Obamacare’s Big Brother: Accountable Care Organizations

by Brian T. Schwartz | 5:30 am, June 9, 2011

The fundamental flaw with ACOs is the Big Brother approach of controlling costs by dictating how physicians may practice. Doctors may decide they’d rather be ‘accountable’ to their ACO paymasters rather than patients.

Feds Bust Down Man’s Door over STUDENT LOANS

by Mr. Bob | 2:27 pm, June 8, 2011

Fed. Gov‘t SWAT Team Busts Down Man’s Door Over Estranged Wife’s Student LoansYou may want to go make sure your federal government student loans are in good order right now. That’s because, as a Stockton, CA mean just learned, the federal gov…

If We Hope Hard Enough…

by Jon Caldara | 12:54 pm, June 8, 2011

There is an old financial investment saying that “hope is not an investment strategy,” but from what I can tell, that’s about all the current Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA) projections are running on. That and crossing some fingers maybe. Financial strategy and investment guru Blaine Rollins hits a home run in this Post guest [...]

Denver Post and NREL, Meet Bastiat

by Ari Armstrong | 9:16 am, June 8, 2011

Let’s play the game of “spot the economic fallacies” in today’s editorial by the Denver Post, which essentially advocates corporate welfare. (This follows a slanted news story on the same topic.)The Post claims that the tax-funded National Renewable En…

When even USA Today notices

by Rossputin | 6:09 am, June 8, 2011

As I was wandering the streets of our nation’s capital yesterday, a headline on a USA Today newspaper in a newspaper vending box caught my eye. Not because the story was news to me, but because it was actually top of the fold on the front page of the most “mainstream” of newspapers.

The article was titled: “U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions”, and subtitled something like “Government obligations now $527,000 per household.”

When the media for everyman starts understanding just how dire our fiscal situation is, and starts telling everyman that it is so, those in political power – especially those seen as particularly responsible for, or ineffective in dealing with, the problem – should be running scared.

And while Republicans of the past decade surely have much to answer for, this isn’t your father’s Republican House of Representatives, and everybody knows it. The GOP freshman class is very large and they don’t (yet?) have the Potomac Fever which has caused us so much harm in years past. They’re still angry with John Boehner’s compromise on the 2011 Continuing Resolution, with many of them believing that the deal ended up cutting a minuscule amount of spending. They’re channeling The Who: “We won’t get fooled again.”

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has given us the impactless but expensive cash-for-clunkers, home loan modification programs and tax credits, and of course the massive failure of the “stimulus” which has stimulated nothing but the growth of the federal government’s reach and cost.

President Obama lost the tax debate, as he should have, when he agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for all brackets. After all, if the economy improves (which it won’t while suffocating under the wet blanket of Obamacare and this administration’s EPA, NLRB, FCC, and Department of the Interior, just to name a few), a strong argument would be made that low and consistent tax rates were of benefit and shouldn’t be tinkered with. Alternatively, if the economy continues to sputter, Obama has already conceded that higher tax rates would doom any potential recovery.

Therefore, between Obama’s December agreement and the current GOP’s absolute refusal to go along with any increase in income tax rates, that particular policy disaster is likely to be held off for some time.

Democrats in Congress, however, still dream for an even more “progressive” system even if it doesn’t generate increased revenue for the government. The fact that they’ll keep trying for a tax rate hike means that upcoming debates over spending and the debt ceiling will be even more difficult than they otherwise might be.  Obama will agree with them even though he’s basically the guy who killed any chance of a tax hike; it’s the old story of a broken clock being right twice a day, and wrong the rest of the time.  (Don’t forget, Obama is the guy who said that he would raise capital gains taxes “in the interest of fairness” even if he knew in advance that the hike would not generate increased revenue for the government.)

My ongoing theme for the 2012 elections is like Coke’s: “the real thing.”

When members of both parties were spending money like drunken sailors (a comparison which is truly an insult to drunken sailors), voters said “hey, if we’re going to elect a government of big-spenders, let’s go with the real pros, the Democrats, and not those GOP Johnny-come-latelies.”

When the as-mainstream-as-possible USA Today is talking about our having debt problems, voters will want the real thing when it comes to cutting spending, and that bodes extremely badly for Democrat electoral hopes in 2012.

