talking about.
Unfortunately, this gives them something in common with many of Nate
Silver’s defenders, who greet any objection to his standing or methods with
cries of 'Are you against SCIENCE? Are you against MAAATH?' If science
and math are things you do appreciate and favour, I would ask you to resist
the temptation to embody them in some particular person. Silver has had more
than enough embarrassing faceplants in his life as an analyst that this
should be obvious".[129]
Writing about Silver’s presidential election model, Cosh said "When it comes
to prestige, it stands about where PECOTA was in 2006. Like PECOTA, it has a
plethora of vulnerable moving parts. Like PECOTA, it is proprietary and
irreproducible. That last feature makes it unwise to use Silver’s model as a
straw stand-in for “science”, as if the model had been fully specified in a
peer-reviewed journal".[130]
Writing at
The Huffington Post, Geoffrey Dunn said, "Silver's commitment to a
quantitative, value-free approach to the living, breathing universe--not
only in politics, but in sports, entertainment, even dating--with an
emphasis on numbers can be troubling, to the point of absurdity, when the
answers have nothing to do with statistical equations...Here's a guy who's
never been centrally involved in a national election, whose political acumen
comes from a calculator, and, who, I am willing to bet (and I haven't seen
the numbers) has never organized a precinct in his life, much less walked
one, pontificating about the dynamics in the electoral processes as if he
actually understood them."[131]
A lot of criticism during the 2012 elections came from political
conservatives who sought to discredit Silver's election projections as
politically biased against the Republican candidate for President,
Mitt
Romney. For example, Silver was accused of applying a double standard to
his treatment of
Rasmussen Reports polls. From Mendy Finkel writing in
Daily Caller: "Dating back to his blogging days at
FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver has been on a mission to discredit Rasmussen’s
polls, which Silver views as biased in favor of Republican candidates.
What’s more, Silver has allowed his Rasmussen obsession to influence his
supposedly objective statistical analysis." Finkel wrote, "To Silver, the
most pressing issue after the 2010 midterm elections was Rasmussen’s polling
performance. Never mind that Silver himself was off in his forecasting —
unsurprisingly, in the Democrats’ favor — or that plenty of other reputable
polling organizations, such as CNN and Gallup, performed no better than
Rasmussen. No, to Silver the world needed to be immediately alerted to
Rasmussen’s alleged bias." Fenkel writes that "Silver rigged his entire
pollster ratings for the sole purpose of lowering Rasmussen’s rank."[132][133]
In October 2012, Josh Jordan wrote in
National Review that "While there is nothing wrong with trying to
make sense of the polls, it should be noted that Nate Silver is openly
rooting for Obama, and it shows in the way he forecasts the election."
Jordan says that Silver conducts "the type of analysis that walks a very
thin line between forecasting and cheerleading. When you weight a poll based
on what you think of the pollster and the results and not based on what is
actually inside the poll (party sampling, changes in favorability, job
approval, etc), it can make for forecasts that mirror what you hope will
happen rather than what’s most likely to happen."[134]
Some critics rose in defense of political punditry.[135]
For example, in an October 2012 article entitled "Nate Silver: One-term
celebrity?" Dylan Byers of
Politico
wrote, "For all the confidence Silver puts in his predictions, he often
gives the impression of hedging. Which, given all the variables involved in
a presidential election, isn't surprising. For this reason and others — and
this may shock the coffee-drinking NPR types of Seattle, San Francisco and
Madison, Wis. — more than a few political pundits and reporters, including
some of his own colleagues, believe Silver is highly overrated."[136]
Byers also quoted this comment by
Joe Scarborough on
MSNBC's "Morning
Joe": "Nate Silver says this is a 73.6 percent chance that the president
is going to win? Nobody in that campaign thinks they have a 73 percent
chance -- they think they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning. And you
talk to the Romney people, it's the same thing," Scarborough said. "Both
sides understand that it is close, and it could go either way. And anybody
that thinks that this race is anything but a toss-up right now is such an
ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and
microphones for the next 10 days, because they're jokes".
Washington Post journalist (and political scientist)
Ezra
Klein wrote: "There are good criticisms to make of Silver’s model, not
the least of which is that, while Silver is almost tediously detailed about
what’s going on in the model, he won’t give out the code, and without the
code, we can’t say with certainty how the model works."[137]
However, comparing Silver's 2012 electoral vote forecasts with those of
several other
poll aggregators, Klein wrote, "It’s important to be clear about this:
If Silver’s model is hugely wrong — if all the models are hugely wrong, and
the betting markets are hugely wrong — it’s because the polls are wrong.
Silver’s model is, at this point, little more than a sophisticated form of
poll aggregation." Furthermore, according to Klein, "What you’re seeing is
that Silver’s forecast isn’t an outlier. In fact, it’s actually quite a bit
friendlier to Romney’s chances than the other models, and only a little more
bullish on Obama than the betting markets".[138]
In October 2012, political science professor
Samuel L. Popkin of the
University of California, San Diego, evaluated Silver's electoral
projections as follows:[139]
We're heading into the last week of a tight presidential campaign,
and polls are coming in too fast to count. Partisans everywhere are
desperate for omens. But at moments like these, it's people who care
most intensely that the "right outcome" occur who run a high risk of
getting it wrong—picking out positive polls for comfort, or panicking
over an unusual and unexpected result they don’t like.
Fortunately, our most prominent number cruncher has been giving us
the straight story instead of capitalizing on this anxiety. In 2008,
Nate Silver correctly predicted the results of all 35 Senate races and
the presidential results in 49 out of 50 states. Since then, his
website, fivethirtyeight.com (now central to The New York Times’s
political coverage), has become an essential source of rigorous,
objective analysis of voter surveys to predict the Electoral College
outcome of presidential campaigns.
On November 1, 2012, in response to the on-air criticism by
Joe Scarborough about Silver's and other projections of an electoral
lead by Barack Obama, Silver sent the following
tweet on
Twitter:
.@JoeNBC: If you think it's a toss-up, let's bet. If Obama wins, you
donate $1,000 to the American Red Cross. If Romney wins, I do.
The wager grew to $2,000. Responding to the wager on the same day, The
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote, "whatever the
motivation behind it, the wager offer is a bad idea – giving ammunition to
the critics who want to paint Mr. Silver as a partisan who is trying to sway
the outcome. It's also inappropriate for a Times journalist, which is how
Mr. Silver is seen by the public even though he’s not a regular staff
member."[140]
One day later, Sullivan wrote another post titled "The Times’s Washington
Bureau Chief, and Legions of Others, in Defense of Nate Silver,"[141]
in which she stuck by her criticism of the wager, but also wrote, inter
alia: "First off, I want to state clearly that I see nothing in Mr.
Silver’s writing that suggests his work has partisan motivations. I also
will repeat that those who choose to equate probability and a close
political race are wildly missing the point. To use everyone’s favorite new
word, they are innumerate".[142]
As Silver's book was about to appear in print, climate scientist
Michael E. Mann wrote in The Huffington Post, "I was rather
crestfallen earlier this summer when I finally got a peek at a review copy
of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail -- but Some
Don't. It's not that Nate revealed himself to be a climate change
denier; He accepts that human-caused climate change is real, and that it
represents a challenge and potential threat. But he falls victim to a
fallacy that has become all too common among those who view the issue
through the prism of economics rather than science. Nate conflates problems
of prediction in the realm of human behavior -- where there are no
fundamental governing 'laws' and any "predictions" are potentially laden
with subjective and untestable assumptions -- with problems such as climate
change, which are governed by laws of physics, like the greenhouse effect,
that are true whether or not you choose to believe them."[143]
Silver responded to Mann on the same day with the following
tweet on
Twitter:
Mann attributes me as endorsing a number of premises that the book
actually refutes.[144]
Mann responded as follows on Twitter:
@fivethirtyeight Nate, I touch on this in piece. U refute things in 1
place, but then reinforce them later, making it hard to read U.
Jensen Comment
I would've been more impressed if Nate Silver had predicted a Romney win when
Romney actually won confirming Nate's prediction.
Predicting an Obama Electoral College win (as opposed to the popular vote)
seems to have been a no-brainer even before the election.
Hi again Tom,
CBS Sixty Minutes on November 11, 2012 had an interesting module noting that
with 20 million people in the U.S. unemployed or underemployed there are 3
million jobs that are chronically unfilled because of a shortage of skilled
labor --- Click
Here
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57547342/three-million-open-jobs-in-u.s-but-whos-qualified/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Sometimes these skills require college education, but in most cases the jobs
require only technical training by workers who will then be dedicated to their
craft. An example, is a dashboard mechanic who sometimes now commands $100 per
hour. New vehicles are terribly complicated behind the dashboard.
Three million open jobs in U.S., but who's qualified?
The balance of power in Washington didn't change
this week as President Obama and most members of Congress kept their jobs.
They'll go back to work and face an unemployment problem that also hasn't
changed very much. Every month since January 2009, more than 20 million
Americans have been either out of work or underemployed. Yet despite that
staggering number, there are more than three million job openings in the
U.S. Just in manufacturing, there are as many as 500,000 jobs that aren't
being filled because employers say they can't find qualified workers.
It's called "the skills gap." How could that be, we
wondered, at a time like this with so many people out of work? No place is
the question more pressing than in Nevada. The state with the highest
unemployment rate in the country. A place where there are jobs waiting to be
filled.
Karl Hutter: Yeah, we hear way too much about the
United States manufacturing, we don't manufacture anything anymore. Not
true. Not true.
Byron Pitts: Sure, it's Mexico, it's in China--
Karl Hutter: Yeah, yeah, that all went to China,
that all went to Mexico. Not true, whatsoever.
Karl Hutter is the new chief operating officer of
Click Bond in Carson City, Nev., a company his parents started in 1969.
Karl Hutter: We're still technically a small
business, but we're growing quickly.
Byron Pitts: So, you're hiring?
Karl Hutter: We are hiring. We're hiring and we
need to find good people. And that's really what the challenge is these
days.
Three hundred and twenty-five people work at Click
Bond, making fasteners that hold cables, panels and pretty much everything
else inside today's planes, ships and trains. Their customers include the
Defense Department. The F-35 has 30,000 Click Bond fasteners.
The workhorses in this factory may look old, but
they're computer controlled machines that make precision parts, accurate to
a thousandth of an inch; the thickness of a piece of paper. Click Bond needs
employees who can program the computers, operate the machines, fix them and
then check to make sure the results are up to spec.
Ryan Costella: If you look at the real significant
human achievements in this country a lot of them have to do with
manufacturing or making something.
Ryan Costella is head of Strategic Initiatives at
Click Bond. That's another way of saying he's looking ahead to both
opportunities and problems facing the company.
