Tag Archives: Economy

Should the Occupy Wall Street protesters move their protest to Washington, D.C.?

10/14/2011 Wintery Knight 3 Comments

Excerpt:

Still, if anyone in the Occupy Wall Street movement wants an intellectually honest explanation for why they can’t find a job, they might start by considering what happens to an economy when the White House decides to make pinatas out of the financial-services industry (roughly 6%, or $828 billion, of U.S. GDP), the energy industry (about 7.5% of GDP, or $1 trillion), and millionaires and billionaires (who paid 20.4% of all federal income taxes in 2009). And don’t forget the Administration’s rhetorical volleys against individual companies like Anthem Blue Cross, AIG and Bank of America, or against Chrysler’s bondholders, or various other alleged malefactors of wealth.

Now move from words to actions. Want a shovel-ready job? The Administration has spent three years sitting on the Keystone XL pipeline project that promises to create 13,000 union jobs and 118,000 “spin-off” jobs. A State Department environmental review says the project poses no threat to the environment, but the Administration’s eco-friends are screaming lest it go ahead.

Then there are the jobs the Administration and its allies in Congress are actively killing. In June, American Electric Power announced it would have to shutter five coal-fired power plants, at a cost of 600 jobs, in order to comply with new EPA rules. Those same rules may soon force the utility to shutter another 25 plants. Bank of America’s decision last month to lay off 30,000 employees is a direct consequence of various Congressional edicts limiting how much the bank can charge merchants or how it can handle delinquent borrowers.

These visible crags of the Obama jobs iceberg are nothing next to the damage done below the waterline by the D.C. regulations factory, which last year added 81,405 pages of new rules to the Federal Register, bringing the total cost to the U.S. economy of regulatory compliance to an estimated $1.7 trillion a year.

Less easy to quantify, but no less harmful, are the long-term uncertainties employers face in trying to price in the costs of ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, the potential expiration next year of the Bush tax cuts, the possible millionaire surcharge, the value of the dollar and so on. No wonder businesses are so reluctant to hire: When you don’t know how steep the trail ahead of you is, it’s usually better to travel light.

If you want to know who is really to blame for poverty, try looking at the Obama administration.

News

New House GOP bill de-funds Planned Parenthood

10/03/2011 Wintery Knight 5 Comments

Story from Life News.

Excerpt:

The battle over yanking federal taxpayer funding of the Planned Parenthood abortion business is back in Congress as House Republicans have unveiled new legislation attempting to remove its Title X funding.

Republicans tried earlier this year to de-fund Planned Parenthood but Obama refused overtures from pro-life Speaker John Boehner to do so when Republicans and Democrats were working on ironing out legislation to fund the federal government. Obama eventually agreed to a compromise that allowed both the House and Senate to vote on a stand-alone bill de-funding Planned Parenthood and, while House Republicans approved their measure, Senate Democrats defeated it in the upper chamber.

[…]Now, Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana, the chairman of the House Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee has introduced new legislation to fund the federal government that prohibits any funds going to Planned Parenthood unless the organization stops doing abortions.

“This bill is the result of the cumulative effort of members of the Subcommittee, and Americans I heard from at 81 listening sessions and in countless meetings in Washington and in Montana. Now, it’s posted online for the only test that matters, and that’s the approval of the American people,” Rehberg said.

Naturally, the head abortionist is outraged – someone is taking away her dollars!

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards issued a statement last week condemning the legislation.

“Eliminating funding for the Title X family planning program and prohibiting Planned Parenthood from providing preventive health care through federal programs will result in millions of women across the country losing access to basic primary and preventive health care,” Richards said.

The new bill also came under attack from both pro-abortion organizations and pro-abortion lawmakers.

“Another health-related provision prohibits any funding under the bill from going to any Planned Parenthood affiliate unless the organization promises not to perform abortions with non-federal funds,” Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, a pro-abortion Connecticut Democrat and a member of the subcommittee, groused. “The main effect would probably be to prohibit Medicaid patients from choosing to receive services such as contraception and cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood clinics.”

I listed Planned Parenthood AND the Democrats as being interested in the dollars. It’s a vicious circle. Planned Parenthood gets the dollars to kill the babies, and then they make campaign contributions to the Democrats who give them the taxpayer money. It’s all about the money. They kill babies for money. It’s a big business, and we subsidize it with our taxes.

And even in Canada, some Canadian conservatives are trying to push to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

Excerpt:

Two more Tory MPs are taking swipes at the International Planned Parenthood Foundation.

