Category Archives: Politics: National

Crafting Legislation Without Passing Laws

Posted on February 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

Gavel

Yesterday I posted on the trend, new or old it turns out, taking place in statehouses across the country.  We are seeing a rash of new legislation being proposed that would make it a crime for anyone to enforce any federal regulation speaking to the control of guns.  I find such actions concerning.  Concerning in the same way that I see the federal government prohibiting states from enforcing federal laws.  The example I used yesterday was immigration.

I made the point that Obama wanted to adjust the policy on immigration and implement reforms that he favors.  Earlier in his 1st term he was speaking to proponents of immigration reform and mentioned that there is very little that he could do; current law is, after all, current law and he is obligated to enforce that law.

Well, as we know, he walked away from that position.  First he sued states like Arizona who wanted to enforce federal law.  Then, of course, he issued an executive order that said, in part, that he would not prosecute “Dreamers”.  That is, those folks who are here illegally but were brought to America as children, are not going to be subject to current immigration laws.

Justification was that Obama isn’t changing laws, he’s simply allocating scare resources and, as executive, he can do that.

I think this whole concept, as I mentioned, is dangerous.  And I think that the precedent is going to lead to very undesirable outcomes.

For example, consider the next time we have a republican in the White House.  And suppose that he doesn’t agree with the tax code, specifically feels that tax levels are too high at various level of income. Rather than wrestle with congress to pass new laws, he can simply issue an executive order stating that he will not prosecute individuals, at specific levels of incomes, who don’t pay taxes in excess of what he feels is fair.

Or, perhaps taking cue from the waivers to Obamacare, he decides to issue corporate tax waivers to selected industries or corporations.

Complete confusion and chaos.

Leave a comment

Posted in Politics: National

Tagged , ,

Enforcing Federal Laws

Posted on February 21, 2013 | 5 comments

Federal vs State

I don’t like strategy of individual states introducing, perhaps passing, legislation codifying a crime to enforce federal laws.  The rage right now is, of course, those laws referring to the enforcement of any federal ban or restriction on  gun ownership.

The latest version that I’ve seen is in Texas:

AUSTIN, Texas –  Under a measure advancing in the Texas Capitol, local police officers could be convicted of a crime for enforcing any new federal gun control laws.

Rep. Steve Toth, a newly elected Republican from the Woodlands, said his proposal would prevent officers from carrying out any future federal orders to confiscate assault rifles and ammunition magazines.

…

Toth’s proposal would create a Class A misdemeanor for police officers enforcing any new federal gun regulations. It also would establish cause for the state attorney general to sue anyone who seeks to enforce new federal gun regulations. It is one of several states-rights measures being offered by conservative state lawmakers nationwide in response to federal gun control proposals.

I think this is a dangerous path to go down.  We can’t have states running around claiming not to enforce federal laws.  The confusion it would create is massive.  Not to mention the continual lurching back and forth as one party or another assumes the role of majority and passes legislation that would enforce said law.

Untenable.

With that said, I have to admit that I feel a bit of “tribal yelp” as I see the states reacting like this.  And I have to work hard to subdue those passions are work to look at the goal objectively.

However, while I don’t think states should willy nilly decide which federal laws they will or will not enforce, it is important to point out that this is in direct response to Obama’s decision to restrict states from enforcing federal laws that HE disagrees with.  Namely, states trying to enforce immigration laws already on the books.  Let’s not forget the battle in Arizona where the Obama administration sued Arizona.

So, while the logical conclusion of this activity is undesirable, that conclusion was set in motion by Obama.

5 Comments

Posted in Politics: National

Tagged , , , , ,

Barack Obama Commenting On Barack Obama’s Plan

Posted on February 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

Barack Obama commenting on the upcoming sequestration:

Let’s look at that again.  Here’s what he is saying will get cut:

  • Military Readiness
  • Job Creating Investments
  • Emergency responder’s ability to help communities to respond to and recover from disasters.
  • Border patrol agents
  • FBI Agents
  • Federal prosecutors
  • Air Traffic Controllers
  • Airport Security
  • Thousands of teachers and educators
  • Tens of thousands of parents who need childcare
  • Hundreds of thousands of Americans who need primary care and preventive care
  • Navy’s ability to deploy aircraft carriers to critical locations

This is an extraordinary laundry list.  Some thoughts:

  • Sequestration is NOT a cut in spending.  It is a reduction in the amount we are going to INCREASE spending.
  • Over a decade.
  • If this is the apocalyptic vision of America when we’re looking at $85 billion, what is that saying about our general overall financial health?
  • This might be minor, and he may means something else, but I don’t think the federal government pays teachers.

