[Reposted with better formatting…]
My friend Don Boudreaux penned such an excellent letter to Dear Leader Barack Obama that I feel compelled to share it with you here (even though I know quite a few of my readers are on Don’s distribution list). If any of you would like to be added to Don’s list, please e-mail me and I’ll put the names together and forward them to him.
8 March 2010
Mr. Barack Obama
President, Executive Branch
United States Government
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Obama:
CBS radio news this morning ran a clip of one of your recent speeches. In it, you criticize insurance companies because they “ration coverage according to who can pay and who can’t.”
My first thought was “not exactly; coverage is rationed according to who PAYS and who doesn’t.” Ability to pay isn’t the same thing as actually paying, and what insurers care about is the latter. Many folks - especially young adults - have the ability to pay but choose not to do so. They get no coverage.
But further pondering of your point leads me to look beyond such nit-picking to see fascinating possibilities. Not only insurers, but all producers who greedily refuse to supply persons who don’t pay should be set aright. Now I’m sure that YOU don’t ration the supply of the books you write according to any criteria as sordid as requiring people actually to pay for them. But our society is full of people less enlightened than you.
For example, the typical worker rations his labor services according to who pays and who doesn’t. That must stop. Oh, and supermarkets! Every single one rations groceries according to who pays. Likewise with restaurants, clothing stores, home-builders, furniture makers, even lawyers! You name it, rationing is done according to who pays. Indeed, my own county government has been corrupted by this greedy attitude: if I don’t pay my taxes, the sheriff takes my house - effectively booting me out of the county merely because I didn’t pay for its services.
Preposterous!
I look forward to your changing this selfish and unfair system of rationing that for too long now has kept Americans impoverished.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
I had recently signed up for the Amazon Associates program by which I would try to “monetize” a bit of value from my web site traffic by hosting some ads for Amazon.com on my site, being paid for “click-thrus". Specifically, I would have hosted links/ads for books I like or live, and think important or entertaining, such as some of the books I’ve reviewed on these pages.
On Monday, I received the following e-mail from Amazon Associates:
Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:
We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax – a course we won’t take.
We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.
There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.
You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.
Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.
We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.
Best Regards,The Amazon Associates Team
My take is the following: The original legislation, before the Dems changed the words to the current law, would have said that having Associates in Colorado would be taken to mean that Amazon has a physical presence in Colorado and that all Amazon.com sales in Colorado would then be subject to state sales tax. Amazon understands that this is really where the legislature wants to go and doesn’t want to take the chance even though the legislation is written to appear to apply to multi-chain corporations where some chain(s) operate in Colorado and some don’t.
Amazon wasn’t fooled by the legislation…and neither were readers of these pages, nor many of the other fine conservative or libertarian Colorado blogs who discussed the issue.
Not that I ever expected to make a lot of money from my Amazon Associates participation, but let’s just think about the effect that the legislation has already had: Amazon will avoid being trapped by the legislation, so the state will collect no sales tax from Coloradoans’ purchases from Amazon.com. However, think of who is hurt by the fact that my Associates account was closed.
I lost the opportunity for income. I and my readers lost the opportunity for me to easily guide my readers to buy books that they might enjoy or find important. The publishers and authors lost potential profits/royalties from book sales. Fewer book sales cost jobs at publishing houses. And so on…
I am not trying to overstate my obviously limited impact in this story. But in the aggregate, killing all Colorado Amazon Associates account probably does add to to something measurable.
It’s only liberals who believe that people won’t change their behavior when regulations and taxes change. It’s only a liberal who could have thought that their bone-headed law would have not caused every business which could avoid being trapped by it to do just that.
Because of their utter inability to cut state spending across the board, as rationally suggested by Colorado Republican legislators, the Democrats have done damage to citizens of their state and elsewhere.
Let them reap the whirlwind in November…and let the next legislature repeal this idiotic law (along with the “dirty dozen” tax increases passed with the signature of Lame Duck Bill Ritter.)
The Harry Reid follies continue…or are they really the actions of an unrecognized true genius. The latter could be true if you accept the maxim, often ascribed to F. Scott Fitzgerald, that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.”
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he supports efforts by Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) to try to change filibuster rules in the Senate’s next session.