Byron Pitts: Sure. So the skill gap, is it across
the board? Is it at all levels? Or is it the entry level?
Ryan Costella: I would honestly say it's probably
an entry level problem. It's those basic skill sets. Show up on time, you
know, read, write, do math, problem solve. I can't tell you how many people
even coming out of higher ed with degrees who can't put a sentence together
without a major grammatical error. It's a problem. If you can't do the
resume properly to get the job, you can't come work for us. We're in the
business of making fasteners that hold systems together that protect people
in the air when they're flying. We're in the business of perfection. .
Costella says Click Bond ran into trouble when it
expanded production and went to buy these machines from a factory in
Watertown, Conn. The company didn't have enough skilled labor back home in
Nevada to run them, so it bought the entire factory just to get the
qualified employees and kept the plant running in Connecticut.
[Conn. worker: You just have to be careful that you
don't hit the side.]
Nationwide, manufacturers say the lack of skilled
workers is the reason for hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs; a number
Ryan Costella says is about to get bigger.
Continued at
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57547342/three-million-open-jobs-in-u.s-but-whos-qualified/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Jensen Comment
Today I had conversations with two skilled small business owners. One is a a
very skilled carpenter building a sunroom on my neighbor's house. The other is a
woman who is building a retaining wall around one of my flower gardens. Both are
very skilled at their craft.
I asked each one of them why they don't hire at least one laborer to help
them in these in their businesses. Both replied that they were sick and tired of
hiring workers who were unreliable about showing up for work and not good
workers when they did show up from work. There are various reasons lousy
workers, but even up here drug and alcohol abuse is one of the most common
problems among men and women laborers.
I think those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s are just not aware how
many of those 20 million unemployed really are not good workers. And yes I do
know that many of them are good workers who cannot find work suited for their
skills and geographic preferences.
Geographic preferences are an issue. For example, some rural teachers and
other workers who are laid off refuse to take on the living costs, crime risks,
traffic congestion, and other drawbacks of moving to large cities, especially if
the work compensation in urban settings is relatively low given the costs of
moving to and living in urban areas. Instead they prefer to draw unemployment
compensation followed by odd jobs and/or living on spousal income.
The Power of Women in New Hampshire
All former and future Congressional Representatives and Senators sent by New
Hampshire to Washington DC are female.
In addition the new Governor, Maggie Hassan, is a woman. She will carry on
the liberal Democratic Party traditions established by Governor Lynch over the
past eight years. By the way Governor Lynch is also a former Dean of the Harvard
Business School.
I'm actually bragging about all of this since it is great not to live in a
"Good Old Boys" state.
I'm truly not upset in a about living in a "Not Any Boys" state.
I'm also pleased that all the women in power have pledged no income taxes or
sales taxes for New Hampshire in spite of their progressive biases. We may not
be celebrating their electoral successes if they had not made such no-tax
pledges for NH. However, I suspect that the new women, all Democrats, from NH
going to Washington DC will rubber stamp all of President Obama's initiatives,
including increased Federal income taxes. Maybe that's a good thing to sock it
to the rich for the sake of greater income equality for the United States.
Political national-level candidates with roots (mostly non-tenured) in
higher education did not do so well in the 2012 election,
There were two such Republican candidates, one who won and the other who
lost.
There were seven Democratic Party candidates, four who lost and three who
won.
One of academic winners claims to be independent, but many voters in Maine
consider him to be a liberal candidate. Angus King from Bowdoin College, running
as an independent, defeated the Democratic Candidate Cynthia Dill who is also
tied to higher education as a Southern Maine Community College instructor
"How Candidates With Ties to Higher Education Fared in the Election,"
by Alina Mogilyanskaya and Michael Stratford, Chronicle of Higher Education,
November 7, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/decision2012/2012/11/07/how-candidates-with-ties-to-higher-education-fared-in-the-election/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
Given the political activism (by usually much less than half the faculty) on
virtually all college campuses, I'm a little surprised that more academics do
not put their money where their mouth is in such matters. The Academy is very
generous to tenured faculty who choose to serve in some elective or appointed
capacity in government. Most colleges and universities allow such faculty to
return to their tenure slots, even after years of being away from the campus.
There are most likely a higher proportion of professors and contract
instructors who run for office at the state and local levels that are not
full-time jobs.
Many of us agree with Keynesians Paul Krugman and Alan Blinder that there are
some benefits to massive government spending at the start of a severe economic
crash. But the trouble with most Keynesians these days is that they don't know
when to stop. There's now a perpetual excuse that the economy is just too
fragile to stop printing money to pay government's bills. Confiscating the
wealth of the 1% won't make a dent in the weak economy. And hence the money
presses just keep rolling and rolling until one morning you wake up and guess
what? You're in Zimbabwe that is now printing million dollar bills, two of which
it takes to by one chicken egg.
In the media, Peter Schiff is the best-known financial analyst who
publically predicted the economic collapse of 2008 long before it happened,
including his predictions of the bursting of the real estate bubble. He did not,
however, make as many millions on his predictions as several others who quietly
gambled on the crash. Some of those heavily leveraged winnings, however,
might've been due more to luck than the deep analysis of Peter Schiff ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schiff
I might note that "Quantitative Easing" QE1-QE3 in the U.S. is short hand for
when the Fed cranks up printing presses for money so the U.S. Government can pay
its bills without having to either tax or borrow. Sounds like a good idea since
these have been trillions of dollars that do not add to the trillion-dollar
deficit or National Debt or rile taxpayers ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
I might also note that I personally think the government is now lying about
inflation since with a wave of the magic wand it took fuel, food, and other
consumer items out of the calculation of inflation. The current calculation of
inflation is also distorted by the crash in the housing market that does not
reflect the rising costs of materials going into new and rebuilt homes. For
your students, when you want to illustrate how to lie with statistics show them
how inflation is calculated by the government.
"When Infinite Inflation Isn't Enough," by Peter Schiff, Townhall,
November 9, 2012 ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/peterschiff/2012/11/08/when_infinite_inflation_isnt_enough
If no one seems to care
that the Titanic is filling with water, why not drill another hole in it?
That seems to be the M.O. of the Bernanke Federal Reserve. After the
announcement of QE3 (also dubbed "QE Infinity") created yet another round of
media chatter about a recovery, the Fed's Open Market Committee has decided
to push infinity a little bit further. The latest move involves the rolling
over of long-term Treasuries purchased as part of Operation Twist, thereby
more than doubling QE3 to a monthly influx of $85 billion in phony money
starting in December. I call it "QE3 Plus" - now with more inflation!
Inflation By Any Other Name
In case you've lost track of all the different ways the Fed has connived to
distort the economy, here's a refresher on Operation Twist: the Fed sells
Treasury notes with maturity dates of three years or less, and uses the cash
to buy long-term Treasury bonds. This "twisting" of its portfolio is
supposed to bring down long-term interest rates to make the US economy
appear stronger and inflation appear lower than is actually the case.
The Fed claims operation twist is inflation-neutral as the size of its
balance sheet remains constant. However, the process continues to send false
signals to market participants, who can now borrow more cheaply to fund
long-term projects for which there is no legitimate support. I said it last
year when Operation Twist was announced, and I'll continue to say it: low
interests rates are part of the problem, not the solution.
Interventions Are Never Neutral
Just as the Fed used its interest-rate-fixing power to make dot-coms and
then housing appear to be viable long-term investments, they are now using
QE3 Plus to conceal the fiscal cliff facing the US government in the near
future.
As the Fed extends the average maturity of its portfolio, it is locking in
the inflation created in the wake of the '08 credit crisis. Back then, we
were promised that the Fed would unwind this new cash infusion when the time
was right. Longer maturities lower the quality and liquidity of the Fed's
balance sheet, making the promised "soft landing" that much harder to
achieve.
The Fed cannot keep
printing indefinitely without consumer prices going wild. In many ways, this
has already begun. Take a look at the gas pump or the cost of a hamburger.
If the Fed ever hopes to control these prices, the day will inevitably come
when the Fed needs to sell its portfolio of long-term bonds. While
short-term paper can be easily sold or even allowed to mature even in tough
economic conditions, long-term bonds will have to be sold at a steep
discount, which will have devastating effects across the yield curve.
It won't be an even trade of slightly lower interest rates now for slightly
higher rates in the future. Meanwhile, in the intervening time, the
government and private sectors will have made a bunch of additional wasteful
spending. When are Bernanke & Co. going to decide is the right time to prove
that the United States is fundamentally insolvent? Clearly this plan lays
down an even stronger incentive to continue suppressing interest rates until
a mega-crisis forces their hands.
Also, when interest rates
rise - the increase made even sharper by the Fed's selling - the Fed will
incur huge losses on its portfolio, which, thanks to a new federal law, will
become a direct obligation of the US Treasury, i.e. you, the taxpayer!
Of course, the Fed refuses
to accept this reality. Even though a painful correction is necessary,
nobody in power wants it to happen while they're in the driver's seat. So
Bernanke will stick with his well-rehearsed lines: the money will flow until
there is "substantial improvement" in unemployment.
Does Bernanke Even Believe It?
Even Bernanke must have a hunch that there isn't going to be any
"substantial improvement" in the near term. I suggested before QE3 was
announced that a new round of stimulus might be Bernanke's way of securing
his job, but recent speculation is that he may step down when his current
term as Fed Chairman expires. Perhaps he is cleverer than I thought. He'll
be leaving a brick on the accelerator of an economy careening towards a
fiscal cliff, and bailing before it goes over the edge. Whoever takes his
place will have to pick up the pieces and accept the blame for the crisis
that Bernanke and his predecessor inflamed.
Don't Gamble Your Savings on Politics
For investors looking to find a safe haven for their money, QE3 Plus is a
strong signal that the price of gold and silver are a long way from their
peaks. Gold hit an eleven-month high at the beginning of October after the
announcement of QE3, but the response to the Fed's latest meeting was
lackluster. When the Fed officially announces its commitment to QE3 Plus in
December, I wouldn't be surprised to see a much bigger rally. For that
matter, many are keeping an eye on the election outcome before making a move
on precious metals.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Many of us agree with Keynesians Paul Krugman and Alan Blinder that there are
some benefits to massive government spending at the start of a severe economic
crash. But the trouble with most Keynesians these days is that they don't know
when to stop. There's now a perpetual excuse that the economy is just too
fragile to stop printing money to pay government's bills. Confiscating the
wealth of the 1% won't make a dent in the weak economy. And hence the money
presses just keep rolling and rolling until one morning you wake up and guess
what? You're in Zimbabwe that is now printing million dollar bills, two of which
it takes to by one chicken egg.
