Those are words you will never hear in Washington because, from what I gather, they have no idea how a calculator actually works. I just started reviewing this new bill, you know, the one so popular that the phone lines to Congress were jammed all week long, and it does not add up. I shouldn’t say that it does not add up, I should say that the assumptions are ridiculous.
They decided the best way to go was to raise the Medicare tax “only” on individuals making over $200,000 a year and couples making over $250,000 a year. The income tax increase is .9% for the Medicare tax, this will be in addition to the other coming tax hikes coming at the end of this year, and there is now an unearned income Medicare tax. So, if you make a lot of money and have dividends or interest you will have to pay an additional 3.8% tax on those investments, so much for investors buying dividends stocks.
Here is the problem, the Democrats claim this tax hike will raise $210B paying for roughly 20% of this bill. Are these people for real? Why would investors hold income producing investments if they will lose 3.8% on the interest earned? They will not because they will buy a variable annuity or growth stocks that pay nothing in dividends. That blows that $210B figure right out of the water, but the Medicare income tax hike is hard to get around. Unless you can control how much you are getting paid you will have to pay that tax, but it will surely have repercussions.
For the first time ever we have an administration who is going to impose one of the largest tax increases on Americans during a recession. I take that back, this did happen twice before, the 1930’s and the 1970’s and both decades were terrible. I can hear many of you now, it is only on the rich! Well, I got news for you first, there has never been one estimate from Congress on taxation, revenue generated and cost that has ever been right. Second, there is no way that only people making over $299K a year can pay for this program, it is impossible. That $200K number will trickle down to, my guess at least, to the sweet spot of $150K for individuals and $175K for couples which is a lot of people I might add.
Insanity does not begin to describe what is happening right now. I mean, sure the President signed an $18b jobs bill today and is about to urge the passing of a trillion dollar spending bill, do you see something wrong with that? It is a bit disproportionate and, frankly, right now the country needs jobs. At this point I just hope we have a real up or down vote on this bill so we know where our Congressional member stands and we do not go through with this sneaky backdoor deemed to pass vote.
I cannot wait to read the full bill, but, unfortunately, I will not have time until well after it is passed. I do know that ultimately this is bad news for all of the country because it was not put together properly. All the people wanted was for Congress to start over and do this the right way, no one is in the “do nothing camp.” Unfortunately, that is not to be and we are on the verge of expanding upon already existing failed programs. Essentially, it is like taking Medicare, which is almost broke, and giving it to everyone, good idea! Actually, that is Alan Greyson’s idea right now, Medicare for all is what he says, but, as most lawyers are, he is illiterate to just how ugly the balance sheet of the government or Medicare really is. Good luck!
I have been on the phone trying to get through to my Congressman, Dan Maffei (D), all day long to voice my opposition to what is going on in Washington. His phone was busy and I finally got his voice mail which was full, but I wanted to give him a piece of my mind so I kept calling until I got through. I left him a scathing message with less than polite language so if you do not hear from me send care packages to GITMO c/o Ray. I really do not care what side of the issue you are on, but I hope you are voicing your opinion to your representative. I am opposed to the current bill and want them to start over. I am not in the camp of “there is nothing wrong here,” but this thing has gotten way out of hand.
Many of you know my position on this bill, it is bad news for the country, and even more shockingly is the fact that Congress went back into hiding to hammer out the details again. This whole thing is like watching a plane crash and you have 2 choices, get in front of it so it ends quickly or stay where you are and risk catching fire, both choices are bad. What is worse is the fact that they may not actually vote on the bill itself, but use a procedure that “deems it approved” which is crazy. Again we are hearing, well the Republicans did it hundreds of times, I am sure that is true, but on something this big? I think not.
The people deserve to know how their representatives are voting on this bill, either for or against, so the voter can voice their opinion at the polls in November, either for or against. To me this whole thing is just amazing and unreal as we just wrapped up the worst 8 years in American history, well, that I have been alive for at least, and now just as we thought we got rid of a tone deaf administration another tone deaf administration has taken its place. What makes this dangerous is the fact that Obama is an ego maniac, in my opinion, and refuses to admit that he is going against the peoples will, so much for change.
