Jun 28

Government Begins Pressuring Medical Profession to Spread Climate-Change Propaganda

BOSTON 2015

“Climate-change” hysteria is very much a movement of the highest government officials, the ultra-rich and wealthy academic elites. It is not a movement of a majority of Americans. The hysteria has been widely promoted by government agencies, and by wealthy political donors. But government global-warming messaging has failed to resonate with voting majorities, who view the climate hysteria as an exaggeration if not a hoax.

The government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting its climate-change agenda. Now the President is pressuring members of the medical profession to spread the government’s climate-change-socialism alarmism during interactions with patients.

“The Obama administration has been hard at work trying to draw a link between global warming and public health issues.”

Jun 27

“Limited Government” Republicans in Kansas–like those in Montana, Nevada, and elsewhere–have just passed one of the largest tax increases in state history.

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NPR has a story about the “conservative,” “limited-government,” “tea-party-controlled” Republican legislature of Kansas. Like the overwhelmingly Republican-controlled legislatures of Nevada, Montana and elsewhere, the Republican-controlled legislature of Kansas has just enacted a budget with some of the highest tax increases in state history.

Jun 27

Obamacare is already causing massive damage to American productivity.

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As many economists predicted, the passage of Obamacare is significantly limiting American productivity and prosperity. “Because of Obamacare,” writes Larry Kudlow, “there’s an additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax on salaries and self-employment income, a 3.8 percent tax increase on capital gains and dividends, a cap on health care flexible spending accounts, a higher threshold for itemized medical expense deductions, and a stiff penalty on employer reimbursements for individual employee health policy premiums.”

According to Kudlow, each of these tax hikes is already producing lower rates of productivity and prosperity in the American economy. Part time workers now account for some 7 million jobs, compared to 4 million part-time jobs during the prior recovery. “Obamacare is a tax on full-time work.”

Kudlow continues, “Obamacare enrollment is coming up short, and the program is unable to sustain an adequate risk pool. Expert health insurance analyst Robert Laszewski and the consulting firm Avalere find that exchanges are succeeding in enrolling low-income individuals but are struggling to attract middle- and higher-income enrollees.”

Laszewski reports that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas wants a 20 percent rate hike; in Maryland, it’s 34 percent; Oregon’s biggest insurer, Moda Health, wants a 26 percent hike; and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee wants a 36 percent hike.

Jun 26

IRS Continues to Obstruct Justice: “Separation of Powers” Remains Broken.

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Under James Madison’s constitutional theory, the separate branches of government would “check” each others’ powers by applications of their own officers’ rival jealousies. For example, legislators can cut the budgets of the executive branch when executive-branch officers overreach. In practice, such “checking” almost never happens, because all three branches have learned to share in common control and exploitation of the American people.

When it came to light that the IRS has been persecuting “tea party” groups seeking 501(c)(4) status as “social welfare” groups (like thousands of other similar organizations, e.g., the Sierra Club, the NRA, etc.), Congress began investigating.

It soon emerged that the IRS obstructed Congress’s investigation, by, for example, deleting incriminating emails. When the highest-level IRS officials were summoned before committees of Congress, such IRS officials falsely claimed that incriminating emails had been “lost.”

Further investigations followed. It has now emerged that IRS officials have deliberately deleted and concealed incriminating emails AFTER they became aware of congressional investigations (and after their IRS head testified falsely that no emails could be found).

The obvious answer is for Congress to slash the budget of the IRS and force the agency to lay off hundreds. (Prosecuting executive-branch agents is difficult when prosecuting officials are themselves agents and partisans of the executive branch.)

“[Investigators] took possession of the 424 backup tapes and determined that 422 of the 424 tapes were degaussed (i.e., magnetically erased) by IRS employees in Martinsburg on or around March 4, 2014, one month after the IRS realized they were missing e-mails from Lois Lerner, and approximately eight months after the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requested ‘all documents and communications sent by, received by, or copied to Lois Lerner.’”

The National Review story is here.

Jun 25

U.S. Supreme Court conceptually rewrites Obamacare law in order to uphold it.

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It is a frequent criticism of judges that they are “activists”–politicians in judicial clothing. The reality, however, is that the judiciary is amazingly passive and tends to bend over backward to uphold the ridiculous, unconstitutional, and intrusive measures and enactments of the executive and legislative branches.