"The UK's Most Disturbing Number: Total Unfunded Pension Obligations =
321% Of GDP," by Tyler Derden, Zero Hedge, November 12, 2012 ---
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-12/uks-most-disturbing-number-total-unfunded-pension-obligations-321-gdp
Can Illinois and California be far behind?
"Is Britain the Next Greece? The U.K. debt plight is worse than the worst.
And there’s nothing that politicians or John Maynard Keynes can do about it,"
by Andrew Sawers, cfo.com, November 7, 2012 ---
http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/11/the-economy_john-maynard-keynes-general-theory-debt-britain-greece
The great economist John Maynard Keynes is a
much-misunderstood man. More than that, Keynes himself didn’t understand how
international economies work, and he took far too optimistic a view about
the ambitions of those in government. The result? Highly indebted countries
are pursuing to their detriment what they mistakenly believe to be Keynesian
policies.
That’s the argument recently put forward by Guy
Fraser-Sampson, a former investment manager at the largest sovereign wealth
fund in the world, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and now an investment
and economics consultant who teaches at Cass Business School in London.
Speaking at the recent Finance Directors’ Forum,
Fraser-Sampson told an audience of CFOs and other senior business executives
that “there is a deep and instinctive view that something has gone horribly
wrong. A lot of people are very frustrated that they know something has gone
wrong but are not really sure how or why or when.”
Fraser-Sampson said that since the Second World
War, politicians have been adopting what he called a “bastard Keynesian”
model. Keynes himself took the view that, in times of recession, governments
should, indeed, intervene in the economy by running budget deficits: “They
should boost public spending and that public spending will lift the economy
out of recession,” Fraser-Sampson explained.
But what most people apparently don’t know is that
Keynes called such deficits “abnormal spending.”
Such spending isn’t something “he envisaged
governments doing all the time. It was something he envisaged them doing
occasionally. As soon as good times returned, they would make good that
money by running a surplus in the good years,” said Fraser-Sampson.
But what nation can actually do that? In the United
Kingdom, he said, a structural surplus has been recorded only five times
since 1945, “and if you talk about a real surplus — a surplus that actually
reduces the amount of public debt outstanding — that’s only happened once:
right at the very end of the [1979–1990] Thatcher era.”
Keynes, said Fraser-Sampson, “was a warm, wonderful
generous human being and he made the classic mistake of believing that
everyone else was the same as he was. He thought politicians were
essentially fine, good, upstanding public-spirited people who went into
public office for the good that they could do for the country, and that it
was perfectly OK to trust them with running a budget deficit. As we’ve seen,
he was tragically misguided.”
The world Keynes inhabited was quite different in
other ways, too. It was a world of fixed exchange rates, and where most
currencies were linked at least indirectly to gold. It was also a world in
which there just wasn’t anywhere near as much reliance on international
trade as there is today. “Keynes, himself, in [his major work] The General
Theory, quite candidly admits that he doesn’t know how to model the effect
of international trade — and therefore he’s left it out.”
Where all of this leads to is that a fundamental
plank of Keynes’s theory starts to fall apart. He developed the idea of the
income multiplier: money spent becomes income in someone else’s hands; he
then spends some of that income, which in turn becomes income for others,
and so on. But, said Fraser-Sampson, research suggests that in open,
international economies where there are floating exchange rates and the
burden of net debt is greater than 60% of GDP, the income multiplier is
actually negative over the medium term.
What does this mean? “If you are a heavily indebted
government in a modern environment and you try to spend your way out of
recession, you will actually make things worse rather than better,”
Fraser-Sampson said.
That doesn’t prevent many from trying. Look at the
euro zone, he said: “We see lots of phony growth that’s been pumped in, and
now the day of reckoning is at hand. You have to have very dramatic economic
contraction such as you’re seeing in Greece and soon in Spain to try to
squeeze all that out [of] the system.”
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
It's just not true that there's nothing the U.K. can do about its debt. The
U.K., unlike Greece, can simply print more money to pay its bills following the
lead of the Weimar
Republic,
Zimbabwe, and the Federal Reserve of the United States under Bernanke. If a
country prints its own currency there's really no longer a need to tax or
borrow.
Here's how the U.S. printed over $2 trillion with the Fed's Quantitative
Easing program ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
Countries still trying to tax or borrow are just ignorant of Quantitative
Easing.
Question for Your Students
Why will a cut in the corporate tax rate hurt rather than help many
corporations?
"Tax Twist: At Some Firms, Cutting Corporate Rates May Cost Billions,"
by Michael Rapoport, The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204789304578086942601404324.html?mod=dist_smartbrief&mg=reno64-wsj
What Uncle Sam has given to the earnings of
companies like Citigroup Inc., C -0.35% American International Group Inc.
AIG -0.73% and Ford Motor Co., F 0.00% he soon might take away.
President Barack Obama has said, most recently
during last month's presidential debates, that the 35% U.S. corporate tax
rate should be cut. That would mean lower tax bills for many companies. But
it also could prompt large write-downs by Citigroup, AIG, Ford and other
companies that hold piles of "deferred tax assets," or DTAs.
After posting big losses, these companies have tax
credits and deductions they can use to defray future tax bills, thus
providing a boost to earnings.
But a tax-rate reduction means some of those
credits and deductions, counted as assets on the balance sheet, would be
worth less, since lower tax bills would mean fewer opportunities to use them
before they expire. That would force the companies to write down their
value, resulting in charges against earnings.
Citigroup, for instance, acknowledged during its
recent third-quarter earnings conference call that a cut in the tax rate
could lead to a DTA-related charge of $4 billion to $5 billion against
earnings. Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT +0.26% said in its latest quarterly
report that a write-down of its DTAs was possible.
Any write-down also would reduce a company's
"tangible book value," the sum it could realize by selling its assets in a
fire sale. That could further weigh on banks' stock prices. Most large banks
already trade at a discount to tangible book value because of investor
concerns about their growth prospects and wariness of reported asset values.
"Investors are focused on tangible book value,"
said Mike Mayo, a CLSA Securities banking analyst who criticized Citigroup's
accounting and asked about the possibility of a write-down on Citigroup's
recent earnings call.
Companies other than Citigroup haven't disclosed
the size of possible write-downs from a tax cut. "I think this is going to
be pretty much a surprise" to investors, said Robert Willens, a tax and
accounting expert.
Some companies have enormous piles of these assets.
Citigroup has $53.3 billion, the most of any U.S. company. Ford has $12.9
billion.
But those numbers would be reduced under Mr.
Obama's proposal to cut the corporate rate to 28% with an added break for
manufacturers. The proposal would require congressional action.
Continued in article
Apple paid 1.9% income tax on $36.8 billion in 2012 (fiscal-year) profits
outside the U.S., down from the 2.5% paid in 2011 ---
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312512444068/d411355d10k.htm
Virtually all those iPhones are made in China, and Macs are made in such
places as tax-friendly Ireland. In order not to rile Congress too much, some
parts are expensively made in the United States.
A Socialist President Faces the Reality of High Business Taxation
"France Announces Cut in Payroll Taxes for Businesses," by David Jolly,
The New York Times, November 6, 2012 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/business/global/france-announces-cut-in-payroll-taxes-for-businesses.html?ref=business&_r=0
"Hurricanes and Human Choice Sandy was terrible, but we're currently in a
relative hurricane 'drought.' Connecting energy policy and disasters makes
little scientific sense," by Roger Pielke Jr., The Wall Street Journal,
October 31, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204840504578089413659452702.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t&mg=reno64-wsj
Hurricane Sandy left in its path some impressive
statistics. Its central pressure was the lowest ever recorded for a storm
north of North Carolina, breaking a record set by the devastating "Long
Island Express" hurricane of 1938. Along the East Coast, Sandy led to more
than 50 deaths, left millions without power and caused an estimated $20
billion or more in damage.
But to call Sandy a harbinger of a "new normal," in
which unprecedented weather events cause unprecedented destruction, would be
wrong. This historic storm should remind us that planet Earth is a dangerous
place, where extreme events are commonplace and disasters are to be
expected. In the proper context, Sandy is less an example of how bad things
can get than a reminder that they could be much worse.
In studying hurricanes, we can make rough
comparisons over time by adjusting past losses to account for inflation and
the growth of coastal communities. If Sandy causes $20 billion in damage (in
2012 dollars), it would rank as the 17th most damaging hurricane or tropical
storm (out of 242) to hit the U.S. since 1900—a significant event, but not
close to the top 10. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 tops the list
(according to estimates by the catastrophe-insurance provider ICAT), as it
would cause $180 billion in damage if it were to strike today. Hurricane
Katrina ranks fourth at $85 billion.
To put things into even starker perspective,
consider that from August 1954 through August 1955, the East Coast saw three
different storms make landfall—Carol, Hazel and Diane—that in 2012 each
would have caused about twice as much damage as Sandy.
While it's hardly mentioned in the media, the U.S.
is currently in an extended and intense hurricane "drought." The last
Category 3 or stronger storm to make landfall was Wilma in 2005. The more
than seven years since then is the longest such span in over a century.
Flood damage has decreased as a proportion of the
economy since reliable records were first kept by the National Weather
Service in the 1930s, and there is no evidence of increasing extreme river
floods. Historic tornado damage (adjusted for changing levels of
development) has decreased since 1950, paralleling a dramatic reduction in
casualties. Although the tragic impacts of tornadoes in 2011 (including 553
confirmed deaths) were comparable only to those of 1953 and 1964, such
tornado impacts were far more common in the first half of the 20th century.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reports that drought in America's central plains has
decreased in recent decades. And even when extensive drought occurs, we fare
better. For example, the widespread 2012 drought was about 10% as costly to
the U.S. economy as the multiyear 1988-89 drought, indicating greater
resiliency of American agriculture.
There is therefore reason to believe we are living
in an extended period of relatively good fortune with respect to disasters.
A recurrence of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake today, for example, could
cause more than $300 billion in damage and thousands of lives, according to
a study I co-published in 2009.
So how can today's disasters, even if less
physically powerful than previous ones, have such staggering financial
costs? One reason: There are more people and more wealth in harm's way.
Partly this is due to local land-use policies, partly to incentives such as
government-subsidized insurance, but mostly to the simple fact that people
like being on the coast and near rivers.
Even so, with respect to disasters we really do
make our own luck. The relatively low number of casualties caused by Sandy
is a testament to the success story that is the U.S. National Weather
Service and parallel efforts of those who emphasize preparedness and
emergency response in the public and private sectors. Everyone in the
disaster-management community deserves thanks; the mitigation of the impacts
from natural disasters has been a true national success story of the past
century.
But continued success isn't guaranteed. The bungled
response and tragic consequences associated with Hurricane Katrina tell us
what can happen when we let our guard down.
