Feeding the Needy

Here are some interesting facts [SNAP is the federal food stamp program]:

·         The cost of the food stamp program went from $35 billion in 2008 to $65 billion last year.  Part of the stimulus package temporarily raised those benefit amounts – I don’t know by how much.

·         To be eligible for food stamps, you must have an income of 130% of the poverty level or less.   Only two-thirds of those who are eligible have signed up.

·         Currently, one in seven Americans are in the program.

·         The benefit depends on income, assets and family size but the average is $133 a month per person;  the maximum is $200.  This benefit is available without time limit.

·         About half of recipients are children and another 8% are elderly.  14% of food-stamp households have incomes above the poverty line;  41% have incomes of half that or less;  18% have no income at all.

·         Medicaid does not cover childless adults in most states, regardless of poverty level.

·         Only a small fraction of those who qualify for housing assistance actually receive it.  I don’t know why.

·         Moody’s Analytics found that food stamps increase economic activity by $1.73 for every dollar spent;  unemployment insurance came in at $1.62;  most tax cuts yielded a dollar or less.

I found these facts interesting.  N and I have been talking for years about how we would define poverty, how those who don’t work live and whether a one-worker family can still live on minimum wage – we did it from September 1963 for three years;  if we were ever poor, we didn’t know it.

A more recent addition to our conversation has revolved around the duties of government, especially the federal government.  Questions arise quickly when you simply ask about any given program, “Who should provide this benefit or make this regulation – the city, county, state or federal government?”  Try it, you’ll be amazed.  While we have far more questions than answers, we have reached some conclusions:

·         Government not only does things poorly but the further the government entity is from the governed, the more waste. 

·         Over time, too many local government duties have been abdicated to or usurped by the states or Washington. 

·         Non-needy people have been made dependent by government programs.   

·         Over time, more and more of the “poor” have been included in the group of truly needy;  we think that’s wrong.  Is right to classify lower middle class workers as “poor”?

·         Americans absolutely need a “safety net” and the recent recession has demonstrated that ours is lacking.  The most notable failure being the lack of saving and insurance.

·         We have always known people who choose to work only sometimes and therefore earn far less than the government’s poverty line.  The people we know are not discernibly needy in any way;  they do not think they are poor;  and when they need extra money, they work more.  There must be a great many like them in the nation.

·         We don not think any fit person should be able to live on taxpayer subsidies without working – certainly not for a lifetime.  But we have no clue what to do about such people except that they should absolutely be a local problem.

·         We believe Americans have the absolute right to be homeless and that vagrancy laws should be strictly enforced.  You cannot live on my streets or in my parks and the authority and responsibility for this should be at the lowest local level.

·         We should not send tax dollars to the feds so that they can offer food stamps to our citizens;  we should provide those services at the city or state level.

·         It’s wrong that needy people get $133 a month no matter whether they live in Manhattan or North Dakota.

·         Who is it that has not signed up for food stamps?  We think many are people who don’t know they are needy.

·         The states, not the feds should provide rent subsidies and decide eligibility and subsidy amounts.

·         Each year recently, our state has reduced all education spending for all students due to the impact of the recession on state revenues.  The feds sent us $100 million of our own money during that period as “matching” funds to look after the uneducable in our public schools.  We were required to reinstate three years of reductions and raise that budget or lose all federal “matching” funds retroactively.  Taking a reduction in federal contributions that matched our local reductions was not an option.

o   Does that sound right to you?

o   Does it seem right that states begin to refuse such programs?  My state can afford to educate its children;  could yours?

The list is endless, once you start.  There are things that must be standardized across all states but the feds have gone too far while we voters were sleeping.

A recent lefty writer railing about the Paul Ryan plan told his readers not to worry about Medicare insurance vouchers.  The real problem he screamed was block grants for Medicaid.  Republicans threaten to remove the management of an entitlement system from the feds and give it to local governments – a major threat to big government progressivism.

Food stamps

Economist, Jul 14th 2011

http://www.economist.com/node/18958475?story_id=18958475&CFID=167616502&CFTOKEN=73150484

Insurers to Be Required to Cover Contraceptives for Women Free of Charge

And so it begins.