One of the last economic rats jumping ship

by Rossputin | 5:59 am, June 8, 2011

Poor Barack Obama. His economic advisors are leaving him almost as fast as Huma should be leaving Anthony Weiner.

Christina Romer resigned last August. Jared Bernstein who co-wrote the report with Romer saying that we had to pass the “stimulus” bill to keep unemployment from going above 8% announced his resignation less than two months ago and left the White House in May. Peter Orszag, former head of the White House Office of Management and Budget and the closest thing to an economic conservative (though surely not one) Obama has had advising him on economics, resigned a year ago with Larry Summers following him out the door three months later.

And now we have the news that Austan Goolsbee, an advisor to Barack Obama since The One’s days as the junior senator from Illinois, is departing from the service of his long-time boss.

Except for the leftist Jared Bernstein (who appears to have no training in economics), Barack Obama’s high-profile economic advisors other than Goolsbee have been serious people and relative moderates. Orszag is reported to have been arguing against tax hikes before his resignation.

So it could be that the earlier resignations of Romer, Orszag, and Summers represented the most economically literate of the crew realizing that Obama’s blind faith in Keynesianism and ingrained desire to “spread the wealth around” could only lead to bad economic outcomes that they didn’t want blamed on them.

The fact that the two most liberal advisers are now out the door…and last out the door…could mean that Barack Obama himself is starting to realize the political impact of his incredible economic mismanagement.

It may be naively hopeful to think that some part of Obama actually wonders if “liberal” economic policies of redistribution and pump-priming might actually not work. More typically, progressives think that they just haven’t taxed-and-spent enough if their first stab at it fails.

We’ll see if there’s any clue to Obama’s mindset with his choice of replacement for Goolsbee. He may choose some nominally moderate economic advisor, perhaps as a way that he can blame his having to move to the middle, at least a little, during the debt ceiling debate on having gotten new and better advice – even though it’s something he knows he must do no matter what to give himself any chance at reelection.

The last rat left is Tim Geithner, the tax-cheat Treasury Secretary who other than for a couple of years after getting a graduate degree has never had a private sector job…and even that job, for Kissinger Associates, was not really private sector-oriented.

Goolsbee was a sacrificial lamb, if I may change animal metaphors, but he’s rather a low-level one; nobody other than policy wonks like me has heard of the guy. Geithner, on the other hand, is a big high-profile name. My guess is that one or two more months of poor economic data will spur his “resignation” as well, the last, dumbest rat off the foundering “USS Fundamental Transformation”

School District Buys IPads for Students in the Second Poorest County in Colorado

by PerlStalker | 10:44 pm, June 7, 2011

The San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado contains six of the poorest counties in Colorado. Three of them, Costilla, Saguache and Conejos, are in the bottom four in the state for median income and Alamosa and Rio Grande counties are in the bottom 15. So…

Shawn Mitchell on Xcel, 2011 Legislative Session VIDEO

by Jon Caldara | 3:22 pm, June 7, 2011

Prendergast On the Media

by Ari Armstrong | 12:37 pm, June 7, 2011

In preparation for a Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership event June 4, I asked several regional journalists about their successes and their views on whether the media report or make the news. Westword’s Alan Prendergast adds his comments below.Hi Ari,Sorry I…

How Did I Miss Utah’s Union Release Time Accountability Law (They Beat Colorado)?

by Eddie | 10:07 am, June 7, 2011

About eight weeks ago I brought your attention to the fact that Colorado and Michigan taxpayers both are still underwriting teachers union release time. But not so much anymore in one of our neighboring states. This is one to chalk up in the “How did I miss that?” category. Anyway, way back in March, Utah [...]

National Outlet Defends TABOR from FASTER

by Jon Caldara | 9:35 am, June 7, 2011

Bravo WorldNetDaily! If you haven’t seen this remarkable write-up of what FASTER has meant for taxpayers in Colorado then check this piece out. The article does a wonderful job of explaining the intention of our Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) to those unfamiliar with it and explaining how former governor Bill Ritter’s fee infested FASTER [...]