Leave a comment

Posted in Economy, Politics: National

Tagged ,

How Does The Minimum Wage Help Those It Intends To Help

Posted on February 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

Minimum Wage

I started blogging after the last minimum wage legislation was proposed, debated, voted on and then passed.  So I missed the massive onslaught of economic debate surrounding it.  However, I have certainly enjoyed reading this round.

What I do remember reading from the debate as the wage was being implemented was that unemployment rates for certain “at risk” groups was increasing.  This struck me as somewhat disingenuous due to the fact that the minimum wage was being uplifted right in the teeth of the recession.  However, Mark Perry at Carpe Diem posted data that showed what I was beginning to think.  Mainly, how much worse was it for those groups than for the population as a whole?

The concept is “Excess Unemployment” and is described as taking the difference between the unemployment rate for the general public and the group being described.  However, even this statistic understates the impact because these groups contribute to the rate in general.  A better metric would be to show the difference of the group and then the public at large without that group influencing the number.  Further understating the data is the fact that we include states and cities that already have wages set HIGHER than the federal minimum wage.  Taking those locales into account would only make the data all the more striking.

So, which groups are likely “targets” of the minimum wage?  Young workers, black workers and undereducated workers.  Here is the devastating impact for each:

Teen Excess Unemployment.2013.01

The data is showing excess unemployment for employees 16 years of age to 19.

Now, to those employees who are black:

Black Excess Unemployment.2013.01

Just as the minimum wage is effectively repealed due to inflation the black excess unemployment spikes up as the minimum wage rises.  And then, of course, the unmistakable impact in recent years.

Finally the undereducated:

Undereducated Excess Unemployment.2013.01

Honest to God.  If you wanted to craft a policy that would hurt the most vulnerable among us could you think of one that would gather as much support and be so accepted as the minimum wage?

Leave a comment

Posted in Economics, Politics: National

Tagged

We Can’t Be Racist If We Call You Racist

Posted on February 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’ve been watching the whole series of “The West Wing”.  Its a great series, I loved it then and I like it even more now.  Sadly, even as I obtained the ability to rip scenes from my DVDs, YouTube has objected claiming copyright infringement.  And I don’t wanna take material that isn’t mine so….

The scene is this:

There is a party going on and Sam is entertaining an old professor of his.  This professor wants funding for his project.

Sam’s advice, his comment?

What are you for?

Sam’s point is that if you want something, all you have to do is stake ground that you are FOR something and then cast your opponent as against it.  And that has summed up the liberal left’s attack on reality.  What are you against?

See, if the conversation can be shaped into one where there is a good guy and a bad guy, and you simply make sure that you are the good guy, then whatever it is that you are proposing is “good.”

For example:

A student at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair, April 26. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical “dihydrogen monoxide.”

And for plenty of good reasons, since:

  1. it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting
  2. it is a major component in acid rain
  3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
  4. accidental inhalation can kill you
  5. it contributes to erosion
  6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes
  7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

He asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical.

  • Forty-three (43) said yes,
  • six (6) were undecided,
  • and only one (1) knew that the chemical was water.

This is where I think that left is playing fast and loose with race.  See, the left sells this notion of a minimum wage as a way out for minorities and the poorest among us.  In reality, the minimum wage traps those very people into a continuous cycle of unemployment and dependence.  And who wins?

The rich elite labor leaders who just so happen to mobilize to elect those very same democrats and siphon millions upon millions of dollars from their ranks into the coffers of democrats across the country.

Witness one man’s explanation:

The minimum wage is one of the most effective tools for racism in the world.

Leave a comment

Posted in Economics, Government, Politics: National, Race

Tagged ,

Jack Lew Grilled Over Perfectly Legal Investment

Posted on February 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

Jack Lew

Jack Lew has been nominated to run the Treasury Department.  Last week he went before his congressional committee for intense questioning.  Among other things, Mr. Lew was forced to answer questions regarding a $56,000 investment:

 President Obama’s nominee to lead the Treasury Department defended his $56,000 investment in a Cayman Islands fund at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, saying he was unaware it was based in a nation famous for having offshore tax havens.

…

“I always reported all income, I always paid all taxes,” he said. “I was aware that it was an international fund investing in emerging markets … I actually didn’t know [its location] at the time.”

