Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Toyota's not leaving California because they want to spend their summers in Texas

(My new American Thinker post)
The top story in North Texas is that Toyota is leaving California and moving to Plano.  It is a huge relocation, as reported by The Dallas Morning News:
Toyota delivered a surprise pink slip to California on Monday, announcing the company would move its U.S. headquarters and about 3,000 jobs from the Los Angeles suburbs to the outskirts of Dallas.   
The world’s largest automaker will keep a foothold in the Golden State - about 2,300 jobs will remain in California after the company settles into its new corporate campus in Plano.  
But the announcement is an economic and symbolic slap for California, a historic center of American car culture that has been trying to shake its reputation as a frustrating place to run a business, whether that involves shooting a film or selling a Prius.  
“When you look at the whole package, it’s difficult to be a business here,” lamented Torrance Mayor Frank Scotto, whose community on the edge of the Pacific will suffer as the jobs migrate to Texas.  
“If all these great, high-end jobs are leaving California, then we are going to turn into a place that’s a retirement community” with low-paying service-sector jobs, Scotto said.
“We can’t have that,” he added, warning that unless the state has a change of attitude, “it’s going to be way too late.”  
Toyota’s announcement comes about two months after Occidental Petroleum Corp. disclosed it was moving its headquarters to Houston from Los Angeles.
Another report is that the Toyota employees could save big on taxes.   My guess is that they will also be very happy when they go shopping for a home.

 Overall, a big one for Texas.  I'm sure that you will hear Governor Perry talk about this over the next few months.   He is been talking about Texas and jobs and this story makes his case, whether you like Gov Perry or not!

 We are obviously very happy that 3,000 good paying jobs will come here. 

 By the way, we hear from Mayor Mike Rawlings that Plano was chosen over Dallas because of DISD, or our incoherent school system.    That's the best argument for school choice ever!

 Last, but not least, is anybody in California getting the message?  When will the Democrats running California figure out that wealth has to be created before it is distributed? 

 P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.
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An Obama Care update


We discussed Obama Care with Mandy Nagy of Legal Insurrection, from enrollment numbers to back end problems with the website.

 Here is the interview:
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Ricky Ricardo would tell the NAACP-Los Angeles that they have a “little esplainin to do”

(My new Babalu post)

We hear that the NAACP in LA had a rather substantial relationship with Mr Sterling, the man who allegedly said some very nasty and racist things on tape.
The relationship is a bit strange given Mr Sterling's past, as we read at TPM:     
"For years, the NAACP's Los Angeles chapter maintained a mutually beneficial but head-scratching relationship with Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.   
But the civil rights organization was finally forced to confront Sterling's alleged transgressions this weekend when reports of racially charged remarks exploded from the gossip website TMZ.  
Leon Jenkins, president of the chapter, gave a statement and fielded questions Monday at a press conference in California, attempting to explain why his branch of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been planning to give Sterling a lifetime achievement award, despite the basketball team owner's history of alleged racist behavior.    
Jenkins' tone was strikingly defensive, asserting that he didn't know whether it was really Sterling whose voice could be heard making racist statements on audio recordings that became public on Saturday. Jenkins also left the door open for future collaborations with the Clippers owner if Sterling proved penitent.     
"There is a personal, economical and social price that Mr. Sterling must pay for his attempt to turn on racial relations," Jenkins said in his opening statement.    
The chapter also plans to return Sterling's recent donations to the group, Jenkins said, though he declined to disclose how much the owner had given, saying only that it was "not a significant amount."    
It was the culmination of a strange affair between a man alleged on multiple occasions to hold racist beliefs and a group founded with the goal of eradicating those beliefs.    
The 20-minute press conference, during which Jenkins was openly combative with the media, did little to illuminate how the NAACP had managed to ignore the prior allegations against Sterling. Jenkins portrayed the team owner simply as the winner in a philanthropic contest between Los Angeles area sports franchises.    
"We looked at the body of work that he's done. What we looked at all of the sports franchises in L.A. We look at how involved all these organizations in the community," Jenkins said. "His organizations gave more money to the minority community."    
Sterling had already been given an award, which has alternately been described as being for lifetime achievement or humanitarian work, by the group back in 2009. There was outragethen, too, because Sterling had been sued for wrongful termination and was accused of allegedly freezing an ex-employee's salary because of his race. He had also been sued in 2004 and 2006 for alleged housing discrimination. He eventually settled a $2.73 million lawsuit from the Department of Justice in 2009.   
"He has a unique history of giving to the children of L.A.," Jenkins said in 2009.    
"We can't speak to the allegations, but what we do know is that for the most part [Sterling] has been very, very kind to the minority youth community.""
Like many of you who don't live in LA, I was not familiar with Mr Sterling or his background.
It's tough to keep up with other sports-team owners when we have local personalities like Mr Cuban of the Mavericks & Mr Jones of the Cowboys.  (The Rangers' owners stay away from the limelight!)
The NAACP spokesman is correct.  Mr Sterling has done a lot for LA kids and others.  He has contributed millions, like a lot of other wealthy people in this country do.
The NAACP needs to answer a few questions:
Why did the group have a relationship with this man? What about the racist allegations past?
Was the NAACP's silence bought with contributions?
Also, how many other "liberal' groups did Mr Sterling give money to over the years?  Will the media confront them for an explanation?
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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Racist remarks make it impossible to talk seriously about real problems in minority communities