Here is a small example of why government cannot run anything and what is so very wrong with “Obamacare”.

·         The new health care law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them. 

·         Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has asked a non-government medical group to identify specific preventive health services that would apply to women.

·         The list of services identified is exhaustive and includes the full range of contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

·         The panel’s chairwoman said, “We did not consider cost or cost-effectiveness in our deliberations.”

·         One panel member, a health economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, filed a dissent saying:

o   The committee did not have enough time to conduct “a serious and systematic review” of the evidence.

o   The report, he said, includes “a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through a lens of advocacy.”

·         Under the new law, Secretary Sebelius will decide on a minimum package of essential health benefits – to be provided free by private companies – and her decision will not require further action by Congress.

This new law gives government the ability to expand services with no responsibility to even measure the costs let alone pay for additional services.  Indeed, any adult can foresee future advocates declaring that HHS has a “duty and responsibility” to add services and that HHS have no authority to even consider costs or effectiveness.  Is there any doubt that the authors of this legislation intended a path to national health care?  Where do you think this will lead?

Proponents of national health care proclaim that such systems are affordable in other nations – that is a lie. 

Opponents of national health care ignore all the other facts:

·         America has chosen, by law, to treat all sick and injured – regardless of ability to pay.  Americans will not change their minds about this.   

·         As a result of government dysfunction today, we provide the mandatory services in the most expensive possible fashion. 

·         Foreign systems are cheaper, cover more people and will last longer before bankrupting their nations.

If you think raising the debt ceiling has been difficult, frustrating and dangerous, fixing health care will be exponentially harder while carrying existential risks. 

Whether we raise the debt ceiling or not and no matter what economic penalties might accrue from a Congressional failure, we are not bankrupt and we will pay our bills.  But with Medicare already carrying $40 trillion in unfunded liabilities and the trend making that number grow at twice the rate of economic growth, either our children or grandchildren will be bankrupt.

We must stop siding with either of the political parties and side with which ever leaders will speak the simple truth.

Panel Recommends Coverage for Contraception

By Robert Pear – NYT, July 19, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/health/policy/20health.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=contraception&st=cse

Who Refused the Largest Cut in the Size of Government in American History?

David Brooks may be even angrier at Republicans than N and I are. 

The Road Not Taken

By David Brooks – NYT, July 18, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

In this column, he furiously declares that he will expose the people who refused the largest cut in the size of government in American history.  He threatens to name names but doesn’t go far enough.

Brooks puts the culprits who engineered this catastrophe into categories:

The Beltway Bandits.

One example is Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.  He enforces rigid ultimatums that make governance, or even thinking, impossible.

·         He was a Newt Gingrich strategist in the 1990s.

·         He was a Jack Abramoff companion in the 2000s.

·         He enforces the no-compromise orthodoxy that binds the party today.

The Big Government Blowhards.

The talk-radio jocks of the conservative ghetto are in the business of building an audience by stroking the pleasure centers of their listeners.  Their rantings have nothing to do with governance.

The Show Horses.

These are Republican political celebrities who are uninterested in governing.  Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann produce tweets, not laws.  They are hopelessly unelectable women in snappy outfits demanding purity over practicality.

I would have named a lot more names here.  I think Brooks is trying to honor Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment:  "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

The Permanent Campaigners.

For many legislators, the purpose of being in Congress is not to pass laws or take responsibility for the state of the country and make it better.  It’s to create clear contrasts they can take into the next election campaign.

Brooks believes there are still practical conservatives in the GOP, who believe in results, who believe in intelligent compromise.  We can only hope.  We can agree with Brooks however that if “Tea Party” types wish to remain in office after the debt ceiling debacle, then leadership must be transferred now to real conservatives.

Presidential Candidate Michelle Bachman Refuses to Raise the Debt Ceiling

On Monday in Columbia, Bachmann signed the Senator DeMint pledge opposing any increase in the U.S. debt limit without major changes to government spending.  But she says even with changes outlined in the pledge she wouldn't vote to raise the debt ceiling.