And there are indications that we are setting the
stage for making future disasters worse. For instance, a U.S.
polar-satellite program crucial to weather forecasting has been described by
the administrator of the federal agency that oversees it—the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—as a "dysfunctional program that had
become a national embarrassment due to chronic management problems." The
lack of effective presidential and congressional oversight of this program
over more than a decade can be blamed on both Republicans and Democrats. The
program's mishandling may mean a gap in satellite coverage and a possible
degradation in forecasts.
Another danger: Public discussion of disasters
risks being taken over by the climate lobby and its allies, who exploit
every extreme event to argue for action on energy policy. In New York this
week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared: "I think at this point it is undeniable
but that we have a higher frequency of these extreme weather situations and
we're going to have to deal with it." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke
similarly.
Humans do affect the climate system, and it is
indeed important to take action on energy policy—but to connect energy
policy and disasters makes little scientific or policy sense. There are no
signs that human-caused climate change has increased the toll of recent
disasters, as even the most recent extreme-event report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds. And even under the
assumptions of the IPCC, changes to energy policies wouldn't have a
discernible impact on future disasters for the better part of a century or
more.
The only strategies that will help us effectively
prepare for future disasters are those that have succeeded in the past:
strategic land use, structural protection, and effective forecasts, warnings
and evacuations. That is the real lesson of Sandy.
Mr. Pielke is a professor of environmental studies and a fellow of
the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the
University of Colorado.
Sandy and 100 Years of Hurricanes (before the brunt of Sandy came
ashore), Bloomberg Business Week, October 29, 2012 ---
http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/2012-10-29/sandy-and-100-years-of-hurricanes
Also see video at
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/scientists-say-it-s-unfair-to-blame-climate-change-for-sandy-1.1017753
When I see all those Sandy-victims complaining about FEMA on TV, I wonder if
they haven't applied for their $30,000 payments for alternative housing. Perhaps
they're just afraid of losing what what's left of their homes and contents.
I do understand that in almost any part of the U.S. there's a genuine risk of
being vandalized if victims leave what's left of their home and home contents
when they move to hotels and apartments elsewhere using housing payments from
FEMA. It was so refreshing to see that after the Japanese tsunami disaster there
was virtually no looting of vacant homes and homeowner property. Why do we have
such a criminal culture that exploits disaster victims?
In addition to FEMA Flood Insurance FEMA provides substantial assistance to
disaster victims who were not insured ---
http://www.fema.gov/disaster-assistance-available-fema
Other FEMA grants and assistance programs ---
http://www.fema.gov/grants-assistance-programs-individuals
How the Federal Government takes care of many property owners (for of
business property and homes) following natural disasters?
"Sandy-Struck Companies Can Seek FEMA Buyouts: Business owners with
heavy damage located in flood plains may want to consider an option that has
worked for homeowners," by Caroline McDonald, CFO.com, November
6, 2012 ---
http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/11/risk-management_fema-hmgp-flood-plain-property-damage-gilinsky-anderson-kill-olick
Homeowners with homes devastated by superstorm
Sandy can take advantage of a decades-old FEMA grant program that buys
damaged property in flood-ravaged areas. Yet although corporate executives
and business owners may not know it, their companies may be eligible too.
FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP)
indeed may be the way to go, rather than pursuing insurance claims under the
National Flood Insurance Program. The HMGP is commonly called a “buyout”
program because a mix of federal and other funds are used to buy the damaged
property from the home or business owner, demolish it, and return the land
to its natural state.
That takes the damaged structure out of the
flood plain and eliminates the risk of future personal injury or property
damage. The property owner can take the
money from the sale, use it to pay off the mortgage, and relocate
elsewhere—usually on higher ground. (According to Title 44 of the Code of
Federal Regulations, a flood plain is "any land area susceptible to being
inundated by water from any source.)
Marshall Gilinsky, an insurance-recovery attorney
at Anderson, Kill, & Olick who represented some Vermont homeowners after
Hurricane Irene, says the program may be a good option for businesses of all
sizes that suffered extensive damage from Sandy and are located in a flood
plain.
“I don’t know historically how many businesses have
availed themselves of it. But I bet there will be a number of businesses for
whom this might be their best option from an economic perspective,” he says,
adding that it is a “business judgment. It all comes down to the relocation
and the displacement associated with that.”
Businesses that have relatively low limits of
coverage under their flood insurance policies – coverage inadequate to the
task of rebuilding – may find it a viable solution. The key is whether the
damaged structure qualifies, Gilinsky says. The simplest determinations are
whether the property is located in a flood plain, and that the cost to
repair or replace the existing damage is at least 50% of the pre-storm fair
market value of the structure.
After Hurricane Irene, he says, he worked with
homeowners having difficulty collecting in full on their flood insurance
policies, and looking at homes badly damaged by flood. Moreover, the flood
recovery from the National Flood Insurance Program would have left them with
a house that they were unable to repair to the extent they would have liked.
The grant option, on the other hand, afforded them a way to buy a new house
in a better location, he says.
Small or large businesses alike may qualify under
this standard, depending on the extent of the damage, he adds. In general,
the worse the damage is, the more likely it is that the business owner will
want to relocate and qualify.
For those businesses that want to use the HMGP to
relocate, another consideration may be the time it takes to get the grant
money. “It has been over a year since Irene and grant money is only now on
the verge of being disbursed,” the lawyer says. Business owners interested
in pursuing the option must approach officials of the town where the company
is located, because it's the town or city, rather than the business owner
that applies for the grant.
To apply, the business owner fills out a grant
application with the town or city, which signs off on the plan. The town
buys the property from the owner, pays for the transaction using grant
money—which tends to be 75% from FEMA and 25% from matching, non-government
grants, such as community development grants. The town then agrees not to
rebuild on the property. Transaction costs, including site investigations
for hazardous materials and demolition and closing fees are included in the
grant money.
Jensen Comment
It occurs to me that this is somewhat of a problem for condo owners. Suppose
there are 30 condos in a destroyed building. Presumably there's a majority rule
regarding disaster buyouts unless there's a contract to the contrary. Hence a
minority number of condo owners may be forced into or out of a buyout contrary
to their personal interests.
Note the clause:
That takes the damaged structure out of the flood plain and eliminates the risk
of future personal injury or property damage
The fact that this happens so seldom for vacation home owners that keep
rebuilding after each and every hurricane indicates that they may be hard core
refusniks when it comes to FEMA buyouts.
Labor unions and construction companies must despise these buyouts.
If these questions wasted your time, blame me since I just made them up
watching the sun set on the White Mountains (that are now powdered with white
snow that looks pink at sunset.
Bob Jensen
"In Disaster Relief, Bigger Government Isn't Always Better: FEMA
spent $878 million on prefabricated homes after Hurricane Katrina. Thousands
were left to rot," by Michael Tanner, The Wall Street Journal,
November 2, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204846304578090873245350506.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t&mg=reno64-wsj
Jensen Comment
I disagree with writers like Tanner that each of the 50 states should take over
responsibility for disaster relief. That in itself is a disaster if the states
have to raise their own funding from taxation or borrowing. It's better to have
the Federal government pay for FEMA disaster relief since the Federal government
under Bernanke learned out to simply crank up the money printing presses to
generate revenue without have to tax or borrow. When the government prints
trillions of dollars to help pay its bills there's no reason to become efficient
about a spending discipline. Bring on the greenbacks with the blessings of
Keynesian theorists Paul Krugman and Alan Blinder.
What's most important for future generations is to stop rebuilding in high
risk flooding zones. If you believe the global warming scientists the ocean
levels are going to rise two feet in a few decades and storms will be more
ferocious (even
if we're presently in what oceanic scientists call a drought of hurricanes
relative to years past). Should we really rebuild all those houses on the
outer banks of New Jersey and North Carolina and rebuild their beaches time and
time again? When will we learn to turn lowlands into wild wetlands once again?
Is cost-efficient to rebuild all of Staten Island or New Orleans with
ever-higher dikes?
Instead we should use Staten Island more efficiently --- as a landfill for
New York and New Jersey trash. If done properly, in 100 years Staten Island will
be a mountain where we can safely build luxury condos with fabulous views of
hurricanes down below. I'm serious here. Bangor, Maine and many other towns are
building what I consider to be outstanding mountains built on landfills. As soon
as there is an efficient way to capture the underground methane these mountains
will one day be outstanding building sites and ski resorts.
"Ten years too late, it’s good riddance to wind farms – one of the most
dangerous delusions of our age," by Christopher Booker, Daily Mail (U.K.),
October 30, 2012 ---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2225544/Good-riddance-wind-farms--dangerous-delusions-age.html
The significance of yesterday’s shock announcement
by our Energy Minister John Hayes that the Government plans to put a firm
limit on the building of any more onshore windfarms is hard to exaggerate.
On the face of it, this promises to be the
beginning of an end to one of the greatest and most dangerous political
delusions of our time.
For years now, the plan to cover hundreds of square
miles of the British countryside with ever more wind turbines has been the
centrepiece of Britain’s energy policy — and one supported by all three
major political parties.
Back in 2008, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown
announced his wish to see the country spend £100 billion on windfarms, the
only response from the Tory leader David Cameron was to say that he should
have done it sooner.
It was the only way, they all agreed, Britain could
meet our commitment to the EU that, by 2020, we must produce nearly a third
of our electricity from ‘renewables’ — with the largest part provided by
tens of thousands more wind turbines.
Yet now, out of the blue, has come this
announcement by the Coalition Energy Minister that from now on there is to
be a moratorium on building onshore turbines other than those for which
consent has already been given. Bonanza
What made this even more piquant was the fact that
Mr Hayes chose to drop this bombshell just hours before attending a
conference in Glasgow staged by RenewableUK, the professional lobby group
for Britain’s wind industry.
These are the very people who for years have been
making fortunes out of the greatest public subsidy bonanza of modern times.
Now Mr Hayes is to stop their gravy train in its tracks.
It will give them the biggest shock of their
professional lives.
The ramifications of such a policy U-turn stretch
in all directions, not least to Brussels, where our EU colleagues won’t be
taken in for a moment by Mr Hayes’s disingenuous claim that Britain doesn’t
need more onshore windfarms because we are now on course to meet our
‘renewables’ target without them.
But nowhere will this announcement be greeted with
more delirious surprise than in all those hundreds of communities across the
land where outraged local protest groups have formed in ever greater numbers
to fight the onward march of what they see as the greatest threat to
Britain’s countryside for centuries.
Continued in article
"MSNBC really is more partisan than Fox, according to Pew study: How does
Comcast allow such wretched bias in presidential coverage?" by David Zurawik,
The Baltimore Sun, November 2, 2012 ---
http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/z-on-tv-blog/bal-pew-study-suggests-msnbc-really-is-more-partisan-than-fox-20121102,0,7266571.story
In writing about the Pew study released today, I
was struck by the big story of how negative coverage on several levels of
presidential politics had become.
