This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Economy

  • Surprise! Surprise!

    Slate Magazine lists the 60 Largest Charitable contributions of the year
    Guess whose name is NOWHERE on the list…

    Warren Buffett, although he thinks he, and, btw, YOU, should pay more taxes, he is apparently above charity.
    This really comes as no surprise to anyone with half a brain.

  • We need an Economics curriculum

    The Washington Post stunningly announces on Page One this morning that they don’t understand economics under the headline “Fed’s Rate Cuts Bring No Relief For Consumers’ Credit Card Bills”;

    The Federal Reserve’s dramatic rate cuts were expected to make it cheaper for consumers to use credit cards. But credit card interest rates remain high and in many cases have even climbed.

    Well, credit cards aren’t a reflection of lending rates – it’s a retail business. Credit card users are welcome to shop their credit card business and dump high interest credit cards for lower rates.

    The increases have perplexed customers such as Richard Davis, an insurance agent who lives in Fairfax County who said the annual percentage rate on his Chase Business Visa card went from 8 percent to 24 percent in December, three months after the Fed’s first rate cut. “That just floored me,” he said.

    If I were Richard Davis, an insurance agent, no less, and I made a stupid remark like that in public, I should expect my clients to bail out of the financial services I’ve provided them. Credit rates increase when people don’t make their payments, the whole lending crisis happened because people stopped making payments on their credit. So guess what – that impacts the whole lending market, not just mortgage companies. Well, at least the Washington Post went into that after their terrorizing headline;

    Banks have reported steep write-offs related to the mortgage mess, and their stock prices have plummeted. “Credit cards historically have been a very profitable segment for the banking industry, so what they’re doing is trying to squeeze customers as much as they can, particularly for accounts they don’t see as profitable or as high risk,” said Curtis Arnold, founder of CardRatings.com, an independent consumer resource on credit cards.

    But it’s not the lenders’ fault, as the Washington Post implies; it’s the whole credit market. What the Washington Post doesn’t recognize is that borrowers are free to shop their good credit around for a better rate.

    And of course, it’s not really a crisis until the Democrats tell us it is;

    On Thursday, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House financial institutions and consumer credit subcommittee, introduced the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2008, which would, among other things, restrict fees and rate changes that companies could impose.

    Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has proposed a similar bill. He said in an interview that Congress will keep an eye on how card issuers react to the changes in the federal funds rate, which the Fed controls. “The credit cards raise the rates when they go up. They should go down when interest rates go down,” he said.

    We don’t need Congressional intervention, we need an education system that explains simple economics to students so they don’t get their pointy little heads into something from which they can’t recover.

  • Pelosi *gasp* sides with Republicans against Reid

    While the Senate gazes at it’s collective navel, Nancy Pelosi sided with Senate Republicans to urge the Senate to pass the economic stimulus package without substantial changes;

    The retreat by Senate Democrats came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sided with Republicans, including McConnell, and called on the Senate to stop its infighting and pass the bill.

    In doing so, Pelosi, D-Calif., split openly with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who backed the more expensive package.

    “There’s no reason for any more delay on this,” Pelosi said Thursday before agreement was reached.

    Reid on Wednesday narrowly lost a crucial procedural vote to push the $205 billion Senate Democratic stimulus plan — as a take it or leave it proposition — toward a final vote in that chamber. Eight Republicans, including a handful who helped craft the measure, voted with Democrats.

    Later, Pelosi issued a statement tailored to support McConnell’s position — which Reid has repeatedly rejected — and pointedly ignoring the other add-ons.

    Seein’s how the economy is recovering nicely without any stimulus, though, I guess she figured she’s better get the ball rolling before the Democrats take another hit in the polls for being too slow and lethargic. But, at least they’ve (tacitly) admited that the Bush tax cuts and rebates saved the economy in 2001.

    UPDATE:

    “We all have to acknowledge that the House bill has been improved significantly…. We’ll be back and do more things to help stimulate the economy,” Reid said.

    A Senate vote on the measure was slated for later Thursday and the House is expected to send the bill to President Bush for his signature by the end of the week.

    So Reid is taking credit and declaring victory even though he split his own party. What a ma-roon.

  • Mr Hillary Clinton: “We must slow DOWN our economy…”

    Mr Hillary Clinton was quoted by ABC New’s Political Punch Blog as saying ‘We must slow down our economy to fight global warming’
    Whoa! Is he trying to torpedo his wife’s campaign? Did he miss a poll or something? Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to be blaming Bush, Cheney, Rove, et al?

