Tag Archives: Fail

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We can see how Democrat presidential candidates would govern from Democrat-run states

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California's ignorant Democrat governor Jerry Brown keeps failing
California’s ignorant Democrat governor Jerry Brown keeps failing

A lot of low-information voters decide who they are going to vote for based on the words the candidates speak, and how those words make them feel, and what their peers will think of them. They see their vote as membership in a club, not as a way to get policies that will actually produce real-world results. Thankfully, we can know what results Democrats produce by looking at Democrat-run states.

Let’s start with the Democrat-dominated state of California, which has pursued some of the most aggressive Green New Deal policies in recent years. The prediction from Democrats is that Green New Deal energy policies will lower the cost of energy and produce abundant energy to fuel economic growth. Is that what happened?

Consider this article from National Review:

More than 2 million people are going without power in Northern and Central California, in the latest and biggest of the intentional blackouts that are, astonishingly, California’s best answer to the risk of runaway wildfires.

[…]The same California that has boldly committed to transitioning to 50 percent renewable energy by 2025 — and 100 percent renewable energy by 2045 — can’t manage its existing energy infrastructure.

[…]California governor Gavin Newsom, who has to try to evade responsibility for this debacle while presiding over it, blames “dog-eat-dog capitalism” for the state’s current crisis. It sounds like he’s referring to robber barons who have descended on the state to suck it dry of profits while burning it to the ground. But Newsom is talking about one of the most regulated industries in the state — namely California’s energy utilities, which answer to the state’s public utilities commission.

So, what happened? What happened is that the Democrats pursued a pretty standard play book in which they regulated the energy industry, forcing them to focus on green energy. And the result of that policy was higher electricity prices, higher gas prices and blackouts. By the way, the utility company has filed for bankruptcy, which is certainly not going to help matters.

They really should have known that this would happen, because other countries, like Germany and Canada for example, tried it first. And the results are the same: higher electricity prices and rotating blackouts. Is it any wonder that business owners are fleeing the state, or outsourcing their operations to areas that are more reality-based?

But that’s not all. What else do environmentalists do? They block the thinning out of forests which prevents forest fires. So what happened next?

Meanwhile, California has had a decades-long aversion to properly clearing forests. The state’s leaders have long been in thrall to the belief that cutting down trees is somehow an offense against nature, even though thinning helps create healthier forests. Biomass has been allowed to build up, and it becomes the kindling for catastrophic fires.

As Chuck DeVore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation points out, a report of the Western Governors’ Association warned of this effect more than a decade ago, noting that “over time the fire-prone forests that were not thinned, burn in uncharacteristically destructive wildfires.”

In 2016, then-governor Jerry Brown actually vetoed a bill that had unanimously passed the state legislature to promote the clearing of trees dangerously close to power lines.

The result of their environmentalist policies? Massive wild fires. California already has a homeless epidemic going on, and the wildfires will only make that problem worse.

But that’s not all, there’s more failure to achieve in other areas:

Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents, and infectious diseases.

Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.

Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline, and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous, and under nonstop makeshift repair.

Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon—the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation, and green mandates—add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state’s failing high-speed rail project.

Residents shrug that the state’s public schools are among the weakest in the nation, often ranking in the bottom quadrant in standardized test scores. Elites publicly oppose charter schools, but often put their own kids in private academies.

Californians know that to venture into a typical municipal emergency room is to descend into a modern Dante’s Inferno. Medical facilities are overcrowded. They can be as unpleasant as they are bankrupting to the vanishing middle class that must face exorbitant charges to bring in an injured or sick child.

No one would dare to connect the crumbling infrastructure, poor schools, and failing public health care with the non-enforcement of immigration laws, which has led to a massive influx of undocumented immigrants from the poorest regions of the world, who often arrive without fluency in English or a high school education.

Stores are occasionally hit by swarming looters. Such Wild West criminals know how to keep their thefts under $950, ensuring that such “misdemeanors” do not warrant police attention. California’s permissive laws have decriminalized thefts and break-ins. The result is that San Francisco now has the highest property crime rate per capita in the nation.

Nothing is working. It’s a complete disaster. And it has to be blamed on Democrats, because they have super-majorities in the state House and state Senate, not to mention the Democrat governor.

Although Democrats like to present themselves as science-based and intelligent, the best way to measure scientific understanding and intelligence is by comparing intentions to results. Smart, reality-based people achieve what they tell others they will achieve. If a Democrat claims that they will get X result (e.g. – you can keep your doctor, you can keep your health plan, your health insurance premiums will go down) and they get opposite results across the board, then you know that they are not scientifically-literate or intelligent.

The best way to get the results you want is to elect people with a record of achieving results. That’s why we look at a candidate’s resume and references before hiring them – at least in the private sector. Democrat voters should know better than to hire candidates based on appearances and words and feelings. We need to learn from their failures.

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Only 11% of new Obamacare enrollees were previously uninsured

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From the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Early signals suggest the majority of the 2.2 million people who sought to enroll in private insurance through new marketplaces through Dec. 28 were previously covered elsewhere, raising questions about how swiftly this part of the health overhaul will be able to make a significant dent in the number of uninsured.