As many of you know, I have also been in the insurance industry for many years, I know how this stuff works. I am well connected in the research area and do a ton of consulting, which is why I am not posting as often now. I often get calls from Senators or Congress members seeking opinions on various topics, they know who I am. Now, here we are in the midst of one of the most important legislative changes ever to hit the insurance industry and guess how many calls I have received? None. Not only have I not received any calls, but neither have any of my other geeky friends who work in this industry. Now, how can this be? How can this bill be vetted by people in the industry when, myself not necessarily included, some of the brightest people I know of in the insurance industry never got one call from even the lowliest intern from Congress?
It makes no sense and it should make you concerned because lawyers are great at lawyer stuff, but they are not good at figuring out insurance issues. Most probably do not even know what the mortality tables look like or what tables we are even using now. They have no idea on how to balance risk or spread it around and I got news for you, there is no way you can insure everyone, pre-existing conditions or otherwise, without raising premiums through the roof. Especially if you eliminate annual or lifetime caps, it is just not possible because you need to pool the risk. To make matters worse, if we continue with the archaic state system that we have now it will be a complete disaster as there is no way to spread geographical risk. It makes my head hurt just thinking about what they are doing.
We need to do something, I agree with that, but this is insane and I guarantee you it is not what you think. Premiums will go higher now until 2014 and then, who knows what will happen because we have not seen the bill yet, however I am sure it is not good news for you. I am extremely sensitive to this topic as it impacts me more than it does the average person, but it is not possible to insure everyone and maintain good quality care. This is where I get into the argument I hear a lot from the left, they claim the U.N. says we are 37th in terms of the quality of health care. First, the U.N. holds little weight with me as they seem to not really like us. Second, how can we add another 31M people to the system and expect to improve the quality of health care? It is not possible.
If what I think happens actually happens, many doctors will leave, the New England Journal of Medicine says one third of doctors will leave the business if this thing passes. Again, how would this increase the quality of care? With Dennis Kucinich all of a sudden signing on to this thing it makes me wonder what really happened when he was on Air Force One. Dennis is a public option fan and he was dead set against this bill, which is the Senate bill, but again, who really knows. Did Obama promise that the public option was on the way in the future? I suspect it is at some point and if it is doctors will leave the business. Medicare pays $26 an office visit, do you think doctors can stay in business at $26 a pop? Not a chance.
Maybe we could do it better than a Canada or a UK, but at the end of the day, I am not a fan of the government involved in my life. I do not want the government to know what drugs I am on, prescription I mean, or what health issues I might have. We also know that Medicare is a favorite for politicians to cut funding from, they tend to do it a lot, so when it becomes so large, on top of our debt, what do you think they will do to save money? They will cut health care, it is that simple. History shows what our elected officials will do and it is always in their best interests, never yours. I do not want even a stepping stone to a single payer system. However, I want some things down and you cannot tell me that you could not win an up or down vote on outlawing a preexisting condition clause on insurance contracts.
The last thing we need is more secrecy in Washington, but that is what we are getting. We have lazy politicians who do not want to start over because it is too hard, they do work for us you now, but that is what needs to be done. I highly recommend you call your representative and let them know where you stand and that you will remember their vote in November. However, I encourage you to say no to this bill, mostly because they keep changing it (!) and tell them to start over.
Here we are on the eve of the Presidents ‘State of the Union’ address, which should prove mind numbing as I will explain later, along with a host of other exciting events on Capitol Hill. We will see testimony from a few important figures from 2008 regarding the credit crisis, how they cannot figure out the cause is really beyond me as my 9 year old can recite the causes, but that is your government at work. While I fully expect to hear, during the Congressional hearings, ‘we did everything right and we would do it again ,‘ like they would admit that they screwed up. The President will give the usual speech tonight, the state of the union is strong, but we need to do work, a complete contradiction of reality I can assure you.
