Preferential treatment

The following news article reports on a new policy agenda envisioned by Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley:

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2009/07/daley-backs-business-setasides-for-gayowned-firms.html

The text of this article is as follows:

• 
  Mayor Richard Daley said today he would support an effort to give preferential treatment in city contracting to businesses owned by gays and lesbians.
  The city already sets aside a portion of contracts for businesses owned by blacks, Hispanics, Asians and women. Now Ald. Thomas Tunney (44th), the City Council’s openly gay member, wants companies owned by gays and lesbians to enjoy the same consideration in doing business with the city.
  “I think it’s good,” said Daley, who enjoys strong support from gays and lesbians. “It helps small businesses. It helps businesses grow in the city, and that’s what you want.”

How does this help small business?

How will the City Administration verify that the owners of business are gays and lesbians? Will there be a gay and lesbian audit committee? If there will be an audit committee then will the committee have a list of sexual activities that the business owners must perform in order to qualify as gays and lesbians?

"the moral thing to do"

The Wall Street Journal published an article about Charlie Rangel chairman of the Ways and Means Committee:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970203946904574300013592601036.html

This article describes Charlie Rangel’s various violations of federal tax reporting, New York housing assistance rules and Washington DC real estate tax rules. The following are some of the highlights:

• 
  Ever notice that those who endorse high taxes and those who actually pay them aren’t the same people? Consider the curious case of Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, who is leading the charge for a new 5.4-percentage point income tax surcharge and recently called it “the moral thing to do.” About his own tax liability he seems less, well, fervent.
• 
  Mr. Rangel soon admitted having failed to report rental income of $75,000 over the years. First he blamed his wife for the oversight because he said she was supposed to be managing the property. Then he blamed the language barrier. “Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,” Mr. Rangel explained.
• 
  Besides not paying those pesky taxes, Mr. Rangel had other reasons for wanting to hide income. As the tenant of four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, the Congressman needed to keep his annual reported income below $175,000, lest he be ineligible as a hardship case for rent control. (He also used one of the apartments as an office in violation of rent-control rules, but that’s another story.)
• 
  The National Legal and Policy Center also says it has confirmed that Mr. Rangel owned a home in Washington from 1971-2000 and during that time claimed a “homestead” exemption that allowed him to save on his District of Columbia property taxes. However, the homestead exemption only applies to a principal residence, and the Washington home could not have qualified as such since Mr. Rangel’s rent-stabilized apartments in New York have the same requirement.

Yes you read that correctly Charlie Rangel lives in a rent controlled apartment in New York. How about Charlie’s comment about the language barrier causing him to understate his income? When he was having these conversations why not just "press 1 for English"?

It is unlikely that the registered voters in Charlie Rangel’s 15th congressional district would ever vote him out of office. There is one avenue for Charlie to be removed from office:

• 
  The House Ethics Committee is investigating Mr. Rangel on no fewer than six separate issues, including his failure to report the no-interest loan on his Punta Cana villa and his use of rent-stabilized apartments. It is also investigating his fund raising for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York. New York labor attorney Theodore Kheel, one of the principal owners of the Punta Cana resort, is an important donor to the Rangel Center.

Email the members of the House Ethics Committee. Let them know that you expect a hearing on Charlie Rangel to begin soon. Also let them know that if the charges against Charlie Rangel are true then you expect the Committee to recommend expulsion from congress as punishment.

For more details on the Charlie Rangel scandal, view this website: http://www.nlpc.org/

Friends of Angelo

Here is another example of your government officials enriching themselves at your expense:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SENATORS_MORTGAGES?SITE=OHWIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Here are some of the details:

• Despite their denials, influential Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd were told from the start they were getting VIP mortgage discounts from one of the nation's largest lenders, the official who handled their loans has told Congress in secret testimony.
  Dodd got two Countrywide mortgages in 2003, refinancing his home in Connecticut and another residence in Washington. Conrad's two Countrywide mortgages in 2004 were for a beach house in Delaware and an eight-unit apartment building in Bismarck in his home state of North Dakota.
• 
  Robert Feinberg, who worked in Countrywide's VIP section, told congressional investigators last month that the two senators were made aware that "who you know is basically how you're coming in here."
• Both senators were VIP borrowers in the program known as "friends of Angelo." Angelo Mozilo was chief executive of Countrywide, which played a big part in the foreclosure crisis triggered by defaults on subprime loans. The Calabasas, Calif.-based company was bought last July by Bank of America Corp. for about $2.5 billion.
• Countrywide VIPs, Feinberg told the committees, received discounts on rates, fees and points. Dodd received a break when Countrywide counted both his Connecticut and Washington homes as primary owner-occupied residences - a fiction, according to Feinberg. Conrad received a type of commercial loan that he was told Countrywide didn't offer.
• 
  "The simple fact that Angelo Mozilo and other high-ranking executives at Countrywide were personally making sure Mr. Feinberg handled their loans right, is proof in itself that the senators knew they were getting sweetheart deals," said Feinberg's principal attorney, Anthony Salerno.

Senator Christopher Dodd is a US Senator from Connecticut and the Chairmen of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

Kent Conrad is a US Senator from North Dakota and is a member of the Senate Committee on Finance.

We must convince voters in Connecticut and North Dakota that Dodd and Conrad must be defeated in the next election cycle.

THROW THE BUMS OUT!

TAKE TWO ASPIRIN AND CALL ME WHEN YOUR CANCER IS STAGE 4

One of our friends sent me the following health care essay by Ann Coulter:



http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BzCcaHAnYX28MDNmZTZkZDMtNDI1NC00MGJlLWIyMWEtNDdhNDNhMDM4MTRh&hl=en

This essay is brief but gets directly to the root of the problem. Using common sense and logic Ann describes the current state of the health care system. Also using common sense and logic she points out the inherent flaws in introducing more government intervention into the health care system.

Consider the following four paragraphs:

• The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple "Genius Bar," is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market.

• The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes: You buy insurance in case your house burns down -- not so you can force other people in your plan to pay for your maid. You buy car insurance in case you're in a major accident, not so everyone in the plan shares the cost of gas.

• Even two decades after the collapse of liberals' beloved Soviet Union, they can't grasp that it's easier and cheaper to obtain any service provided by capitalism than any service provided under socialism.

• Instead of making health care more like the DMV, how about we make it more like grocery stores? Give the poor and tough cases health stamps and let the rest of us buy health care -- and health insurance -- on the free market.

The two most highly regulated industries in our economy are finance and health care. We have been told that the problems of the financial sector must be cured by more regulation. Now we are being told that the health care system is broken and can only be cured by more regulation.

We must fight back against this every expanding government intervention. Do not hesitate to punctuate your arguments with the following quotation:

GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOULTION TO OUR PROBLEMS, GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM!

(click on the above quotation to view a video)

Freedom in health care

The Cato Institute has started an ad campaign to educate the public on the subject of health care reform. You can view the ads at the following website:



http://healthcare.cato.org/campaign

The Cato Institute is promoting a commonsense approach to healthcare reform:

• 
  There is a better, uniquely American solution: freedom. Freedom to choose your doctor and health plan. Freedom to spend your health care dollars as you choose. Freedom to make your own medical decisions. Freedom to keep a health plan you are satisfied with.

To support the Cato Institute in its efforts to promote freedom in health care follow this link:

https://www.cato.org/support/healthcare/

Health Care or Freedom

The following article by Dr. Thomas Szasz was published on 7/15/09 in the Wall Street Journal Online:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124761945269242551.html

Dr. Szasz makes several interesting points:

• Everyone recognizes that the more fully we wish insurance companies to defray our out of pocket expenses for our car repairs, the higher the premium they will charge for the policy. Yet foregoing reimbursement for trivial or unnecessary health-care costs in return for a more suitable health-care policy is an option unavailable under the present system. Everyone with health insurance is compelled to protect himself from risks, such as alcoholism and erectile dysfunction, that he would willingly shoulder in exchange for a lower premium.
• The idea that every life is infinitely precious and therefore everyone deserves the same kind of optimal medical care is a fine religious sentiment and moral ideal. As political and economic policy, it is vainglorious delusion. Rich and educated people not only receive better goods and services in all areas of life than do poor and uneducated people, they also tend to take better care of themselves and their possessions, which in turn leads to better health. The first requirement for better health care for all is not equal health care for everyone but educational and economic advancement for everyone.
• If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price. We will become the voluntary slaves of a "compassionate" government that will provide the same low quality health care to everyone.