Seriously.  Lew was forced to endure question regarding a 56k investment in a legal fund established in the Caymans.  This isn’t a case where the funds should have been taxed and Lew cheated to avoid paying money that he owed.  No.  This is the case of a man making intelligent decisions balancing risk with reward and diversifying his portfolio.

This is what people who have money, often why people HAVE money to begin with, do to make sure they will continue to have more money later.

Now, to be sure, the only reason -I’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt- that the republicans went after Lew is because Obama demonized Mitt Romney during the campaign for the exact same reason; his off-shore Cayman investments.

And if THAT wasn’t enough, the republicans kept at it:

Lew also addressed a bonus of nearly $1 million he received as Citigroup was receiving billions in government support amid the financial crisis. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned whether it was “morally acceptable” for Lew to accept a bonus at Citi briefly before the bank tapped the government for billions of dollars in bailout relief. Lew said his compensation was not out of the norm at the time, and that he disclosed everything as he should.

“I was compensated for my work,” he said, adding that he was aware that Citi was about to receive a large federal guarantee when he received the bonus.

“I do believe it was comparable for people in positions like mine in the industry,” he added. “I don’t think there’s anything that hasn’t been fully transparent both in what I did and what I earned.”

Surely I’m aware of the beautiful bitter irony, but just because a democrat NOW is speaking truth doesn’t mean that he’s wrong to say it.  Listen to what he’s saying, “I have a job maybe not 1,000 people in America could do as well as I do it.  And for that, I get compensated.  Of COURSE I feel justified in cashing that check.”

I don’t know, maybe politics demands that the questions be asked and answered.  While Lew played stupid on the Cayman island thing, and we can’t use stupid to defeat democrats, he did provide ammunition in the class-war that the left is waging.

Maybe it’s worth it, but I wish we governed in a way and manner in which we didn’t need that.

Leave a comment

Posted in Government, Politics: National, Republicans Can Be Leftists Too

Tagged , , , ,

The Liberal War On Black Americans

Posted on February 14, 2013 | 2 comments

Thomas Sowell on the impact of the minimum wage as it pertains to minorities in America, specifically black Americans:

Over the years, some of the most devastating policies, in terms of their actual effects on black people, have come from liberal Democrats, from the local to the national level.

As far back as the Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression of the 1930s, liberal Democrats imposed policies that had counterproductive effects on blacks. None cost blacks more jobs than minimum-wage laws.

In countries around the world, minimum-wage laws have a track record of increasing unemployment, especially among the young, the less skilled, and minorities. They have done the same in America.

One of the first acts of the Roosevelt administration was to pass the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which included establishing minimum wages nationwide. It has been estimated that blacks lost 500,000 jobs as a result.

After that act was declared unconstitutional, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set minimum wages. In the tobacco industry alone, 2,000 black workers were replaced by machines, just as blacks had been replaced by machines in the textile industry after the previous minimum-wage law.

Fortunately, the high inflation of the 1940s raised the wages of even unskilled labor above the level prescribed by the minimum-wage law. The net result was that this law became virtually meaningless, until the minimum-wage rate was raised in 1950.

During the late 1940s, when the minimum-wage law had essentially been repealed by inflation, 16- and 17-year-old blacks in 1948 had an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, slightly lower than that of whites the same ages and a fraction of what it would be in even the boom years after the minimum-wage rate kept getting increased by liberal Democrats.

Emphasis mine.

And who gains by the enactment of minimum wage laws?

Organized labor union.

Obama and the democrats continue to wage an economic war on a group of people in the most need of our help  in order to win the union vote and its financial gravy train.

2 Comments

Posted in Economics, Politics: National

Tagged , , , ,

The Continued Assault On Undereducated And The Underskilled

Posted on February 14, 2013 | 3 comments

On Tuesday night, Barack Obama announced a continued assault on the prosperity of America’s most vulnerable; the undereducated and the underskilled.  He did this in his annual State of the Union Address when he announced a desire to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour.

While the president may very well feel that he can slow the rise of the oceans:

Yes, while he may slow the rise of the oceans, he is not able to defy the laws of economics.

Now don’t get me wrong, the intentions are noble and honorable, if you are to believe politicians are capable of such things.  We all would like to see the folks who make the least be able to earn more and enjoy a better life.  We want to see a steady rise n the incomes of the poorest among us so that they too may avoid the constant worry of bills past due and the need to feed hungry children.

