Category Archives: Commentary

Washington Post columnist bashes Obamacare

The Washington Post is one of the most liberal newspapers, but not the worst. For example, further left there’s the New Republic and National Journal, which are basically Marxist. Well the article I’m looking at today was written by a columnist who has  worked for both National Journal and New Republic. He’s even work for Newsweek which is just Democrat propaganda. Surprisingly, his WaPo article is actually fairly accurate about the problems with Obamacare, although his opinions of what to do instead are still left-wing.

He lists 5 reasons why Obamacare is bad policy:

  1. It increases uncertainty and decreases confidence when recovery from the Great Recession requires more confidence and less uncertainty.
  2. The ACA discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring.
  3. Uncontrolled health spending is the U.S. system’s main problem — and the ACA makes it worse.
  4. Obama’s program also worsens the federal budget problem.
  5. The ACA discriminates against the young in favor of the old.

Here’s are the details on numbers 2,4 and 5:

(2) The ACA discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring. This is basic economics. If you increase the price of labor, companies will buy less of it. Requiring employers to buy health insurance for some workers makes them more expensive, at least in the short run. Particularly vulnerable are low-skilled workers, notes economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute. Because the employer mandate exempts firms with fewer than 50 workers, there’s a huge incentive for firms to stop at 49, she says.

(4) Obama’s program also worsens the federal budget problem. Driven by Medicare and Medicaid, health care already exceeds one-fourth of the budget and is headed toward a third. It’s the crux of the problem. So Obama creates another huge health program. The administration’s retort: the program lowers the budget deficit. This is rhetorical hocus-pocus. Here’s what happens. From 2012 to 2022, the ACA raises federal spending by $1.762 trillion, estimates the Congressional Budget Office. However, all of this and a bit more is offset by tax increases and assumed cuts in Medicare. But these tax increases and cuts could have been used to shrink the huge budget deficits that pre-existed Obamacare. Now they can’t; moreover, the Medicare cuts might be repealed or reduced.

(5) The ACA discriminates against the young in favor of the old. Government policy already does this through payroll taxes that have young workers subsidizing Social Security and Medicare benefits. The ACA compounds the effect by forcing some young Americans to buy insurance at artificially high premiums that would pay for the care of a sicker, older population.

Higher unemployment, more debt and passing the costs on to the younger generation who can’t even find jobs with their worthless degrees in political correctness.

I think there are a lot of leftist nuts who are getting increasingly disengaged with Obama’s plan to “help the poor”. It’s not working because Obama has no idea how to help the poor. The way to help the poor is to give them jobs, and the way to give them jobs is to give more incentives to the private sector job creators, and the way to give incentives to the private sector job creators is to lower their taxes and decrease their regulatory burden. That’s what would actually work. Obama did the opposite, and nowhere is this more visible than in his Obamacare boondoogle.

Entitlements programs are going bankrupt: how can we fix them?

From the American Enterprise Institute, a post that explains in brief how to reform each of the three largest entitlement programs so that they will not go bankrupt by the time today’s younger workers need them.

Here are the programs:

  1. Social Security (a social program to redistribute wealth from current workers to current retirees)
  2. Medicaid (a social program to provide health care to low income/low wealth Americans)
  3. Medicare (a social program to provide health care and prescription drugs to older Americans)

And here’s one of the solutions (for Social Security):

Social Security is the easiest entitlement program to reform and can be done without raising taxes.

  • The age should be gradually raised to 70 by 2065.
  • Benefits should be indexed to price inflation, not wage inflation, as the program’s purpose is to keep the elderly out of poverty.
  • Benefits should gradually be reduced for earners with high incomes. The system should be a way to keep individuals out of poverty, not create a dependent upper- and middle-class.

Together these three reforms would ensure Social Security stays solvent. The entire system, however, could be easily replaced with a new program designed to keep seniors out of poverty and empower them throughout their retirement. People should be given the incentive to work longer by eliminating the Social Security payroll tax for individuals over 62, and a basic income supplement should be provided to impoverished senior citizens. Workers should then be given ownership of their retirement savings by enrolling all workers 55 and younger into a retirement savings account funded by 5 percent of the worker’s earnings (2.5 percent from the individual and 2.5 percent from the employer). These simple reforms would create a system that  actually provides a safety net for needy citizens — all for 60 percent of what the U.S. currently spends on Social Security.

Click through for the other two problems and solutions.

Married Mormon man comes out as gay on his tenth anniversary

ECM sent me this post, and it is a must-read.

Excerpt:

Hi guys.

Lolly and I are sitting by a pool in the blazing sun, tanning our Seattle-white skin. We are having the time of our lives. Our kids are being watched by their Aunt Kati and Uncle Blake while we relax, celebrating ten incredible years of marriage.

And, side by side, we are finishing the final details of this post which we have written together over the course of the last month.

This is a different post than what you’re used to seeing here on The Weed. If you are here to laugh and read something light-hearted and fun, you probably want to skip this one. It’s long. And it’s serious. And I won’t be offended by anyone who decides to wait until things get light-hearted again.

This is the post where I tell you that I, Josh Weed, am homosexual.

[…]When we do tell people about this—and we’ve been telling a lot of people lately, so we’ve gotten really practiced at it—they usually have a lot of really good, genuine questions. Here are some of the questions we’re most frequently asked (there really should be an acronym for that—I know! I’ll call it a FAQ!). We hope answering these questions will help you understand how we make sense of this delicate and complicated issue in our lives.

Excerpt:

Here is the basic reality that I actually think many people could use a lesson in: sex is about more than just visual attraction and lust and it is about more than just passion and infatuation. I won’t get into the boring details of the research here, but basically when sex is done right, at its deepest level it is about intimacy. It is about one human being connecting with another human being they love. It is a beautiful physical manifestation of two people being connected in a truly vulnerable, intimate manner because they love each other profoundly. It is bodies connecting and souls connecting. It is beautiful and rich and fulfilling and spiritual and amazing. Many people never get to this point in their sex lives because it requires incredible communication, trust, vulnerability, and connection. And Lolly and I have had that from day one, mostly because we weren’t distracted by the powerful chemicals of infatuation and obsession that usually bring a couple together (which dwindle dramatically after the first few years of marriage anyway). So, in a weird way, the circumstances of our marriage allowed us to build a sexual relationship that is based on everything partners should want in their sex-life: intimacy, communication, genuine love and affection. This has resulted in us having a better sex life than most people I personally know. Most of whom are straight. Go fig.

Click through and read it. This reminds me of Ari’s book “Bias Incident“, where the protagonist argues that gay people can and should marry someone of the opposite sex and have children. And then the sky falls on him! I hope you all consider buying that book. It’s only $0.99!

Disclaimer: I am not endorsing homosexuality, Mormonism or anything!