The solution to our current problems in the system of health care is less government involvement not more. In our health care decisions as in all other aspects of our lives we must be “free to choose”.

CIA Assassination Program

This is an interesting article discussing the recent action by CIA director Leon Panetta:


http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090715_u_s_reaction_cia_assassination_program?utm_source=SWeeklyS&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=090715&utm_content=readmore


The following paragraphs give an overview of this article:

• That a program existed to assassinate al Qaeda leaders should certainly come as no surprise to anyone.


• Furthermore, since 2002, the CIA has conducted scores of strikes against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the MQ-1 Predator and the larger MQ-9 Reaper. These strikes have dramatically increased over the past two years and the pace did not slacken when the Obama administration came to power in January. So far in 2009 there have been more than two dozen UAV strikes in Pakistan alone.


• During the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections in the United States, every major candidate, including Barack Obama, stated that they would seek to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Obama was quite vocal in his criticism of the Bush administration for not doing more to go after al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan. This means that, regardless of who is in the White House, it is U.S. policy to go after individual al Qaeda members as well as the al Qaeda organization.


• In light of these facts, it would appear that there was nothing particularly controversial about the covert assassination program itself, and the controversy that has arisen over it has more to do with the failure to report covert activities to Congress. The political uproar and the manner in which the program was canceled, however, will likely have a negative impact on CIA morale and U.S. counterterrorism efforts.


• Furthermore, there are certain parts of the world — including some countries considered to be U.S. allies — where it is very difficult for the United States to conduct counterterrorism operations at all. These difficulties have been seen in past cases where the governments have refused U.S. requests to detain terrorist suspects or have alerted the suspects to the U.S. interest in them, compromising U.S. intelligence efforts and allowing the suspects to flee.


• The fear that details of a sensitive program designed to assassinate al Qaeda operatives in foreign countries could be leaked was probably the reason for the Bush administration’s decision to withhold knowledge of the program from the U.S. Congress, even though amendments to the National Security Act of 1947 mandate the reporting of most covert intelligence programs to Congress. Given the imaginative legal guidance provided by Bush administration lawyers regarding subjects such as enhanced interrogation, it would not be surprising to find that White House lawyers focused on loopholes in the National Security Act reporting requirements.


• In April we discussed how some of the early actions of the Obama administration were having a chilling effect on U.S. counterterrorism programs and personnel. Expanding the minimum reporting requirements under the National Security Act will serve to turn the thermostat down several additional notches, as did Panetta’s overt killing of the covert program. It is one thing to quietly kill a controversial program; it is quite another to repudiate the CIA in public. In addition to damaging the already low morale at the agency, Panetta has announced in a very public manner that the United States has taken one important tool entirely out of the counterterrorism toolbox: Al Qaeda no longer has to fear the possibility of clandestine American assassination teams.

The actions of our Presidential Administration and Congress are diminishing the ability of our security agencies to pursue and eliminate terrorist threats. Congress does not need and should not be given broader oversight powers.

The decline and fall of the Wall Street Empire

The following article is by Luigi Zingales a business school professor at the University of Chicago. (As you may remember President Obama was a faculty member of the University of Chicago Law School.) This article discusses the ebb and flow of financial centers:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/13/wall-street-changed-opinions-contributors-luigi-zingales.html

Professor Zingales' outlook for the future of New York as the financial capital of the world can be summed up in these 2 parpgraphs:

• The biggest threat of all to the Big Apple's financial supremacy, however, comes from Washington. The Founding Fathers wisely decided that the nation's political capital should be separate from its financial capital (in both senses of the word). Now this splendid segregation has ended. If the outcome of the Chrysler bankruptcy is any indication, Washington is willing to flex its muscle in financial decisions, altering the substance of contracts freely agreed to by private parties. In so doing, the national government has undermined the certainty of the rule of law, which was the American capital market's strongest asset.
• 
  Unfortunately, since Washington is the source of the problem, New York City can do little by itself to defend its position. Perhaps the city's best bet is to offer favorable tax treatment to the financial industry--but to do that, it had better first put its finances in order.