There is no evidence that Bachman has the intellectual capability to understand the potential consequences of her position.  This woman is a despicable human being with a husband who may be worse.  The further this bimbo gets in the process after winning the Iowa Caucus, the sooner these facts will become known to the greater voting public.

Her character will reflect on Republicans and conservatives across the nation.  The sooner GOP leaders stop catering to Bachman and her ilk, the better for America.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/18/3777786/bachmann-signs-spending-limit.html#ixzz1SZeZj62j

Obama Is Knocking It Out Of the Park While Republicans Encourage Morons

Here’s an interesting column by George Will that reminds us of the challenge presented to serious people who might choose to be candidates for office – their first step is to get by the fringe lunatics that represent the nominating electorate.

Thus Michelle Bachman is doing well at the moment because the center of the nation is not paying attention yet.

Who Will Bat Against ‘Alibi’ Obama?

By George F. Will,  Washington Post - July 6

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-will-bat-against-alibi-obama/2011/07/05/gIQAiImI1H_story.html

Basically, Will is saying that the only Republican at the moment with a chance to beat Obama is Mitt Romney and therefore Will is rooting for Rick Perry to get into the race.  

About the awful Bachman, he says she has appeal to the nutbags of the Republican nominating electorate but no centrist or independent would ever vote for the bimbo.  We have just lived through a few years of a hopelessly ill-prepared President who worships at the church of progressivism.  Why would anyone with common sense now vote for a hopelessly ill-prepared and uninformed bimbo who worships at some other church?

I would add that this President has been consistently ill-served by the most incompetent staff of any President in memory – a fact that reflects directly on the competence of the person selecting the staff.  Bachman’s staff is worse.

Meanwhile, if you watched the President’s press conference yesterday morning, he wowed everybody with his common sense, reasonableness, statesmanship and centrism.  “Everybody” that is, except those that actually follow what’s going on.

Republicans look like petulant children.  They have taken a righteous public outrage with government and started us down a path to sanity.  They negotiated real concessions – substantial deficit and debt reductions – from the most left leaning set of Democrats since FDR.  Then, they refused to accept success and walked away.  They have completely lost the political argument and possibly the 2012 election with it.  It remains questionable whether any deficit progress can now be achieved.  Outrageous.

And all of this in the face of a President who does not hyperbolize, he lies.  Even if you didn’t watch the new conference, you have seen a clip of this statement by the President on every news outlet:

"You have 80 percent of the American people who support a balanced approach … that includes revenues and includes cuts. … The clear majority of Republican voters think that any deficit reduction package should have a balanced approach and should include some revenues."

This is a lie.  You saw the clips repeatedly but you’ve never seen the lame-stream press correct him.

It’s cherry picked from only one poll;  it ignores the many contradictory polls;  and even the President reassembled the basic statement more than once into, “80% of Americans want cuts and tax increases and that includes Republicans”.  It’s a lie;  his is the repeated polling data both sides are trying to deal with:

·         72% of registered voters demand that government balance the budget.  Not 80% and here’s the other “but”.

·         63% of registered voters reject any change to entitlement benefits.

·         62% of registered voters reject any increase in taxes.

As in 2010, centrists and independents will decide these races.  How can Republicans allow themselves to become dumber, more dangerous and more obnoxious than the Nancy Pelosi 111^th House?  Republicans need to dump the foolishness or we will soon face a second term of Obama with a Democratic Senate and possibly even a Democratic House.  Let’s get the libertarians, Bible thumpers and bimbos back in their box. 

Fact Check: Obama Stretches Poll Findings on Debt

By Calvin Woodward, Associated Press – 7/16/11

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5it-1RSWNRH1l6fEVj93NQ8A1fnXA?docId=23c2b436db714387893910b2d2240cba

On Deficit, Americans Prefer Spending Cuts; Open to Tax Hikes

By Jeffrey M. Jones   Gallup - July 13, 2011

http://www.gallup.com/poll/148472/deficit-americans-prefer-spending-cuts-open-tax-hikes.aspx

Trudeau on Creationism

I’m not a big Doonesbury fan but this strip is perfect.

