It is ironic that the greenest president presides over the demise of the green industries while a new oil boom is making us more energy independent in spite of policies intended to stunt the growth and development of fossil fuels.  The jobs boom is not coming from the development of green energy, but it is coming from the ‘dying’ oil sector.  More and more countries are withdrawing from the Kyoto Accords and and more and more scientists have become skeptical of the absolutism of politically influenced science used to promote extravagant solutions to climate problems that may not exist, or at least may be beyond the cause or the control of human action..

Victor Davis Hanson writes in The National Review Online Obama 101, 11/30/11.

Excerpt:

“Green” will never be quite the same after Obama. When Solyndra and its affiliated scandals are at last fully brought into the light of day, we will see the logical reification of Climategate I & II, Al Gore’s hucksterism, and Van Jones’s lunacy. How ironic that the more Obama tried to stop drilling in the West, offshore, and in Alaska, as well as stopping the Canadian pipeline, the more the American private sector kept finding oil and gas despite rather than because of the U.S. government. How further ironic that the one area that Obama felt was unnecessary for, or indeed antithetical to, America’s economic recovery — vast new gas and oil finds — will soon turn out to be America’s greatest boon in the last 20 years. While Obama and Energy Secretary Chu still insist on subsidizing money-losing wind and solar concerns, we are in the midst of a revolution that, within 20 years, will reduce or even end the trade deficit, help pay off the national debt, create millions of new jobs, and turn the Western Hemisphere into the new Persian Gulf. The American petroleum revolution can be delayed by Obama, but it cannot be stopped.

HKO comment:

With all of the enormous political power at his disposal, the president is unable to fight true market forces.  The crony capitalists who see enormous campaign donations as the same kind of investment as capital equipment and technology are able to suck large sums from the public trough until the market reality that their product cannot survive in a true market becomes obvious.  It is one thing for an objective investor to place his fortune at risk to develop new technology; it is quite another for a public official to place taxpayer money at risk while making endless efforts to hobble competitive energy options.  Markets move at a much faster rate than government.  This is the reason that such government solutions are always fighting the last war and ignorant of the developments that refute their best and most corrupt efforts.

The Arab Spring may throw off the yoke of dictators, but unless they also dispose of the foolish beliefs that these dictators used to hold on to power for decades their societies will continue to decline.

At Bloomberg.com Jeffrey Golberg writes Praise Arab Spring, Except for Anti-Semitism 11/28/11.

Excerpts:

A BBC journalist named Thomas Dinham recently wrote of his own encounter with anti-Semitism in Cairo. Dinham, who is neither Israeli nor Jewish, told of one potentially dangerous confrontation: “Someone pushed me from behind with such force that I nearly fell over. Turning around, I found myself surrounded by five men, one of whom tried to punch me in the face. I stopped the attack by pointing out how shameful it was for a Muslim to assault a guest in his country, especially during Ramadan.” He went on, “I was appalled by the apology offered by one of my assailants. ‘Sorry,’ he said contritely, offering his hand, ‘we thought you were a Jew.’”

The Arab Spring should liberate people not only from oppressive rulers, but also from self-destructive and delusional patterns of belief. Anti-Semitism, the “socialism of fools,” not only threatens the Israel-Egypt peace treaty and dehumanizes Jews. It also undermines rationality. It prevents its adherents from seeing the world as it is — and it will only be an impediment to actual change in the Arab world.

Walter Russell added his comments on Goldberg’s piece at his blog at The American Interest in a post called The Anti-Semitic Spring:

As I’ve observed before in this space, countries where vicious anti-Semitism is rife are almost always backward and poor.  This isn’t, as anti-Semites believe, because the Elders of Zion are plotting to keep Uz-beki-beki-beki-stan poor.  It is because the inability to see the world clearly and discern cause and effect relations in complex social settings is linked to many other failures in economic and political life.  Anti-Semitism isn’t just the socialism of fools; it is the sociology of the befuddled.  The anti-Semite fails to grasp how the world works, and that failure condemns him to endless frustration.  Naturally, this is the fault of the Jews.

In a similar vein Ruth Wisse writes at The Weekly Standard The Suicidal Passion

..early benefits of organizing politics against the Jews are inevitably outweighed by the ruin that overtakes its practitioners. Why inevitably? Because anti-Semitism attributes real problems to a phony cause. Putting off problems tends to compound them, and aggression fomented against a convenient target cannot be permanently controlled or contained. Strategies of blame may temporarily help justify repression, quell rebellion, camouflage corruption, channel dissatisfaction, and redirect aggression, but societies that resort to them collapse under the weight of their negativity. Palestinians—once considered the ablest Arabs, and perhaps sacrificed by their fellow Arabs for that reason—are now in strong competition with Germans of the last century in the sweepstakes of self-destruction.