Strategic Calculus and the Afghan War

The following link will take you to a very interesting article from Stratfor Global Intelligence about the strategy of waging a counterinsurgency war:

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090713_strategic_calculus_and_afghan_war?utm_source=GWeeklyS&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=090713&utm_content=readmore

This article is very interesting and the subject matter is exceptionally relevant when considering our course of action in Afghanistan. I have not provided any outtakes as this article should be read in its entirety.

Boycott GM and Chrysler

The following opinion article was published on the Cato Institute site today:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/07/09/strike-a-blow-for-freedom-dont-buy-gm/

This paragraph sums up the argument:

• But in all seriousness, this legislative effort is an affront to common sense and an insult to our heritage of free enterprise and capitalism. It is stunning enough to watch the slow-motion nationalization of an iconic behemoth like GM, but Congressional meddling at the operational level to stop the company from following through on an obviously wise cost-cutting measures should be a wake up call to all Americans that we are doomed to politically-driven micromanagement of the economy–into the ground no less–unless we register our disgust and dissent now!

The Government’s solution to the Chrysler saga sounds like the punch line of a joke. It would be funny if it wasn’t costing all of us billions of our hard earned dollars. Chrysler is in financial trouble due to management inefficiencies and low labor productivity. The solution that we all are contributing to is to have the Federal Government take over the Board of Directors, then give the UAW a controlling ownership interest and finally bring in an Italian automaker to manage the company. Incredible! The Federal Government, the UAW and an Italian automaker, to solve inefficiency and low productivity.

GM and Chrysler have become vampire corporations and will feed on the US Treasury for years to come. It is time to drive a stake through the hearts of these living dead corporations before they drain us of what little savings we have left.

An admission of guilt from Timothy Geithner

In an appearance before the House Financial Services Committee and the House Agriculture Committee today Timothy Geithner made a startling admission. The following article gives the overview of this testimony:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FINANCIAL_OVERHAUL?SITE=OHWIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Geithner’s admission:

1. …the ease with which derivatives were bought and sold in an era of easy credit encouraged financial institutions and investors to take on too much risk.
2. The federal regulatory system "failed in its most basic responsibility to produce a stable and resilient system for providing credit and protecting consumers and investors," he said.
   

The Secretary of the Treasury has finally admitted that the Federal Government was responsible for the current financial crisis. Statement 1 above is an admission that easy credit encouraged financial institutions and investors to take on too much risk. Statement 2 above is an admission that the most basic responsibility of the federal regulatory system is to produce a stable and resilient system for providing credit and protecting consumers and investors.

The Federal Reserve was then and is now guilty of a reckless policy of easy credit. In an effort to support maximum employment the Federal Reserve created a financial bubble in the housing market by forcing interest rates to below market levels. The actions of the Federal Reserve were compounded by the expansion of Federal intervention in the US housing mortgage market. The Federal regulators ignored obvious acts of fraud by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

His testimony is designed to convince congress that the Federal financial regulators should be granted more powers. To prevent future financial bubbles the Federal financial reform that should be enacted is a rewriting of the Federal Reserve mandate. The Federal Reserve’s current mandate is as follows:

"conducting the nation’s monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates"

The new mandate should eliminate the pursuit of maximum employment clause. If the Federal Reserve only concentrated on stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates we would have a smoother business cycle without the huge financial bubbles that we have suffered in recent years.

The following quote from Milton Freidman is listed in the “Quotation section” in the right column of this Blog page:

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. ... A steady rate of monetary growth at a moderate level can provide a framework under which a country can have little inflation and much growth. It will not produce perfect stability; it will not produce heaven on earth; but it can make an important contribution to a stable economic society."

The Public Option Two-Step

An opinion article published in today’s Wall Street Journal gets to the heart of the current health care debate:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124709618142215031.html

Here are some of the highlights:

• Americans unschooled in liberal health-care politics may have trouble deciphering the White House's conflicting proclamations this week about a new government insurance program for the middle class. Allow us to translate: President Obama loves this so-called public option, but he needs to sell it in a shroud of euphemism and the appearance of "compromise."


• The reason left-flank Democrats are so adamant about a public option is because they know it is an opening wedge for the government to dominate U.S. health care.


• Mr. Emanuel echoes his boss and says a government health plan is needed to keep the private sector "honest," but then why don't we also need a state-run oil company, or nationalized grocery store chain? (Or auto maker? Never mind.) The real goal is to create a program backstopped by taxpayers that can exert political leverage over the market.