(My new American Thinker post)
During "the Bush-43" years, some in the left used to play the "Hitler card". 

 It backfired because most people understand that there is a big difference between Hitler and a US president, especially one who started a war with bipartisan support.

 More recently, some who hate the welfare state have argued that today's dependency on government is no better than being a slave at the plantation.

 It backfired too because it makes no sense!  

 The sad part is that all of these ignorant race remarks, from Mr Bundy to Mr Sterling, distract us from having a serious conversation about problems in the minority communities.

 Unemployment is a terrible problem in the black community, as reported by economist Dean Baker:
"The drop in labor force participation was sharpest for African Americans, who saw a decline of 0.3 percentage points to 60.2 percent, the lowest rate since December of 1977. The rate for African American men fell 0.7 percentage points to 65.6 percent, the lowest on record. The decline in labor force participation was associated with a drop in the overall African American unemployment rate of 0.5 percentage points to 11.9, and a drop of 0.6 percentage points to 11.6 percent for African American men."
Add to this the "out of wedlock" birth rates, as reported last year:
"Nationwide, African-American women reported the highest rate of out-of-wedlock births, at 67.8 percent.
American Indian or Alaska Native women reported a 64 percent rate, while Hispanics reported 43 percent and non-Hispanic whites reported 26 percent.
Asian-Americans reported the lowest rate of out-of-wedlock births, at 11.3 percent."
We should be talking about these two problems in minority communities, as well as lousy public schools that Democrat politicians do not send their kids too.

 Unfortunately, all these ignorant remarks by Mr Bundy and Mr Sterling will give "the race hustlers" a reason to appear on TV and justify their existence.

 We should be having a serious conversation about unemployment, out of wedlock births and lousy inner city schools but we won't.

P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.
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Check out "The Gosnell movie"

The Dr Gosnell movie is a horrific chapter in recent US history, as you can read in movie website:

 "Dr. Kermit Gosnell is the most prolific serial killer in American History, but almost no one knows who he is. 
The Grand Jury investigating Kermit Gosnell's horrific crimes said this:
          This case is about a doctor who killed babies ... What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors .... Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.   (Report of the Grand Jury) "
We spoke with Phellim McAleer about the movie:

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Monday, April 28, 2014

The week in review


We reviewed the events of the week with Bill Katz of Urgent Agenda.   The topics were:

 1) Ukraine;
2) President Obama's trip to Japan & South Korea;
3) The Supreme Court ruling;
4) Obama Care and Democrats;
5) Hillary Clinton vs Elizabeth Warren; and 
6) the recent remarks by Mr Mundy & Mr Sterling.

