Al Jazeera headline: ‘US officials bullish about growth’

Ha! I read “bullshit” instead of bullish. I thought it was embarrassing, but accurate. Here’s the article:

“US economic growth is highly likely to resume in the second half of the year, senior US administration officials have said.

But Timothy Geithner, the treasury secretary, warned in an interview with ABC television on Sunday that once recovery was regained, there would be “hard choices” to contain rising deficits.

He said he would not rule out higher taxes in the future, adding: “We’re going to have to do what is necessary.”

Geithner and Larry Summers, the White House economic adviser, went on the Sunday television talk shows to make the case that the economic stimulus programme by Barack Obama, the president, was gaining traction, despite rising unemployment and worries about the US deficit.

Summers told NBC television: “A very great likelihood – and this is what most professional forecasters say – is that we’ll see growth going forward in the second half of this year.”

The two men were seconded by Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, who told ABC the worst US financial crisis in a half a century was “not quite” over, “but we’re getting there”.

‘Pretty sure’

Greenspan said he was “pretty sure” the broader US economy had hit bottom and begun to turn around in mid-July.

Summers pointed to the success of a “cash for clunkers” programme where motorists can trade-in old vehicles for a government payment against a new one as a sign that the US car industry was coming back to life.

He said industries will have to replace inventories that have been massively cut.

But both he and Geithner acknowledged that the US jobless rate would continue to climb from its current level of 9.5 per cent.

Geithner cited private analysts as saying the rate will not start coming down until the beginning of the second half of 2010.

Gross domestic product figures released on Friday by the commerce department estimated that the US economy contracted 1.0 per cent in the second quarter, better than forecasters expected.

The administration said the new report showed the economy was in deeper trouble than believed when Obama took office but that its recovery programmes were working.” (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)

Obama praises his economic policy

The only good thing about Obama’s speech, is him calling bullshit on Newsweek.

Every single one of the things he takes credit for is Keynesian bullshit. If you print a bunch of money out of thin air, of course you can “create” jobs, and prop up artificially high home and stock prices.

People NEED to lose jobs. Values of things we don’t want NEED to drop. There has been so much mal-investment that resources need to realign in the production of goods and services that people actually want. Obama is making it worse.

Also, the vast quantities of money printed so that Obama can take credit for propping up prices and creating jobs are a huge transfer of wealth AWAY FROM the poor and working classes. When the government prints (ie legally counterfeits money) it is a transfer of wealth from money holders at large to the institutions who have the privileged of dealing directly with government – banks, military industries, our 22 million government employees, etc.

Haaretz Editorial: Settlers undermining legitimacy of Israel’s existence

“The representatives of the settler organizations have recently declared their intention to establish 11 new settlements in the territories, including some, according to media reports, on privately-owned Palestinian land. The operation is being depicted as having been inspired by the 11 tower and stockade communities in the northern Negev that were established just before Yom Kippur in 1946. This is not the first time the settlers have compared their efforts to the settlement activities that provided the foundation for the establishment of the state. There is no basis for such a comparison, which is nothing more than an act of forgery and fraud.

The basic difference between the two undertakings is that the settlement project that preceded Israel’s establishment was intended to create the territorial basis for the future Jewish state. It wasn’t intended to deprive the Arabs of everything that was left or, for that matter, their right to a state of their own alongside the Jewish state.

The 11 settlements in the northern Negev, meanwhile, were meant to ensure the inclusion of the Negev in the Jewish state upon the expected partition of the Land of Israel into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

The current settlement campaign, on the other hand, like the unnecessary construction in East Jerusalem, is not designed to ensure the existence of the state of the Jews, but rather to deprive the Arabs of their state in the West Bank and their capital in Arab Jerusalem. That is precisely the difference between the just Zionism of self-defense and aggressive Zionism, which is totally dismissive of the Arabs and their human rights.

According to the settlers, the Jews have the right ‘to settle everywhere,’ and the Jews of course also have needs created by ‘natural growth.’ In their opinion, do the Arabs also have the right to settle everywhere, or is any construction by Arabs illegal for one reason or another? And don’t the Arabs have ‘natural growth’?