Just one month ago, Reid was singing a different tune. According to the Washington Post’s February 11th article, “Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday dismissed an effort by some Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, saying the chamber’s procedures were designed to prevent the majority party from unilaterally changing the rules.”
The Post also noted that “in 2005…Reid fiercely defended the minority’s right to filibuster and argued that the Senate was bound by its past rules until the supermajority acted to change them.”
Reid is getting desperate, for himself and for The One. Senate rules and history be damned.
While it’s unlikely that these moves will succeed since at least a few Democrat senators recognize that they will not always – indeed, maybe not even next year – be in the majority, one has to wonder at just how far out of touch the Democrat leadership is with the American electorate.
“Progressives", which is to say the far left of the Democrat Party, care nothing for principle. They are strictly utilitarian, willing to say and do one thing today and the opposite tomorrow if they believe it gets them a step closer to their desired socialist utopia.
In case you don’t believe me, here’s a great example from the wacky-left Daily Kos: “Obviously, unrestrained majority rule is not a good idea, but when you’re dealing with policies like the current health care proposal – as opposed to issues involving constitutional rights, such as the power to declare war or the freedom of speech – majority rule is the American way.”
Huh? What part of taking over 1/6th of the American economy, spending our children in to bankruptcy, and wrecking the health care system that’s the envy of the world does not impinge on multiple Constitutional rights, not least the fact that it’s patently unconstitutional to require someone to buy something (insurance) as a condition of citizenship? That and other constitutional questions surround ObamaCare, including a few discussed HERE.
And what part of American history says that rules for making laws should be different based on whether a particular person or group claims that an issue is fundamentally about the constitution or just about insignificant things like your health? The blogger is, like all Progressives, utterly utilitarian, making any feeble excuse to change the rules to get his way. You can only imagine the bloody murder he’d be screaming if Republicans were talking about eliminating the filibuster as a tactic to pass an abortion ban or a repeal of gun rights restrictions.
The true Progressives, though, are a minority of the Democrat Party (even if a majority of their leadership) and a very small minority of Americans.
Real Americans, on the other hand, tend to be at least slightly more principle-oriented and react much more negatively to transparent attempts by anyone from politians to businesses to casinos to change the rules of the game when it becomes clear that those politicians or businesses or casinos are not winning the game. If you can’t win the game, change it until you can. No Sale, Harry.
If Democrats are able to effectively gut the filibuster next year (they can’t do it this year because that rule change which takes only a majority at the beginning of a Senate session would take 67 votes during a session), it would all but guarantee that Democrats lose their majority in the Senate in 2012 if they don’t lose it in 2010. But the leadership doesn’t care if it means they can pass the most sweeping leftist legislation in two generations and help care for the legacy of their beloved Dear Leader, Barack “Pass Anything, Please!” Obama.
Reid’s move is politically questionable as well. Threatening to change the rules to get their way will be yet another argument made against Democrat Senate candidates in the upcoming election. Furthermore, with Democrats in the electorate likely to care about “fairness", seeing their own party try to rig the game could demotivate Democrat voters and allow on-the-bubble Senators like Barbara Boxer to be beaten. One can only hope.
It’s also funny to hear Reid throw more of his own blood in the water: Schumer and Durbin are both interested in eliminating the filibuster because they see a decent chance of Democrats having a one- or two-vote majority in the next Senate…and an even better chance of Harry Reid having been returned to civilian life.
Schumer and Reid are sharks tearing at the twitching but not yet lifeless body of Harry Reid and all Reid is doing is bleeding a little more. Hardly a good way to stop a shark.
In fairness, if Reid is a genius then so is President Obama. Obama and his henchman, David Axelrod, have called for an “up or down vote", code for bypassing a filibuster. But in 2005, when Republicans stupidly tried a similar move, Obama said “majoritarian absolute power (is) not what the Framers intended.”
Obama was right in 2005 and Reid was right just a month ago. Given their current efforts to destroy the filibuster, perhaps nobody but their far-left fringe socialist base or F. Scott Fitzgerald would be proud.
The radical leftist ACLU is challenging President Obama’s hint that they may return Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the military tribunal system. It’s amusing to watch the left’s circular firing squad…a strategy of failure which is normally reserved for Republicans.