 Here is the show:



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Sunday, April 27, 2014

Raul Castro wants 'los capitalistas americanos' to bail out 'los socialistas cubanos'

(My new American Thinker post)
The Cuban government has just announced the latest version of "foreign investment reforms." 

 Before you go and put a dime in Cuba's corrupt communist government, please consider what my friend Alberto de la Cruz posted yesterday:
"The most important flaw that is obvious from the outset is the legal aberration of expressly excluding the rights of Cubans on the island to participate as investors in their own country, an issue that is unparalleled in any civilized nation, and that alone disqualifies the best intentions beforehand. Another issue, no less twisted, is the exclusion of free contract (that is, allowing foreign investors to hire Cuban workers directly).
Both elements are unsustainable since they are not justified or serve any function other than to maintain absolute control over the population to prevent the weakening of political power."
In other words, the Castro family, or "Castro Inc,"  wants you to invest in Cuba but only if you align yourself with Raul and his sick older brother.

 The new "reforma" does not allow you to negotiate directly with Cuban workers, or the essence of a free market economy where you can hire and fire based on your economic necessities.  

 In other words, Cuban workers are not allow to form 'a union," as they used to do before the communists came to power! 

 For example, my father was a banker in Cuba and a member of the "bankers union."  It allowed Cuban workers like my dad to negotiate with the many Cuban private banks or employers. 

 Pre-communist Cuba enjoyed living standards that no one in the island today enjoys today, as CONTACTO published a few years ago:
"In 1958, an industrial worker in Cuba earned an average salary of the equivalent of $6 US dollars per each 8-hour work day, while an agricultural worker earned the equivalent of $3 US dollars.
Cuba then ranked number eight (8) in the world as far as salaries paid to industrial workers....."
By the way, you didn't learn that by watching "Godfather II" or your Latin America studies class in school.  

 Don't get your Cuban history from watching "Godfather II" or a leftist professor.  Instead, talk to my father and the others who were actually there and remember the bloody communist takeover.

 So don't get too excited about Raul's cynical "reformas," as reported by Cross-border debt and equity specialist, William A. Wilson.  

 In simple terms, how can you invest in a country that does not respect property laws?  

 Just ask Cubans, or others, who had their properties expropriated by the same Castro brothers who now want you to invest in the island!

 The bottom line is that Raul is not looking to improve Cuba's economy.

 He is just hoping that foolish investors will bail out Castro "socialismo." 

 Raul needs a "sugar daddy" now that the USSR is dead or most countries don't want to finance "la revolucion" that doesn't pay back its loans.

 P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.
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Saturday, April 26, 2014

Maybe Chicago needs General Petraeus

(My new American Thinker post)
We were all horrified by the latest round of violence in Chicago, as reported by The Chicago Tribune:
"A South Side shooting left four girls and a boy hurt, and on the Northwest Side a 15-year-old girl was shot while riding in a car as shootings across Chicago Sunday night added to the toll of a violent holiday weekend.  
At least nine people were killed and at least 36 wounded since Friday.
Two of the deathscame Sunday morning when a Cook County Sheriff's Office correctional officer apparently shot to death his wife, a Chicago police officer, inside their Southwest Side home before turning the gun on himself, authorities said.
Three of the deaths and 14 of the wounded were shot between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Sunday."
As always, the anti-gun crowd jumps on these deaths to promote another round of gun laws.   

 Question:  What new gun law are they talking about?  Chicago has very strict gun laws already. 

 I would suggest a couple of ideas.

 First, President and Mrs Obama should heed Jennifer Rubin's advice:
"I suggested earlier today that first lady Michelle Obama should spend more time talking to teens.
She can start, perhaps, in her home town. 
At funerals — but more important, in schools before kids drop out and when a productive life still awaits them – she and her husband can lend their own stature to the effort to reduce violence, not by putting stickers on windows or passing more useless anti-gun laws, but by keeping kids in schools and fathers in families."
Second, it may be time to reactivate General Petraeus and put the National Guard in the streets.  They should be ordered to clear the streets, arrest "bad guys" and make it possible for order to return.  My guess is that these troops would be welcomed by the people terrorized in these neighborhoods.