Doonesbury by G.B. Trudeau, July 10, 2011

The Politics of Debt Ceilings

In politics, it’s often hard to tell the Kabuki from reality but if you’ve been following the debt ceiling process, reality may seem to have left the scene altogether – it ain’t really so.

Everyone has some experience with negotiating, even if it’s only with the spouse or the kids.  Most folks know that the complexity of negotiations grows exponentially as the number of people involved increases.  In business, negotiations are conducted by recommenders – sometimes there are many – and if an impasse arises, the deal is bucked upstairs to the deciders which often means just two people.  In business, the deciders’ view is final.

It starts the same in politics, deals are negotiated by recommenders but impasses are standard and the deciders are many;  535 plus one, to be exact.  The direction from Presidents and Party leaders can easily be rejected.  In addition, those 536 people spend a lot of time worrying about their thousands and millions of bosses in the general voting public.  I’m saying that we may be less forgiving than we should be of elected officials who are actually engaged in negotiations.  We have every reason to be disgusted with government for the situation the nation is in but two other things are true:

1.      We the people – particularly the shrinking center portion of the nation that has retained a little common sense – have failed to exercise our voting duties competently.

2.      At the moment, elected government officials are actually trying to address the deficit/debt issue but they have found that we, the angry people, are blocking all progress.

Consider this latest Fox poll that backs up the many polls before it.

Fox News Poll:  Balanced Budget Amendment Favored, Obama's Stimulus Panned

By Dana Blanton, June 30, 2011

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/30/fox-news-poll-economy-and-debt-limit-negotiations/

Americans overwhelmingly want the federal budget balanced but refuse, with equal adamancy, to pay for that action with either increased taxes or decreased services.  We are completely stupid. 

·         72% of registered voters demand that government balance the budget.  These people are so adamant that they favor amending the Constitution to require a balanced budget by law. 

[The balanced budget amendment is possibly the dumbest and most counter-productive legislative idea ever conceived – look at California Proposition 13 – but that’s for another post.]

·         63% of registered voters reject any change to entitlement benefits.

·         62% of registered voters reject any increase in taxes.

How stupid can we be?  How can we be well enough informed to know that we are on a nation ruining path but dumb enough to think that the solution won’t involve both tax increases and benefit cuts?  We are not only stupid enough to listen to – you pick ‘em – Michelle Bachman, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Cantor, Barack Obama, Glenn Beck, Paul Krugman, et al but we believe them!  Where is our common sense?

Consider this excellent analysis of the debt ceiling negotiations from Douthat.

The Method to Their Madness

By Ross Douthat,  NYT, July 10, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/opinion/11douthat.html?_r=1&ref=rossdouthat

This is what the politicians know that we are too disgusted to think about:

1.      The debt ceiling will be increased. 

The deal making of the moment is all about the completely artificial custom that raising the debt ceiling is the responsibility of the Party that holds the Presidency.  The other side gets to extract some concessions.  What is gained is strictly a matter of the skill of the negotiators, the mood of the public and the overall quality [statesmanship] of Congress at that moment.  This could be done with no deal, just a simple vote – there is no choice but to raise the ceiling.

2.      The President wants a deal and he wants it to look conservative.

The more centrist looking the final deal is, the more likely the President will gain a second term.  He needs spending cuts and entitlement cuts to make the deal look conservative and thereby gain the support of independents.

3.      Tax increases are on the horizon.

The President and Democrats know that taxes will rise automatically in 2013 unless Obama is defeated – an unlikely case – so they can negotiate an immediate deal that appears lopsided on the spending cut side.

The last deal struck – to keep the government operating without a budget – ends all of the Bush tax cuts right after the 2012 election.  With President Obama in the White House controlling the veto, Republicans will either have to do nothing in 2013 – tax revenues would increase $3.8 trillion – or they would have to fight which would end with taxes going back up for just the “rich” – a gain of $700 billion in revenue.  Either way, taxes go up.