I think this is big trouble for democracy,
especially the hostile level of discourse in social media. And that it's
something the media need to address collectively after the election.
But here's one of several fascinating smaller
findings of the study that are kind of stunning -- even if they seem obvious
and ho-hum to some of my more jaded, postmodern, aren't-we-cleverly-ironic
colleagues:
ON MSNBC, the ratio of negative to positive stories
on GOP candidate Mitt Romney was 71 to 3.
That's not a news channel. That's a propaganda
machine, and owner Comcast should probably change Phil Griffin's title from
president to high minister of information, or something equally befitting
the work of a party propaganist hack in a totalitarian regime. You wonder
how mainstream news organizations allow their reporters and correspondents
to appear in such a cauldron of bias.
I thought show host Sean Hannity of Fox News
defined party propagandist. But while his channel was bad, it wasn't as
bad-boy biased as MSNBC.
The ratio of negative to positive stories in Fox's
coverage of President Obama was 46 to 6.
Check out the full Pew study here. It's a good one,
and there is much food for thought in its findings as we approach the end of
an election cycle marked by poor media performance.
Ann Coulter ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Coulter
Michael Moore ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore
I'm not a huge Ann Coulter fan, and I seriously do not recall ever quoting
her on the AECM or on my Website. However, the article below illustrates another
way progressives on campus in the past are silencing conservative voices on
campus. It's not just that the conservatism speakers that are being silenced,
it's a message to conservative students that they should not be advocating
conservatism.
It's OK to invite Michael Moore but not Ann Coulter.
It's not so much that both Coulter and Moore often violate the principles
of good scholarship. The point is why is Moore so easily invited by liberal
students on campus and Coulter repelled so often by faculty and administration
on college campuses?
"A Different Ann Coulter Debate," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher
Ed, November 12, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/12/fordham-declines-ban-ann-coulter-her-invitation-rescinded
Bob Jensen's threads on liberal biases in the media and academe ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias
CRS officials then pulled the report from its
website. In a Sept. 28 email to a Republican Senate staffer, CRS deputy director
Colleen Shogan wrote that "I decided to remove the Hungerford report from the
CRS website for now." She added that she had given Mr. Hungerford's manager, Don
Marples, "a list of concerns I would want addressed in a future version" and
that "in particular, I want a better, more robust defense of the methodology in
the paper."
"Congressional Research Hit Job Democrats politicize a supposedly
nonpartisan think tank.," The Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2012
---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203880704578086771452127606.html?mg=reno64-wsj#mod=djemEditorialPage_t
The Congressional Research Service is supposed to
be a nonpartisan research tool for the House and Senate, but like so many
institutions in Washington it is now being hijacked for partisan ends. The
dispute concerns a highly politicized CRS tax study that Democrats have been
trying to use as a cudgel against Mitt Romney.
The tax study just happened to appear on the CRS
website in September in the heat of the Presidential tax debate. Author
Thomas Hungerford purported to show that 65 years of changes in "top tax
rates have had little association with saving, investment or productivity
growth." The timing couldn't have been better for President Obama, and the
usual liberal media suspects picked it up. So did New York Senator Chuck
Schumer, who used it in a speech to attack tax reform.
Mr. Hungerford tells us the study wasn't requested
by a Member of Congress, so perhaps it was his idea. You won't be surprised
to learn that Mr. Hungerford has donated to the Obama campaign and Senate
Democrats and worked as an economist at the White House budget office under
Bill Clinton.
Republicans understandably objected to this
partisan exercise, especially because the study has statistical design flaws
and ignores multiple peer-reviewed studies that have found a significant
relationship between cuts in tax rates and the pace of capital formation,
investment and economic growth.
CRS officials then pulled the report from its
website. In a Sept. 28 email to a Republican Senate staffer, CRS deputy
director Colleen Shogan wrote that "I decided to remove the Hungerford
report from the CRS website for now." She added that she had given Mr.
Hungerford's manager, Don Marples, "a list of concerns I would want
addressed in a future version" and that "in particular, I want a better,
more robust defense of the methodology in the paper."
Now Senate Democrats are trying to portray Mr.
Hungerford as a victim of censorship due to GOP pressure, and Thursday they
got an impressionable Jimmy Olson at the New York Times to buy the spin. The
reality is that sometime after we called Mr. Hungerford, he or someone else
at CRS talked to Senate Democrats, who decided to give the study one more
propaganda run before Election Day.
CRS spokeswoman Janine D'Addario told us Thursday
that "To my knowledge, CRS has never taken out of circulation a study based
solely on comments from Members of Congress or a Congressional committee"
and that "this one wasn't."
This episode is nonetheless a significant blot on
the CRS reputation for unbiased research. We're not sure why Congress needs
a research operation when it already has a budget office, a tax committee
and thousands of staff, but it surely doesn't need one that acts like an arm
of the Democratic Party.
Question
What is the difference between education and indoctrination?
Education ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education
Indoctrination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination
Where many voices of education are silenced
Training ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training
"Noam Chomsky Spells Out the Purpose of Education," by Josh Jones,
Open Culture, November 2012 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/noam_chomsky_spells_out_the_purpose_of_education.html
E + ducere: “To lead or draw out.” The
etymological Latin roots of “education.” According to a former Jesuit
professor of mine, the fundamental sense of the word is to draw others out
of “darkness,” into a “more magnanimous view” (he’d say, his arms spread
wide). As inspirational as this speech was to a seminar group of budding
higher educators, it failed to specify the means by which this might be
done, or the reason. Lacking a Jesuit sense of mission, I had to figure out
for myself what the “darkness” was, what to lead people towards, and why. It
turned out to be simpler than I thought, in some respects, since I concluded
that it wasn’t my job to decide these things, but rather to present points
of view, a collection of methods—an intellectual toolkit, so to speak—and an
enthusiastic model. Then get out of the way. That’s all an educator can, and
should do, in my humble opinion. Anything more is not education, it’s
indoctrination. Seemed simple enough to me at first. If only it were so. Few
things, in fact, are more contentious (Google the term “assault on
education,” for example).
What is the difference between education and
indoctrination? This debate rages back hundreds, thousands, of years, and
will rage thousands more into the future. Every major philosopher has had
one answer or another, from Plato to Locke, Hegel and Rousseau to Dewey.
Continuing in that venerable tradition, linguist, political activist, and
academic generalist extraordinaire Noam Chomsky, one of our most
consistently compelling public intellectuals, has a lot to say in the video
above and elsewhere about education.
First, Chomsky defines his view of education in an
Enlightenment sense, in which the “highest goal in life is to inquire and
create. The purpose of education from that point of view is just to help
people to learn on their own. It’s you the learner who is going to achieve
in the course of education and it’s really up to you to determine how you’re
going to master and use it.” An essential part of this kind of education is
fostering the impulse to challenge authority, think critically, and create
alternatives to well-worn models. This is the pedagogy I ended up adopting,
and as a college instructor in the humanities, it’s one I rarely have to
justify.
Chomsky defines the opposing concept of education
as indoctrination, under which he subsumes vocational training, perhaps the
most benign form. Under this model, “People have the idea that, from
childhood, young people have to be placed into a framework where they’re
going to follow orders. This is often quite explicit.” (One of the entries
in the Oxford English Dictionary defines education as “the training
of an animal,” a sense perhaps not too distinct from what Chomsky means).
For Chomsky, this model of education imposes “a debt which traps students,
young people, into a life of conformity. That’s the exact opposite of what
traditionally comes out of the Enlightenment.” In the contest between these
two definitions—Athens vs. Sparta, one might say—is the question that
plagues educational reformers at the primary and secondary levels: “Do you
train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?”
Chomsky goes on to discuss the technological
changes in education occurring now, the focus of innumerable discussions and
debates about not only the purpose of education, but also the proper methods
(a subject this site is deeply invested in), including the current unease
over the
shift to online over traditional classroom ed or
the
value of a traditional degree versus a certificate.
Chomsky’s view is that technology is “basically
neutral,” like a hammer that can build a house or “crush someone’s skull.”
The difference is the frame of reference under which one uses the tool.
Again, massively contentious subject, and too much to cover here, but I’ll
let Chomsky explain. Whatever you think of his politics, his erudition and
experience as a researcher and educator make his views on the subject well
worth considering.
Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at
Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica /
A Magazine of Arts and Politics.
Bob Jensen's threads on the liberal bias of the major media and higher
education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"Dirty money cost China $3.8 trillion 2000-2011: report," Reuters,
October 25, 2012 ---
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/25/us-china-dirtymoney-idUSBRE89O1RW20121025
WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (TrustLaw) - China has lost
$3.79 trillion over the past decade in money smuggled out of the country, a
massive amount that could weaken its economy and create instability,
according to a new report.
And the outflow - much of it from corruption, crime
or tax evasion - is accelerating. China lost $472 billion in 2011,
equivalent to 8.3 percent of its gross domestic product, up from $204.7
billion in 2000, Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy group
that campaigns to limit illegal flows, said in a report on Thursday.
"The magnitude of illicit money flowing out of
China is astonishing," said GFI director Raymond Baker. "There is no other
developing or emerging country that comes even close to suffering as much in
illicit financial flows."
The lost funds between 2000 and 2011 significantly
exceeded the amount of money flowing into China as foreign direct
investment. The International Monetary Fund calculated FDI inflows at
roughly $310 billion between 1998 and 2011.
Illicit capital flows rob a government of tax
revenues and potential investment funds. Capital flight on this scale can be
politically destabilizing by allowing the rich to get richer through tax
evasion, GFI said.
China has a low level of tax collection given
the size of its economy, according to the IMF. Beijing has recognized
that corruption and bribery is a significant problem, an issue brought into
sharp focus recently by the Bo Xilai scandal. The country has announced a
major crackdown as it prepares for its once in a decade leadership
transition.
GFI calculates how much money leaks out of a
country unchecked by analyzing discrepancies in data filed with the IMF on
import and export prices between trade partners and calculating
discrepancies in a country's balance sheet.
The developing world overall lost $903 billion in
illicit outflows in 2009, with China, Mexico, Russia and Saudi Arabia in
that order showing the largest losses, it said.
Trade mispricing was the major method of smuggling
money out of China, accounting for 86.2 percent of lost funds, the GFI
report found. This scheme involves importers reporting inflated prices for
goods or services purchased. The payments are transferred out and the excess
amounts are deposited into overseas bank accounts.
Trade mispricing is most common for nuclear
reactors, boilers, machinery and electrical equipment, the report said.
The bulk of the money ends up in tax havens - on
average, 52.4 percent between 2005 and 2011. Much of this money eventually
makes its way back to China as foreign direct investment for a double hit to
the economy.
