No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for the 'Politics – National' Category

April 23, 2011

Directive 10-289

by @ 13:17. Filed under Business, Defending the American Dream, Economy, Economy Held Hostage, Law and order, Politics - National.

This week, the NLRB filed a complaint against Boeing in an attempt to prevent them from opening an new manufacturing facility in South Carolina.

Boeing is opening the new facility for two reasons.  First, it wants the ability to manufacture its new airliner in a redundant facility giving it greater capacity.  Second, after several contentious years with the Union at it’s Washington State facility, Boeing was looking to find a location to mitigate the Union’s impact on production.  Enter South Carolina.

South Carolina is a right to work state.  Right to work means many things for employees and employers.  Amongst them is that an employee can not be required to join a union and pay union dues as a condition of employment at a particular business i.e. “closed shop.”  The benefits for Boeing are obvious.  The benefits for Boeing are those that any prudent business would seek given the troubled labor history of Boeing’s Washington State facilities.

In what can only be the missing chapter from Atlas Shrugged, the NLRB’s complaint is based solely on Boeing’s desire to mitigate it’s labor challenges:

The NLRB said its investigation found that the company violated two sections of the National Labor Relations Act in 2009 when it picked Charleston International Airport as the site of its second 787 assembly plant rather than expanding its existing factory in Everett.

Specifically, Boeing officials made “coercive statements” to its unionized employees starting in 2009 that the company would shift or had shifted production work away from the Puget Sound area because of labor walkouts, the agency said.

Wow! “coercive statements,” including their desire to move away from labor disputes are the basis for the NLRB complaint! Can anyone possibly imagine that there may have been some “coercive statements” from the union that may have included threats to shut Boeing plants down which the have done on numerous occasions?

With his desire to “spread the wealth around” and now his NLRB agents attempting to dictate business decisions as basic as where they will do business, I’m beginning to believe that Obama doesn’t view “Atlas Shrugged” as fiction but rather as a road map for full implemention of his socialistic desires. Does anyone really believe Obama would not implement an “Equalization of Opportunity” plan or Directive 10-289?

April 19, 2011

Government Motors flaming out – both figuratively and literally

by @ 18:52. Tags:
Filed under Business, Politics - National.

Item #1 (H/Ts – Kevin and Fausta) – The same Chevrolet Volt involved in a garage fire last week burst into flames a second time Monday.

Item #2 – The Wall Street Journal reports that the US Treasury is looking to dump the remainder of its holdings in Government Motors (500,065,254 shares) over the summer. At the current trading price of $29.51, that would mean we the taxpayers lost over $14 billion on just the auto-manufacturing part of the GM bailout while (assuming GM makes it to the end of 2014 and the UAW fully cashes out), the entity that was most-responsible for the collapse of Old GM, the UAW, would make $12.55 billion on the deal.

That led Warner Todd Huston to unveil the last car from the current version of GM – the Government Motors WeeKan.

April 18, 2011

Nobody’s Senator raised no money this quarter. In other news, water is wet.

by @ 17:11. Filed under Politics - National, Politics - Wisconsin.

Since The Hill decided to breathlessly report that Herb “Nobody’s Senator” Kohl raised $0.00 in the first quarter of 2011, Baseball Crank decided to ruminate on it, and Allahpundit put it in the Hot Air Headlines, I’ll explain why it means NOTHING for everybody.

Let’s first go back to the ends of 2004 (just under 2 years before Kohl’s re-election in 2006) and 2010 (just under 2 years before Kohl is up for re-election again). By the end of the 2003-2004 cycle, Kohl raised $2,148 in individual contributions, contributed $185,000 to himself, and had $1,493 cash on hand with no debt. By the end of the 2009-2010 cycle, Kohl raised $270 from individual contributions, contributed $281,500 to himself, loaned himself $1,000,000 and had a net of $4,348 cash on hand (after removing the $1 million in self-debt). The situations were, outside of Kohl’s early loan to himself this time around, similar 2 years out.

Next, on to the first quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2011. In the first quarter of 2005, Kohl raised…wait for it…wait for it…$195.00 in individual contributions, loaned himself $2,000,000, spent $34,000 on polling, and spent another $20,000 on various other expenses. In the first quarter of 2010, Kohl raised…wait for it, wait for it…$0.00 in individual contributions, spent $42,000 on polling, and spent another $9,000 on other expenses. Again, the situations were similar.

