Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

A refusal to look abroad to see what systems actually work is the major failure of Obamacare. It was rammed down our throats from behind closed doors. Ill-conceived, politically motivated, you name it. For example: the Danish health care system is the nightmare of any anti-government free market believer: it's a tax-funded state-run universal health care system. Denmark provides "free" health care to all residents, funded through taxes. There is an optional private health care sector, but it is tiny compared with the vastly larger public system that is used by most of the population. Users pay for a few procedures, such as fertility treatments (from the third attempt onwards) and non-essential cosmetic surgery, as well as most of their own dental care and a portion of prescription medication. Apothecaries are privately owned, but doctor's visits and hospitalization, including tests, treatment, follow-up care, and some medication, are fully covered. The Danish health ...

Have a looky at the unusually large number of "BlueHeads" - people with no profile photo - making negative comments on my post. Most of them, when you look at their profiles, have never made a post and have little or no followers. Draw your own conclusions:

“Fiscal cliff” is the popular term used to describe the conundrum that the U.S. government will face at the end of 2012, when the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 are scheduled to go into effect. Among the laws set to change at midnight on December 31, 2012, are the end of last year’s temporary payroll tax cuts (resulting in a 2% tax increase for workers), the end of certain tax breaks for businesses, shifts in the alternative minimum tax that will take a larger bite, the end of the Bush tax cuts from 2001-2003, and the beginning of dozens of new taxes related to Obamacare. These tax changes affect everyone -– not just “the rich”. At the same time, the spending cuts agreed upon as part of the debt ceiling deal of 2011 will begin to go into effect. According to Barron’s, over 1,000 government programs – including the defense budget and Medicare are in line for “deep, automatic cuts.” This bill was signed into law by Barack Obama on August 2, 2011 . Republicans should allow th...

I grew up in a middle-class Jewish (but not religious) family where most everyone was - surprise - a Democrat, and voted Democratic. As I was growing up and into my teens and early 20's nobody really talked much about politics. It was basically, XYZ president or politician promised me this, and and I like him/her and I'm going to vote for him. Little if any critical independent thinking was devoted to "how" Mr. XYZ intended to PAY for whatever he promised. In my 20's I decided I needed to broaden my horizons, and traveled to Israel to live on a Kibbutz for about a year. I had a great time. I also worked hard (you HAVE to work on a kibbutz, period!). But I also learned that the kibbutz mentality is very socialistic, and not quite as capitalistic as many may think. I also learned a lot about the Jewish culture, morality, and history and how Christians and Jews are "joined at the hip". After all, Jesus Christ was born - and lived - a Jew. S...

Socialism in Europe and in this country always starts the same way – promise people free health care and free retirement and free housing and whatever free stuff wins political favor and gets you reelected. This is what progressive liberals do and what Obama is doing. And people keep voting for them because they love "free stuff".  They don't care where the money comes from.  Some claim that the "rich" will pay for it all. But, the rich do not have enough money. They may have enough to pay for the very poor, but not for everyone. So, the socialists borrow the money. That way, they are still giving the populace free health care. But, at some point you can't borrow the money anymore because the people you are borrowing it from realize that they will never be paid back. This is the tipping point at which socialism fails. Past this point, you have to tax the people to whom you promised the "free" stuff in order to pay for their "free" s...

Romney is making this election about Barack Obama. Considering the current state of the economy, Barack Obama has a record that he simply cannot run on. This is why the "Generic Republican" did so well in the primary season polls against Obama.  Republicans are putting forward a contrasting vision, but the election is ultimately a referendum on Obama.  Romney is correctly focusing on that issue. Romney has a history of turning things around. With the economy still limping along, only a 63 percent labor force participation rate, and American debt dangerously spiraling out of control, this country absolutely must have a change in direction.  Fixing entities that are in trouble is exactly what Mitt Romney has spent much of his life doing. As CEO of Bain Capital, Romney oversaw the investment and renovation of numbers of struggling companies, with an 80% overall success rate.  He successfully led the effort to save the 2002 Winter Olympics, which...

First of all, this is just not true. Secondly, this makes an assumption that all conservatives are white. There are many black conservatives.   Are there racists in the Republican party? Sure, but no more than you’ll find in the Democratic Party. So, why are Republicans being constantly accused of racism? It’s a political strategy . If black Americans weren’t convinced that the GOP was racist, they’d probably break 70/30 or even 60/40 for the Democrats instead of 90/10 and that would be devastating to the left. That’s why the Democrats are desperate to shout "racism" at every possible opportunity. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or false because the political stakes are so high for the left. Thinking for oneself, loving your country, understanding and embracing the free market capitalist system, and loving your Constitution means you are not “black” but instead you are a "house negro" or a "token" for the Republican party.  ...