We will also hear the President talk about fiscal responsibility, which is a complete joke, as he talks about the massive $250B 10 year spending freeze in government, after he increased spending in those same departments 40% last year. Basically, the President is saying we will save $250B over 10 years, but those spending increases from last year will cost $1.3T, or so. With numbers like those I can assure you the media will not talk about the total hypocrisy of the spending freeze. I am sure we will hear about how well things have ‘improved’ from last year when he inherited this mess, the public is getting tired of that line Mr. President, and keep this in mind, ‘improved’ is a relative term and more politically correct than true for the average American.
A twist will be the indication that Mr. Obama ‘heard’ the public with the MA Brown victory, but he is still not listening. Like him or hate him there is one fact that cannot be ignored, Obama is tone deaf to the public and his arrogance is overwhelming, dare I say more than Bush’s? The point is that he may have ‘heard’ Americans, but he still will not listen to them which will cost him in the upcoming elections. Let’s face the facts, Obama campaigned for 3 Democrats and all 3 Democrats lost and he thinks it is not a repudiation of his policies? Sorry Mr. President, but 3 strikes and you are out. Like most Americans I like Obama on a personal level, but that is not the same thing as endorsing his policies or being blind to the fact that his policies are not working. Hell, Ted Bundy by all accounts was a likeable guy, but few people would want to be roommates with the guy.
No matter what the rhetoric is from tonight’s speech I can assure you that it is going to be meaningless and tone deaf to what is really needed for the country. What is also clear, to me at least, is that fiscal responsibility does not exist and the only things to cut are social programs, labeled ‘entitlement programs.’ It is only a matter of time that Social Security and Medicare benefits are reduced or altered, it needs to be done, but I do have a problem with that. The thing about entitlement programs is that every time you get paid a piece of your money goes into those entitlement programs. In other words, you already paid for these programs through years of work.
The irony is this, we know that these programs were not funded properly and they are broke, even though we put such a large portion of our checks into them every week, but Obama seems to think national or single payer health care is viable. How can any single payer or national health care be viable is Medicare and Social Security are bust and why would any trust the government after 2 large examples of, essentially, failed programs? I am not saying get rid of the 2 programs, the opposite is true, as these programs helped millions of Americans survive, literally, retirement. What I am saying is that these two programs are broke and if these programs, which pays benefits out to those 60 and older, cannot support that segment of the population how in the world can over 300M people get insurance from the government and not have that program blow up? It is not possible, sorry.
Regardless, the President is showing zero sign of fiscal responsibility as his $1.35T budget shows. What I found interesting is that the CBO came out with a damning report on the deficits which got a little air time, but not as much as it should have. However, even the CBO has the projects rosier than what is likely to happen. They actually predict that the deficits will shrink as the Bush tax cuts expire, this is true, for year 1 after the cuts expire. However, we know from history that as taxes go up revenues go down because the ‘wealthy,’ who are the enemy of the state now, decide to earn less because it will eventually be equally as profitable for them to earn less so they can keep more, this is why tax hikes never work long-term. However, that logic is lost on people who care to ignore both history and economics.
The good news is that real tax hikes will not take place until this fall, after the mid-term elections. Now, as far as the whole repayment of TARP tax proposed by Obama, that is a joke because TARP was paid back by most major banks. However, Detroit will likely never payback what they owe, how can they when unions now have board seats? Unions are the ones who killed Detroit to begin with, that is another argument though. The fact is that TARP, a Bush solution, worked, as much as I hate it, and if Obama stuck with only banks receiving it then it would have been profitable. However, now banks have to pay for Detroit which is about par for the administration, blame everyone else but themselves and make others pay for their pet project failures.
I am not sure how the President can claim everything is fine when all the economic data, bad data I mean, is coming home to roost. Unemployment is going to move higher as initial claims increase and the GDP figures, minus government transfers, will show horrible organic growth. We are not out of the woods yet, but everyone is acting like we are.
According to Mr., and I use that term loosely, Olbermann, if you are a pickup truck owner, like trucks, against bigger governments or, apparently, a white guy you are a racist. Hey, don’t yell at me, he said it and makes the suggestion and I just tell you about it since his audience consists of me and 2 other people locked in a basement somewhere. In fact, MSNBC has been playing the race card for the past year now asking how race relations have changed over the past year.
