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Last Rajjpuut Remembers . . . .

Loyal readers will remember that repeatedly Rajjpuut not only excoriated the Congressional Budget Office for their gutless refusal to stand up to the “pie-in-the-sky” assumptions included in the Obamacare budgeting but also assured followers that if made into law, Obamacare would bankrupt the country among other hideous consequences. The process of passing the law particularly the last minute cave-in by Bart Stupak and eleven other so-called “pro-life” Democrats to pass the bill; and the particulars of the bill which NO ONE STILL HAS READ IN ITS ENTIRETY even now; and the irresponsibility of cost estimates; and the moving of 16% of our economy into the government sphere were each of them more than enough to demand a thumbs-down vote. Taken together, they promised a hideous new law sure to wreck the country. Right now 58% of Americans agree the law must be repealed and only 31% think it shouldn’t be repealed. All of that, however, might have just become moot points.

The “Anointed One” himself, Barack H. Obama, Jr. appears ready to exercise the veto pen upon his own foul “reform” of the health care system. You read that correctly. In the train of recent revelations by the CBO that the bill was not going to cut deficits but rather increase them mightily , Obama appears poised to axe parts of his legislation. Rajjpuut has a better idea: sh__can the whole mess and start over with five goals:
A. Real tort reform to make malpractice insurance costs less and excess testing costs much less and health care costs dramatically much less
B. Cutting costs with minimal effect on the present system by eliminating waste and abuse and fraud
C. Insurance sales across state lines allowed
D. Emphasis on prevention and regular physials
E. Less than 200 pages employed in the whole bill.
As Rajjpuut has mentioned often, politicians tend to be slimy individuals when it comes to semantics and use of semantic tricks. While it sounds “bad” to be against “reform” any time; the word-reform, especially from Barack Obama’s tongue, is not the thing-reform. The word “reform,” you’ll note has been attached by Obama and his administration and the Democrats in both chambers of Congress to mean “changing to greater government control” rather than its previous dictionary meaning of “improving something.” Rajjpuut suggests a 100% reform of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama and especially of his administration.
This not-that-surprising turn of events comes after the so-called “surprise-announcement” that congressional budget referees now predict healthcare reform could top $1 trillion as conservatives have said for over a year now. Let Rajjpuut be clear here: Obamacare will eventually come in at $4 TRillion, not in total -- but $4 Trillion per year, the way it is currently written. Government-Freebies, or more accurately “Perceived-Government Freebies” always are in much higher demand than predicted. If, like Rajjpuut you’ve ever seen four or five male bears in the wild (who normally can’t stand each other within 100 yards) five feet apart during berry season as they gorge on nature’s bounty . . . you’ll understand where the 4X factor prediction comes from. And, of course, the law doesn’t really begin to come into play until 2014 . . . so meanwhile it’s killing the economy for four years with nasty taxes.
Those naïve hayseeds among you might consider all this to be an “explosive” revelation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The laws of economics did NOT go to sleep for a hundred years just because a politician totally ignorant of them moved into the oval office. Oh, a few more details, besides its own internal lack of integrity and fiscal inconsistency: the law still threatens to cut physicians’ income and to raise Medicare costs and to bankrupt each and every one of the states because of new Medicaid requirements. Ain’t that sweet?
House Minority Leader John Boehner, said this new CBO analysis ". . . coming just weeks after the Obama administration itself released an analysis confirming that the new law actually increases Americans’ healthcare costs, this provides ample cause for alarm. The American people wanted one thing above all from healthcare reform: lower costs, which Washington Democrats promised, but they did not deliver. These revelations widen the serious credibility gap President Obama is facing."

Jennifer Hing, spokeswoman for Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, told Fox News: "If Congress were to approve all of this new discretionary funding authorized in the healthcare bill, almost all of the administration's highly touted savings would be made null and void."

CBO estimators also said they simply had not had enough time to run the numbers. Costs could go even higher, because the legislation authorizes several programs without setting specific funding levels. Rajjpuut would say, that is virtually always true. Too little study and too much spend-spend-spend and way too little actual understanding make Congress dangerous to the country’s political health and fiscal soundness. NO BILL should ever become law until sufficient time to truly understand all its ramifications has been taken . . . .

In the wake of the obvious example of highly-socialistic Greece’s present demise with fellow European socialistic countries England, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain (more or less in that order) waiting in the wings for their own fiscal comeuppance . . . Rajjpuut suggests it’s high time this country and its leadership got its feet on the ground. Europe is in chaos trying to avoid the utter financial failure of tiny self- indulgent Greece, the European Union (EU) this week pledged $1 trillion to inject green money into the veins of Europe's socialistic vampires. Not to go unmentioned: about $76 Billion coming from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) comes from American taxpayers . . . we’re actually supporting other countries’ failed experiments in socialism, doesn't that make you happy? Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave and the Founding Fathers? Their ghosts are right now discussing reincarnation to ignite a new American Revolution***.

Last Rajjpuut remembers, the Berlin Wall came down . . . a symbol of the differences between capitalism and communism (socialism taken to its logical extreme). Remember . . . they had to pen their people in and even that didn’t work thousands died trying to leave their corrupt stinking corpse of a system. Look at our borders, we’re having huge problems keeping people out. Last Rajjpuut remembers, the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST republics (what a laugh, republics!) collapsed freely and voluntarily as her leaders admitted their system didn’t work. Last Rajjpuut remembers, the Warsaw Pact countries joyfully abandoned their own wonderful socialisms. Last Rajjpuut remembers, communist China is now prospering as they’ve adopted a huge level of capitalism upon its own rotten corpse of Marxism. Last Rajjpuut remembers, people still die striving to leave Cuba and make for our shores on inflated truck inner tubes. Last Rajjpuut remembers Adolf Hitler only gets credit for 13 million deaths while Stalin and his commies killed 25 million and Mao, IN PEACETIME, caused the death of almost 57 million Chinese. How difficult is it to reach the conclusion that SOCIALISM SUCKS!

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

*** For God’s sake, fellow citizens, IF you have NOT read and understood the following brief words, you are, like Obama, an utterly ignorant fool when it comes to economics, correct that situation immediately:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

and for good measure, more brevities:

http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

and the Full Monty:

http://jim.com/econ/

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Obama-watchers here in the United States tell anyone who’ll listen that to understand our future, one has but to look at the shenanigans in Greece. Recently world stock markets include the ones here in the good ol’ U.S.A. tanked in response to the European Union/International Monetary Fund $150 Billion bailout of Greece. The three major fears concerning financial analysts are that either 1. the loan will NOT prove enough to cover Greece’s needs either for borrowing or the upward spiraling of debt or 2. the German parliament will not approve the bailout (voting is Friday May 6, in Germany) or 3. a combination of both scenarios. Just two and a half years ago Greece had a debt to gross domestic product ratio of roughly 55%, comparable to what the U.S. faced when President Obama took office (50%), but today Greece’s D/GDP ratio is at 102% and not only is the country facing financial ruin but there is literally “blood in the streets” as the all-powerful Greek labor unions are rioting in opposition to the belt-tightening being negotiated by the Greek government in order to receive the EU loans.

While Rajjpuut is NOT a fan of big and politically powerful labor unions, in the union’s favor it must be stated that the government of Greece has been guilty of outright lying and manipulating debt with “funny” statistics for about a decade now and the news that came out when the truth finally was released was more than shocking, it was abysmal. Oh, and for you Obama-watchers here, the D/GDP ratio in the United States has now risen to 76%.

To put things in perspective, and thus realize just how badly off the economies of Greece (also Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal) and the United States are, consider that the next worst of the European countries (England) had a ratio of only 11% w hen the following memorable speech linked immediately below was made to the EU by Daniel Hannan criticizing the actions of Prime Minister Gordon Brown a year ago. England’s ratio now is roughly 14% . . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

Many believe that Greece’s “contagion” will spread quickly to the other “PIGIES” (the next five weakest countries in Europe mentioned earlier, Greece is the "G") with one-time European financial bulwark Spain possibly the next to go. Spain about seven years ago had the strongest fiscal situation of any European power. Then they decided upon a critical experiment (one that Obama wants to work over here) and aimed to become the world’s #1 power in green technology. Spain’s 3% unemployment has spiraled all out of control and is now at 20%, second only to Greece’s problems. In the Spanish experience every green-tech job created cost $677,000 in government subsidies and killed 2.2 jobs in the real market place because of government spending and taxation. Most Spanish green jobs lasted from six weeks to nine months and only 1/10 of them proved permanent. In the United States that would translate to Obama’s promised “five million new green jobs” costing the loss of eleven more real economy jobs to subsidize them; and then with only 500,000 of those jobs proving permanent and a 22/1 ratio of lost real jobs to permanent green tech jobs. Additionally the typical green job pays $10-$14 per hour which is a huge letdown to most Americans’ way of thinking about new technologies.

The violence created in the streets by the Greek labor unions cost three bank employees their lives two days ago. The unions say they’ll refuse to make any financial concessions. Their intransigence might worsen the Greek debt situation or repel the other EU countries completely. As for Germany’s hesitation, the Germans suffered one of the two greatest inflations in European history (during the Weimar Republic after WWI, which eventually spawned Adolph Hitler and the Nazis) and the country is loathe to get involved with the fiscally irresponsible Greek government at risk of inflation to their own country. However, German Prime Minister Merkel has made it plain in her speeches that the “survival of the European Union is at stake.” Once again the European experience may prove to be a harbinger of things to come for the USA, because Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has inflated our money by 1500% so that now there is 1600% more money in circulation in the country and today’s 2010 dollar is now potentially worth only about 6.3 cents compared to the 2008 buck. Of course in this country we're talking about fifty individual states in financial disarry not twenty-four separate countries.

Worse news for Greece, the violence and fiscal unrest don’t look like they’ll be ending anytime soon. If that ugly scenario keeps repeating the EU may not loan the money and Germany's refusal also could be in the cards. And the possibility of a worldwide depression is always on investors’ minds. Additionally, with the latest round of worries that the Greek debt contagion will spread to Spain and elsewhere in Europe. The looming specter of massive debt default and deflation is heavy in the air for investors worldwide and fear dominates the markets. All this and unending days of national strike are NOT painting an encouraging scene.

Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery.

Rajjpuut

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