4.      Bipartisan, grand bargain budget deals never deliver the spending cuts they promise.

Think how many times Congress has “paid for” spending by promising future Medicare cuts and then failed to pass them even though they were “required by law”.  Thus the President and Democrats can promise entitlement spending cuts to get the deal the President needs for his re-election. 

A second reason for Democrats to promise entitlement cuts – so long as they are future cuts – is that the next Congress is likely to be Republican by narrow margins.  That would make Republicans the benefit cutting villains rather than the current Democrats who actually did the deal.

5.      The national deck is stacked in favor of long term tax increases.

At the moment, tax increases and entitlement cuts are equally unpopular.  But with every passing every day, seniors become more selfish while their numbers steadily increase – and we vote.  As seniors we demand our benefits and don’t care much about taxes – we care nothing about FICA taxes anymore.  Our kids and grandkids are in serious trouble and we just don’t give a damn.

Republicans absolutely deserve credit for demanding work on deficits and bringing the issue to the public’s attention.  Democrats were planning to do nothing.  Republicans are also correct to be as demanding as they are regarding both spending and taxes.  The President needs this deal, can agree to spending cuts that may be tough to actually implement later and knows that taxes are going up no matter what.

The rhetoric is still often frustrating but Paul Ryan and John Boehner are demonstrating real statesmanship.  The President is going along because he can and it’s in his interest. At this point, any debt ceiling deal helps the President.  Republicans must make sure the President actually earns his budget-cutting bona fides.

I Think I’m a Liberal

My friends and family seem to think I’m a right wing radical – I think that’s because they don’t know any.

If I were a Republican, I’d be expelled for my determined lack of purity and unvarnished distain.  Today’s Republican Party is so much a part of the problem that its singular redeeming characteristic is not being the Democratic Party.  The Democrats are not worse – as the Republicans cannot stop demonstrating – they’re just bad in a way that is more repugnant to me at the moment. 

It’s exactly like choosing which fatal cancer you would prefer – while I would have preferences, my far deeper preference would be none of the above.  It is precisely the same with political parties, they should not just be avoided;  they should be eradicated.

While I see the Republican Party as momentarily less objectionable than the Democrats, I cannot be as forgiving of most Republican Party activists or almost any current Republican Presidential candidate.  Anyone who believes Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Jim DeMint, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann is of Presidential caliber deserves a lifetime of President Barack Obama.  If Republicans nominate one of these turds, four more years of the President are exactly what we will get.

Among the stupidities of today’s right are its immigration policies and exclusionary rhetoric.  This George Will column celebrates a unique Hispanic Texan running for the Senate and, to my eye, bemoans the goofiness of the hard right.

In Ted Cruz, a Candidate As Good As It Gets

By George F. Will, Washington Post - June 15, 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-ted-cruz-a-candidate-as-good-as-it-gets/2011/06/14/AGdrmWWH_story.html

Ted Cruz believes Hispanics are – by reasons of faith, industriousness and patriotism – natural Republicans.  He says the military enlistment rate is higher among them than among any other demographic and he asks, “When was the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?”  What makes otherwise intelligent people so uncharacteristically and self destructively rabid about Hispanics is debatable but there is no Republican future without Hispanic support.

The Founders – by definition – were limited-government constitutionalists.  Today, such people are labeled “conservatives” and set in automatic opposition to “liberals and progressives”.  We take it for granted that Republicans are conservatives and Democrats are liberals even though both sides have long since abandoned their bedrock principles.

Meanwhile, Americans consistently share the Founders values with great pride.  We believe in American exceptionalism and would rather live in America than any other nation.  We don’t put party or ideological labels on these things – unless we get to Washington.

·         77 percent of us said that “whatever its faults,” the United States “has the best system of government in the world.”

·         74 percent of Americans feel strongly they’d “rather be a citizen of my country than any other.”  Comparable responses were 58 percent for Canadians, 37 percent for South Koreans and 18 percent for Germans.