The irony is that I rarely if ever think about race of individuals at all and I don’t think most people do except those baiting for a fight, MSNBC in this case. I never even hear Fox make much reference to race, but MSNBC brings it up all the time, why? How in the world can race be more important than a person’s beliefs or policies? You see, that is what I pay attention to, what people say and do, not what color they are. I simply do not care what color people are, but apparently the progressive, liberal, MSNBC does and yet I am supposed to be the racists. No, I do not own a pickup truck, but I am a white guy and I detest big government, uh oh!
I am only boosting Keith’s ratings tonight because I want to see his face if/when Brown wins, he called brown a racists, homophobe (spelling??), bigot, sexist, and on and on while completely ignoring Coakley’s willingness to let a pedophile go free because of political ties. Of course, all Democrats seem to ignore things like this, don’t worry Republicans seem to ignore the tax cheats and corruptness of their friends to, but at least they are not touching little kids, except for Foley, even then the kid wasn’t 2. Regardless, the hypocrisy of the Democrats is, in my opinion, so much worse than the Republicans in 2006.
I recently wrote a liberal and asked if he knew why Obama received $23M from Wall Street, more than most other candidates, he did not know. I told him it is because most Democrats are too stupid to understand how Wall Street works and that is why the likes of Goldman give the Democrats more money than Republicans. Of course, the media and Democrats say Republicans are for Wall Street, but that is simply a lie. Proof of this is no further than Freddie and Fannie who gave massive amounts of money to, guess who? Democrats. Guess which party blocked attempts to regulate the GSE’s? Exactly.
Anyhow, I guess if you believe in the Tea Party movement, what a dumb name anyhow, you are a racist. That may come as a surprise to many of the black people I saw at the rallies, on TV, not in person. I just cannot get over the fact that these idiots on TV sit there and called protestors in 2004 patriots then, but now they are racist “tea baggers,” which by the way is a crude term for when a man sticks his you know what’s in someone else’s mouth, now you know and now you know the intellectual level of MSNBC hosts. What these idiots on TV do not get is that people are hurting, broke and see the level of corruption and spending in Washington from the people who were supposed to be “on their side” and all that spending and corruption never trickled down to the people, just to unions and, well we really don’t know where now, do we?
What Keith and the other idiots on MSNBC also do not realize is that is that Democrats had control of Congress since 2006 and only increased their margin of control in 2008. Knowing that fact, who do you think really owns the financial crisis? Sure, Bush owns a big chunk of it, but the Democrats own way more than they will ever admit to. Those are the little facts that the talking heads and Democrats want you to forget about, but how could anyone really forget that? I guess if you say it was the other guys fault enough times people will, but in time people will remember.
In the meantime, brown is kicking the snot out of Coakley and it looks like Ted’s seat is going to a Republican, he must be mortified wherever he is. I am willing to bet the market rallies tomorrow, but this is not good news for the market because this means spending is going to be reigned in, to a degree. I would not be a buyer tomorrow, but this makes me like utilities more and biotech along with other select healthcare stocks. If Coakley wins, I am buying insurers.
We are all a little biased towards ourselves and most people are likely to not judge themselves harshly. Even mass murderers tend to justify or view their actions as moral or for the greater good, well many of them anyhow. My point is that when we are faced with a question about our performance we tend to spin it in the best possible light, another great example is Goldman Sachs spinning their huge bonuses as God’s work. The reason why I bring this up is because our President was asked to grade himself during an interview a few weeks ago and he gave himself a “solid B+” which is absurd.
The reason why he should have avoided the question altogether is because he has not completed one campaign promise to the people, except for higher taxes. Health care was done behind closed doors, Gitmo is open, Iraq is still somewhere, Afghanistan is getting more involved 9a big mistake I might add), and unemployment is sky high (add back in those “marginally attached” people and we are pushing 11%). Let us not forget that the annual deficit is 4 times what it was under the last President, who was certainly no peach, and we are quickly approaching 100% debt to GDP, not good.