As for the entirety of the 2005-2006 election cycle, Kohl raised $11,342 from individuals, $450 from non-party PACs, $120 from the Democrat Party PACs, and loaned himself $6,250,000. Once again, Kohl proved that the bastardization of his opening campaign slogan of “Nobody’s Senator But Yours” to “Nobody’s Senator” is the operative phrase.

Whether Kohl decides to run again or not is at least as much predicated on the fortunes of his Milwaukee Bucks as the decision is on anything else, and certainly more than on his (lack-of-)fundraising prowess. We in Wisconsin have often joked that the Bucks are a once-every-six-years playoff contender, coinciding with their owner’s re-election cycle.

April 17, 2011

Sunday Hot Read – Keith Hennessey’s “Understanding the President’s new budget proposal”

by @ 16:37. Filed under Politics - National.

If you’re confused by President Obama’s speech/”budget”, Keith Hennessey deciphered it for you. I’ll skip to the quick, but I encourage you to read the whole thing:

Here are four broad reactions to the new proposal.

First, this is a short-term budget, not a long-term budget. There are three forces driving our long-run government spending and deficit problem:

  1. demographics;
  2. unsustainable growth in per capita health spending; and
  3. unsustainable promises made by past elected officials, enshrined in entitlement benefit formulas.

The President’s proposal addresses none of these forces. It instead spends most of its effort on everything but those factors. His proposed Medicare and Medicaid savings, while large in aggregate dollars, are quite small relative to the total amount to be spent on those programs, and he lets the largest program in the federal budget (Social Security) grow unchecked. While Bowles and Simpson focused their efforts on the major entitlements and also addressed other spending areas and taxes, the President’s proposal does the reverse, focusing on other mandatory spending, taxes, and defense. That’s a short-term focus.

Second, this proposal “feels” to me like the recently concluded discretionary spending deal. It’s the size of a typical deficit reduction bill that Congress usually does every five or so years. I’m sure the affected interest groups are even now preparing to invade Washington to explain how a 3-5% cut will devastate them. The problem is that our fiscal problems are now so big that they require much larger policy changes.

Third, while framed as a centrist proposal, the substance leans pretty far left. It’s deficit reduction through (triggered) tax increases on the rich, plus defense cuts, plus unspecified other mandatory cuts and process mechanisms that might cut Medicare provider payments. Centrist Democrat proposals do all of these things, but they also reform Social Security and Medicare, usually through a combination of raising the eligibility age, means-testing, and raising taxes.

Fourth, the President’s speech was campaign-like in its characterization of and attacks on the Ryan plan.

The President’s proposal could be the opening bid in a negotiation with Congressional Republicans. When you combine this substance with the President’s aggressive partisan attacks and framing of the Ryan budget, however, it’s hard to see how this leads to a big fiscal deal this year or next. A small incremental bill, which “cuts” spending by a couple hundred billion dollars over the next decade, is possible. But the chances of a long-term grand bargain in the next two years just plummeted from an already low starting point.

Bonus must-read – James Pethokoukis found a Goldman Sachs analysis which shows that up to 60% of Obama’s deficit “reduction” over the next decade comes from tax increases, including an unspecified $1 trillion in new taxes (over 12 years) compared to the CBO “alternate baseline”. That does NOT include either the tax hikes on those making over $200,000 or the “trigger” to essentially eliminate itemized deductions when the debt-to-GDP ratio fails to fall.

April 15, 2011

Must-see TV – Iowahawk and Hammer edition

by @ 9:07. Filed under Budget Chop, Politics - National, Taxes.

I don’t think you’ll be able to take Iowahawk’s advice of “Sleep tight, everybody” after this…

Meanwhile, Mary Katharine Ham dreams of what an audit should be.

Happy </sarcasm> Traditional Tax Day, everybody.

Friday Hot Read: Phil Gramm’s “The Obama Growth Discount”

by @ 7:57. Filed under Economy Held Hostage, Politics - National.

(H/T – Tom Blumer, who has some further stats worth reading)

Former Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) wrote in today’s Wall Street Journal just how disappointing the POR Economy (™ Tom Blumer) “recovery” has been:

Had the U.S. economy recovered from the current recession the way it bounced back from the other 10 recessions since World War II, our per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) would be $3,553 higher than it is today, and 11.9 million more Americans would be employed.

Those startling figures are based on the average recovery rate of real GDP and jobs three years after the beginning of each postwar recession. Some apologists suggest that the current recovery is so weak because the recession was so deep. But the totality of our experience in the postwar period is exactly the opposite—the bigger the bust, the bigger the boom that follows.

On average, three years after the four deepest previous recessions started, real GDP was 7.6% higher than the pre-recession level. During the Obama recovery, real GDP is up only 0.1%. Forty months after the start of the 1953, 1957, 1973 and 1981 recessions, total employment was on average 4.7% higher than the pre-recession peaks, while total employment today is still down 4.7%—that’s a total employment gap of 13.9 million jobs.

Gramm goes on to further contrast the POR Economy to that of the Reagan recovery, including a laundry list of sabotage undertaken by Obama.

There is a further bit of required reading from Tom – what jobs have been gained since the “official end” of the recession has been entirely temporary work. That’s right – since June 2010 2009, a seasonally-adjusted 263,000 non-temporary jobs have been lost.

That’s the reason why Shoebox started the “Economy Held Hostage” series.

Revisoins/extensions (4:05 pm 4/15/2011) – Corrected a typo. D’OH!

April 14, 2011

I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday $25B in 2021 for a hamburger $18B in new spending today

by @ 16:13. Filed under Budget Chop, Politics - National.

I briefly touched on this as part of my third revision/extension to yesterday’s post that found that the federal government, under the “Grand Deal of 2011”, will be spending $18 billion more in discretionary funds in FY2011 than it did in FY2010 using the bottom-line outlays. I decided it needed its own post.

The CBO explained today that the reduction in non-emergency FY2011 budget authority will, assuming it gets adhered to in future budget years, eventually result in between $20 billion and $25 billion of reduced spending through FY2021 compared to leaving the budget authority at FY2010 levels. Of course, that assumes that Wimpy Congress actually remembers when it’s Tuesday that the budget authority was cut. It also is in current dollars, which means that once inflation is figured in, it’s likely that the $18 billion in new spending today won’t be fully-covered by the potential $25 billion in reduced spending over the succeeding 10 years.

It’s actually two situations. The future savings, that may or (more likely) may not come, is based on the Wimpy principle of saying, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” The old “Popeye” cartoons never did resolve that, but you can bet your bottom grain of smokeless gunpowder that the Congressional equivalent, especially as long as either half of the bipartisan Party-In-Government has control of so much as one House of Congress, will simply declare Tuesday as not existing.

The present situation is sort of like the carpenter example that Jeff Dunetz outlined:

The difference in the numbers are the difference between outlay and spending authority. Look at it this way. Say you are a carpenter and have been given $100,000 to redo someones kitchen. After one week’s worth of work you have allocated $75,000 to specific items but you haven’t purchased anything as of yet. The home owner comes to you and says you can only spend $70,000. You have cut the budget (or spending authority) by $30,000 but cut outlays by only $5,000.

The problem is that the outlays are actually the cost overruns, which, because Congress is the opposite of progress, will be fully-funded. With that in mind, let’s restate the example:

Say you are a carpenter and have been given $100,000 to redo someone’s kitchen. You’ve been asked by the homeowner and his wife to keep the spending to a maximum of $75,000 (i.e. budget authority) because that’s what the two agreed it would cost, but he agreed to cover any and all cost overruns out of a “separate” account his wife knows nothing about (hence the $100,000 in outlays). After a week, you discover that it’s actually going to cost $105,000 and take an extra week. Because there’s a penalty in the contract negotiated by the wife, the requested maximum has been cut to $70,000, but because the the homeowner also signed a provision putting him on the hook for the entirety of the cost overruns, it’s still going to cost $105,000.

April 13, 2011

Having Balls

by @ 20:05. Filed under Budget Chop, Politics - National.

When running for the 2010 elections, Republicans attempting to harness the Tea Party enthusiasm promised that they would cut $100 B from the budget.  Barely had they gotten elected and the Republicans backed off their $100 B promise and said they could only get something in the $60 B range.  When it came to actually getting an agreement, they managed to hold on to a cut that was advertised as $38 B, but quickly identified as only $14 B.

Now that folks have had a chance to read the actual legislation, it turns out that none of the previously touted numbers are the real reduction that Boehner was able to negotiate.  According to numerous sources, the actual amount of deficit reductions that Speaker, “We are going to cut $100 billion in discretionary spending next week” Boehner managed to get was only $353 Million…MILLION!

When it became apparent last year that the Republicans would retake the house I had conversations with several people who are much more knowledgeable of Republican leadership than I.  I told them my reservations about Boehner becoming speaker and how everything I had seen from him lead me to believe that he was another Washington lifer who would say or do what he needed to to keep his position.  I was told by several of them that Boehner was the “real deal.”  While now living in Kentucky, I agreed to be from Missouri and be shown that Boehner was a conservative.

No more!

I am now on record as saying that Boehner is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the Republican party.  Boehner is either a charlatan or ignorant.  Regardless of which, he is not worthy of leading a party’s effort that is overwhelmingly made up of a base that desires, no, DEMANDS reductions in government spending.

This continuing resolution needs to be voted down.  Boehner needs to be personally repudiated by any true House conservative for putting them in a position of having to support this sham of an agreement.

I hate Nancy Pelosi.  I despise everything about the woman.  Even with my level of disdain for her I give her props for one thing; she has a set of balls as big as two moons hung side by side.  Nancy has balls and Boehner is a eunuch!

Going from $100 billion of spending “cuts” to $18 billion of new spending – UPDATE – And maybe $20-25 billion of savings down the road

by @ 18:31. Filed under Budget Chop, Politics - National.

(H/Ts – Allahpundit and Ace)

The Associated Press (as carried by the Washington Post) reported on a Congressional Budget Office report of the purported $38 billion cut deal reached by House Republicans, Senate Democrats and Barack Obama last weekend, and found that not only is the actual outlays authorized only a (wrongly-estimated) $15 billion cut, but that the impact to the deficit is…wait for it…

…Wait for it…

$352 million (this on a roughly-$1,600,000 million FY2011 deficit).

But wait, it gets worse. While I haven’t been able to find the CBO report referenced by the AP, I did find a 1-page estimate of the FY2011 discretionary spending amounts in the deal. Take a good look at the number at the lower-right corner – $1,364,714 million (or if you prefer, $1,365 billion after rounding to the nearest billion). That is the total amount of outlays that will take place in FY2011, including $76 billion for “emergencies”. In FY2010, the federal government had $1,347 billion in discretionary outlays.

Fucking brilliant, Boehner. I hope this deal fails and the government shuts down, then I hope somebody primaries Boehner right out of his district.

Revisions/extensions (6:34 pm 4/13/2011) – Somehow forgot the link to the article. Fixed.

R&E part 2 (9:25 pm 4/13/2011) – National Journal dug up (H/T – Dad29) a further document from the CBO comparing the total discretionary spending outlays in the “deal” to those called for in all the previous continuing resolutions for this year. Roll tape of the bottom-line projected full-year outlays of the continuing resolutions that had ending dates in 2011:

  • The CR through 3/4/2011 – $1,361 billion
  • The CR through 3/18/2011 – $1,360 billion
  • The CR through 4/8/2011 – $1,359 billion
  • The CR through 4/15/2011 – $1,368 billion (fucking brilliant – a $9 billion increase just to “save” the federal government for a week)

Oh, did I forget to mention that even HR1, the supposed $100 billion $61 billion non-security discretionary-spending cut, had a total projected discretionary outlay of $1,356 billion (once again, higher than FY2010’s $1,347 billion)?

R&E part 3 (3:30 pm 4/14/2011) – (H/T – Jeff Dunetz) The CBO explains how, assuming Congress doesn’t simply add all the spending back in, there MIGHT be a cumulative $20 billion-$25 billion in actual spending reduction over the next decade versus doing nothing. Of course, once one figures inflation into that, even the $25 billion in savings down the road won’t match the $18 billion in new spending today.

Shorter Obama budget plan

by @ 15:45. Filed under Politics - National.

The classic galley ship scene from “Ben-Hur” describes perfectly what Obama thinks the budget needs to be…

Of course, there is one difference – unlike Arrius, I don’t think Obama will eventually tire of ordering ramming speed from we the rowers.

April 11, 2011

Distilling the Republican “Big Three”

by @ 12:59. Filed under 2012 Presidential Contest.

One of Jim Geraghty’s readers beat me to this observation – “Tim Pawlenty is the Huck/Mitt love child — a telegenic blue state governor with a populist tone.”

Insert your own inappropriate punchline here…

It’s becoming a pattern, federal edition

by @ 10:56. Filed under Politics - National.

The first two big battles of 2011 in Wisconsin both involved big contributors to the Democrat Party (a successful attempt to limit both product and medical malpractice liability, thus reducing the paydays of lawyers, and an attempt to limit the mandatory union dues for public workers that is still stuck in the courts). Taking a page from the Wisconsin Democrats, Senate Democrat leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama successfully threatened to shut down federal government unless Planned Barrenhoo…er, Parenthood, which contributed over $1 million to Democrats the last election cycle, continued to receive federal funding.

Yep, it’s all about the money (oh, and forcing a minority, highly-divisive social agenda down the throats of the country).

April 1, 2011

Friday Hot Read – Stephen Moore’s “We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers”

by @ 8:40. Filed under Economy, Politics - National.

Stephen Moore has a devastating look at why we’re in so much trouble in today’s Wall Street Journal:

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government….

Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. (Editor’s note; for several months in 2009 and 2010, Wisconsin had more government workers than manufacturing workers, and the ratio as of February was 435,300 in manufacturing and 424,700 in government) Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida’s ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York’s.

Do read the entire, depressing thing.

March 31, 2011

Eating the rich

by @ 18:42. Filed under Politics - National.

In case you, like me, missed Iowahawk’s explanation of how we can get through 2011 on a mere $10 billion a day, Bill Whittle has you covered with a video version…

Of course, as Bill points out, what happens in 2012 when we need $11 billion a day and the rich are gone?

March 29, 2011

Cash for Clunkers II – Electric Boogaloo

by @ 10:58. Filed under Business, Politics - National.

Kerry Picket caught a change to the $7500-per-electric vehicle giveaway to Government Motors being pushed by Michigan Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow in a proposed bill and President Barack Obama in his 2012 budget. To wit, instead of a tax credit of $7,500 for buying the Chevy Volt (and the all-electric Nissan Leaf), that $7,500 would be taken off at the dealer, with the dealer hoping to get compensated by the government at a later date. If you don’t believe Kerry’s and my assertion that it is Cash for Clunkers II, allow me to lift a couple paragraphs from the story:

In fact, Department of Energy’s David Sandalow told Bloomberg News in February the insta-credit would operate the “same way the 2009 ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program worked.”

The Detroit News reported Vice President Joe Biden said at an Indiana battery assembly plant, “You won’t have to wait,’ it would be like the cash-for-clunkers program.”

No word if the dealers will have to run glass through the engines of any cars traded in for the overpriced glorified golf carts, or whether the compensation for the dealers would be any faster than it was for the first Cash for Clunkers.

It’s also worth noting that Government Motors is currently trading at somewhere under $31/share. If the Treasury could dump its remaining 33.3% of Government Motors now, it will have lost over $13 billion on the venture, most of it transferred to the UAW.

Revisions/extensions (11:31 am 3/29/2011) – There’s more discussion at Sister Toldjah, who suggested a new liberal motto (“If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again”), The PJ Tattler from Bryan Preston, who noted all the Dem-supporting groups who will also be bailed out, and Memeorandum (just because I haven’t linked there lately).

March 24, 2011

59% of insiders think we’re rubes

by @ 17:49. Filed under Politics - National.

(H/T – Allahpundit via Dad29)

Rasmussen Reports, from time to time, has noted the difference between the ruling class and the rest of us. Today, National Journal has followed suit. One of the questions in their current Political Insiders Poll was, “On balance, doe sthe public know enough about the issues facing Washington to form wise opinions about what should be done?” 59% of those surveyed, including 71% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans, said, “No.”

At the end of the article, National Journal listed a sampling of answers from all four parts of the partisan portion of the sample. Before I list a couple of them related to entitlements, I’ll quote an anonymous Democrat operative, “Though we claim to represent ‘the people’ we are much more likely to doubt their ability to understand public policy. Republicans don’t represent the people’s interests, but have more confidence in them.”

I’ll let you guess the party on these “gems”:

  • “Although the real proof of this will be when entitlements are under the knife.”
  • “Although the real proof of this will be when entitlements are under the knife.”
  • “They don’t know that Social Security and Medicare are going broke.”

March 22, 2011

Tax the rich? We’ve already tried that.

by @ 19:44. Filed under Politics - National, Taxes.

(H/T – Allahpundit)

Scott A. Hodge of the Tax Foundation pointed out that the tax burden in the United States during the mid-2000s (specifically, 2005) was the most-progressive in the industrialized world. Specifically, while the richest 10% of Americans had, according to the OECD, 33.5% of the market income (3rd in the industrialized world), they paid 45.1% of the taxes (highest in the industrialized world). For those of you wondering, the tax take includes both income and social insurance taxes (and judging by the numbers, also state/local taxes). To put it another way, those in the top 10% paid a ratio of taxes to income of 1.35, easily the highest among industrialized nations, and far higher than the average of 1.11.

Further, during his testimony to Congress last week, Hodge pointed out that, again according to the OECD, low-income Americans had the lowest tax burden of any industrialized nation.

Let’s relate that to the federal income tax. One of the things the IRS does is offer statistical releases of tax data. One series of tables breaks down the returns with a positive Adjusted Gross Income by AGI and taxes paid. In 2005, those in the top 10% of filers had 46.4% of AGI and paid 70.3% of income taxes. The ratio of taxes-to-income was 1.51. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of filers with positive AGIs (which I note again because there are those who through various means had negatifve AGIs) had 12.8% of income and paid 3.1% of income taxes, for a taxes-to-income ratio of 0.24.

Fast forward to 2008, when once again the bottom 50% of earners had 12.8% of income. Their share of the income taxes dropped to 2.7%, reducing the taxes-to-income ratio to 0.21. Meanwhile, the top 10% saw their share of the income drop to 34.7%, but their share of the income taxes only dropped to 69.9%. That caused the taxes-to-income ratio to increase to 1.69.

March 17, 2011

Reid on SocSecurity – I’m getting mine, you won’t be getting yours

by @ 19:28. Filed under Social Security crater.

(H/T – Ed Morrissey)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he won’t take a look at making Social Security solvent for at least 20 years. Ed has already done a fine job knocking holes in that statement, but I have a couple of wrecking balls to deliver as well. I’ll let Ed handle the set-up:

Why take action now, if the “solvency” of Social Security won’t be at issue until 2037? In the first place, that’s debatable in and of itself. The SSA has slipped into red ink on a monthly basis six years earlier than projected by Peter Orszag in 2008, when he ran the Congressional Budget Office, which means that the extended projections are certainly questionable. The “fund” has no cash on hand, either; it consists of Treasuries that SSA received so Congress could spend the money over the last few decades. When SSA starts cashing those Treasuries, as it has to do now to cover monthly deficits, the federal government has to sell more bonds to cover the cost.

Since Ed quotes extensively Charles Blahous, author of Social Security: The Unfinished Work, and Blahous used the 2009 Trustees Report for the basis of his book, I’ll use that as well. In combined terms, between 2011 and 2030, using the intermediate case scenario, the combined OASDI trust funds will spend $3,482 billion (or if you prefer, $3.48 trillion) more than they take in. Through 2036, the last full year of “solvency” for the combined funds, that figure jumps to $7,167 billion. As Ed notes, that’s money the Treasury will have to borrow, or at least try to borrow.

The bad news is the actuaries that put together that report “sort of” missed on the near-term predictions. Instead of the combined trust funds running a $37 billion cash surplus between 2009 and 2010, they ran a $45 billion cash deficit. If one adjusts the future predictions to reflect the past 2 years of poor performance, the “drop dead” date drops to 2029.

The ugly news is that there is no combined OASDI trust fund. The two parts of Social Security, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance, are two separate entities, and the smaller Disability Insurance fund will reach exhaustion before the end of this decade. At that point, those on federal disability will be taking a significant cut in benefits, on the order of 15%-25%, because neither of the programs are currently authorized to borrow to meet costs.

March 13, 2011

Kicking the Can

by @ 21:54. Filed under Budget Chop, Politics - National.

At the federal and state levels, from the east coast to the west coast, in traditionally conservative and even traditionally liberal jurisdictions, the 2010 elections had one message: fix the fiscal problems!  It seems that jurisdictions that saw the biggest shifts in political ideology have taken their mandate on acted on it. 

The State of Wisconsin which ousted long time liberal Senator Russ Feingold and equally liberal Governor Jim Doyle, wasted little time in responding to voter expectations.  Governor Scott Walker and the Republican led Assembly and Senate have delivered budget changes that will benefit taxpayers not only today but into the future.

Michigan, under the new leadership of Governor Rick Snyder, is also taking steps to restore fiscal sanity to a state long led by Democrats who thought that Washington would fund them in perpetuity regardless of the outcome.  If you thought the screaming and ballyhooing in Wisconsin was entertaining, Governor Snyder has a plan that allows the State to take over failing counties and municipalities under emergency decrees.

Yes, there are signs across the country that adults are finally in charge of the checkbook.  Across the country but not in Washington, D.C.

The same “fix the fiscal mess” message that changed leadership in Wisconsin, Michigan and other states elected 6 incremental Senate seats and 63 incremental House seats.  These increases came with an expectation that a host of fiscal issues including defunding Obamacare, reducing the deficit, reigning in government mandates, fixing entitlements etc., etc., etc., would be fixed.

To date, the newly elected Congress, especially the House, has been nothing but a disappointment.  They have provided a show legislation for reversing the Obamacare mandate.  However, they have tacitly or purposely avoided all opportunities to date of defunding the mandate.  This in spite of finding a surprise $105 B implementation mandate in the Obamacare legislation!  With all that we know now, it is hard to understand why every effort and every method is not being used to starve Obamacare of every dollar it needs for implementation and management.

There seems to be no recognition by this Congress of the need to shrink the size of government.  Even though the GAO has issued a report showing massive duplication of authority of government agencies, the elimination of which has been estimated to save $100B annually, the current budget proposals show no desire to address this low hanging fruit of spending reduction.

Perhaps the most disappointing action of the short life of this Congress is their action, or rather, inaction of dealing with a budget. 

As part of their campaign promises, the House Republican leadership comitted to a $100 B spending reduction for the current fiscal year.  However, each time they go to the microphone, that number seems to slip.  At this point, the House budget has $60 B in cuts with concerns being raised that this amount is “draconian.”

Draconian?  Really?  We had a deficit of $222 B in February ALONE and someone has the audacity to think $60 B is a problem?

The House is expected to pass ANOTHER continuing resolution on Tuesday.  The Senate is expected to agree to that resoltution to keep the government running past Thursday.  WHY?

With a $222 B shortfall in February (that’s one single month if you went to Wisconsin public schools) and the House budget fighting to get a reduction of $60 B for the rest of the year, what’s the point?  Even if they got the House plan adopted, should we really be congratulating them and doing high fives?  NO and HELL NO!

Wisconsin, Michigan and other states finally got some adults to deal with their fiscal situations.  Where are the adults we thought we elected to the House and the Senate?  McConnell has been a known RINO and inside the beltway guy.  Second only to Obama, he decides his principals by what he believes the personal political impact to be.  While it’s only been a few months, I’m ready to throw the towel in on Boehner as well.  Rather than force the issue of really addressing a spending reduction, Boenher is allowing Congress to continue to kick the can down the road.  For what?

We have a spending problem in Washington.  We elected men and women to address this spending problem.  Every day we allow the current administration to continue to function without forcing the issue is a day that the American people say “see, you’re no different than the Democrats” and another day that spending continues without abatement.

Like Governors Scott Walker and Rick Snyder, it’s time to address the spending problem head on.  We should have no more continuing resolutions.  Let the government “shut down.” Let’s see who notices.  Let’s have the debate.

March 12, 2011

“Drill baby, drill!”, says…Bill Clinton?

by @ 16:49. Filed under Energy, Politics - National.

(H/T – Ed Morrissey)

Poltico is reporting that, at a unrecordable IHS CERAWeek conference last night, during a moderated talk with former President George W. Bush and IHS CERA president Daniel Yergin, former President Bill Clinton came out in favor of increased oil exploration:

But according to multiple people in the room, Clinton, surprisingly, agreed with Bush on many oil and gas issues, including criticism of delays in permitting offshore since last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill.

“Bush said all the things you’d expect him to say” on oil and gas issues, said Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. But Clinton added, “You’d be surprised to know that I agree with all that,” according to Noe and others in the room.

Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it,” according to Noe and others.

“That was the most surprising thing they said,” Noe said.

The two former presidents both generally agreed on the need to get offshore drilling workers back on the job.

Clinton and Bush also agreed on the need for more domestic shale gas production, with Clinton noting that it has been done safely for years in his home state of Arkansas.

This (reportedly) comes from the President who took locking up our natural resources and turned it into an art form. Don’t forget that this came from an event where microphones were banned.

March 9, 2011

Another tipping point – government handouts equal 35% of wages and salaries, 18% of total personal income

by @ 22:17. Filed under Politics - National.

(H/T – Eric Odom)

CNBC reported yesterday that in January, personal transfer payments from government (including Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, veterans’ benefits, family assistance) equaled 35% (actually 35.2%) of the wages and salaries collected, a record figure.

Since the CNBC story did a horrible job of actually explaining things, I’ll draw your attention to the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Personal Income and Its Disposition table, and especially line 17. Yes, I did take the liberty of including every year available in a manner that allows you to download it as a comma-delimited file (suitable for display in any modern spreadsheet).