The egalitarianism and welfarism of modern liberal government are incompatible with the facts of human nature and the human condition. But the rise to power of the liberal agenda has resulted from the fact that the people of western societies have irrationally demanded that governments take care of them and manage their lives -- instead of protecting their property rights. The liberal agenda gratifies various types of pathological dependency; augments primitive feelings of envy and inferiority; reinforces paranoid perceptions of victimization; implements manic delusions of grandeur; exploits government authority for power, domination and revenge; and satisfies infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation. Modern liberalism rejects, to one degree or another, the competence and sovereignty of the common man and subordinates him to the will of governments run by liberal elites. The modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he va...

In a free market, demand is a function of price: the higher the price, the lower the demand. These rules apply equally to both prices and wages. When employers evaluate their labor and capital needs, cost is a primary factor. When the cost of hiring low-skilled workers moves higher, jobs are lost. Despite this, minimum wage hikes, like the ones recently set to take effect, are always seen and reported as an act of governmental benevolence.  Before bringing on another worker, an employer must be convinced that the added productivity will exceed the added cost (this includes not just wages, but all payroll taxes and other benefits.) So if an unskilled worker is capable of delivering only $6 per hour of increased productivity, such an individual is legally unemployable with a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Low-skilled workers must compete for employers' dollars with both skilled workers and capital. For example, if a skilled worker can do a job for $14 per hour that two unskil...

A recent Pew Center poll reveals some interesting statistics about who believes global warming is mostly because of human activity. There is a large partisan gap in views about the causes of global warming: 51% of Democrats and 40% of independents say the earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity. But only 19% of Republicans say rising temperatures are mostly attributable to human activity. Of course, if you add all these numbers up based on the percentage of the US population who are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, you find out that most people do not believe that global warming is mostly because of human activity. Remember, this question is not about just "solid evidence of global warming" -- we already know the earth has warmed and cooled for billions of years -- its about "do you believe the earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity" . What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, one obvious one is ...

Damnant quod non intellegunt    --They condemn what they do not understand America's central bank, the Federal Reserve, is engaged in a bailout of European banks. This operation is going pretty much unnoticed here in America. The Fed is using what is called a "temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement" with the European Central Bank (ECB). There are similar arrangements with the central banks of Canada, England, Switzerland and Japan. The Fed trades or "swaps" dollars for euros. The Fed is compensated by payment of an interest rate (usually 50 basis points, or one-half of 1%) above the overnight index swap rate. The ECB, which guarantees to return the dollars at an exchange rate fixed at the time the original swap is made, then lends the dollars to European banks of its choosing. Why are they doing this? The Fed could  lend directly to U.S. branches of foreign banks. It did a great deal of such lending to foreign banks under var...

On December 6, regarding his proposed 1.9 percent surtax on million-dollar incomes, Harry Reid said: "Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist… Only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than 1 percent, are small business owners. And only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction are traditional job creators… Most of these businesses are hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers. They don’t do much hiring and they don’t need tax breaks." The real facts: Millionaire tax filers earn almost a quarter trillion dollars from their businesses. They hire hundreds of thousands of employees to do so. There are a trivial number of millionaire hedge-fund managers and wealthy lawyers (who, according to Harry, do not hire anyone and don’t need tax breaks). The millionaire tax surcharge is not aimed at them, but at the tens of thousands of millionaire business owners. A 1.9 percent surc...

Why would Democrats want the two-month cut instead of the yearlong cut? Because they didn’t want to give the issue up as a political boon. It allowed them to criticize Republicans for hypocritically opposing a tax cut. They settled for Keystone and offsets in exchange for the ability to again bash GOP-ers over their opposition to the tax cut extension two months from now. The House didn’t want to play along. A study came out to demonstrate that a two-month tax cut would be unworkable, allowing them to focus on the timeframe, rather than the tax cut extension itself. Their game? A two-month tax cut extension is a source of too much uncertainty for taxpayers. That's true, but it's not the central issue. Here’s the problem: Whether it’s for two months or a year, a payroll tax cut extension is simply bad policy . In the context of comprehensive Social Security reform, it might make sense to tamper with the payroll tax. But as a half-hearted, gimmicky gesture to pander ...