All of this while Democrats keep blaming Bush for everything and the Republicans accept that argument, what? Oh, how quickly we forget the recent past. Before I go any further I did not like Bush, at all, and firmly believe he was one of the worst President’s of all time, so save the hate mail. However, Democrats are just as guilty of where we are today as the Republicans as they were ushered into power in 2006 in congress, the real power in politics. They rebuffed any attempt to rein in the GSE’s and they rubber stamped all of bush’s policies for 2 years. So, to say “we inherited this problem” is utter nonsense and has to stop.
When you have the power to say no and stop crazy spending and you do not you are just as guilty as the person who proposed it. That is exactly what the Democrats did for 2 years and to make matters worse, they simply allowed things to continue the way they were without a peep. Don’t believe me, check YouTube.com for the GSE hearing meetings or go check Democrat voting records for raising the debt ceiling, 7 times. They did not inherit anything, they helped create it, end of story.
If you actually believe that they inherited all these messes and did nothing to create them then you have a poor knowledge of politics, history or simply are blinded by partisan politics. I, on the other hand, do not care as I see all politicians for what they are, parasites on the backs of the American people who care about 2 things, reelection and power, not necessarily in that order. To sit here now and say that the stimulus is working is simply crazy, babbling, rabid partisan bickering because it is clear that it did not. If it did work GDP would not be at 2.2% in 3Q09, I know we will get an initial estimate of 4 or 5% for 4Q09, but that to will be adjusted lower and will be all government heroin.
Never before had the US government spent $787B in any stimulus plan and not seen any results. Instead the best argument Democrats can muster is that it stopped us from going over the abyss, oh really? Are these the same Democrats who said that not all the money has come into the system yet so we don’t know how well the stimulus is working? So, how can you say that on one hand it stopped us from falling off a cliff, but on the other hand say we don’t know how well it is going to work? You can’t because that is political double talk for we spent a bunch of money on stuff and we made many mistakes, but will not admit it. Instead, they decide to lie to us and then launch secret stimulus packages, i.e. the jobs bill passed at the dead of night.
What no one ever talks about is this, what would have happened if the stimulus was not enacted? I am willing to bet that things would have probably followed about the same track it is following now. Well, I think there would have been an exception to that, employment would have bottomed sooner and we would be seeing real recovery a lot sooner. Considering even Jim Cramer has admitted that the CEO’s he has spoken to have not seen one dime of stimulus I am pretty sure that the stimulus did not work at all. I mean, even the government is not adding tons of jobs, yet, until the census begins. Of course we do have more government employees making over 100K than ever before in history, but who cares, right?
If the original stimulus saved us and is going to get us back to growth then why in the world do we need a second stimulus? Simple, the first one was the greatest fleecing of America next to TARP in the history of the world. However, never fear because it is all Bush’s fault, a year later. I absolutely hated it when Bush blamed Clinton for the recession in 2000 just as much as I hate Obama blaming Bush now for one simple reason, the President has very little to do with the economy. I say that with a caveat, unless they implement policies that impact the economy like ridiculous stimulus packages, unpaid for tax cuts or Medicare advantage plans and things like that. What I mean is that the last 2 administrations, in my opinion, have had a greater impact on the economy than previous administrations mostly because of their lackeys in Congress happen to be in power at the same time.
Because of the absurdity of what is going on, even though I cannot stand the hypocritical Republicans, I am praying the Republicans take all of Congress in November and grid lock this thing for the next couple of years. Why would I want that to happen? Simple, I do not want my currency to be toilet paper around the world and I certainly do not want more spending. I also do not want more unionization of government employees, we need more firings in government, not hiring’s or raises. What I am trying to say is that we need balance restored back in Washington, it worked in 1994 and perhaps it could work again.
In the meantime, our President should not be issuing any grades for himself as he certainly did not earn a “solid B+” as I am pretty sure his math teacher would have flunked based on his estimates on health care costs and budget deficits. I am fairly sure a big “I” is what the President should have given himself for incomplete since he has not even kept the transparency promise he made. When C-SPAN says what is going on, you got an image issue Mr. President. So, keep some promises, fire some government workers, starting with all of you Czars, and let’s really figure out the deficit before the dollar does crash.
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