Today, June 25, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the extension of Obamacare subsidies into states that did not set up their own “exchanges”–DESPITE THE PLAIN LANGUAGE OF THE STATUTE(S) INDICATING THAT Obamacare subsidies would not apply in such states.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, penned this ridiculous statement: “In this instance, the context and structure of the act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.”

Justice Scalia dissented, and said to an audience at the Supreme Court building, “We really should start calling this law Scotus-care,” to laughter from the audience.

Jun 24

Study demolishes the myth of multi-generational inherited wealth

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Government trusters and advocates of violent redistribution of wealth frequently claim that the superrich are hoarding and amassing inherited investment wealth at rates that surpass the upward mobility of working classes. For example, government-trusting economist Thomas Piketty made such a claim in his book Capital in the 21st Century (2014). Piketty argued that economic inequality increases as capital accumulates in the hands of ultra-rich families.

But recent research has shattered this argument (again). There is, in fact, rapid turnover among people in the “super rich” category. Estates rise and fall. “[A]t any given time, roughly half of the collective worth of the hyper-wealthy is first-generation earned wealth, not inherited wealth,” according to the authors of the study.

Dynastic wealth accumulation is simply a myth. The reality is that each generation spawns its own entrepreneurs who create vast pools of entirely new wealth, and enjoy their share of it, displacing many of the preceding generations’ entrepreneurial wealth creators. Today, the massive fortunes of the 19th century are largely depleted and almost all of the fortunes generated just a half-century ago are also gone.

The study can be downloaded here. A writeup in Reason Magazine can be found here.

Jun 24

“Five years of wage cuts, tax increases and record unemployment”: Greeks awaken to a New Normal of ever-higher taxes and slavery to pay for their welfare state

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Socialism is a curse that should be wished only on one’s enemies. Every society that embraces it will ultimately become sick and weak.

Greeks are now learning the lesson that years of socialized medicine, welfare, security entitlements and big government must be paid for. The Greek people mortgaged their children’s future a generation ago, and those children have now grown up to experience life under virtual slavery.

Greece, of course, is legendary for its past innovation, invention, arts and learning. But modern Greek industry has died, and Greek innovation has been choked off due to high taxation and regulation.

Greek indebtedness now threatens the European Union itself. The story is here.

Jun 22

“Americans With Disabilities Act” LOWERED the percentage of disabled with jobs.

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The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in the early 1990s and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. The law was passed with claims that it would help get people with disabilities gainfully employed.

But years later, we learn that the Act had the opposite effect. Employment of men with disabilities fell by 10.9 percentage points following the enactment of ADA, while employment of nondisabled men fell by 3.1 percentage points. Thus, ADA reduced the employment of disabled men by 7.8 percentage points. The study is here.

Jun 22

Research Problem: Can Anyone Devise a Method to Test Whether Medicare and/or Social Security Have Negatively Impacted General Health?

Roger Roots, J.D., Ph.D.

Roger Roots, J.D., Ph.D.

by Dr. Roger I. Roots

A previous post on the fact that today’s senior citizens are generally sicker (but longer-living, due to medical advancements) than their predecessors got me thinking.

Can this increased level of sickness and chronic illness among today’s populations be partially attributed to Medicare? Or to Social Security?

This is not as outlandish as it seems. I’ve read some research suggesting that increased use of safety devices such as seat belts, and car insurance may be correlated with riskier driving behavior by drivers.

The evidence is overwhelming that Social Security has incentivized Americans to save less, invest less, and retire earlier. Overall, Americans work fewer total hours per lifetime in response to Social Security (and, presumably, Medicare). The country is slightly poorer and less prosperous than it would have been otherwise. Could these entitlement programs also incentivize American workers to work less safe? Or to live less healthy?

I don’t know how to test or measure this hypothesis. If anyone who can offer a suggestion would email me at [email protected], I would be very grateful.

Thanks!

Jun 22

An Explosion of Wealth and Prosperity in Latin America? Low Tax Rates are Slowly bringing Latin America into the First World

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Even as the West is careening toward socialism and forced redistribution, some Latin American countries are increasingly seen as low-tax havens.

And the numbers of wealthy Latin Americans is growing rapidly. A June 21, 2015 story in Yahoo News detailed the fascinating growth of the super rich in Latin America.

Mexico and Brazil, for example, are increasingly large markets for Porsche and other luxury automobiles. In Peru, Colombia, and Panama, numbers of such automobiles are approaching growth rates of 60 percent per year. Mexico is now second only to the U.S. in new purchases of private jets.

And although there is widespread poverty in South and Central America, measures of human well-being are improving across the entire socio-economic strata.