• Because this is so expensive, the public version Mr. Schumer favors would supposedly receive no special advantages. But this is meaningless when Democrats are planning to mandate the benefits that private insurers must provide, the patients they must accept, and how much they can charge. Oh, and a government plan would still have an implicit taxpayer guarantee a la Fannie Mae, giving it an inherent cost-of-capital advantage.


• The other goal of a new public plan is to force doctors and hospitals to accept below-cost fees. This is how Medicare tries to control costs today, but it's like squeezing a balloon: Lower reimbursements mean that providers -- especially hospitals -- must recoup their costs elsewhere, either by shifting costs onto private payers or with more billable tests and procedures. The only way costs can conceivably be managed via price controls is if government is running the whole show, which naturally leads to severe restrictions on care while medical innovation withers.

The public option is the worst part of a very bad bill now being drafted in Congress. To learn how you can help stop this from becoming law, go to the following website:

http://www.cprights.org/

Obama's mythography: An Orwellian disaster

One of our friends emailed me the following opinion article published today in the Pittsburgh Tribune:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_632488.html

The first paragraph is very powerfully worded:

• President Barack Obama's Orwellian rhetoric has become absolutely pathological. And it's become so blatant that you can almost guarantee that the truth is the exact opposite of what he says.

As you know I have a great admiration for Orwellian comparisons so this opinion piece is one that I find compelling. The Orwellian practice that President Obama and his administration most dramatically exhibit is the concept of “doublethink”. Doublethink is defined in Orwell’s novel “1984” as Reality Control. This is the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. Doublethink allows President Obama to insist he has no intention of taking over Chrysler and General Motors while at the same time he covets the usurpation of both corporations.

This would be an interesting study in the psychology of delusional politicians if only it did not impact our life, liberty and property.

The 7% soultion

The following article is another example of how government funding can corrupt society. The Chicago Public Schools are under constant condemnation for their high dropout rate and poor student test scores. The solution chosen by CPS officials is to falsify the attendance records:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-0627edit1jun27,0,478588.story

These 2 paragraphs explain the motivation for committing fraud:

• There's plenty of motivation to cook the attendance books. Attendance determines the amount of state and federal money schools receive: Depressed attendance caused by dropouts and truants costs CPS as much as $20 million a year in state funding. Attendance determines staffing levels too. As enrollment dips, jobs are threatened.
• This type of low-grade obfuscation may keep extra dollars flowing to Bowen, but it does nothing to stem the school's tide of underachievement. Only 7 percent of Bowen Environmental students passed the state assessment tests in 2008.

You read that correctly, only 7 percent of this school’s students passed the assessment tests. And keep in mind that the State’s assessment tests are designed to pass the greatest number of students as possible.

It is incredible that a service provider can stay in business with a 93% failure rate. Could you imagine a hospital staying in business if 93% of its patients died? Would you hire an attorney who has a record of 93% of clients being convicted? What about an accountant who had 93% of his clients audited? How about dining at a restaurant where 93% of customers get food poisoning?

For more information about public education and school choice see the following website:

http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/Welcome.do

Pay to get appointed

When you are a Chicago politician you learn early in your carrier that you reward those who bring in the cash. President Obama has taken very good care of his major donors. This link will take you to a detailed list of presidential appointments:

http://www.verumserum.com/?p=6949

The more things “change” the more they stay the same.

We hold these truths to be self-evident

Happy Independence Day.

As we struggle against the tyranny of government each day it may be easy to forget how this nation was founded. I encourage you to take a few minutes of your time today to read our Declaration of Independence:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

We all have heard the words contained in the second paragraph:

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

On this 4th of July it is a good time to reflect on how far our government has drifted from these founding principles. We should never forget the last sentence in the above paragraph. “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed”.

Independence in 1776 to Dependence on 1776

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute has published a chart depicting the growth of Federal subsidy programs:






It is a sad coincidence that the number of subsidy programs now equals 1,776. In the year 1776 our nation’s founders were willing to fight and die to attain liberty and economic freedom. Today the citizens of this nation have traded that liberty and economic freedom to become wards of the state and its 1,776 subsidy programs.




Independence in 1776 to Dependence on 1776