I do need to make a clarification of CNBC’s characterization of things – that 35.2% of wages/salaries the governmental personal transfer payments does not mean those handouts made up 35.2% of those wages and salaries; those are two separate items. Rather, the $2.26 billion that flowed out of government from the “haves” to the “wants” is 35.2% of the $6.41 billion in wages and salaries.

The handouts are, however, a part of the total personal income. Last year set a new record in the percentage of income that flowed out of government from the “haves” to the “wants”, at a full 18.0% of the $12.54 billion of total personal income in the country.

How outrageous is that latter amount? When records began to be kept in 1929, government transfers from the “haves” to the “wants” made up only 0.9% of personal income. The Great Depression caused that number to increase to 2.9% by 1931, and despite Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, it remained in that range until World War II caused a reduction. In 1946, when veterans’ benefits spiked following World War II, that went to a temporary high of 5.7%. The last year of Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency, with his “War on Poverty” and Medicare in full swing, that number was 7.5%. That ratio reached 10% (specifically 10.5%) in 1974, and spiked at 12.5% in 1983 before dropping back to a low of 11.2% in 1989. Even as late as 2008, government handouts made up less than 15% of personal income (with a high of 14.9% in 2008). In 2009, it jumped to 17.2%.

February 27, 2011

Happy 2nd birthday, Tea Party

by @ 10:21. Tags:
Filed under Politics - National.

Two years ago today, the first widespread Tea Parties happened. In case you missed what led up to them, Michelle Malkin wrote a short primer of the beginnings of what came to be known as the Tea Party. I had the fortune of being in DC for the first one there, and got a few pics of my own.

We may have a long way yet to go, but we have come a long way.

February 24, 2011

Thursday night Hot Read – Doug Ross’ “In the blue corner…”

by @ 21:03. Filed under Politics - National.

Doug Ross put together the three latest high-profile examples of union thuggery, all from this week. I’ll give you the close, which includes some further reading from Peter Ingemi (donator of loaner fedoras and delicious cannoli):

Welcome to the real world.

And that goes double for you pathetic legacy media types who decried non-existent “violent rhetoric” by Sarah Palin after Tucson… but can’t seem to find a single instance of actual leftist violence. What with all of your layer upon layer of fact-checking and such.

Get stuffed.

February 23, 2011

Übermensch proves his “mental superiority” by assaulting a woman

by @ 19:02. Filed under Compassionate Lieberals, Politics - National.

Most of the others who have blogged about the assault on FreedomWorks employee and friend Tabitha Hale by a thug hired by the Communications Workers of America to “aggressively demonstrate” in front of FreedomWorks’ offices have focused on the call to violence by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA). Allow me to take it a slightly-different direction. First, the video from Tabitha’s phone:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_Fl3AszuU[/youtube]

Note what the thug said just before he began his assault on Tabitha. History is replete with examples of those who believe themselves “mentally superior” also believing they have the right and duty to attack those they consider “mentally inferior”. One modern example was evident in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, where CBS correspondent Lara Logan was gang-raped. Another was evident in Madison on Saturday (see especially the second sign).

Update by Shoebox – “Taking a stand for Justice” – I’m hoping Tabitha pressing assault charges on this moron.  I can’t wait to see his appreciation of “justice” after this video is played in court.  It’s now beyond doubt and discussion that the left’s attempt to paint the tea party as violent is/was nothing more than a projection of themselves on a different political movement.  The left has shown themselves to be nothing but thugs and condoning of thuggary.

R&E part 2 (6:58 am 2/24/2011 – steveegg) – Tabitha provides the rest of the story of what happened outside FreedomWorks’ offices yesterday.

February 18, 2011

Right Wing News Blogger Poll – GOP 2012 Presidential Field, Feb 2011 edition

by @ 21:55. Filed under 2012 Presidential Contest.

Once again, John Hawkins took the temperature of a gaggle of right-of-center bloggers, and once again, I was one of the 63 who submitted their thoughts. This time, we had several questions on who we preferred in the GOP Presidential field.

The most-interesting answer was the combined first-choice/second-choice results. The supposed rock-stars of CPAC, Ron Paul and Donald Trump, netted a total of one (second-place) vote. Surprisingly, Chris Christie ran away with 30 votes (23 first-place votes to run away with that category, 7 second-place votes). My choices (Herman Cain as 1st, Sarah Palin as 2nd) finished, respectively fourth (tied for third in 1st-place votes, tied for fifth in 2nd-place votes) and second (a distant second in 1st-place votes, barely first in 2nd-place votes).

We’re still almost a full year from the primary season, so things can and will change.

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