P. S. You can hear my chat with Richard Baehr of American Thinker about Chicago's violence & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.
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Friday, April 25, 2014

Keystone makes sense for jobs and national security

(My new American Thinker post)
We've focused a lot on the economic benefits of building the Keystone Pipeline. The delay has been criticized all over, including an outstanding Washington Post editorial: 
"At this point, there is little doubt about the big picture. After two thorough environmental analyses, State Department experts determined that the pipeline’s impact probably would be minimal, even on climate change-inducing carbon dioxide emissions. The economic rewards of extracting Canadian oil are too attractive and the options for getting it out of the country are too numerous. We would rather see Canadian crude traveling a well-built, well-regulated pipeline in the United States than on the rail cars, barges and ocean tankers that will move it until cheaper options inevitably come online.
That does not mean we like burning dirty oil sands crude. But symbolic gestures will have no impact on climate change. Governments should steadily reduce global carbon dioxide emissions with smart, economy-wide policies such as carbon taxes, which meaningfully and permanently cut demand for carbon-heavy fuels. Alberta’s provincial government, which oversees much of Canada’s oil development, is considering enhancements to its fairly weak carbon price system, which could redress some of the excess emissions associated with pulling the viscous oil out of the ground.
If activists want to make a real difference on carbon dioxide emissions, they should devote their energies to establishing an ambitious carbon price across Canada and in the United States — or, if that’s not achievable, any number of second-best but serious policy options. In a comprehensive and efficient system, it might well make economic sense to burn some Canadian crude for quite a while as the world slowly transitions away.
As for the pipeline’s routing, planners and regulators have already considered all sorts of options through Nebraska, and they already shifted the route once. Neither route posed environmental concerns of a sort that would justify concluding that Keystone XL is outside the national interest. It is bizarre to imagine that a new route from an even more careful process in Nebraska would significantly increaseenvironmental concerns.
The administration’s latest decision is not responsible; it is embarrassing. The United States continues to insult its Canadian allies by holding up what should have been a routine permitting decision amid a funhouse-mirror environmental debate that got way out of hand. The president should end this national psychodrama now, bow to reason, approve the pipeline and go do something more productive for the climate."
Beyond jobs, and that's no small matter in this economy, or our relationship with Canada, a major trading partner and friend, the other benefit of this pipeline is that promotes North American energy independence. 

 Every barrel that we buy from Canada or Mexico is one less barrel that we have to import from the Middle East or the anti-US Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela.

 Yes, this delay is embarrassing.  It tells the world that the president of the US can be put on his knees by a rich guy who promises to contribute to politicians who will vote against the Keystone Pipeline.  

 You'd better believe that David Brooks is not the only person in the planet who thinks that President Obama has a "manhood problem". 

 P. S. We spoke with Brian Lloyd French, Canadian author & journalist, PLUS Barry Jacobsen, military historian & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.
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Wednesday was quite a day for D-FW sports

Do you remember a sports day like Wednesday?

 It started with the Rangers in Oakland, another shutout by young left hander Martin Perez.  He looks good!

 In the evening, the Stars beat Anaheim in a 3rd period rally that was fun to watch.

 Down in San Antonio, the Mavs looked like a team on a mission from the first minute.

 The Stars are 2-2 and the Mavs are 1-1.  I think that most experts predicted that the Stars would be gone in 4 or that the Mavs would be 0-2.

 The Rangers have been an incredible story after 22 games.  They are 14-8 with so many stars in the DL.

 Overall, a fun day for everybody around here.

 I don't know how long this will last.    I hope that it goes on a few more weeks!
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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Confirming that Sotomayor was a bad choice for the high court

(My new American Thinker post)
The Supreme Court correctly decided the Michigan higher education racial preferences case. The 6-2 decision reaffirmed two important principles:

 1) Let voters decide these issues.  There is no evidence that these voters in Michigan want to take minorities back to the 19th century or any other century. Also, my guess is that some minorities voted for the referendum, too. So let's respect voters. 