·         Our huge national pride – which often strikes others as arrogance – rests on what scholars call the American Creed:  faith in freedom;  the rule of law;  equal opportunity;  and democratic ideas and political institutions.

·         What defines us as Americans is not ethnicity, race or religion but our bedrock beliefs.  That makes America exceptional because it differs from most societies.

·         Other nations and some Americans – including President Obama – think of “American Exceptionalism” by the dictionary’s secondary definition of exceptional:  “unusually excellent or superior”.  But properly construed, America is a “rare instance” or “unusual example” of a nation founded on individual liberty, limited constitutional government and proud welcoming of “the wretched refuse of [other nation’s] teeming shore.”

America’s Unhappy Birthday

By Robert J. Samuelson - Washington Post – July 4, 2011

http://www.thestate.com/2011/07/04/1882619/samuelson-americas-unhappy-birthday.html

Samuelson says, “Unfortunately, widely shared values do not settle most specific conflicts.”

Samuelson is right.  If you’ve ever been forced to solve a knotty problem or negotiate an agreement, you will know that it is essential to decompose the issues into basics and think carefully about what is most important.  Even a child knows that the rigid purity of today’s politicians and activists dooms problem solving.  Too many of today’s citizens have taken sides and can no longer become outraged by any egregious action taken by their own.  Activists are telling us what to think and who to blame while politicians abdicate their duty to study complex issues and act for the common good – instead they do whatever the polls tell them at the moment.

Left or right, we believe in America, the Founders, the Constitution, our exceptional three branches of government and the American creed of individual liberty.  Consider Classical liberalism and the things that philosophy finds important:

·         human rationality

·         individual property rights

·         natural rights

·         the protection of civil liberties

·         individual freedom

·         equality under the law

·         constitutional limitation of government

·         free markets

·         global free trade

·         fiscal constraints on government

Classical liberalism is a philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets.  It’s a Western concept enumerated in the 19th century but practiced in America, I believe, from our founding.  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism]

I’m a classical liberal and so is every one of my family and friends.  But then we get to issues.  

Limited government is now an abandoned concept in both of our political parties which is exactly the reason that the nation is in such serious straights. 

Americans pride themselves on their political institutions as well as on the personal responsibility that is inextricable from our individual freedom.  We are aghast when government proposes to radically alter institutions and traditions that anchor the social order.  It is impossible – arguably un-American – to even consider that America would stop treating the sick and injured, feeding the needy, educating the young or providing an income to the old and disabled.  At the same time, Americans are awakening to the extent to which we have violated our founding principles, ignored the Constitution – the powers not enumerated there belong to the states – and grown the federal government.  We are alarmed that the poor receive the same services as the needy and are made dependent in the process.  Most alarming are deficits, debt and unaffordable liabilities.

Obamacare is radical, not because of its content or objectives.  It is radical because it was passed by only one party.  It is radical because one party subverted the standard process of Senate/House reconciliation.  It is radical because it affects every American, encompasses over a sixth of the federal budget, is 3,000 pages long, contains the most egregious of vote buying, raises costs during a recession and most outrageous of all, nobody knows exactly what’s in it or what affects it might have.

Obamacare is hated because it’s radical and this is America.

Americans no longer select the best statesman in the land to lead us in the Presidency and the Congress.  Instead, we play varying roles in the political parties’ war to elect the next king of the nation and his vassals.  Once selected our vassal Congress ignores the Constitution and happily lets the king take the heat.  Responsible Americans walk away from politics in disgust – that is disaster enough regarding voting but far worse when considering those willing to serve.

If I were going to form a Third Party, I would begin with classical liberalism and limited-government constitutionalism.  I’d lay out a list of the most urgent problems facing the nation.  When enumerating alternative solutions I would include the most compelling ideas in the land.  Once elected, I would translate all legislation from legalese into ordinary English.  Any law requiring more than a few hundred words would be split into multiple laws.  And most important, I would establish the mechanisms for the demise of political parties, including my own – simply enough, those would be open primaries and independent districting.

Anyway, while I dream on, I think I’m a liberal.  Happy Fourth of July.