Please see my article for Human Events:
ACLU Assaults Obama on KSM Trial
(Some of you may have noticed that my postings this week have been short, or have been guest-postings, or otherwise somewhat easier for me to produce than my usual work. The reason is that I am on a week-long ski trip with my 4-year old daughter in Utah and I’m trying to keep my typing to a minimum…)
The original ESPN story was over-hyped, but it sounds in-character for Obama and his radical environmentalist friends, and the truth is not as cut-and-dried as Administration apologists would like you to believe.
Here’s the story that started the recent hubbub:
http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762
A Fox News story says that the ESPN story is probably overboard, and certainly government spokesmen are denying that the regulations being considered related to recreational fishing.
Also, ESPN has issued this clarification.
However, the Administration’s Interim Framework released three months ago clearly and repeatedly mentions recreational fishing as one of the uses of waterways, including the Great Lakes, that would be part of what is regulated.
So, when you read denials from left-leaning sites such as the one that one of my leftist readers sent me HERE, look out for the outright lies such as the one that the Interim Framework ” says zip about recreational fishing". Just search the document (linked above) for “recreational"…
In his article for Human Events entitled “Obamacare Declares War On Growth Capital“, the always excellent Deroy Murdock explains an aspect of Obamacare which needs to be explained more loudly and more frequently to anybody who hopes to start a business – or work for one, namely the punishing tax increases Obama hopes to use to fund his government takeover of medicine.
While the focus on Obamacare’s likely destructive impact on the quality of American health care and its metaphysical certainty to increase health care price inflation is appropriate and reasonable, more must be made on the other costs to Americans of the plan.
Murdock’s article is excellent intellectual ammunition for anyone who wants to understand this and help others to understand it.
Please check out my short note for the National Review Institute pointing out the fallacy of the claim by climate alarmist scientists that they are at some sort of competitive disadvantage versus “skeptical” scientists because of funding by energy companies:
In an article for Human Events, Donald Lambro writes about “The Case for Larry Kudlow“, explaining that various “supporters” have been encouraging the economist and CNBC economics commentator to challenge Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for one of New York’s Senate seats in the upcoming November elections.
Lambro correctly portrays Mr. Kudlow as a popular and influential voice for smaller government, liberty, and free markets.
But if anything, Kudlow’s combination of expertise and current position argue against his running for office.
I imagine that Larry Kudlow would show up near or at the top of the list if you ask television viewers – especially white-collar Americans – whom they think of when asked to name a free-market small-government economist.
This name recognition is crucially important if the forces of liberty hope to win a nationwide argument for the “hearts and minds” of Americans as we go into the November elections. Kudlow can make a much bigger impact in support of the positions he cares about and in support of politicians who share his “classical liberal” values by staying where he is and using his CNBC (and radio) megaphone to influence voters across the nation rather than having to focus his voice into a singular NY Senate race.
For someone to give up the influence that Kudlow has now in order to run for the U.S. Senate would strike me as an act of blind hubris. My take is that a man who has seen the highs, and more importantly the lows, that Larry Kudlow has seen (he’s not shy about talking about his experience with “twelve step programs", for example) simply does not have the narcissistic ego that drive others (such as Barack Obama) to seek high office.
In terms of the politics, even a popular figure like Kudlow would be a huge underdog against Chuck Schumer. Lambro notes that Schumer already has $30 million in campaign funds and points out a recent poll which shows Kudlow 35 points behind Schumer in a theoretical matchup. And while Lambro optimistically notes that “conservative strategists are quick to point out that would put Kudlow about where Scott Brown started out before he came from behind to win", this is NOT the Massachusetts race.
How many of you (who don’t live in Massachusetts) can even name Scott Brown’s opponent? That person…Martha Coakley…had modest-at-best name recognition even within her own state. She ran a much worse campaign than Schumer would. And, Scott Brown had the advantage of being involved in the only election in the nation at that time, allowing conservative and libertarian and Republican activists from around the nation the “bandwidth” to assist and contribute to his campaign. Kudlow’s campaign would be one of many. I simply don’t see the outpouring of nationwide grassroots support for Larry Kudlow, despite the many tens of thousands of Americans like me who think he’s great, in an environment where people will be focused on their local Congressional, state legislature, and in many states, Governors’ elections.
Additionally, like it or not, Kudlow will be attacked for his extremely optimistic pronouncements on his web site such as saying “There is no recession” and “The Bush boom is alive and well” just as we headed into the worst recession for several generations. To be fair, this comment was before it became clear that Democrats were going to control everything, something which I’m sure would have made Kudlow temper his indefatigable optimism. But still, you can get these words will be used to tie him to the unpopular George W. Bush and generally make him look bad. (All this despite the fact that Kudlow was right that the good economic news was consistently and almost certainly intentionally underreported by the left-leaning “mainstream” media as long as a Republican president would have gotten credit. And despite the fact that Obama’s dismal early performance is making George W. Bush look good in comparison, something many – including many Republicans – would have found difficult to imagine just a year ago.)
Larry Kudlow has a great job, an influential voice, and is one of the nation’s true champions for capitalism. The last thing that those of us who care about winning the long-run war for our nation versus the short-run battle for one Senate seat should breathe a sigh of relief that Mr. Kudlow has the good sense and modest ego to decline giving up a position that many of us would envy – were fiscal conservatives envy-prone, a trait we generally leave to the left.
Instead of being one voice in the Senate, Larry Kudlow should keep using his bully pulpit to educate and pressure 100 Senators into learning basic economics and the fundamental value of liberty. At such teaching, Kudlow has few equals and America is lucky to have him – right where he is.
For today’s reading, may I suggest two articles focusing on Barack Obama’s psychology:
First, this interesting analysis by James Lewis of AmericanThinker.com about a man commonly called The One, the Messiah, and Dear Leader, not least due to his statements such as:
- “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
- “This (his election) was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
See “Obama’s Malignant Narcissism“, James Lewis, AmericanThinker.com, 3/4/2010
Second, a more directly political take by Quin Hillyer at the American Spectator:
See “Not the American Way“, Quin Hillyer, Spectator.org, 3/5/2010
The Hill is reporting that John McCain is calling for a new “Gang of Fourteen” to stop the use of “budget reconciliation” to pass ObamaCare.
The story notes “So far, he’s had no takers.”
McCain’s pathetic plea shows two major problems with McCain’s view of politics and reinforces the need for him to get out of politics.
First, does anybody other than John McCain believe that “bipartisanship” means anything other than conservatives (or RINOs pretending to be conservatives) moving towards liberal positions? When is the last time that bipartisanship resulted in liberals agreeing to an even-slightly conservative position? Maybe in 1995, when Dick Morris told Bill Clinton that if Clinton didn’t sign welfare reform, the 1996 election might not go too well. But even that might not be a great example, because the 87 votes in the Senate were to pass a much less ambitious (i.e. less “conservative") bill than was passed in the House.
Look at McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” and the would-be McCain-Kennedy (amnesty) and McCain-Lieberman (cap-and-trade) bills: Just what in that “bipartisan” approach did anything but move the country (in fact or in attempt) to the left?
Of course there are no takers for McCain’s new “Gang". Almost all the other Republicans recognize the futility of bipartisanship and its tendency to work against conservative principles. And the Democrats know that they don’t need bipartisanship when all it could do is move the current health care “reform” proposals to the right. If McCain thought he’d have any support beyond his spineless pal Lindsey Graham and at the most one or two other Senators, he’s more out of touch than even we, his detractors, have believed.
Second, the last thing a Republican or conservative should be doing is giving the Democrats cover. Let the nation see the Democrats for who they are, at least those people in the nation who haven’t already figured it out. If McCain were able to be successful in recruiting this “Gang", it would probably only happen if the Democrats knew they couldn’t pass a bill. If they can pass a bill, they will – they won’t help McCain when they see their Congressional majorities and the legacy of their Messiah, Barack Obama, on the line. If they can’t pass a bill, they should be made to suffer through that utter (and wonderful) failure. Giving them a way to appear rational or moderate is truly stupid politics and can only serve to dampen the nation’s justifiable anger against the left’s attempted takeover of health care.
It’s time for John McCain to go.
Following Obama's Economic Policies
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