HKO Comment:
It is not the dictators themselves that have held back these countries. It is a culture of blame and hatred that has been inculcated by the imams from their pulpit. Our foreign policy has focused on the political leaders when the real power was emanating from the mosques.

tips to Bob Cain

Steve Landsberg, author of The Armchair Economist (a worthy read) writes in The Wall Street Journal How the Death Tax Hurts the Poor - It encourages the rich to pick extra fruit, leaving the trees a little barer for the rest of us. 10/29/11

Excerpt:

The death tax sends a powerful message to rich people: “You can’t leave everything to your heirs, so spend now, before it’s too late. Burn more fuel. Demand more timber for your mansions, more steel for your private planes, and more fiberglass for your yachts.”

Then all those resources—the fuel and timber, the steel and fiberglass—become unavailable to build factories, so the rest of us get worse jobs at lower wages. Those resources are unavailable to build farm equipment, so we all pay higher food prices. They’re unavailable to build roads and schools and hospitals.

I don’t begrudge anyone the fruits of his labor. But the death tax encourages people to pick extra fruit, leaving the trees a little barer for the rest of us.

Every tax discourages work, and every tax discourages risk-taking. That’s sad but true, and it’s a reason to hesitate before you raise any tax. But the death tax is a double whammy, compounding the damage by encouraging overconsumption. (The same is true, incidentally, of taxes on interest and dividends.) So my message is this: If you must tax the rich, please do it in a way that minimizes the collateral damage to the poor.

HKO comments:

Please read the whole article. It is a gem.  (You may find it requires a paid subscription- which I also encourage.)

Stewards of family wealth do not look at it as if it is only theirs.  But even if they did, if they had the choice to enjoy it now or give it to the government later, you can easily guess the choice.  Even the super wealthy prefer to leave it to private foundations because a) it avoids estate taxes and b) because it will be spent more wisely.

Inflation also encourages a shift of assets from taxable financial resources to appreciating  assets such as  jewelry, land and collectibles.  One of the engines that drove the stock market boom of the 1980’s was the shift from non taxable tangible assets to taxable financial assets. This shift also distorted the perceived divergence in income growth.  What was perceived as unbalanced growth in the wealth of the upper class was actually partially a shift of income form nonreportable to reportable income.

A consumption tax may be more consistent since spending habits, especially among the rich, vary less than income.  Creating incentives to invest will do much more to create the jobs we so desperately need than this failed effort to create only short term stimulus to demand.    Long term investment will not respond to short term stimulus.

There is much not to like about Obama Care  (Patient Protection and Health Care Affordability Act) , but this post will focus on just one.

HSAs or Health Savings Accounts are actually a part of a health insurance option that includes a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) option.  Before Obama Care a plan was designed that allowed a consumer to buy a policy with a large deductible that also qualified for a tax deductible savings account (HSA). The idea was to bring consumer pressure to bear on the medical market place.  By allowing health insurance buyers to pay more out of pocket  they would become more cost conscious.

Accumulation of funds in the health care savings account could roll over and be used to pay future bills, but the crux of the intention was that the consumer would be spending his own health care dollars and saving insurance for major medical expenses.  This was one of the few reforms in health care that sought to increase consumerism.

But the higher deduction was also largely offset by much lower premiums because consumers were willing to pay more out of pocket. This is how insurance should work.

But Obama Care has mandated first dollar coverage on preventative care even for HSAs where consumers chose to pay first dollar costs themselves  in order to get lower premiums.  Preventative care is also being expanded to include more than just physicals; it now includes birth control pills and family counseling.  The wider interpretation  of ‘preventative’ has companies concerned about what else will now be similarly considered and thus forced to cover at 100%.

The result is that now HSAs are no longer a low cost option.  On our renewal this year our HSA  option is about the same cost as an HMO.   There is no room left to fund the tax deductible health savings account.  HSAs now appeal to either the very healthy who get their annual physicals covered at 100% or the very sick who will reach their maximum out of pocket anyway, and may actually have few copays in such a high deductible plan.

By mandating what they think we need rather than what we would freely choose, they have reduced our choices and increased our cost.

Now they this bill has passed, the more we get to see what is in it, the more we are not going to like it.  Using the word ‘affordability’ in the title of this bill is an Orwellian joke.

… the elite have responsibility to use their largess wisely and not turn into the Kardashians. But that a fifth of one percent of the taxpayers are finding ways not to pay at the income tax rate on their large incomes does not hurt the republic as much as 50% of the population paying no income tax at all. The latter noble sorts do not bother us as much, but their noncompliance bothers the foundations of our society far more than that of the stingy, but minuscule, number of grasping rich.

From

Victor Davis Hanson’s article,   Why Does the Good Life End, published in Pajamas Media 9/25/11.

HKO Comments:

The focus on class warfare and exploiting extremes in tax behavior will never generate the wealth needed to run endless programs demanded by those who pay nothing.   It is much easier to stop the wealthy from producing than it is to stop the leeches from consuming what other produce.

As wrong as they may have been, the Wall Street self ordained masters of the universe did not do near the damage as those who felt they deserved a home they could not afford.  And neither did as much destruction as the political alchemists who encouraged all of them to believe they were wealthier and smarter and more deserving than they were.