MAD Mom Says TABOR Like “Parental Controls For Teenagers”

by Mike Krause | 9:16 am, June 7, 2011

Over at The Daily Caller, Mothers Against Debt (MAD) director Amy Oliver Cooke gives a pretty severe spanking to proponents of the recent lawsuit against the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), comparing them to spoiled teenagers wanting a bigger allowance. Money quote:
What’s not to like about TABOR? Plenty if you are an [...]

The Congressman Oscar Mayer Weiner Song

by Rossputin | 8:59 am, June 7, 2011

Rick V, commenting on my article for the American Spectator today, offered this excellent bit of political poetic levity.

In case some of you don’t remember the original tune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNddW2xmZp8

 

And now Rick’s excellent work:

I’m sorry that I tweeted you my wiener –
That is something you don’t want to see –
Now ever since I tweeted you my wiener –
Everybody wants a piece of me.

I always thought I had the nicest wiener –
A point on which the whole world would agree –
Now I’m having second thoughts about my wiener –
It now seems to be a liability.

I was a congressman to be afraid of –
Republicans would tremble as I passed –
The halls of Congress now are filled with laughter –
My flag is only flying at half-mast.

So I offer this advice to my successor –
It now seems as plain as day to me –
If you want to show the voters what you’re made of –
You shouldn’t do it in your BVD’s.

Weiner jokes

by Rossputin | 6:12 am, June 7, 2011

Look, everybody’s going to be talking about Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), making weiner jokes, wondering how many 16-year old girls were among his Facebook “friends” and Tweetees, and so on. So I’m not going to. Instead, let’s start with the sickening behavior of the media, at least as I heard them on satellite radio while I was driving for an hour or so on Monday afternoon.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who had actually asked Weiner some hard questions on the topic, ended his report following the congressman’s various admissions by saying that this is basically an issue between Weiner and his wife.

Similarly, CNN’s Jeanne Moos in a segment about an hour later, described one of the images Weiner sent to some unknown Internet acquaintance-ette as funny (or something like funny) and pointed out that a picture of him holding a sign saying “Me” had “his wedding ring in plain view.”

So now, the media isn’t just trying to save a left-winger’s job, but also his marriage?

Please read the entirety of my article for the American Spectator here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/06/07/the-jokes-on-weiner

Gov. Hickenlooper wrong to veto Colorado SB11-213

by Brian T. Schwartz | 5:30 am, June 7, 2011

Gov. John Hickenlooper was wrong to veto Senate Bill 213, which would have increased Child Health Plan Plus premiums for families earning more than twice the federal poverty level. What’s unfair is that Colorado compels taxpayers to fund a program that allows eligible parents to value satisfying bodily appetites more than their children’s healt

Heath’s Tax Hikers Recruiting at State Colleges

by PerlStalker | 10:12 pm, June 6, 2011

I received a most interesting call at work today. A man called me today on my work phone claiming he was from a group trying to get Sen. Heath’s education tax hike bill on the ballot. I regret that I didn’t write down the gentleman’s name. He called me…

‘Wrong, But Accurate!’

by T.L. James | 9:31 pm, June 6, 2011

Charles Johnson says he won’t apologize for treating the Weiner Twitter scandal as a phony ‘nontroversy’ fabricated by Andrew Breitbart now that Weiner has admitted to it, because…umm…Andrew Breitbart is dishonest and sleazy. And even if Breitbart’s right, being sleazy makes him wrong. Or something. If anyone actually cares. ADDED: HotAir has a clip just released by ABC [...]

My Super Summer Vacation

by Mr. Bob | 11:30 am, June 6, 2011

My Super Summer Vacation My Super Summer Vacation by Piper Palin (channeled by Betsy M. Galliher) http://bit.ly/jwFPTn

Cost of Fannie Freddie Bailout, twice what earlier predicted by Administration

by Mr. Bob | 11:21 am, June 6, 2011

True cost of Fannie/Freddie bailout more than twice Obama administration claim « Hot Air http://t.co/OB11df6 via @hotairblogTweet

Cult of Global Warming predicting CANNIBALS if we don’t DO something!

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 11:04 am, June 6, 2011

David K. Williams, Jr.I have often kidded about and exaggerated the horrible apocalyptic warnings from the Al Gore Cult of Global Warming if we humans do not reduce our comparatively miniscule contributions to “greenhouse gases” and implement some poli…

Tennessee One to Watch as Colorado Moves Forward on Educator Effectiveness

by Eddie | 10:15 am, June 6, 2011

Happy Monday! The debate over implementing Colorado’s educator effectiveness law (aka SB 191) continues to grow. This week the State Board of Education is scheduled to hear a staff presentation concerning the first draft of rules for creating a statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals, to set the parameters for the 2012-13 pilot program, [...]

Free Colorado’s Beer and Liquor Markets

by Ari Armstrong | 9:35 am, June 6, 2011

At a recent Liberty On the Rocks event, Kris Cook and I argued in favor of free markets in beer and liquor sales. The event was actually a debate, but, as the other participants didn’t actually believe their stance, I didn’t want to include that footag…

Reapportionment Commission to hear public testimony on state legislative district boundaries

by CTBC Director | 7:57 am, June 6, 2011

Although the drawing of Colorado’s Congressional district boundaries has been sent to the courts (since the state senate failed to consider redistricting legislation, abdicating their constitutional obligations), the Reapportionment Commission (charged with drawing state legislative districts) is meeting over the summer and will hear public testimony both in Denver (initially) and throughout the state (once a [...]

A Sustainable Renewable Energy Fantasy

by Rossputin | 6:19 am, June 6, 2011

Thanks to Seldon Graham for this guest article:
Have you noticed how many movies are fantasies now?  The American public loves fantasies.  Fantasies sell at the box office.  Fantasies are popular.  Fantasies are also popular in o…

What can a white guy talk about?

by Rossputin | 5:08 am, June 6, 2011

While sitting in for Dan Caplis on 630 KHOW’s Caplis & Silverman show on Friday, we got on to the issue of drug legalization. (Podcast here.)

I made an argument that went more or less like this:

There have been two government policies which I think have been primarily responsible for the decimation of black society in America: The development of the Welfare State and the War on Drugs. By increasing the profits in the drug trade, the war on drugs has made people living in ghettos believe they can make a living without going to school, creating a large part of a generation of black kids who have doomed themselves to poverty once their drug-selling days are over…and who won’t be particularly capable of helping the next generation escape that poverty.

Two of the next three callers to the show were black women, both of whom called to “pick a bone” with me. (Start around 12:30 in the podcast for the first caller and around 17:30 for the next.)

The first tried to make the point that lots of people other than blacks were on welfare.

The second tried to make the point that people other than blacks live in ghettos.

If I remember correctly, one of the callers agreed with me on legalization and the other either didn’t agree or didn’t say.

They both complained that I was making policy suggestions for the black community without ever having been black. To that I plead no contest. I have never been black.

But what does it say about the future of black America if whites who truly want to make a positive impact can’t even talk about policy without blacks looking to nitpick very small and essentially irrelevant parts of the discussion?

Would those women suggest leaving all progress in policy which impacts black communities (and ghettos) to black leaders? How’s that working out for them so far?

More broadly, and I’m not saying I expect many or most blacks to see this intuitively, the policies which have kept black people poor for decades (incentives to have kids out of wedlock, the War on Drugs, and the Social Security system) are all supported by politicians and bureaucrats who have, in the case of welfare and entitlements, incentive to keep people dependent on government. The failed War on Drugs is mostly a creation of Republicans, but Democrats are now complicit in not trying to stop it.

I don’t think we’ve had a black Republican in Congress between when J.C. Watts retired in 2003 and when Alan West (FL) and Tim Scott (SC)  got elected last year. The Congressional Black Caucus is made up entirely of Democrats.

Again, these people (Democrats, not just black Democrats) have a vested interest in keeping people dependent. They also usually have a very narrow view of what’s even possible in economic and social policy since their world view revolves around government being the solution to all problems.

But as Ronald Reagan pointed out, government is the problem.

And now that we have the first (or perhaps second, after Bill Clinton) black president, does anybody think that race relations have improved, or that President Obama has done anything to improve the situation for American blacks? Anything? Is education better? No, Obama killed the DC voucher program that had multiples of applicants for each slot since black parents want the best for their kids just the way any other parent does.  Has the War on Drugs been diminished? No, despite promises by Barack Obama early in his administration that they would stop raids on users or growers of marijuana who were in compliance with the relevant state laws.

No, Democrats never do anything that actually helps black America. The best they can do is to stop doing what they’ve been doing. Since Obama is our Campaigner-in-Chief but not a leader, at least he hasn’t done much more harm to blacks.

But am I even allowed to talk about that as a white guy?

If you listen to the first caller mentioned above (Deborah), she calls in to yell at me for not being black and then, nearly yelling, says that the War on Drugs was racist at its beginning…which I thought was one of the points I was making!

Let me make an analogy: Benjamin Netanyahu said that there cannot be peace between Palestinians and Israelis until the Palestinians stop teaching their children to hate Jews.  Was it not stunning, for those who didn’t ignore it out of their blind rush to support Barack Obama, to hear the rhetoric of Chicago’s own hate-preacher, Jeremiah Wright, in whose pews our now-president sat for years?

With that sort of “leadership” in black churches – and I am not implying that most black churches are full of such hate mongers, but how many do there need to be to have a big impact? – how are whites and blacks supposed to have an open, forthright discussion?

Those were some extremely frustrating, even if entertaining, moments of radio because the nitpicky negative reaction to my making a point specifically about how public policy can and should be changed for the betterment of black society show a long, rough road ahead for a big segment of our nation’s population. Until blacks realize that I don’t have to have been black to want better things for them – just because they’re people and Americans – and until black leaders themselves stop being Jackson- and Sharpton-style race hustlers, it’s hard to be optimistic about American blacks achieving the kinds of gains that all Americans are entitled to strive for.

Tell Sen Bennett!

by Al Maurer | 3:05 pm, June 5, 2011

Sen Bennett wants to know what the people think about the deficit: let’s tell him.

On Making the News

by Ari Armstrong | 8:49 am, June 5, 2011

Yesterday I discussed media with the students participating in the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Program. This is a group of very smart and articulate kids; the idea is to gather together nearly 200 students from across Colorado for a weekend of talks …

Backbone Radio, June 5, 2011: We got ‘em!

by Rossputin | 5:46 am, June 5, 2011

Audio archives for this show:

Segment 1 – Intro; the downfall of John Edwards
Segment 2 – Lt. Col. Steve Russell, author of “We Got Him!”
Segment 3 – Doug Groothuis, Professor of Philosoph; the benefits of philosophy; intellectual approach to evolution versus creationism
Segment 4 – More with Doug Groothuis; protection of religious speech; natural rights
Segment 5 – The politics of weak housing and job statistics
Segment 6 – Trivia question; German economic performance; scaremongering the debt ceiling

In our first hour of Backbone Radio this week, we’ll be joined by Lt. Col Steve Russell whose words “We got him!” following his batallion’s finding and capturing Saddam Hussein are the stuff of military (true) lore.  Russell has authored a book of the same name which you can find at Amazon.com.

I think what we’ll talk with LTC Russell about is fairly obvious…but we’ll also ask his take on the killing of Osama bin Laden.

In the second hour, I’ll be joined by Doug Groothuis who is, by his own description, “an evangelical Christian philospher, political conservative, and (who) loves discussing important ideas with whomever is interested.”  We’ll go wherever the conversation takes us, and I hope you’ll join in with your own thoughts and questions.

In the third hour of the show, we’ll discuss the GOP political field and the question of whether a white guy (like me) can even talk about issues impacting black society without being called a racist – even when offering policy prescriptions intended to help.

Please join me by listening to (and calling in to) this week’s Backbone Radio program from 5 PM to 8 PM on 710 AM KNUS in Denver and 1460 AM KZNT in Colorado Springs.

If you’re not in range of the radio waves, you should be able to listen to the show online by clicking HERE.

I hope you’ll actively participate in the conversation with me: Call the studio at 303 696 1971.

Open Courts Advocate Judge O. John Kuenhold to Retire

by PerlStalker | 8:44 am, June 4, 2011

I rarely write posts to honor retiring judges. In fact, I think this is my first but Judge O. John Kuenhold deserves it. Others will chronicle his decisions over three decades of service as a Judge but I’d like to point to a contribution that is easily…

Do Media Report the News or Make the News?

by Ari Armstrong | 1:50 pm, June 3, 2011

I was invited to address participants in the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Program in an upcoming event. The topic: “Do the media report the news or make the news?”My invite came on short notice (as I’m replacing a speaker who had to cancel), and I w…

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