by | BLOG, Israel, OBAMA
“What Hamas did was horrific, and there is no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable … And so, if you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth. And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree.”
The above comments were given on a podcast called “Pod Save America” just a few days ago by Barack Obama. It’s absolutely disgusting that a former President of the United States could be so blatantly wrong -headed and antisemitic in the face of abject terrorism. While he initially condemned the Hamas atrocities, he then continued to make a ridiculous moral equivalence by suggesting that everyone involved was “complicit to some degree.” As if burning people alive, rape, and beheading can be morally equivalent to anything.
Everyone knows that the Palestinian’s conditions are unbearable; it’s abuse at the hands of Hamas and the PLO. Billions of dollars are siphoned off to their wealthy leaders and their rebel armies, and not used for the betterment of their own people! Yet Obama’s excuse of being “occupied” is clearly false and he knows it, since the Israelis left Gaza in 2005, even before Obama became President! Nor did he explain that Hamas was elected to lead Gaza in 2006 and has held no election since. This is the same Hamas that has long been designated a terror group by the US, the European Union, and the UK (though a UN resolution failed in 2018). Obama, being President from 2009 – 2017 fully knows this yet remained absolutely silent.
If anyone is complicit, it’s certainly Obama. Remember Obama’s Iranian deal freed up some $100 billion in funds to Iran, including an estimated $1.7 billion in cash payments. Those most certainly went to terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah and Houthi, the same rebels currently and directly assisting Hamas.
And as a Jew, I couldn’t be more ashamed that Jews voted approximately 78% for Obama. I thought we were smarter than that. Obama did an exceptional job bamboozling people that he wasn’t an antisemite while in office and he tried the same thing recently with regard to Hamas. He knows better. It’s truly reprehensible that Obama is actually that cowardly and prejudiced.
by | ARTICLES, BIDEN, BLOG, COVID, ECONOMY, ELECTIONS, OBAMA, TAXES
As Biden is gaining closer to winning the upcoming election, his economic plan deserves more scrutiny. So far, Biden is clearly looking to Obama for his policy aspirations. Unfortunately, Obama was following FDR’s playbook to the detriment of our economy. Let’s take a look:
Obama’s policies resulted in the poorest recovery since the New Deal, just as FDR’s meddling only prolonged America’s longest depression ever. Obama followed FDR’s failed playbook – he raised taxes, over-regulated businesses, gave organized labor excessive power, instituted policies that discouraged people from working, and hurt international trade.
Firmly entrenched in Keynesian economics, Obama believed in government spending while wholeheartedly crowding out private spending; he substituted inefficient political and crony-based spending for free-market, give-the-public-what-they want spending.
This week in the WSJ, Jay Starkman issued a warning on Biden’s plans, in “Bidenomics May Repeat FDR’s Blunder.” He notes, “Today the U.S. economy is recovering from a great crash, as it was before Roosevelt’s tax onslaught. Unfortunately, Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to have learned the right lessons. Should he win in November, he proposes to cancel the Trump tax cuts, raising the top federal income-tax rate back to 39.6%, and raise the corporate income tax from 21% to 28%. He also promises to limit low capital-gains tax rates to the first $1 million in profits and extend the full Social Security tax to income above $400,000.” With Biden also promising to increase regulation and institute energy policy that will produce less energy at a much higher cost, danger is in the wind.
Why go back to the policies that have so clearly failed us before. After three years of robust economic activity during Trump’s administration before the onslaught of COVID, this country can neither risk nor afford Biden’s plans.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, ELECTIONS, FED, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, POTUS, SOCIAL SECURITY, TAXES, TRUMP
Are we past the tipping point for economic reform? I would argue that Obama’s budgets and spending accelerated the deficits beyond repair. Some people will go back to Reagan and say that the deficit and the debt ballooned during the Reagan Administration and they will blame it on his tax cuts. But what is actually true is that the tax cuts generated a large increase in revenue, and the only reason why he had deficits was that the Democrat-led Congress increased spending even over the increased revenue. The same thing happened with the Bush tax cuts which were very pro-growth; the revenue went up sharply, but spending went up even faster. But at this point the debt was still manageable.
Then you come to Obama. At the beginning of his administration, we had the deep recession -which arguably could have benefited by one year of stimulus. The concept of a stimulus is supposed to be a one-off event. In other words, you engage in big one-time expenditures to get the economy on track and then spending goes back to previous levels as the recovery occurs. The problem is that Obama didn’t put things in for just one year. He did long term things, like food stamps, teacher’s compensation, etc., knowing full well that once put into effect they could not easily be withdrawn. And it was pretty clearly his intent all along, for political reasons, to bake them into the budget. So now when we started to have a recovery, you had ballooning deficits — even with a growing economy. Then by the time Trump was elected, the locked-in recurring spending with its locked-in annual increases made the deficit – and the debt – almost impossible to rein in.
Now we have the pandemic and we have no place to go. There’s no surplus to go to the deficit. Millions of Americans are unexpectedly unemployed, which means they’re not paying into Social Security. At the same time, we see older workers who have lost their jobs choose to draw their benefits as soon as they become eligible. This will speed up the insolvency train. But then Trump did something that was very stupid (though his political motivation is clear). He said that entitlements are off the table. If entitlement reform is off the table at this point, we’re headed to bankruptcy.
We’ve been talking about the coming insolvency of the Social Security and Medicare programs for many, many years now and Congress has done nothing to stave off the inevitable. Couple that with Obama budgets, Trump’s lack of action, and the pandemic, and the deficits are even larger now. Anyone seriously looking at the situation knows that absent a major change to entitlements, the mandated annual increases, both because of cost of living adjustments and demographics, will bankrupt both programs in the next ten to fifteen years. It’s very safe to say that absent major entitlement reform, we’re basically past the tipping point.
by | BLOG, EDUCATION, OBAMA, POLITICS
It is clear, from any economic sense, that compensation paid in the private sector is more beneficial to society than that paid in the public sector. This is because amounts in the former is controlled by people risking their own money making sure it is maximizing output for a given input. (It also works for charities funded by people parting with their own hard earned money).
Federal state and local governments and government funded not-for-profits are less good for society, and they normally pay too much for what they receive in services. So how stupid must one be that we want to incentivize- by forgiving student loans – those who would take more from and contribute less to society??
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, GOVERNMENT, HYPOCRISY, OBAMA, POLITICS
Last week, Nick Gillespie of Reason moderated a webinar on policing and protests with Jacob Sullivan and C.J. Ciaramella. Gillespie is a thoughtful libertarian whose discussions I generally enjoy. Thus, I was appalled to hear Gillespie –no less than five times during the hour-long segment–refer to the 2014 Ferguson incident with Michael Brown as the beginning of the focus on police abuse and brutality. That is completely fictional. It was very clearly established that the police did nothing wrong in that case, a determination subsequently confirmed by the DOJ report — under Eric Holder no less!
It’s bad enough that this particular lie continues to be propagated by the left and progressives and repeated again and again, but for Reason to do so? For Nick Gillespie to do so? This is shameful. There are certainly well known cases of very wrongful and egregious cases of police misconduct that inform society’s dealing with the problem. But the Michael Brown incident – with its now famous though absolutely false “hands up, don’t shoot” – is actually a potent example of a mantra of a movement built on a lie.
To present Michael Brown’s case in the same sentence as George Floyd or Breonna Taylor is both damaging and reckless and it undermines the credibility of any meaningful conversation on a very important topic.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, HYPOCRISY, OBAMA, POLITICS, POTUS, TAXES, TRUMP
The Washington Post recently published a ridiculous article about deficit spending and entitlements from a group of former chairs of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Unsurprisingly, these economists scoff at the idea that entitlements are a cause for alarm, and predictably attack the Jobs and Tax bill that passed last year by President Trump. Of course, it’s to be expected, as the author-contributors were hand-picked from either only the Clinton or Obama administrations. Let’s take a closer look at some of their assertions:
“It is dishonest to single out entitlements for blame. The federal budget was in surplus from 1998 through 2001, (read: Pro-Clinton), “but large tax cuts and unfunded wars have been huge contributors to our current deficit problem” (read: anti-Bush). “The primary reason the deficit in coming years will now be higher than had been expected is the reduction in tax revenue from last year’s tax cuts, not an increase in spending” (read: anti-Trump). “This year, revenue is expected to fall below 17 percent of gross domestic product — the lowest it has been in the past 50 years with the exception of the aftermath of the past two recessions” (read: anti-Trump).
What’s noticeably absent? Any mention of Obama. Where were these so-called economists when Obama went spending crazy? When the deficit doubled in the eight years of Obama’s administration? Deficit spending is an undisputed crisis and a large driver of that is, in fact, entitlements — a problem that has continued to be punted each year; in fact the latest SSA report, released June 5, plainly states that Medicare’s Trust Fund is set to run out in 8 years, and Social Security’s in 16. The Social Security program’s costs will exceed its income this year for the first time since 1982, forcing the program to dip into its nearly $3 trillion trust fund to cover benefits. But these numbers and projections are nothing new, so it is right for the Hoover Institute to continue to insist on reform in the face of years of inaction.
At a time when these very authors note that “the U.S. unemployment rate is down to 4.1 percent, and economic growth could well increase in 2018. Consumer and business confidence is high,” to then hold up Clinton as the pinnacle of economic excellence, spear Bush and Trump as reckless, and to completely ignore the profligate spending of Obama is disingenuous. The bias of the Washington Post shines through with this one.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, FED, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, HYPOCRISY, OBAMA, POLITICS, POTUS, TRUMP
George Will shined the light on yet another disturbing case of civil asset forfeiture a practice that denies citizens the right to due process. In this particular instance, a border agent on US soil unlawfully demanded the password a citizen’s phone; when he refused, they searched his truck and then seized possession of it after finding five .380-caliber bullets (and no weapon) in the truck’s center console. Their rationale? He was transporting “munitions of war.”
Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to take money or property from a citizen who is merely suspected of criminal activity — not charged or convicted. Though original asset forfeiture laws were aimed at drug cartels to interrupt their business and money, it use has expanded rapidly in recent years. It’s not being used just for “organized crime” anymore; that’s a red herring that gives police a green light to continue to abuse citizens and take their property without due process. Citizens are guilty until proven innocent and have to prove that they were not involved in any criminal activity, which can be a long and expensive process against the government.
Outrageously, the citizen had to petition to get a judicial hearing about his truck (after paying a bond of 10% of his truck’s value) — but then the hearing actually never happened. He never got his due process and only got his truck back after two years, during which he faithfully continued making loan payments and maintained insurance. This lack of any hearing for a citizen to redress the unlawful seizure is not an anomaly, either. In fact, the citizen is now pursuing a class action lawsuit, just “to establish a right to prompt post-seizure judicial hearings,” which should already be a given anyway in such incidences — even though the practice of civil asset forfeiture should be abolished outright.
Civil asset forfeiture is really all about money. “Under the equitable sharing program, federal authorities may “adopt” state and local forfeiture cases and prosecute them at the federal level. Those local police departments get to keep up to 80 percent of the forfeiture revenue, while the rest goes into the equitable sharing pool and is distributed among partner departments around the country.” During the Obama Administration — after some highly publicized appalling asset forfeiture cases, Obama began addressing asset forfeiture and restrictions were rightly implemented as a stepping stone to reign in this abominable practice. Unfortunately last year, AG Jeff Sessions loosened those once again.
Clarence Thomas wrote a scathing dissent of asset forfeiture last year when SCOTUS chose not to hear a case on the matter. He wrote, “this system—where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use—has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses. He further pointed out, “because the law enforcement entity responsible for seizing the property often keeps it, these entities have strong incentives to pursue forfeiture.” Clarence Thomas is entirely correct, and the policy of civil asset forfeiture should be entirely eliminated. Continuing to highlight this abhorrent practice is the only way to bring about change.
by | ARTICLES, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, POTUS, TAXES, TRUMP
Part of Obama’s terrible legacy was his frequent abusive use of Executive Order, even maintaining a “We Can’t Wait” page on the White House website. From changing student loan rules to immigration reform, Obama was rightly chided for making major policy changes without going through Congress.
It is therefore egregious that President Trump should decided to enact a 25% tariff on imported steel and a 10% tariff on imported aluminum products under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (the provision that allows additional tariffs when national security is affected).
When our largest importer of steel is Canada, followed by Brazil, South Korea and Mexico, it is abhorrent to invoke such a tariff under these pretenses. This particular Executive Order rivals Obama in making up lies to justify illegal executive action.
It also makes it possible for the next Democrat President to abuse presidential power by saying: “It’s not as big a whopper as Trump’s saying that tariffs on steel are needed to protect our nation’s security”. This is truly a terrible precedent.
by | ARTICLES, BUSINESS, CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, TAXES, TRUMP
While we’re on the subject of tax reform, one particular item that could be included in the package is the elimination of the individual mandate. Since SCOTUS classified the penalty as a tax, it is one that can be repealed as part of the reform, and would produce an estimated savings of $338 billion over 10 years, according to current CBO figures.
Eliminating the individual mandate would not affect Medicaid or pre-existing conditions; it would simply allow taxpayers to have the freedom to decide if he or she wants to forego insurance without being penalized (taxed) for their choice. According to the Wall Street Journal and IRS data, more than 90% of households who paid the “individual shared responsibility payment” (tax) earned less than $75,000. The tax is essentially a tax on the poor.
Republicans would be wise to repeal the mandate, ease the tax burden on taxpayers, and use the savings gained within the rest of the tax package to strengthen other parts of the reform proposals and provide meaningful relief for all taxpayers.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, LAW, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
I’m sick and tired of reading over and over again in places both liberal and conservative that Trump’s (as well as the Republican’s) proposed tax reforms are going to give the lion’s share of the cuts to the top 1%. The entire concept is totally distorted.
In fact, nobody has been talking about the series of tax changes that occurred when Obama and his Democrat cronies passed the Obamacare increases. These raised the Bush tax rates on only the wealthiest from 36% – 39.6 % and then again raised the tax rates on the wealthiest by adding a net investment income tax (NIIT), otherwise known as the “Obamacare tax,” which covered all investment income. The increase also raised capital gains tax on the wealthiest from 15% – 20%. When the 3.8% tax is added, capital gains rates effectively went from 15%- 23.8% — an increase of almost 60%. That’s ridiculous!
Those ludicrous tax increases were principally responsible — along with the hemorrhage of regulations coming out of the Obama administration — for the horrific economic performance since Obama took office. The first step of any meaningful tax reform should be to reverse those Obamacare tax increases, which went 100% to the higher income individuals, and 0% to the middle class and lower income. The reversal of those insane tax increases should in no way be considered a tax cut. It is just restoring what was in fact an egregious toxin on our entire economy.