FDI benefits from special tax breaks and subsidies,
essentially setting up an elaborate form of money laundering for Chinese
businesses, GFI added.
Jensen Comment
Would this be as serious in the U.S. under the Ben Bernanke/PaulKrugman/AlanBlinder
Keynesian Theory of Economics where, like Zimbabwe, we just print trillions of
more dollars at virtually zero cost?
"Cliff Confusions," by Paul Krugman, The New York Times,
October 29, 2012 ---
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/cliff-confusions/
While I have access, let me point you to an
excellent
post by Suzy Khimm making a point I should have
made: the only reason to worry about the fiscal cliff is if you’re a
Keynesian, who thinks that bringing down the budget deficit when the economy
is already depressed makes the depression deeper. And the same logic
actually says that we should not just avoid spending cuts, we should raise
spending right now.
What Khimm doesn’t mention is that a lot of the
Very Serious People don’t seem to get that. As
Jon Chait pointed out, finance bigwigs published
an utterly ludicrous letter claiming that the risk from the fiscal cliff is
that interest rates might spike — which is completely off base. The only way
I can make sense of that letter is cognitive dissonance — they’re so wedded
to the notion that the danger is that the invisible bond vigilantes will
scare off the confidence fairy that they can’t admit, even to themselves,
that what’s really worrying them right now is straight Keynesian concerns.
And the supposed deficit hawks, who should be
celebrating the prospect of such a big move in their direction, aren’t. Why?
As Khimm suggests, this isn’t the deficit reduction they wanted — it was
supposed to involve hurting the working class, not raising tax rates at the
top (which were supposed to be cut!).
Jensen Comment
I wonder if Professor Krugman continues to support this unlimited Keynesian
spending for Greece --- a nation that cannot seem to enforce its own tax laws
and would have almost no government spending discipline without
externally-imposed austerity pressures from the EU?
The Keynesian spending approach of unrestrained spending is more worrisome
for nations and states (like Illinois and California) that have almost no
government spending disciplines unless such disciplines are applied from the
outside. Both California and Illinois have very nearly the highest tax rates in
the United States. How high can they keep going up and up and up to support
progressive spending in those states and their unfunded public pension funds?
The problem is that Greece, Illinois, and California cannot print their own
currencies.
There's no such spending restraint under the Bernanke/Krugman/Blinder
Keynesian Theory of Economics for nations like the U.S. and China that can crank
up the currency printing presses.
And more good news for China
"Jeep, an Obama favorite, looks to shift production to China,"
Washington Examiner, October 25, 2012 ---
http://washingtonexaminer.com/jeep-an-obama-favorite-looks-to-shift-production-to-china/article/2511703#.UI_Gge_Aut_
. . .
Well it appears that the taxpayer bailed-out
Chrysler is looking back and now considering cutting costs by shifting
production of all Jeeps to China, which has a strong desire for Jeeps.
In a Bloomberg interview, Jeep's president said the
automaker plans to restore Jeep production in China, suspended in 2009, and
is considering making all Jeeps in China. "Fiat SpA, majority owner of
Chrysler Group LLC, plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually
make all of its models in that country, according to the head of both
automakers' operations in the region," reported the business wire service.
Mike Manley, chief operating officer of Fiat and
Chrysler in Asia and president of the Jeep brand, told Bloomberg, "We're
reviewing the opportunities within existing capacity" as well as "should we
be localizing the entire Jeep portfolio or some of the Jeep portfolio" to
China.
Chrysler builds Jeep SUV models at plants in
Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Manley said the firm is in talks with China's
Guangzhou Automobile Group Co.
Surprise Victory of Business Over Government
Canadian "Supreme Court backs Glaxo in transfer-pricing dispute," by Jeff
Gray, Globe and Mail, October 18, 2012 ---
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/supreme-court-backs-glaxo-in-transfer-pricing-dispute/article4620345/
The Supreme Court of Canada has sided with
GlaxoSmithKline PLC in a lengthy tax fight the drug giant has been waging
with the federal government, in a ruling that some say expands the ability
of multinationals to use a technique known as “transfer pricing” to shift
profits outside of Canada’s borders.
The court, weighing in for the first time on
transfer pricing, handed a defeat to the Canada Revenue Agency in its battle
with Glaxo over the way multinationals account for the profits they report
to Canada’s taxman and those they send to other, often lower-tax,
jurisdictions.
Queen’s University law professor Art Cockfield said
Thursday’s ruling could embolden companies that use transfer pricing: “They
can take a more aggressive stance, and create these sorts of structures that
shift profits to countries like tax havens.”
But Prof. Cockfield and other tax law experts also
acknowledge that the decision largely reinforces practices already used by
multinationals, while beating back a CRA attempt to much more narrowly
interpret the rules.
“This does not give taxpayers carte blanche, at
all,” said Claire Kennedy, a tax lawyer with Bennett Jones LLP in Toronto.
“... It’s not as though it’s creating a huge opening in terms of transfer
pricing.”
Multinationals with local subsidiaries that sell
their imported products in Canada must set a price, for tax purposes, that
the subsidiary pays its parent for those goods. If the multinational wants
to move more of its profits out of Canada, it can increase this “transfer
price” that it charges its own subsidiary.
But according to tax laws in Canada and other
countries, the prices subsidiaries pay must be equal to the “reasonable”
cost an arm’s-length business would pay. At the centre of the Glaxo fight
was just how this should be defined.
From 1990 to 1993, the Canadian subsidiary of
British-based Glaxo Group Ltd. told Ottawa it had paid a Swiss affiliate
$1,512 and $1,651 a kilogram for the ingredient ranitidine, which it
packaged as the stomach ulcer drug Zantac.
That price was five times the cost paid by generic
producers for the same drug. This difference attracted Ottawa’s attention,
and it reassessed the company for $51-million in unpaid taxes, starting a
complex and lengthy legal battle. Glaxo beat back the reassessment at the
Federal Court of Appeal, and the government took it before the Supreme Court
in January.
Glaxo argued the price made business sense, since
it was dictated by a licensing agreement that gave its Canadian subsidiary
access to all of its other drugs and the right to sell brand-name Zantac for
a much higher price. The local subsidiary was still making, and declaring, a
60-per-cent profit margin, the company said.
But lawyers for the Canadian government argued that
tax laws mean only the comparable generic price should be taken into
account.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court
disagreed, saying other factors, such as licensing agreements, should be
considered when determining a reasonable arm’s- length price. But it
declined Glaxo’s request to actually decide whether the price its Canadian
subsidiary paid was fair, referring that question back to the Tax Court of
Canada.
Continued in article
Forwarded by Dr. Wolf
Obama Fires Top Admiral For Advocating Libyan
Rescue?
- Posted by
Harry Riley on October 29, 2012 at 6:23pmObama Fires Top
Admiral For Advocating Libyan Rescue?
According to
this report, yesterday (27 October) Obama
ordered the immediate removal of Rear Admiral
Charles M. Gaouette from his command of the
powerful Carrier Strike Group Three (CSG-3)
currently located in the Middle East .
CSG-3 is one
of five US Navy carrier strike groups currently
assigned to the US Pacific Fleet. US Navy
carrier strike groups are employed in a variety
of roles, which involve gaining and maintaining
sea control and projecting power ashore, as well
as projecting naval airpower ashore.
The aircraft
carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) is the
strike group’s current flagship, and as of 2012,
other units assigned to Carrier Strike Group
Three include Carrier Air Wing Nine; the
guided-missile cruisers USS Mobile Bay (CG-53)
and USS Antietam (CG-54); and the ships of
Destroyer Squadron 21, the guided-missile
destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG-108), USS
Dewey (DDG-105), USS Kidd (DDG-100), and USS
Milius (DDG-69).
US news
reports on Obama’s unprecedented firing of a
powerful US Navy Commander during wartime state
that Admiral Gaouette’s removal was for
“allegations of inappropriate leadership
judgment” that arose during the strike group’s
deployment to the Middle East .
This GRU
report, however, states that Admiral Gaouette’s
firing by President Obama was due to this strike
force commander disobeying orders
when he
ordered his forces on 11 September to
“assist and provide intelligence for”
American military forces ordered into action by
US Army General Carter Ham, who was then the
commander of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM),
against terrorist forces attacking the American
Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
General Ham
had been in command of the initial 2011 US-NATO
military intervention in Libya who, like Admiral
Gaouette, was fired by Obama. And as we can, in
part, read from US military insider accounts of
this growing internal conflict between the White
House and US Military leaders:
“The
information I heard today was that General
[Carter] Ham as head of Africom received the
same e-mails the White House received requesting
help/support as the attack was taking place.
General Ham immediately had a rapid response
unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that
he had a unit ready.
General Ham then received the order to stand
down. His response
was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow.
Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the
move to respond, his second in command
apprehended General Ham and told him that he was
now relieved of his command.”
"ObamaCare's Costs to the Working Class Perverse incentives will make
part-time work more attractive than a better-paying full-time job," by David
Gamage (UC Berkeley), The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203335504578086702676417058.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion&mg=reno64-wsj
It is time to move past the debate over whether
ObamaCare was a good or a bad idea. I count myself as an ObamaCare
supporter, but this doesn't blind me to the law's flaws. Regardless of who
wins the presidential election, bipartisan compromise will be necessary to
reform health care in a constructive way.
The most important provisions of ObamaCare are
scheduled to take effect in 2014. I have been researching ObamaCare and
assisting with its implementation, and have come to this realization:
Without further reforms, the law will create unnecessary costs for
working-class Americans.
Consider a low-income American supporting a family
of four deciding whether to take a part-time job that pays $36,000 a year or
a full-time job that pays $42,000 a year. According to my research,
accepting the higher-paying job could result in the family losing over
$10,000 a year in health-care subsidies.
Moreover, by switching low-income employees to
part-time positions, rather than offering them health insurance, an employer
will be able to save over $3,000 a year by avoiding ObamaCare's
employer-mandate penalties. Without further reforms, many employers and
employees will jointly benefit if employers make low-income employees
part-timers rather than offering them health insurance. The losers will be
taxpayers, who will need to fund the subsidies that these employees will be
eligible for.
These perverse incentives won't be as extreme for
employees with higher incomes, for dual-income families, or for single
employees. For instance, a worker supporting a family of four deciding
between a job paying $54,000 a year without health insurance and a job
paying $72,000 a year with insurance would lose only about $7,000 in annual
subsidies by accepting the higher-paying job. And a single employee deciding
between those two jobs wouldn't lose any subsidies by accepting the
higher-paying job. Nevertheless, many employers will face incentives not to
offer health insurance to lower-income employees so those employees can
qualify for federal health-care subsidies under ObamaCare.