 2) Why should race be a factor in college admissions anyway?  Are you telling me that minority kids can not survive in the real world without government programs?

 The 6-2 decision included a dissent that confirmed why so many of us thought that Justice Sotomayor was a bad choice for The Supreme Court. Her long dissent was more of a "rant" than any outline of legal principles,as reported by The Washington Post:
"In her most personal moment in 41 /2 years on the court, Sotomayor read part of her dissent from the bench to emphasize her disagreement with six colleagues who upheld Michigan’s constitutional amendment banning the consideration of race in public university admissions.
It is a 58-page dissent, longer than the combined efforts of four other justices who wrote.
The court’s first Latina justice directly took on Roberts’s view that the nation’s continued reliance on racial classifications hinders rather than promotes the goal of a color-blind society.  
Sotomayor noted Roberts’s famous statement in a 2007 opinion that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”   
Too simplistic, she said.   
“This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable,” Sotomayor wrote.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.”  
She added: “As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.”  
Roberts responded with a short, sharp statement of his own.  
“To disagree with the dissent’s views on the costs and benefits of racial preferences is not to ‘wish away, rather than confront’ racial inequality,” Roberts wrote.   
“People can disagree in good faith on this issue, but it similarly does more harm than good to question the openness and candor of those on either side of the debate.”
The judges got this one right.  They respected the voters and that is really refreshing.

 P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.

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Sometimes there is something "nice" in the news!

Like most of you, I often get depressed following the news.   Once in a while, there is a story that puts a smile in your face, or maybe a tear in your eye.

 Check this story about a letter, a Korean War soldier and a sweetheart back home:
"A couple of years ago, Sandi Blood of Murrells Inlet, S.C., purchased a pile of paperbacks at a used bookstore in the next town.
 When she opened one of her “fictional beach reads,” she said a letter slipped out. For years, it had been lost inside the pages.The yellowed envelope was dated November 1951. It was one of those red, white and blue air-mailed envelopes, she said, with an Army/Air Force Postal Service postmark and a 6-cent stamp still stuck to the corner. And it was sent from a “G. LeBlanc.”
 According to the soldier’s account, this letter must have been special. LeBlanc said soldiers in those days were poorly equipped, rarely having access to paper. Typically, a soldier who wrote one, scribbled it on the back of one he had received. Not this one.
 “Honey you can’t realize how much I love you and think and dream about being with you,” he wrote. ”It’s hurting me all over.”
 After Blood read it, she had tried to find the owner. She sent letters to a few potentials but she never got any responses. Then last week, she stumbled upon the letter again. This time, she turned to social media and the local news to help her, she said.
 One of Blood’s Facebook friends responded, saying that her mother is a genealogist. Blood provided the soldier’s name and military ID and, within minutes, they had found the now 83-year-old veteran in a suburb of Detroit.

Blood gave him a call.
 At the end of his tour, LeBlanc came home for a 30-day leave and married his sweetheart, he told WPDE NewsChannel 15.    
U.S. Army Pvt. Gilles LeBlanc wrote the three-page letter to his girlfriend, Carole Petch, in Toronto, Ontario, telling her he had just arrived at Camp Drake in Japan and was waiting for orders to report to Korea. He also wrote about their future wedding — in handwriting still intact on a type of vellum paper that’s so see-through that a writer could only use one side.
“We talked for quite a while. I was dumbfounded that the damn letter fell out of the book,” LeBlanc told The Washington Post. He said all the other letters he wrote her from the war are neatly tied together with a piece of string. “I’m just a romantic that’s all.”
The couple had six kids. They were married 22 years. And they later got divorced in the 1970s.
One of LeBlanc’s daughters, Paula Gillies, 50, said her mother used to vacation in Garden City and the family thinks the letter was tucked inside a novel that was among a pile of old books she brought to the South Carolina shop to exchange.
Blood said her Facebook friend and the friend’s mother, who is the genealogist, will soon hand-deliver the letter to LeBlanc when they go to visit relatives a town away from his. Blood said, “It should find its way back to where it belongs.”
“That’s as sweet as hell,” LeBlanc said."
What a great story.   
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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Babalu: Some thoughts about Gabriel Garcia-Marquez & Fidel Castro

 Victor Triay, author and college professor, joins me for a chat about the Latin American left.   We will also hear from Michael Prada.
We will look at the death of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, the well known author of the Spanish language, who died in Mexico City.
My concern is that Mr Garcia-Marquez is another one of those Latin American intellectuals who loved Fidel Castro more than the Cuban people.  How else do you explain his fascination with Castro?  Why the selective indignation?
You can hear the show here:

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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Be careful what you wish for......you may get a president that you don't respect!

(My new American Thinker post)
According to most polls, the country is happy that we got out of Iraq, phased out our presence in Afghanistan, stayed out of Syria & Ukraine. 

 However, the country is getting what they wanted but no one is happy with it, as Fred Hiatt wrote a few days ago:
"Robert Kagan recently wrote on this page that, foreign policy decision by foreign policy decision, President Obama has given Americans what they say they want.
But the result hasn’t made them proud of America or of their president.   
The same phenomenon may explain the disappointment in Obama’s domestic record.  
Case by case overseas, Kagan suggested, Americans agree with Obama’s calls: pull out of Iraq, wind down in Afghanistan, steer clear of Syria. But the emerging picture of an America in retreat, and a leader half-heartedly committed to promoting liberty, is not what they were looking for.  
At home, the fateful moment came in 2011 when Obama cold-shouldered the bipartisan panel he had appointed to right the nation’s finances for the long term. That, too, was a decision in keeping with the polls.  
The Simpson-Bowles commission had called for higher taxes and slower growth in Medicare and Social Security spending. Neither is popular. Had Obama endorsed the recommendations, Democrats would have forfeited their trustiest campaign weapon: warning oldsters that Republicans want to take away their retirement benefits and health care. Obama’s reelection in 2012 seems to vindicate his judgment.  
 But at what cost? He defeated a weak opponent by tearing him down as a job-killing plutocrat. He didn’t come close to regaining the control of the House that he lost in 2010. His second-term agenda is meager.   
Now he stands in danger of losing the Senate, too. His weapon to ward that off is a poll-tested and cynical campaign against Republicans’ “war on women” — cynical because it overstates the wage gap between men and women, oversimplifies the cause of the problem that does exist and proposes an ostensible solution that wouldn’t reach the true causes."
President Obama's problem is that he made all of "the easy calls" but never explained that there could be unintended consequences.

 In Iraq, the country got tired of the war but President Obama never explained that we had to keep a presence for regional security reasons.   

 In Afghanistan, he called it the "right war" during the campaign and then did everything possible to get out. I remember talking to a young Marine who said that their work became a lot more difficult once the enemy could tell the locals that we were leaving in the near future.

 In Syria, he never rallied world opinion against Assad, the way that President GHW Bush did against Sadam when he invaded Kuwait or the way that President GW Bush did at the UN in 2002.  He made speeches, drew red lines and then fizzled. 

 In Ukraine, he is paying for "the reset" and getting manhandled by President Putin in the court of world opinion.  Even David Brooks said that President Obama has a "manhood problem".

 The bottom line is that the public wanted all of those things that President Obama promised.  They don't seem so certain now that they got what they wished for.  

 Nobody told the public that all of those things that President Obama promised would come by "retreating" from the world or shrinking as a superpower. 

P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.

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Cultural differences in the US-Latin America business marketplace


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Monday, April 21, 2014

Behind those enrollment numbers

(My new American Thinker post)

Once in a while, you read something that you want to share with friends and AT readers.   

 Charles Blanhous' paper on The Affordable  Care Act is remarkable.    Before I go any further, let me tell that Mr Blanhous is "....the director of spending and budget Initiative, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare."

 His analysis is that the ACA is unsustainable, no matter how many people they tell us have signed up for it:
"It is quite possible that the ACA is shaping up as the greatest act of fiscal irresponsibility ever committed by federal legislators.
Nothing immediately comes to mind as comparable to it.
Certainly no tax legislation is, because tax rates rise and fall frequently, such that one Congress’s tax cut can be (and often is) undone by a later tax increase.
The same is true for legislation affecting appropriated spending programs.
But the ACA is a commitment to permanently subsidize comprehensive health insurance for millions who could not otherwise afford it, which the federal government has no viable plan to finance.
Moreover, experience shows that it is very difficult to scale back such spending once large numbers of Americans have been made dependent on it. "
In other words, it does not really matter whether 7, 8 or whatever million people sign up.   The ACA is an actuarial disaster, promising more than it can deliver and encouraging people to get subsidies that they may not really need.
As Mr Lanhous points out:
"The ACA was enacted when legislators knew, or should have known, that they inhabited a fiscal environment in which such extravagance was unaffordable.
Deficits (and debt) are far higher today than when the other major entitlement programs were created; millions of baby boomer retirements are swelling expenditures arising from previously-enacted Social Security and Medicare law.
Someday historians will puzzle over the thinking that induced legislators to embark on a vast new spending program at the very moment it could least be afforded."
Of course, maybe the legislators voted for the AHCA thinking that the Supreme Court would throw it back.  They could vote for something that they didn't read, understand or analyze and hope that the Court would literally "bail them out".  It was a good strategy until Justice Roberts surprised everyone.

 Repealing ObamaCare is the only option to save health care and our financial future.  I just hope that the next elections move us in that direction!

 P. S. You can hear my chat with Bill Katz of Urgent Agenda about ObamaCare & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.
Online Politics Radio at Blog Talk Radio with Silvio Canto Jr on BlogTalkRadio


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Sunday, April 20, 2014

An update from Venezuela with Comandante Cazorla



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Colombia and US-Latin America stories of the week


Wednesday: The latest about Colombia PLUS other US-Latin America stories.....Listen in now at http://t.co/TcbAbQDSmT. #BlogTalkRadio

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Our chat about Brazil with Monica Showalter

TUESDAY: Let's talk Brazil with Monica Showalter of Investors Business Daily..Listen in now at http://t.co/y3HocszUbl. #BlogTalkRadio

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The Ukraine crisis with Barry Jacobsen




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Putting a small group of environmentalists over pipeline jobs?

(My new American Thinker)

 Another Friday night announcement - the administration has decided to make everybody unhappy and delay the Keystone pipeline again. Fox News reports:
"The administration has faced pressure from both sides of the debate on the pipeline. Republicans largely are united in support of the project, but Democrats are sharply divided.Moderate Democrats, as well as labor unions, are pressing the State Department to give the thumbs-up, calling the project a jobs engine and a way to boost energy security.But environmental interests, and lawmakers allied with them, are strongly opposed -- citing its alleged impact on climate change and possible health risks.   One such environmentalist, California billionaire Tom Steyer, has been vowing to back vulnerable Democrats with big money if they oppose the pipeline.He called the latest announcement "good news on Good Friday for those who oppose Keystone as not being in our nation's best interest.""  
This is another awful decision by a rather incompetent administration.

 First, we are insulting Canada, a country that fought with us in Afghanistan. Unlike other NATO allies, the Canadian fought and took casualties.

 Second, we are delaying economic activity and job creation at a time when a lot of Americans cannot find work.

 Third, the Obama administration has shown us once again that it's all about his contributors, whether we are talking "the evolution" on same sex marriage during the 2012 campaign or building the Keystone pipeline in 2014.

 P. S. You can hear my chat with Dr Ileana Johnson, economist & author, about the Keystone Pipeline & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.
Online Politics Radio at Blog Talk Radio with Silvio Canto Jr on BlogTalkRadio

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