In the eyes of the settlers, the term ‘illegal’ only applies to Arabs, not to the settlers’ construction, because the source of their inspiration is divine and beyond the democratic context. According to this approach, the law only exists as a tool of the state, as the settlers’ subcontractor, to deprive the Arabs of what little is theirs.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

Israel targets U.K. funding of IDF veterans’ group that exposed ‘IDF crimes’ in Gaza

“Israel continues to ratchet up diplomatic pressure against European Union funding of a group that exposed what it described as war crimes perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.

The deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Rafi Barak, expressed ‘concern’ last week over Britain’s financial contributions to ‘Breaking the Silence,’ an organization founded by IDF veterans which collects testimonies from soldiers serving in the Palestinian territories.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

In a Savings Shocker, the Government Discovers That Paper Has Two Sides

“WASHINGTON — With the budget deficit soaring toward $2 trillion, the Department of Justice has figured out how to play its part: double-sided photocopying.

There are other acts of national sacrifice. The Forest Service will no longer repaint its new, white vehicles green immediately upon purchase. The Army will start packing more soldiers onto R&R flights. The Navy will delete unused email accounts.

Three months ago, President Barack Obama ordered his cabinet secretaries to find $100 million in budget cuts for the current fiscal year to emphasize the point that he, too, was serious about belt-tightening. They responded with $102 million. That is 0.006% of the estimated federal deficit.

The list of 77 spending cuts, which the White House is calling ‘the $100 million savings challenge,’ reflects the vastness of government — and its vast inefficiency. Hundreds of millions of dollars in savings were found simply by casting around for areas to trim.” (Read more from online.wsj.com)

Let us never forget that government is a disgusting, lazy, inefficient slob which finances itself by collecting money at the point of a gun. Let us be mindful of this when we consider giving government authority over, say, our healthcare, or anything else.

Clinton moved to halt disclosure of CIA torture evidence, court told

“Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, personally intervened to suppress evidence of CIA collusion in the torture of a British resident, the high court heard today.

The dramatic turn emerged as lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident abused in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay, joined by lawyers for the Guardian and other media groups, asked the court to order the disclosure of CIA material.

It consists of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA knew, and what it told MI5 and MI6, about the treatment of Mohamed. Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, the judges hearing the case, have said that the summary contains nothing that could possibly be described as ‘highly sensitive classified US intelligence’.

However, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has repeatedly told the court that the US would stop sharing intelligence with the UK if the CIA material was published.” (Read more from guardian.co.uk)

More change we can believe in?

Healthcare Mythology

Wow! This is the best healthcare commentary I’ve read in a long time, excerpted for your convenience (original here):

by Tyler Durden

There are large groups of people in this country who want socialized medicine and they sense that the stars are aligning, and now is their time to succeed. They rarely call it socialized medicine, but instead “single payer health care” or “universal coverage” or something that their public relations people have told them sounds better. Whatever they call it, they believe (or pretend to believe) a lot of wrong-headed things, and they must be stopped. Step one is understanding how and why they are wrong. Step two is kicking their asses back to Cuba where they can get in line with Michael Moore and Al Gore for their free gastric bypasses. . . .

Myth #1 Health Care Costs are Soaring

No, they are not. The amount we spend on health care has indeed risen, in absolute terms, after inflation, and as a percentage of our incomes and GDP. That does not mean costs are soaring.

You cannot judge the �cost� of something by simply what you spend. You must also judge what you get. I’m reasonably certain the cost of 1950’s level health care has dropped in real terms over the last 60 years (and you can probably have a barber from the year 1500 bleed you for almost nothing nowadays). Of course, with 1950’s health care, lots of things will kill you that 2009 health care could prevent. . . .

In the case of health care, the fact that we spend so much more on it now is largely a positive. The negative part is if some, or a lot, of that spending is wasteful. Of course, that is mostly the government’s fault and is not the part on which the socialists want you to focus [emphasis added]. We spend so much more on health care, even relative to other advances, mostly because it is worth so much more to us. Similarly, we spend so much more on computers, compact discs, HDTV, and those wonderful one shot espresso makers that make it like having a barista in your own home.

Myth #2 The Canadian Drug Story

We have a (relatively) free market in the US where drug companies spend a ton to develop new wonder drugs, a non-trivial amount of which is spent to satisfy regulatory requirements. The cost of this development is called a �fixed cost.� Once it’s developed it does not cost that much to make each pill. That’s called a �variable cost.� If people only paid the variable cost (or a bit more) for each pill the whole thing would not work. You see, the company would never get back the massive fixed cost of creating the drug in the first place, and so no company would try to develop one. Thus, companies have to, and do, charge more than the variable cost of making each pill.[2] Some look at this system and say to the drug companies �gee, it doesn’t cost you much to make one more pill, so it’s unfair that you charge much more than your cost.� They are completely wrong and not looking at all the costs. . . .

[Canadians] have socialized medicine and they bargain as the only Canadian buyer for drugs, paying well below normal costs. Drug companies that spent the enormous fixed costs to create new miracles are charging a relatively high cost in the free and still largely competitive world (the US) to recoup their fixed cost and to make a profit. But socialist societies like Canada limit the price they are allowed to charge. The US-based company is then faced with a dilemma. What Canada will pay is not enough to ever have justified creating the miracle pill. But, once created, perhaps Canada is paying more than the variable cost of each pill. Thus, the company can make some money by also selling to Canada at a lower price as it’s still more than it costs them to make that last pill. . . .

I’m a big fan of Canadians in general . . . but when it comes to pharmaceuticals they are lucky parasitic hosers.

Myth #3 Socialized Medicine Works In Some Places

This is a corollary to the �Canada as parasite� parable above. The funny part is socialized medicine has never been truly tested. Those touting socialism’s success have never seen a world without a relatively (for now) free US to make their new drugs, surgical techniques, and other medical advancements for them. When (and I hope this doesn’t happen) the US joins in the insanity of socialized medicine we will see that when you remove the brain from the body, the engine from a car, the candy from the striper, it just does not work. . . .

To put it simply, right now the US’s free system massively intellectually subsidizes the world’s unfree (socialized) ones. That sucks. The only thing that would suck worse is joining them without anyone to subsidize us all.

Myth #4 A Public Option Can Co-Exist with a Private Option

Part of the current junta’s plan is to add a �public option� for health insurance. That is health insurance provided by the government (actually provided by you and your neighbors � this is a good thing to remember whenever you find yourselves thinking anything comes from the government, really, if you take away anything from this essay take away this!). They claim this �public option� can co-exist fairly alongside private health insurance, increasing competition and keeping the private system �honest�, and not deteriorate to a single payer (socialized medicine) system. They are wrong, or very dishonest, as in unguarded moments they admit that the single payer socialized system is what they really want. The New York Times disagrees with me, thinking the two can co-exist. But the New York Times still thinks Stalin was a pretty decent Joe. . . .

The government does not co-exist or compete fairly with private enterprise. It does not play well with others. The regulator cannot be a competitor at the same time. It cannot compete fairly while it owns the armed forces and courts. Finally, it cannot be a fair competitor if when the �public option� screws up (can’t pay its bills), the government implicitly or explicitly guarantees its debts. We have seen what happens in that case and don’t need a re-run.

The first thing the government does is underprice the private system. You can easily be forgiven for thinking this is a good thing. Why not, cheaper is better right? Wrong. They will underprice private enterprise by charging less to the purchaser of health insurance, not by actually creating it cheaper. Who makes up the difference? Well, you and your family do if you pay taxes, or your kids will pay taxes, or their kids will pay taxes. The government can always underprice competition, not through the old fashioned way of doing it better, they never do that, but by robbing Peter to pay for Paul. . . .

Second, the government ultimately always cheats when it’s involved in �honest� competition. Try mailing a first class letter through Fed-Ex [See Post Office sues Cub Scouts to maintain monopoly], or placing an off-track bet with a bookie, or playing a lottery through a private company. Uh, you can’t, so please stop trying. . . . Once the government discovers it cannot win, it changes the rules. You see, the government has the power to legislate, steal, imprison, and kill. Those are advantages most private firms do not have, save Google, and you didn’t hear that from me. . . .

Perhaps the best example of the destructive �public option� is our nation’s schools. Here we clearly have a government provided �public option� competing with (and in fact dominating in size) private schooling. But, is it fair? Does it work well? Not by a long-shot. To send your kids to private school (i.e., a school that competes with the government) you need to first pay your taxes. Absent vouchers or tax credits . . . if you eschew the �public option� you have to pay for education twice. . . .

With a �public option� things inevitably would go the horrific way of our public schools. Instead of existing to please customers (patients and students respectively) the �public option� in schools exists largely to benefit empowered stakeholders of the system (health administrators and unionized school employees respectively), who will shamelessly pretend to give a darn about sick people and children. Watch the analogy play out if we go this route in health care. . . .

Myth #5 We Can Have Health Care Without Rationing

Rationing has to occur. This sounds cold and cruel, but it is reality. . . . [Healthcare is] going to be rationed by some means. The alternatives come down to the marketplace or the government. To choose between those alternatives you judge on morality and efficacy. . . .

There is no system that provides for unlimited wants with limited resources. Our choice is whether it should be rationed by free people making their own economic calculations or by a bureaucracy run by Congressional committee (whose members, like the Russian commissars, will, I guarantee you, still get the best health care the gulag hospitaligo can provide). Free people making their own choices only consume what they value above price, using funds they have earned or been given voluntarily. With socialized medicine health care is rationed by committees of politicians trying to get re-elected and increase their own power, and people consume as much of it as the commissars deem permissible. I do not find these tough alternatives to choose between.

Myth #6 Health Care is A Right

Nope, it’s not. But we are at the nuclear bomb of the discussion. The one guaranteed to get me yelled at or perhaps picketed by a mob waving signs printed up with George Soros’s money. Those advocating socialized medicine love to scream �health care is a right.� They are loud, they are scary, but they are wrong about rights. . . .

Listing rights generally involves enumerating things you may do without interference (the right to free speech) or may not be done to you without your permission (illegal search and seizure, loud boy-band music in public spaces). They are protections, not gifts of material goods. Material goods and services must be taken from others, or provided by their labor, so if you believe you have an absolute right to them, and others don’t choose to provide it to you, you then have a �right� to steal from them. But what about their far more fundamental right not to be robbed?

. . . .

Lots of politicians understand that the simple free system leaves them out in the cold. No power for them. No committees to sit on to decide people’s lives. No lies to tell their constituents how they (the government) brought them the health care they so desperately need. No fat checks from lobbyists as the crony capitalists pay dearly to make the only profits possible under this system, those bestowed by the government. Libertarians are often accused wrongly of loving �big business,� but we don’t, particularly when they predictably turn themselves into crony capitalists who try to succeed by wheedling from the government. On the other hand the socialists love cronies of all sorts, ones who command large enterprises all the better. Socialists are far closer than libertarians to building and countenancing the all-powerful corporate state they claim to fear. Odd I know!

(Read the complete essay at zerohedge.blogspot.com)

Texas stands up to Obama care

“Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be ‘disastrous’ for Texas.” (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

Never thought I’d say it, but God bless Texas – for this, as well as their fanatic devotion to the 2nd amendment.

Senior Democrat Says Obama’s Czars Unconstitutional

“Senator Byrd wrote a letter to President Obama in February, criticizing the president’s strategy of creating czars to manage important areas of national policy. Senator Byrd said that these appointments violate both the constitutional system of checks and balances and the constitutional separation of powers, and is a clear attempt to evade congressional oversight. (Didn’t this White House promise unprecedented transparency?)

And Senator Byrd is exactly correct. The Constitution commands that government officers with significant authority (called ‘principal officers’) are nominated by the president but then are subject to a confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate. And principal officers include not only cabinet-level department heads, but go five levels deep in executive appointments, to include assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries.” (Read more from townhall.com)