    Did he misspeak? No, not at all. Bill Clinton is many things, chief among them, he is the consummate politician. His political savvy is well nigh unmatched, he doesn’t misspeak. I think he is beginning to think Hillary could win and HIS presidency could be shunted aside as a mere footnote. For someone as obsessed with his legacy as Bill Clinton, that is a maddening concept.

    One thing is for damned sure, you never hear any conservative saying slowing the economy would ever be a good thing.

  • Way to shut the door, Congress

    Apparently the House of Representatives tried to reduce the rebate amount of my taxes so they can pay illegal aliens (Fox News link);

    Members of the Senate Finance Committee passed a bill Wednesday they say will fix a loophole in the House-passed economic stimulus package that allows some illegal immigrants to qualify for tax rebate checks.

    The fix requires that anyone eligible for a rebate envisioned in a House-passed $161 billion stimulus package must have to have a valid Social Security number, rather than an Individual Tax Identification Number.

    The stimulus plan overwhelmingly passed the House on a suspended vote, meaning no amendments were included on the initial legislation. A mini-brushfire broke out in the Capitol Wednesday as members realized that the decision to refund tax payments to ITIN holders meant illegal immigrants could possibly benefit.

    Michele Malkin quotes Tom Tancredo;

    “This package will stimulate one thing for certain: more illegal immigration,” said Tancredo. “It’s just the latest unfortunate example of American workers footing the bill for illegal aliens.”

    […]

    “Worse, a large portion of this money will just be sent back to the home countries of illegal aliens,” concluded Tancredo. “So it might stimulate someone’s economy – just not ours.”

    But, it’ll buy some illegal votes for the Democrats, and that’s all that really matters isn’t it?

  • The legacy of George Bush

    Yesterday, I was completely enthralled with a post on The Anchoress about George Bush’s legacy. It’s probably not what most Conservatives would say about him, let alone the Left, but it’s pretty much what I’ve been saying all along;

    Perhaps I am a dim bulb, but President Bush has never surprised me, and that is probably why I have never felt let down or “betrayed” by him. He is, in essentials, precisely who he has ever been. He did not surprise me when he managed, in August of 2001, to find a morally workable solution in the matter of Embryonic Stem Cells. He did not surprise me when, a month later, he stood on a pile of rubble and lifted a broken city from its knees. When my FDNY friends told me of the enormous consolation and strength he brought to his meetings with grieving families, I was not surprised. When the World Series opened in New York City and the President was invited to throw the first pitch, there was no surprise in his throwing (while wearing body armor) a perfect strike.

    […]

    Let me tell you what has surprised me about George W. Bush. I have been surprised by his ability to keep from attacking-in-kind the “public servants” in Washington who – for five years – have not been able to speak of the American President with the respect he is due, by virtue of both his office and his humanity, because they are entralled with hate and owned by opportunism. I have been surprised that he has kept his committment to “changing the tone” even when it has long been clear that the only way the tone in Washington will ever change is if everyone named Bush or Clinton or Kennedy is cleared out and “career politicians” are shown the door….

    Now, I don’t pray at the altar of George Bush or pray in the direction of the White House, but you have to give the man his due, and I think The Anchoress has done that. Whether you agree with his policies or not, he told what he was going to do before you voted for him, didn’t he? Because he told us what he believed in that first election, nothing he did surprised us – except that he kept his word. How unpolitician-like.

    He said he’d never govern by polls, and by-God he hasn’t. He put his head down and plowed through the nattering nabobs of negativity (h/t Spiro Agnew) and did what he thought was right regardless of the cacophony of the dissenters – on both sides. We’d have gotten the same kind of determination from Fred Thompson, I think, but that ship has sailed apparently.
    More praise for George Bush is published in, of all places, the Washington Post, this morning (I can only imagine the comments that’ll appear there before the end of the day) written by Michael Gerson;

    Proposals such as No Child Left Behind, the AIDS and malaria initiatives, and the addition of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare would simply not have come from a traditional conservative politician. They became the agenda of a Republican administration precisely because of Bush’s persistent, passionate advocacy. To put it bluntly, these would not have been the priorities of a Cheney administration.