One claims the group conned the government when it applied for and got a federal grant of $6 million over three years.

Another is linking it to the sinister and long-discredited science of eugenics.

Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott says the federation was deceitful in claiming that the money would only go to countries where abortion is illegal.

Alberta MP Leon Benoit wants to condemn the foundation over an award named for Margaret Sanger.

Sanger was a pioneer in planned parenthood who embraced a type of eugenics.

Saskatoon MP Brad Trost started the ball rolling earlier this week with a web post condemning the decision to fund the international family-planning group.

While the Prime Minister’s Office is adamant that abortion is not an issue for the Conservative government, it still seems to be a touchy subject for backbenchers.

The Planned Parenthood grant is a case in point.

Trost said in his web post that the government’s claim that the money would be used in countries that bar abortion is “hair-splitting.”

Vellacott said the federation is “trying to dupe” the government over abortion.

“Even in those countries where abortion is technically illegal, it’s naive to think that Canadian tax dollars are not being used to promote abortion,” he said in a news release.

Maurice Vellacott is my favorite Canadian MP. He is the Canadian-equivalent to Iain Duncan-Smith in the UK. And don’t think these guys aren’t good on fiscal issues – they are. They just are also good at social issues, which should go together anyway.

Related posts on Planned Parenthood

News

Chile’s transition from Social Security to private retirement accounts

10/01/2011 Wintery Knight 1 Comment

Herman Cain favors transitioning the existing Social Security program to a privatized model, and he cites Chile as an example of how it can be done. Did it work in Chile? Let’s find out.

From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Chile’s system, enacted in 1981, took government out of the pension business altogether and replaced it with a system of personal retirement accounts.

It’s one of most successful fiscal reforms in history.

It outperforms Social Security on returns, yielding about 9.23% compounded annual returns over 30 years under private management.

That means Chilean retirees take home pension checks four times what they would have gotten if they had remained in their old Social Security system.

Workers chose the types of investments, the level of risk, the size of their contributions — 10% to 20% — and the day they intended to retire.

Unlike Social Security, accounts are by law property. A worker who dies early can will his account to heirs.

[…]Moving from public to private accounts spooks some because of the continuing cash-flow need to pay out retirees and people nearing retirement.

Chile solved this problem by issuing bonds for 40% of its transition, selling off state assets, and temporarily using a small portion of the old payroll tax.

Because Chile’s architect, Labor Secretary Jose Pinera, motivated the government to make it work, the size of government was cut too. The move boosted savings and economic growth — increasing the country’s tax base.

As for the other concern —that fund managers would steal the money or make risky investments — that too has never happened in the well-regulated Chilean system, where private managers must invest their funds broadly in easy-to-understand investments, and are subject to strict reporting requirements and supervision.

Would it work here? Chilean economists, such as Pinera, believe it would. Something similar has already been done in more than 30 countries, most of which were in far worse financial shape when they started.

Incredibly, the benefits of this privatization do not stop at just the retirees themselves. The private pension pools have given Chile the widest, deepest capital market in Latin America. That turned the country into an economic powerhouse.

After the program began, per-capita incomes soared — from $4,000 in 1981 to $17,000 in 2010. GDP grew for nearly 20 years at a 7% average, while joblessness plunged from nearly 30% to around 5% today.

Most Tea Party-friendly of all, private pensions meant Chile’s savings rose to 100% of GNP, leaving Chile with no net debt. In 1981, its debt was north of 100% of GNP.

More about Chile’s privatized retirement program from IBD.

Excerpt:

Instead of paying a 12.4% Social Security tax as we do here, Chilean workers must pay in 10% of their wages (they can send up to 20%) to one of several conservatively managed and regulated pension funds. From the accumulated savings, they get a life annuity or make programmed withdrawals (inheriting any funds left over).Over the last three decades these accounts have averaged annual returns of 9.23% above inflation. By contrast, U.S. Social Security pays a 1% to 2% (theoretical) return, and even less for new workers.

[…]In 2005, New York Times reporter John Tierney worked out his own Social Security contributions on the Chilean model and found that his privatized pension would have been $53,000 a year plus a one-time payout of $223,000. The same contributions paid into Social Security would have paid him $18,000.

We don’t have to do things the old way. The old way just leads to more debt, and more tax hikes, and, as surely as night follows day, higher unemployment – as capital moves outside of our country for greener pastures.

WINTERY KNIGHT

Tag Archives: Economy

Should the Occupy Wall Street protesters move their protest to Washington, D.C.?

New House GOP bill de-funds Planned Parenthood

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