But that isn’t what Obama is doing.  In fact, what Obama is doing is sacrificing the very people that he claims to be helping in order to make a catchy and effective sound bit during his speech.  See, raising the minimum wage doesn’t help the people who are the ones making the least amount of money; it hurts them.

The minimum wage prevents business from hiring them in the first place.  It raises the barrier to entry past the meager skills that they posses.  At a time in their life when they should be willing to take a job, any job, to learn new skills, become proficient in new trades and crafts, during a time when they need to begin to understand the expectations of employers as it relates to employees, they are being priced out of the market.

The market is very effective at setting the value of scare resources.  And labor is nothing more than a scare resource; we all want more of it as cheaply as we can get it.  And so, in the course of voluntary trade, we set the rate at which we are willing to pay for it.  And most labor, believe it or not, is set at rates already ABOVE the minimum wage.

But for those entering the job market, such as high school kids, they are finding that they lack the skills required to demand such a wage.  And as a result, they are being left behind and find themselves unemployed.  This at a time when we need these young people working.  The years lost at the beginning of the working career are very difficult to make up.  And the longer they are out of the work force, the further and further they fall behind those in it.

If you wanted to target the poor an the undereducated, many of which are minorities, you would be hard pressed to contrive a more malicious program that would guarantee to make life worse for those folks than the impacts of minimum wage laws that Obama supports.

But who benefits?

Unions.

Barack Obama has made a decision.  He has placed a bet that he can secure the Union vote by selling out the poor, the undereducated and the underskilled all the while using words and rhetoric that would cause that group of people to support him.

It is depravity at its worst.

3 Comments

Posted in Economics, Economy, Politics: National

Tagged , ,

Team vs. Policy

Posted on February 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a relative new comer to following politics.  And certainly, this is the first time that I’ve followed and paid attention to politics real time.  So I’ve never been in the circumstance of having to critique a republican president.

To be sure, at the end of Dubya’s term, I was aware and didn’t appreciate the lack of end-game concerning the two wars, I didn’t like the fact that we were detaining suspects with no real intention of trying them and I didn’t like the stimulus.

However, now we’re into Obama’s 2nd term and I’ve noticed a definite lack of prosecution regarding the subject of drones, drone strikes and the use of such as it concerns targets; foreign and domestic.

I would have guessed at such silence.  After all, politics is, in many ways, a zero-sum game; the other guy wins when you lose.  So  liberal to take Obama to task for such abuse of power is counter-productive to their “cause”.  I get that.

But this?

“We trust the president,” former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan said on Current TV. “And if this was Bush, I think that we would all be more up in arms because we wouldn’t trust that he would strike in a very targeted way and try to minimize damage rather than contain collateral damage.”

This isn’t a critique of policy where one side “attacks” the other guy and silently disagrees with our guy.  This is a case where the policy is okay in the hands of our guy but wrong in the hands of the other.

In other words, the act of killing Americans, foreign suspects and innocent civilians isn’t wrong a priori, it’s only wrong in the hands of President Bush.

The only thing more surprising than thinking this?

Saying this.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Idiots on Parade, Liberty, Politics: National

Tagged , , , ,

We’ve Got Spirit Yes We Do! We’ve Got Spirit How ‘Bout You?

Posted on February 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

Minnesota has seen a democrat resurgence of late.  What once was a red governor and house and senate is now blue through and through; fitting for the state that had voted for the democrat presidential candidate for the most consecutive elections.

And Wisconsin isn’t that.  We all know the battles that have been waged in the badger state.

But this is awesome:

A Wisconsin legislator is using Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget proposal to try to lure business across the state border.

Republican Rep. Erik Severson, of Osceola, has sent a letter to hundreds of Minnesota businesses, including Best Buy, 3M and UnitedHealth Group.  Severson urges the businesses to relocate to Wisconsin and avoid higher taxes.

Dayton’s proposal raises about $2 billion in additional tax revenue by lowering the state sales tax, but expanding it to more items and to services. The St. Paul Pioneer Press says Dayton’s office has responded to Severson’s letter by saying job growth is not dictated by taxes and that Severson should focus on his own state. The statement from the governor’s office also says Minnesota’s economy has fared far better than Wisconsin’s in recent years.

For what it’s worth, the Minnesota Wisconsin football rivalry is the single longest consecutive years played match-up in college football.

Leave a comment

Posted in Economics, Fun, Politics: National

Tagged , ,