Insurers, brokers and consultants estimate at least two-thirds of those consumers previously bought their own coverage or were enrolled in employer-backed plans.

The data, based on surveys of enrollees, are preliminary. But insurers say the tally of newly insured consumers is falling short of their expectations, a worrying trend for an industry looking to the law to expand the ranks of its customers.

About 48 million Americans were uninsured in 2012. The health law is expected to cut 25 million from that total by expanding state-run Medicaid programs and the pool of privately insured people who buy through state marketplaces, also called exchanges.

Only 11% of consumers who bought new coverage under the law were previously uninsured, according to a McKinsey & Co. survey of consumers thought to be eligible for the health-law marketplaces. The result is based on a sampling of 4,563 consumers performed between November and January, of whom 389 had enrolled in new insurance.

One reason for people declining to purchase plans was affordability. That was cited by 52% of those who had shopped for a new plan but not purchased one in McKinsey’s most recent sampling, performed in January. Another common problem was technical challenges in buying the plans, which 30% mentioned.

I thought that the point of Obamacare was to reduce the number of uninsured Americans. Well, I guess if you know 129 million people out of their current insurance, and some of those people who are now uninsured will be obligated by law to buy Obamacare health care plans, then that counts as reducing the uninsured, right? I mean – they were uninsured when you knocked them out of their current health plan, right? It makes sense. Like me robbing you of $500 and then giving you $50 back. Good deal, right?

Previously, the Wall Street Journal reported on how the number of young people enrolling was WAY below estimates, which will increase the losses of the private insurance companies.

Excerpt:

Just under a quarter of the roughly 2.2 million people who signed up for private plans nationwide by Dec. 28 were between the ages of 18 and 34, while one-third were in the 55-to-64 range, just short of the age at which most qualify for Medicare, the federal government program for the elderly.

[…]Under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, consumers no longer pay premiums based on their health risks. To prevent a sharp rise in premiums in 2015 and beyond, carriers say they need strong enrollment from younger people who are likely to be healthier. That would balance out the bills racked up by sicker and older people.

[…]“There’s no way to spin it: Youth enrollment has been a bust so far,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio). “When they see that Obamacare offers high costs for limited access to doctors—if the enrollment goes through at all—it’s no surprise that young people aren’t rushing to sign up.”

Previously, I blogged about a study that showed that young people have to pay are much higher than pre-Obamacare health plans. That’s why fewer of them are enrolling than the Democrats expected. If the insurance companies take losses on this shortfall, then they will need to be bailed out by the government – and the Obamacare bill provides for this bailout. As it stands right now, Moody’s has downgraded health insurance companies  from stable to negative.

News

526 economists, including 5 Nobel prize winners, grade Romney and Obama plans

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Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor Force Participation Rate

From the Daily Caller:

The 526 economists — including Nobel laureates Gary Becker, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Myron Scholes — point to six facets of Romney’s economic approach that they see as beneficial to future economic success.

  • Reduce marginal tax rates on business and wage incomes and broaden the tax base to increase investment, jobs, and living standards.
  • End the exploding federal debt by controlling the growth of spending so federal spending does not exceed 20 percent of the economy.
  • Restructure regulation to end “too big to fail,” improve credit availability to entrepreneurs and small businesses, and increase regulatory accountability, and ensure that all regulations pass rigorous benefit-cost tests.
  • Improve our Social Security and Medicare programs by reducing their growth to sustainable levels, ensuring their viability over the long term, and protecting those in or near retirement.
  • Reform our healthcare system to harness market forces and thereby reduce costs and increase quality, empowering patients and doctors, rather than the federal bureaucracy.
  • Promote energy policies that increase domestic production, enlarge the use of all western hemisphere resources, encourage the use of new technologies, end wasteful subsidies, and rely more on market forces and less on government planners.

Seven of the signatories are from Harvard University and five from Columbia University — two of President Barack Obama’s alma maters.

The economists’ statement of support pillories Obama’s economic record, claiming that his expansion of the federal government has resulted in “anemic economic recovery and high unemployment,” which will continue if his future plans are implemented.

Among the Obama policies with which the 526 economists take issue include:

  • Relied on short-term “stimulus” programs, which provided little sustainable lift to the economy, and enacted and proposed significant tax increases for all Americans.
  • Offered no plan to reduce federal spending and stop the growth of the debt-to-GDP ratio.
  • Failed to propose Social Security reform and offered a Medicare proposal that relies on a panel of bureaucrats to set prices, quantities, and qualities of healthcare services.
  • Favored a large expansion of economic regulation across many sectors, with little regard for proper cost-benefit analysis and with a disturbing degree of favoritism toward special interests.
  • Enacted health care legislation that centralizes health care decisions and increases the power of the federal bureaucracy to impose one-size-fits-all solutions on patients and doctors, and creates greater incentives for waste.
  • Favored expansion of one-size-fits-all federal rulemaking, with an erosion of the ability of state and local governments to make decisions appropriate for their particular circumstances.

We can’t afford four more years of incompetence and failure. We need to ask ourselves what economists like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams would do. And they wouldn’t give Obama four more years. We need a change.