If you thought the University of East Anglia email dump from two years ago was revealing, put your drink down and take a deep breath. There’s a whole new dump of 5,000 emails and documents leaked by FOIA.org, and they are just as damning – and more so – than the first batch. James Watts has the best synopsis here . Here’s a teaser sample from Michael Mann: email 1680.txt date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:03:05 -0400 from: “Michael E. Mann”.. subject: Re: Something not to pass on to: Phil Jones Phil, I would not respond to this. They will misrepresent and take out of context anything you give them. This is a set up. They will certainly publish this, and will ignore any evidence to the contrary that you provide. s They are going after Wei-Chyung because he’s U.S. and there is a higher threshold for establishing libel. Nonetheless, he should consider filing a defamation lawsuit, perhaps you too. I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigat...

Republicans stink. This, in a nutshell, is what Democrats are running on in 2012. Republicans are mean. They're obstructionists. They don't care about the elderly and they don't care about the middle class. They're dangerous ideologues looking out only for the rich. The country faces serious economic challenges and catastrophic debt. Homes are worthless, jobs are scarce and collapsing European social-welfare states are providing frightening previews of what Americans can expect if Washington doesn't dial back its deficit spending. But Democrats are unwilling to engage in serious, honest debate about their vision for the country. Instead, they just criticize Republicans. What's even more repulsive than this juvenile approach to governance and campaigning? The fact that a huge chunk of the electorate actually buys it. If there's a lesson in all this, one year before Americans go to the polls to again decide the direction of the country, it's that...

  I am often scolded by my liberal friends about how this past recession (2008) was different, we almost had an economic collapse, it was as bad or worse than the Great Depression, and various other items all underscoring the need for "more stimulus". They claim that we tried lower tax rates, etc. A quick look at the composition of the stimulus spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (see chart) reveals that the major portion of the spending was to transfers to state and local governments (mostly used for fiscal relief, which is temporary), transfers to persons (temporary) and "Tax Cuts" - almost all of which were temporary in nature. Temporary measures simply cannot provide permanent economic growth. They run out (as they already have), and you end up with more of the original problem that has never been solved in the first place. Plus - an even bigger debt burden. There are not many cases of economic collapse in modern histo...

Many Americans are confused or simply ignorant about the history of Israel and "Palestine".  The following information is offered to provide some historical context, and is derived from several good sources. A common misperception about Israeli sovereignty  is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people; 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham. Even after the destru...

Tomorrow the FED will, in all its inglorious righteousness, decide whether to print either $500 Billion or $ 1 Trillion in new fiat money to purchase securities. There's already been agricultural and commodity inflation (Think "food") for the better part of 2010. This will now send prices through the roof. These idiots have absolutely NO EARTHLY IDEA what they're doing or what the consequences are. Sooner or later, our FED devalued greenback will filter down to the consumer. Ron Paul, where are you when I need you? You're the only guy with the guts to be willing to abolish the Federal Reserve. There is no such thing as a "free lunch". If you print money the way the Obama Administration has done (in addition to spending it foolishly), somebody is going to have to pay the Piper. We can't get these idiots out of office fast enough. UPDATE: As of Nov 3 2010 the FED has announced a new program where they'll print enough fiat money to purchas...

"Olim habeas eorum pecuniam, numquam eam reddis: prima regula quaesitus" (Once you have their money, you never give it back: the 1st rule of acquisition) The U.S. Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of 747 savings and loan associations (S&L's) in the United States. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around USD$160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. government -- that is to say, by you and me, the U.S. taxpayers, either directly or through charges on our savings and loan accounts. This contributed in a major way to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s. The resulting taxpayer bailout ended up being even larger than it would have been because moral hazard and adverse-selection incentives compounded the system’s losses. Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk....

Yesterday, the Senate began what is expected to be a week-long, contentious debate over legislation to combat global warming by mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. You can read up on my post re the World Bank’s experiments with carbon credit trading to see how this is likely to pan out. President Bush said that the measure amounted to "a huge spending bill fueled by tax increases" and that it "would impose roughly $6 trillion in new costs on the American economy." It isn’t just that the alarmists are trumpeting climate model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are predicting catastrophes that couldn’t happen even if the models were right, in order to justify costly policies to try to prevent global warming. The average person conflates alarmism with science – the Senate and House of Representatives being no exception. The results can be tremendously misguided and dangerous legislation. Meanwhile, a U.N. FAO repor...