For employees whose only job option comes with
health insurance, ObamaCare's new subsidies may also create penalties for
marriage and incentives for divorce. Under rules proposed by the Treasury
Department, if an employer offers health insurance for which the cost of
self-only coverage is affordable to an individual employee, that employee's
entire family will be disqualified from receiving the new federal subsidies.
Consider a couple with children in which one of the
parents earns most of the family's income. If the couple marries, the family
would lose thousands of dollars of subsidies that could otherwise be used to
pay for health insurance for the children and the lower-income spouse. If
the couple is already married, divorce may be their only option for
obtaining affordable insurance for their children and the lower-income
parent.
We cannot predict with confidence how these
perverse incentives will affect the behavior of individuals or employers. In
Massachusetts, which in 2006 enacted reforms similar to ObamaCare, most
employers have continued to offer subsidized health insurance, although
there is some (mostly anecdotal) evidence of employees moving to part-time
positions.
Yet ObamaCare's subsidies and penalties are
sufficiently different that it is unclear how much we can learn from
Massachusetts. Individuals and employers may change behavior gradually over
time as they learn about the incentives created by new reforms. Even if
these perverse incentives affect only a limited number of individuals,
lawmakers should still strive to mitigate them through further reforms.
In light of these flaws, many Republicans want to
repeal the law and replace it with something new. But what? There is
near-universal agreement that the individual health-insurance market is
dysfunctional. Americans who don't have the option of employer-sponsored
insurance typically face excessively high costs in the individual market.
And Americans with pre-existing conditions often have no realistic options
in the individual market even if they are willing to pay far more than what
insurance costs on the employer-sponsored market.
ObamaCare's subsidies, along with the new
individual and employer mandates, are designed to fix the problems in the
individual market. Assuming that key provisions of ObamaCare do take effect
in 2014, insurance on the individual market should no longer cost
dramatically more than in the employer-sponsored market. And Americans with
pre-existing conditions will be able to buy health insurance on the same
terms as other Americans.
There are alternatives that might also address the
problems of the individual market. But realistic approaches must either
embrace the direct government provision of health care (true "socialized
medicine") or rely on government subsidies to make private insurance
affordable. Hence, whether we want to "repeal and replace" ObamaCare, or
"improve ObamaCare through further reforms," is merely a question of
semantics.
Addressing the perverse incentives will also mean
tackling a defect in health-care policy left intact by ObamaCare: By far the
largest federal subsidies currently available for health insurance are the
tax exclusions for employer-sponsored coverage. ObamaCare didn't end these
subsidies, and their cost will be much greater than ObamaCare's new
subsidies.
Conservative and liberal economists have long
criticized the tax exclusions for employer-sponsored coverage on the grounds
that they drive up health spending and provide far more tax benefit for
higher-income than for lower-income taxpayers. Sen. John McCain proposed
replacing these subsidies with better-designed tax credits when he ran for
president in 2008. Yet ObamaCare failed to reform these older subsidies for
employer-sponsored insurance.
ObamaCare's perverse incentives result mainly from
creating a mismatch between the subsidies for individual health insurance
and those for employer-sponsored insurance. Beginning in 2014, lower-income
Americans will be eligible for far greater subsidies if they aren't offered
employer-sponsored coverage, qualifying them for the new subsidies available
for individual insurance. In contrast, higher-income taxpayers will be
eligible for far greater subsidies if they get employer-sponsored coverage.
To resolve these perverse incentives, we should
adopt a variation of Sen. McCain's proposals and replace the tax exclusions
for employer coverage with tax credits. To the extent possible, we should
provide the same subsidies for employer-based insurance as for individual
insurance.
ObamaCare is far from perfect. Yet there was
widespread agreement that the health-care system before ObamaCare needed
reform. If Republicans and Democrats will work together, they can build a
system better than either ObamaCare or what we had before. Partisan warfare
should not stand in the way of improving health care for all Americans.
Mr. Gamage is an assistant professor of law at the University of
California at Berkeley. During the academic years 2010-12, he worked at the
Treasury Department on the implementation of the tax provisions of
health-care reform. The views expressed here are his own and are unconnected
to the Treasury Department.
Ann Coulter ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Coulter
Michael Moore ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore
I'm not a huge Ann Coulter fan, and I seriously do not recall ever quoting
her on the AECM or on my Website. However, the article below illustrates another
way progressives on campus in the past are silencing conservative voices on
campus. It's not just that the conservatism speakers that are being silenced,
it's a message to conservative students that they should not be advocating
conservatism.
It's OK to invite Michael Moore but not Ann Coulter.
It's not so much that both Coulter and Moore often violate the principles
of good scholarship. The point is why is Moore so easily invited by liberal
students on campus and Coulter repelled so often by faculty and administration
on college campuses?
"A Different Ann Coulter Debate," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher
Ed, November 12, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/12/fordham-declines-ban-ann-coulter-her-invitation-rescinded
"Moving Further to the Left," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
October 24, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/24/survey-finds-professors-already-liberal-have-moved-further-left
Academics, on average, lean
to the left. A survey being released today suggests that they are moving
even more in that direction.
Among full-time faculty members at four-year
colleges and universities, the percentage identifying as "far left" or
liberal has increased notably in the last three years, while the percentage
identifying in three other political categories has declined. The data come
from the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research
Institute, which surveys faculty members nationwide every three years on a
range of attitudes.
Here are the data for the new survey and
the prior survey:
|
2010-11 |
2007-8 |
Far left |
12.4% |
8.8% |
Liberal |
50.3% |
47.0% |
Middle of the road |
25.4% |
28.4% |
Conservative |
11.5% |
15.2% |
Far right |
0.4% |
0.7% |
Gauging how gradual or abrupt this shift is
complicated because of changes in the UCLA survey's methodology; before
2007-8, the survey included community college faculty members, who have been
excluded since. But for those years, examining only four-year college and
university faculty members, the numbers are similar to those of 2007-8.
Going back further, one can see an evolution away from the center.
In the 1998-9 survey, more than 35 percent of
faculty members identified themselves as middle of the road, and less than
half (47.5 percent) identified as liberal or far left. In the new data, 62.7
percent identify as liberal or far left. (Most surveys that have included
community college faculty members have found them to inhabit political space
to the right of faculty members at four-year institutions.)
The new data differ from some recent studies by
groups other than the UCLA center that have found that professors (while
more likely to lean left than right) in fact were
doing so from more of a centrist position.
A major study in 2007, for example, found that
professors were more likely to be centrist than liberal, and that many on
the left identified themselves as "slightly liberal." (That study and the
new one use different scales, making exact comparisons impossible.)
In looking at the new data, there is notable
variation by sector. Private research universities are the most left-leaning,
with 16.2 percent of faculty members identifying as far left, and 0.1
percent as far right. (If one combines far left and liberal, however,
private, four-year, non-religious colleges top private universities, 58.6
percent to 57.7 percent.) The largest conservative contingent can be found
at religious, non-Roman Catholic four-year colleges, where 23.0 percent
identify as conservative and another 0.6 percent say that they are far
right.
Professors' Political Identification,
2010-11, by Sector
|
Far left |
Liberal |
Middle of the Road |
Conservative |
Far right |
Public universities |
13.3% |
52.4% |
24.7% |
9.2% |
0.3% |
Private universities |
16.2% |
51.5% |
22.3% |
9.8% |
0.1% |
Public, 4-year
colleges |
8.8% |
47.1% |
28.7% |
14.7% |
0.7% |
Private, 4-year,
nonsectarian |
14.0% |
54.6% |
22.6% |
8.6% |
0.3% |
Private, 4-year,
Catholic |
7.8% |
48.0% |
30.7% |
13.3% |
0.3% |
Private, 4-year, other
religious |
7.4% |
40.0% |
29.1% |
23.0% |
0.6% |
The study found some differences by gender, with
women further to the left than men. Among women, 12.6 percent identified as
far left and 54.9 percent as liberal. Among men, the figures were 12.2
percent and 47.2 percent, respectively.
When it comes to the three tenure-track ranks,
assistant professors were the most likely to be far left, but full
professors were more likely than others to be liberal.
Professors' Political Identification,
2010-11, by Tenure Rank
|
Far left |
Liberal |
Middle of the Road |
Conservative |
Far right |
Full professors |
11.8% |
54.9% |
23.4% |
9.7% |
0.2% |
Associate professors |
13.8% |
50.4% |
24.0% |
11.5% |
0.4% |
Assistant professors |
13.9% |
48.7% |
25.9% |
11.2% |
0.4% |
So what do these data mean?
Sylvia Hurtado, professor of education at UCLA and
director of the Higher Education Research Institute, said that she didn't
know what to make of the surge to the left by faculty members. She said that
she suspects age may be a factor, as the full-time professoriate is aging,
but said that this is just a theory. Hurtado said that these figures always
attract a lot of attention, but she thinks that the emphasis may be
misplaced because of a series of studies showing no evidence that left-leaning
faculty members are somehow shifting the views of their students or
enforcing any kind of political requirement.
Continued in article
"Noam Chomsky Spells Out the Purpose of Education," by Josh Jones,
Open Culture, November 2012 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/noam_chomsky_spells_out_the_purpose_of_education.html
Bob Jensen's threads on liberal biases in the media and academe ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias
"Political Correctness Run Amok: Some Private Sector Contestants for the
U.S. vs U.K. Stupidity Contest," by Daniel J. Mitchell, Townhall,
November 4, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2012/11/04/political_correctness_run_amok_some_private_sector_contestants_for_the_us_vs_uk_stupidity_contest
I’ve had some fun on this blog by comparing moronic government policies
in the United States and United Kingdom.
In my never-ending search for cheap laughs and juvenile entertainment,
I’ve ever turned this into a contest to see which nation has more pathetic
and useless bureaucrats.
The United Kingdom has some very strong contestants.
As a patriotic American, I’m proud to say that we’re giving the Brits a
run for their money. As you can see, the United States is filled with
equally stupid and clueless government officials.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
A few of the above are not such bad ideas. On some beaches perhaps life vests
should be required for anybody planting both feet in the water.
Licensing bums may be a good idea if constitutional rights are ignored.
And why not require sunscreen at summer camps?
What's wrong with Ole or Sven or Lena for a dangerous Navy Seal operation?
Yeah, I know that they're losers whereas Geronimo was a fierce and brave
Indian Native American chief.
The Rhode Island boy's defense might be that the added soldiers were part of
President Obama's plan for increasing the size of the force at war. IT's PC if
President Obama supports it.
And women should passively tolerate being raped instead of threatening would
be rapists with a knife or gun.
And Garfield should not have been taken from the pet store by that totally
incompetent dope named John.