    This leaves critics of the Bush administration with a “besides” problem. Bush is a heartless and callous conservative, “besides” the 1.4 million men, women and children who are alive because of treatment received through his AIDS initiative . . . “besides” the unquestioned gains of African American and Hispanic students in math and reading . . . “besides” 32 million seniors getting help to afford prescription drugs, including 10 million low-income seniors who get their medicine pretty much free. Iraq may have overshadowed these achievements; it does not eliminate them.

    Conservatives have been dealt cards which are Socialist in nature. If we want the big ticket items (National Security, sane economic policy, etc…) we have to pay for the things that are aptly named “entitlements” that Democrats have used to pay for votes for decades and the victims of our public school system have come to expect. Until we either change the culture or accept the fact that we don’t want to have Conservatives in public office, that’s the price we have to pay – it’s called accepting reality.

    Gerson continues;

    Bush has received little attention or thanks for his compassionate reforms. This is less a reflection on him than on the political challenge of compassionate conservatism. The conservative movement gives the president no credit because it views all these priorities — foreign assistance, a federal role in education, the expansion of an entitlement — as heresies, worthy of the stake. Liberals and Democrats offer no praise because a desire to help dying Africans, minority students and low-income seniors does not fit the image of Bush’s cruelty that they wish to cultivate.

    In the January 30th edition of The Weekly Standard, Joseph Loconte writes about Bush’ success in Africa against AIDS;

    “Protecting our nation from the dangers of a new century requires more than good intelligence and a strong military,” Bush said. “It also requires changing the conditions that breed resentment and allow extremists to prey on despair. So America is using its influence to build a freer, more hopeful, and more compassionate world.” Under PEPFAR, about 1.4 million
    AIDS patients in 15 nations in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean have received life-saving medicines. Bush announced Monday night that he intended to add another $30 billion to the program over the next five years.

    Many on the left, at home and abroad, have reproached the president for his alleged failure to use “soft power” to confront religious extremism and advance U.S. foreign policy goals. Yet here is a supremely humane initiative – inconceivable to foreign policy realists – linked to U.S. security concerns. Bush rightly calls it “a reflection of our national interest and the calling of our conscience.” Just think about the number of AIDS orphans that would be scratching for survival without PEPFAR. Millions of rootless young boys cannot be a good thing for any society. Whatever the relationship between poverty and terrorism, this program is probably doing more to check the flow of terrorist recruits than all the diplomatic bloviating in Brussels, Geneva, and New York put together.

    Either way he’s screwed, at least by the voices on both extreme ends of the political spectrum. A man who has always been true to his word, who kept his campaign promises, ignored the loudest noisemakers – quite refreshing considering his predecessor and the alternate choices we had in 2000 and 2004.

    History will be more kind to him than his current critics. Especially if we get a Clinton or Obama term to compare to Bush’s.

  • Our shrinking rebates

    Well, back two weeks ago I wrote that President Bush recommended that Congress rebate taxpayers $800. Last week, the House of Representatives cut that amount to $600 so they could give money to people who don’t have any taxable income (effectively negating the meaning of “rebate”). Today in the Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Lueck, writes that the now the Senate has sunk their hungry gums around our rebate, too;

    Sen. Baucus proposed a $500 rebate for people who report at least $3,000 of income on a 2007 tax return, including Social Security income, as well as wages, a move that would provide rebates to millions of seniors not eligible under the House compromise. Married couples would be eligible to receive $1,000. He also revived a top Democratic priority — an extension of unemployment-insurance benefits — that was dropped from the House plan.

    So, in just two weeks time, the rebate of our money that we earned and gave to the government has been slashed 37.5% . A married couple expecting $1600 from President Bush will be getting $1000 from Baucus instead.

    Doing what the Left do best – be so fair to everyone that everyone ends up with scraps. Spreading out the misery in equal doses. And being so slow about it, that by the time the checks the mailboxes, this latest “crisis” will be over.
    Jeffery Birnbaum in the Washington Post writes that the K Street lobbyists couldn’t muster their forces soon enough to tear the rebates up for the special interests, so they’re focusing on the Senate;

    Other interests are bearing down on Baucus and his committee as well. Late last week, Baucus and his staff met with representatives of organized labor, including Rod Bennett and Donald J. Kaniewski of the Laborers’ International Union, Christopher D. Heinz of the carpenters union and the building trades department of the AFL-CIO, and Jeffrey Soth of the International Union of Operating Engineers.

    A tax rebate for low- and middle-income workers — a foundation of the stimulus package — “is good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough,” said Bill Samuel, legislative director of the AFL-CIO. Yesterday, in fact, the finance panel released its proposal, which adopted an important request from organized labor. It would extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks, among other additions to the president’s package.

    Except that’s not AFL-CIO’s money. It’s our money – us – the American taxpayers.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that those crooked-ass insurance brokers at the AARP are licking their lips, too;

    The AARP, an advocacy group for retired people, has pushed for the elderly to be included. But “it’s going to be hard to get people to take advantage of it,” said David Certner of AARP, if they don’t normally file tax returns.

    Well, numbnuts, if they don’t pay taxes, they don’t get a rebate. How hard is that to understand?

    But it’s part of a larger problem. Americans are convinced that all money belongs to the government and we only get to keep what they let us have. Every once in a while they throw us a bone, and we clap like a room full of retarded children because we get to keep our shiny toys for a little while longer.

    So here we sit like a bunch of birdlings waiting for the government to come by and drop some worm ooze in our open mouths – if the vultures from the special interests don’t get to the worm first.

  • Tax rebates become income redistribution

    A tentative deal has been reached between Congressional Democrats and Republicans – and socialism is winning out (Associated Press link);

    Democratic and Republican congressional leaders reached a tentative deal Thursday on tax rebates of $300 to $1,200 per household and business tax cuts to jolt the slumping economy.

    Congressional officials close to the negotiations said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio reached agreement in principle in a telephone call Thursday morning.

    […]

    Pelosi, D-Calif., agreed to drop increases in food stamp and unemployment benefits during a Wednesday meeting in exchange for gaining rebates of at least $300 for almost everyone earning a paycheck, including low-income earners who make too little to pay income taxes.

    So it’s not a tax rebate at all – a tax rebate would be sending money back to the people who earned it, but instead, Pelosi wants to send money they confiscated from the person who earned it and send it to someone who didn’t earn it. That’s income redistribution, that’s socialism.

    And why do you think they’re going to give it to someone who didn’t earn the money? To buy their vote. And what is that person going to do with that money? Squander it, just like everyone else with found money.

    Say what you will about the President but his plan actually returned money to taxpayers;

    President Bush has supported larger rebates of $800-$1,600, but his plan would have left out 30 million working households who earn paychecks but don’t make enough to pay income tax, according to calculations by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. An additional 19 million households would receive only partial rebates under Bush’s initial proposal.

    So people who actually earned the money end up getting less so the people who didn’t earn the money get included. And it was House Republicans who caved;

    Democratic aides said greater GOP flexibility over giving relief to poor families with children — who would not have been eligible under Bush’s original tax rebate proposal — was the catalyst that moved the talks forward.

    “Greater flexibility” means Republicans folded like cheap lawn chairs.

    I don’t care who gets what money – I care about honesty. If it’s a big program to hand out money to the poor, then say that. You can’t rebate something to someone who never owned it in the first place.

    And because there’s more people to whom the IRS must mail checks, it’ll slow the whole process down (WSJ link);

    Even if Congress meets its goal of finishing a stimulus bill before March, it is likely to take until June for the government to start sending out the millions of rebate checks that would be the plan’s centerpiece. It would take a couple more months before all the checks could be mailed.

    […]

    A big question for the IRS is how to get benefits to people who don’t have income-tax liability. The last stimulus rebate, in 2001, went only to income-tax payers. This time, the IRS and the Social Security Administration have been discussing how they might identify and locate a broader group.

    Two points – One; If the IRS was taking our money, they’d damn sure be fast about it, tax season or not. Two; of course the IRS doesn’t know where the people who don’t pay taxes are – why would they? f’Pete’s sake.

    S.A.Miller at the Washington Times writes the good news;

    Mrs. Pelosi also abandoned the Democratic push for spending on infrastructure projects, including construction and repair of roads and bridges, which critics said would take months to start and even longer to affect the economy.

    So at least we’ve got that going for us. But Michele Malkin writes that Lil’ Chuckie Schumer has another plan for yet another “stimulus package”. We all know what kind of “stimulus” The Putz has in mind.

    More from the AP;

    Republicans, for their part, were pleased that the bulk of the rebates — more than 70 percent, according to an analysis by Congress’ Joint Tax Committee — would go to individuals who pay taxes.

    If the Republicans were happy that 70% of the recipients were taxpayers, maybe they’d be just as happy working for 70% of their pay, too. Or with 70% of their staff. Or to get their free mailings cut to 70%. They’re already getting 0% of my campaign donations compared to election year 2000.