And why shouldn't there be a requirement to hire people incompetent for the
job? Somebody has to hire them. Oops, I didn't mean they should fly my plane or
drive my bus or fix my car's engine or teach my grandchildren.
Let's give nursing home residents jobs instead of beds.
It really is unfair to pay brain surgeons more than symphony percussionists
and high school softball coaches.
Why shouldn't we rid our prisons for inmates who promise to behave for the
rest of their lives?
If anybody can join the U.S. Congress without a license, why must we license
our teachers, truck drivers, pharmacists, plumbers, pilots, nurses, and medical
doctors?
What's really wrong with requiring models to have full figures and big feet?
A Health Cost Savings Idea from Two Tuck Graduate School of Business
Professors at Dartmouth
"Quality Health Care at 3% of the Cost," by Vijay Govindarajan and Anant
Sundaram, Harvard Business Review Blog, November 2, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/a_great_idea_for_lowering_cost.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Every so often, good ideas
to lower health care costs in the US will come from unlikely sources.
Consider organ
transplants. Approximately 30% of the world's 100,000 transplants
performed annually are done in the US. Nine out of 10 of these involve
kidney, liver, or pancreas.
One important
problem in organ transplantation is the immune system's adverse reaction
to foreign objects, leading to organ rejection. Transplant nephrologists
use
induction therapy to deal with this problem.
In this therapy, the physician
introduces antibodies (typically, polyclonal
as opposed to monoclonal) into the patient's system to help suppress
rejection.
The most common
process in the US involves induction using polyclonal antibodies
derived from rabbits. In a typical kidney
transplant, for example, therapy using rabbit-derived antibodies costs
up to $20,000 per patient.
Yet, evidence —
from a team of nephrologists led by Dr. K. S. Nayak at
Lazarus Hospitals
in Hyderabad, India — shows that use of an equine-derived antibody can
lower this cost to $600 to $800 per patient. This cost reduction is
achieved by using a product made by an Indian company,
Bharat Serums &
Vaccines Ltd., and switching to a
carefully-managed protocol that administers the equine-derived antibody
in a single dose, as opposed to a multiple-dose protocol common in the
US. (A smaller dose is given just prior to surgery since it aborts the
initiation of rejection, and predisposes the patient to fewer
post-surgical infections.) This approach has now been adopted in many
developing countries.
In
published research, Dr. Nayak and his team
show that success rates from the use of such a single-dose,
equine-derived, $600- $800 induction therapy are no different from those
from the $20,000 procedure. If adopted across the 30,000 transplants in
the US, this protocol could conceivably save hundreds of millions of US
health care dollars, annually.
Interestingly,
product development and testing of the equine-based product was
originally done decades ago by researchers at the University of
Minnesota, but
use of
the antibody failed to get FDA approval and its production stopped in
1994.
This raises two
nettlesome questions. First, why did it take a team from emerging
markets to adopt this US innovation? Second, why do cost-saving
innovations like these fail to get adopted in the US health care system?
Our take on the question
of why this was first adopted in an emerging market and not in the US?
Contrast per capita incomes in the US and India: The average American
earns $50,000 per year, while the average Indian earns one-thirtieth of
that. Indeed, incomes of the majority of Indians lie below that
already-low average. Add to that a lack of social safety nets or health
insurance. Such severe economic constraints can, counter-intuitively, be
an advantage in the innovation game. Why? Health care providers in
countries like India are forced to push the price-performance paradigm.
They are pressed to offer quality care at an ultra-low price.
But what might explain
the US health care system's inability to adopt and widely diffuse such
low-cost solutions? Is it the incentives inherent in a fee-for-service
system that compensates providers based on quantity rather than quality
of services? Is it the delinking of the consumption of health care from
price signals — i.e., providing a service to those who almost never have
to see a bill, let alone pay for it out-of-pocket? Is it the way in
which we train medical professionals, training that places no emphasis
on cost of care?
How can high quality-low
cost innovations be adopted in the US? What needs to change?
Jensen Comment
The above article illustrates how to mislead with aggregations. The above
article claims about 30% of the 100,000 global transplants are performed in the
U.S. However, if we delete the relatively simple kidney transplants from the
aggregation the proportion for the U.S. skyrockets, especially in terms of the
much more complicated heart and heart-liver transplants ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_transplantation
One of my good friends (an attorney) in Bangor, Maine has lived with a heart
transplant for over 30 years and is still doing very well in his retirement
years. I wonder how long he would've lived on the less expensive equine-derived
antibody therapy? One of the problems with major new cost cutting innovations in
the area of organ transplantation is that survival studies take many years.
The article does not mention the fact that Texas is prospering with the
simple cost saving idea of passing a constitutional amendment to cap punitive
damage awards in the State of Texas. The major heart transplantation center in
Houston benefits greatly from the resulting decline in malpractice insurance.
A major problem with transplantation is the shortage of donors having genetic
matches with patients awaiting transplants. This makes kidneys less of a problem
since a relative can donate a kidney and still live on with a full and happy
life. But awaiting a heart transplant often becomes futile. I think there should
be some kind of government program to significantly reward people while living
for agreeing to donate organs immediately after death. Perhaps there could also
be a program to reward their estates, although this presents some moral hazards
of terminating Uncle Joe before his time.
Bob Jensen's threads on health care ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
"Health-Care Law Spurs a Shift to Part-Time Workers," by By Julie
Jargon, Louise Radnofsky, and Alsexantra Berzon, The Wall Street Journal,
November 4, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204707104578094941709047834.html?mod=ITP_marketplace_0&mg=reno-wsj
Some low-wage employers are moving toward hiring
part-time workers instead of full-time ones to mitigate the health-care
overhaul's requirement that large companies provide health insurance for
full-time workers or pay a fee.
Several restaurants, hotels and retailers have
started or are preparing to limit schedules of hourly workers to below 30
hours a week. That is the threshold at which large employers in 2014 would
have to offer workers a minimum level of insurance or pay a penalty starting
at $2,000 for each worker.
The shift is one of the first significant steps by
employers to avoid requirements under the health-care law, and whether the
trend continues hinges on Tuesday's election results. Republican
presidential nominee Mitt Romney has pledged to overturn the Affordable Care
Act, although he would face obstacles doing so.
President Barack Obama is set to push ahead with
implementing the 2010 law if he is re-elected.
Pillar Hotels & Resorts this summer began to focus
more on hiring part-time workers among its 5,500 employees, after the
Supreme Court upheld the health-care overhaul, said Chief Executive Chris
Russell. The company has 210 franchise hotels, under the Sheraton, Fairfield
Inns, Hampton Inns and Holiday Inns brands.
"The tendency is to say, 'Let me fill this position
with a 40-hour-a-week employee.' "Mr. Russell said. "I think we have to
think differently."
Pillar offers health insurance to employees who
work 32 hours a week or more, but only half take it, and Mr. Russell wants
to limit his exposure to rising health-care costs. He said he planned to
pursue new segments of the population, such as senior citizens, to find
workers willing to accept part-time employment.
He described the shift as a "cultural change"
toward hiring more part-timers and not a prohibition against hiring
full-timers.
CKE Restaurants Inc., parent of the Carl's Jr. and
Hardee's burger chains, began two months ago to hire part-time workers to
replace full-time employees who left, said Andy Puzder, CEO of the
Carpinteria, Calif., company. CKE, which is owned by private-equity firm
Apollo Management LP, APO -3.31% offers limited-benefit plans to all
restaurant employees, but the federal government won't allow those policies
to be sold starting in 2014 because of low caps on payouts. Mr. Puzder said
he has advised Mr. Romney's campaign on economic issues in an unpaid
capacity.
Home retailer Anna's Linens Inc. is considering
cutting hours for some full-time employees to avoid the insurance mandate if
the health-care law isn't repealed, said CEO Alan Gladstone.
Mr. Gladstone said the costs of providing coverage
to all 1,100 sales associates who work at least 30 hours a week would be
prohibitive, although he was weighing alternative options, such as raising
prices.
The Costa Mesa, Calif., company currently offers
benefits to workers who put in at least 32 hours a week.
Supporters of the health-care overhaul said most
large employers already covered workers voluntarily, and requiring others to
do so or pay a penalty was important to level the playing field between
businesses.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and
Human Services said the administration didn't believe the law would
substantially affect employment, citing the Massachusetts health-care
overhaul signed by then-Gov. Romney in 2006.
"Consistent with the experience in Massachusetts
and projections of the Congressional Budget Office, the health-care law will
improve the affordability of health care while not significantly impacting
the labor market," spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt said in a written
statement. "This law will decrease costs, strengthen our businesses and make
it easier for employers to provide coverage to their workers."
Administration officials declined to answer further questions.
Companies in industries that already offer full
benefits have indicated that they weren't planning major changes around the
law. Several employers with hourly workforces, including Marriott
International Inc. MAR -0.73% hotels, the Costco Wholesale Corp. COST -1.04%
warehouse chain and the Panera Bread Co. PNRA -0.01% restaurant chain also
said they had no plans to change employee hours in response to the law.
But benefits consultants said most retail and hotel
clients have explored shifting toward part-time workers.
Those industries are less likely to offer health
coverage now, and if they do, the plans typically are too skimpy to meet the
minimum-coverage requirements.
"They've all considered it," Matthew Stevenson, a
workforce-strategy principal at Mercer. In a July survey, 32% of retail and
hospitality company respondents told the consulting firm that they were
likely to reduce the number of employees working 30 hours a week or more.
Consultants have warned that companies that use
more part-time labor risk productivity losses from high staff turnover and
lower morale. Laurence Geller, who until last week was CEO of Strategic
Hotels & Resorts Inc., BEE +0.36% said he weighed moving toward part-time
workers but decided against risking that highly trained staff at his
high-end hotels would go elsewhere. The company owns hotels bearing the Four
Seasons, Fairmont and Ritz-Carlton names.
The insurance mandate applies to companies with the
equivalent of 50 or more full-time workers, a calculation based on the
number of people employed by the company and an average of hours they work
in a week. Companies are adjusting schedules now because they will have to
review employment rolls for up to a year in advance to determine which
workers will be deemed full-time under the law.
A company will have to pay a penalty of $2,000 for
every such worker, after the first 30, if it doesn't offer qualifying health
coverage. If a company offers health insurance but the coverage is deemed
sparse or unaffordable, the company must pay $3,000 for every worker who
gets a federal tax subsidy to purchase coverage as an individual.
Continued in article
Adding Pain to Misery in Medicare Funding of the Future
"The Dementia Plague: As the world's population of older people rapidly
grows in the coming years, Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia will become a
health-care disaster," by Stephen S. Hall, MIT's Technology Review, October
5, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/featured-story/429494/the-dementia-plague/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121005
Bob Jensen's threads on health care ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm