Free Frank Warner

Jeffrey Sachs says runaway Medicare costs are a ‘myth’

Jeffrey Sachs, the environmental economist of Columbia University, writes in Huffington Post that new figures show health care costs are coming under control. He says the calls for restructuring Medicare and Medicare are “hysteria” based on a “myth.” Sachs says:

According to the President's budget, Medicare and Medicaid would rise slightly from 5.1 percent of GDP in 2011 to 5.5 percent of GDP in 2020. Not exactly the stuff of deficit cataclysm.

So what is the source of the hysteria? Some of it is simply propaganda, by those with the political agenda to gut the country's social safety net.

He quotes a free market defender:

As J. D. Keinke of the American Enterprise Institute writes [Feb. 17] in the Wall Street Journal, the idea of runaway health spending is a "myth" because "new data show that health spending over the past several years has been normalizing toward the rate of general inflation, rather than growing higher and higher, as had been the case almost continuously since the 1970s."

Growing costs. Keinke, a former health-care executive, and Sachs are referring to a mildly hopeful trend, during which free market forces have tamped down on health care costs, slowing their growth relative to inflation. But those costs already are busting the budget, and they haven’t stopped rising. We'd have something to cheer about if the percent of GDP represented by Medicare and Medicaid were decreasing a little each year, or for maybe even one year.

Table S-6 of President Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget shows Medicare and Medicaid will increase 25 percent as a share of the economy over the next 10 years.

If you want to see how this affects the federal budget, take a closer look at Medicare, for example: Average federal spending on Medicare is projected to be 3.2 percent of the economy over the next 10 years, but under the Obama plan, the Medicare payroll tax will average only 1.4 percent of GDP over the same decade. We’ll pay less than half the Medicare bill and borrow the rest. No wonder the deficit balloons.

(Meanwhile, Congress and the president again just approved waiving a third of the Social Security payroll tax, without spending cuts to replace that money. This guarantees that Social Security can’t even sustain itself this year, much less in 25 years. It also guarantees more debt of epic proportions, or a dollar collapse.)

Here we are in 2012: All our troops are out of Iraq and, according to Sachs, we’re seeing a break on health care costs, and yet the president proposes a budget that requires borrowing another $900 billion, more than the cost of the entire Iraq war. That’s no myth. The myth, the blind faith, is in pretending we’re out of the fiscal woods.

Frank Warner

The South Park message: Anti-Mormon bigots, grow up

If you engage in the lazy bigotry of making fun of Mormons, you might ask yourself if, in mixed company, you speak the same way about other religions.

And if there is a religion you don’t make fun of, you might ask yourself why. After all, every religion has at least one fundamental article of faith that defies reason and logic. Then again, if you make fun of all people of faith, if you feel good calling them narrow-minded and stupid, you might look in the mirror for the moron with the narrow mind.

That old South Park cartoon episode, “All About Mormons,” summed up my philosophy toward the people who imagine themselves morally and intellectually superior to Mormons.

High and mighty. In that show, which highlighted the Mormons’ many irrational beliefs, young Stan has fun hanging out with Gary, the new Mormon kid in South Park Elementary School, but Stan still decides to shun Gary because it just isn’t cool to associate with a Mormon.

Gary figures it out. He finally tells Stan:

Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that’s stupid, I still choose to believe in it. All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan, but you’re so high and mighty you couldn’t look past my religion and just be my friend back. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, buddy. Suck my balls.

That says it.

Frank Warner

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Update: CNN's John King calls Romney "Governor Mormon."

After 3 years, Obama notices we need our own oil

It was encouraging that President Obama’s State of the Union address this week opened the door to drilling for more U.S. oil to replace some of the oil imports that drain the nation’s wealth and prop up oil-rich tyrants.

He said:

This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.  A strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.

Like Palin. His “all-of-the-above” policy, straight from the mind of Sarah Palin, was a complete reversal from last year’s State of the Union speech, which kept up the pseudo-liberal pretense that we somehow we’ll be able to do without oil within a generation.

Last year Obama mentioned the word "oil" twice, the first time to call for the United States to end its dependence on it, and the second time to call for funding clean energy development by decreasing tax breaks for oil companies.

This year he mentioned oil nine times (10 if you include a reference to a regulation that categorized cow milk as an oil). Gone was any sense that oil was an addiction, as his predecessor George Bush had called it, or something the United States had to reduce its dependence on. He praised the fact that the U.S. produced more oil last year than it had for eight years, and he said that he is opening more areas for offshore drilling. When he called for the development of alternatives to oil, his reason was that we just don't have enough of it in the United States. 

Although Obama sounded supportive of oil, he did call for an end to subsidies for oil companies and for Congress to "double down" incentives for clean energy. He also said he would continue efforts to make sure oil companies can contain oil spills like the one in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Last year, Obama said that U.S. oil dependency could be broken by turning to biofuels and electric vehicles. He didn't mention either this year.

Wealth or poverty. There have been recent breakthroughs in electric cars, which still are run indirectly by burning coal, and in other energy alternatives, and we can expect more advances in the next 20 or 30 years.

In the meantime, if we expect to compete globally and to build the wealth we need for better health care and the other necessities of democratic civilization, we’d better find all the domestic oil and natural gas we can.

Frank Warner

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Note: In the speech, President Obama also mentioned freedom once and liberty once. That's low.

Wilmar Villar dies of hunger strike for Cuba freedom

Wilmar Villar, in a prison within the larger prison called Communist Cuba, died two days ago following a 50-day hunger strike to protest tyranny under the never-elected Castro brothers.

Villar's death is only the latest attributable to the Castros. Tens of thousands have died at the direction of the Castros, and millions more have not had a breath of freedom since Fidel seized power in 1959, promising free elections within two years.

Villar was in prison on a charge of "contempt," an undefined offense that follows any public demand for Cuban liberty. He protested and was willing to sacrifice his life to make the point that if a man cannot live free, he is already dead. Two years ago, another of the Castros' political prisoners, Orlando Zapata, also died of a hunger strike.

Cuba's long winter. When does the Castro mob loosen its hold on the army, the police, the secret police, the bureaucracy, the courts and the press of Cuba? When will the Cuba people shed their chains? When will Cuba see a Cuban Spring?

Frank Warner

We left Iraq way too early

When President Obama declared Oct. 21 that he was removing all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year, my first thought was, That’s the end of Israel.

My second thought was, That’s the end of a democratic Iraq. It’s the return of the Iraq war.

I still feel that way. I hope I’m wrong.

The early signals aren’t good. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who could afford to be tolerant of minorities when U.S. forces held the balance of power in Iraq, on Dec. 18 ordered the arrest of his Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, on a charge of planning political assassinations.

That could be just the beginning of the splintering of Iraq, as many of the majority Shiites no longer feel tied to their constitutional obligations to share power.

So why did we leave Iraq after only eight years -- or really, only three years after the fascists lost the war? There’s no good reason, except that our State Department did not make it a high enough priority to reach an agreement that could have kept a U.S. stabilizing force there at least five more years.

We didn’t leave Germany three years after World War II. We didn’t leave Japan. We didn’t leave South Korea immediately after the Korean War. The result: All of those nations are free, prosperous and at peace.

For reasons of politics and incompetence, we’re out of Iraq, and despite headlines that the “Iraq war is over,” Iraq is seeing a new wave of violence.

Iraq easily could devolve into dictatorship or descend into civil war. The risks are unforgivably high, when there would be no risk had 30,000 or 40,000 U.S. troops stayed behind.

Democracy does not take root with one round of elections. The institutions of freedom and tolerance appear only after at least three changes of power at the highest levels. The first power change is a test; the second, the learning of a habit. By the third, a democracy understands its checks and balances.

Democratic Iraq hasn’t had one change of power. (Maliki is the second prime minister, but his Al Dawa party is the same as the first prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who wasn’t around long.) Iraq is going to struggle hard when the first change comes. The United States won't be there, as it was in Germany, Japan and South Korea, to help it along toward change that strengthens Iraqi freedom.

Then there’s Israel, that one long-established Middle East democracy. Even with U.S. influence and Iraq's democratic framework, Iraq would be difficult to hold back if a demagogue were elected prime minister with a promise to help Iran wipe out the Jewish state.

Without U.S. influence, count on Iraq to start planning the invasion itself. Iran and Iraq don’t have much in common with Sunni Egypt, but all three Muslim nations might very well cooperate on the Israel elimination plan. Must we now start the countdown to the massacres and mushroom clouds?

If this sounds alarmist, it’s because there is cause for alarm. If it sounds bitter, it’s because it didn’t have to happen. Iraq was free and fairly calm. It was on its way to becoming the proof that Arab Muslims, long abused by despots, could thrive in democracy.

But America’s leaders looked at Germany and Japan and South Korea, and saw no lessons to apply.

Frank Warner

 

Christopher Hitchens, a true liberal, has died

Of course, the first thing that came to my mind when I heard Christopher Hitchens died yesterday of esophageal cancer was his articulate and resolute support for the liberation of Iraq.

He was one of the few real liberals in America’s debate over freeing 25 million Iraqis from fascism. Others who claimed to be liberals -- defenders of the defenseless -- only pretended to understand the horrors of oppression. They cynically opposed the hard and heroic work of freeing Iraq’s oppressed.

Hitchens, who felt a personal stake because of his friendships with Iraq’s Kurds, knew what his old allies on “the left” did not know -- that Iraq was condemned to generations of ignorance, tyranny and war unless it was freed by outside powers committed to democracy.

The Iraqis probably would remove Saddam (or his sons) on their own, he said, but the bloodbath of that kind of civil war would make the recent Iraq War look like a skirmish. And without America’s guiding hand, he said, the winner of that war almost certainly would have been another tyrant.

The bitter argument over the Iraq War tested Hitchens’ relationship with “the left,” leaving him disgusted with Democrats who wanted to tolerate Saddam’s despotism simply because a Republican president wouldn't tolerate it. But President Bush’s resolve also reminded him of America’s indispensable role in a world still half-unfree.

America’s unselfish project in Iraq eventually inspired Hitchens to become a U.S. citizen. For a full decade, he was the world's most passionate voice for freedom. He was a true liberal. He was the best kind of American.

Frank Warner

* * *

See also: R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens.

See also: An atheist Christmas remembrance.

See also: Master of the contrarian essay.

See also: On the death of Christopher Hitchens.

Newt Gingrich, paid off, in 2007 said Freddie and Fannie helped ‘stable finance’

We already know that Newt Gingrich took $1.6 million in consulting fees over a decade from Freddie Mac, the mortgage giant that, with its twin Fannie Mae, bought or backed $1 trillion in bad home loans and brought down the economy.

Many have wondered what Gingrich did for all that dough. Most of us figured the money was to keep a top Republican’s mouth shut as Freddie and Fannie promoted all those risky loans and cooked the books to enrich Freddie and Fannie’s executives.

Well, according to Verum Serum, the former Speaker of the House actually did some talking for the two toxic lenders (also called government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs). On Freddie Mac’s webpage, in April 2007, Gingrich is quoted at length making the case for Freddie and Fannie:

Q: A key element of the entrepreneurial model is using the private sector where possible to save taxpayer dollars and improve efficiency. And you believe the GSE model provides one way to use the private sector.

Gingrich: Certainly there is a lot of debate today about the housing GSEs [Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae], but I think it is telling that there is strong bipartisan support for maintaining the GSE model in housing. There is not much support for the idea of removing the GSE charters from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And I think it’s clear why.

The housing GSEs have made an important contribution to homeownership and the housing finance system. We have a much more liquid and stable housing finance system than we would have without the GSEs. And making homeownership more accessible and affordable is a policy goal I believe conservatives should embrace. Millions of people have entered the middle class through building wealth in their homes, and there is a lot of evidence that homeownership contributes to stable families and communities. These are results I think conservatives should embrace and want to extend as widely as possible. So while we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself.

Q: This is not a point of view one normally associates with conservatives.

Gingrich: Well, it’s not a point of view libertarians would embrace. But I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism. I recognize that there are times when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development. Look at our own history. The government provided railroad land grants to encourage widespread adoption of what was then the most modern form of transportation to help develop our country. The Homestead Act essentially gave land away to those willing to live on it and develop it. We used what were in effect public-private partnerships to bring telephone service and electricity to every community in our nation.

All of these are examples of government bringing about desired public purposes without creating massive, taxpayer-funded bureaucracies. To me that is a pragmatic and effective conservative approach.

Bipartisan treason. “It’s telling that there is strong bipartisan support for maintaining the GSE model,” Gingrich said. Yes, it’s telling. It tells us that, as Barney Frank and other Democrats took over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in the 1990s and early 2000s, they paid off every Republican in a position to stop them from tossing aside sound lending practices and saddling millions of Americans with loans they could never pay back.

Gingrich shouldn’t be running for president. He should be joining Barney Frank in a retirement of silence and shame.

Frank Warner

Reaction to retirement of Barney Frank, the man who destroyed the U.S. economy

Congressman Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, yesterday announced he will not seek another term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He will be remembered by historians as having done more harm to the United States than any single American since the Civil War.

Allahpundit at Hot Air:

Of all the losers to have passed through Congress, how many can say they played a major role in precipitating a global economic catastrophe? It’ll take a lot of media whitewash to obscure that legacy, but I’m sure they’re game: The ratio of political eulogies today that mention his wit and intellect to those flagging his boosterism for Fannie and Freddie is running about five to one from what I’ve seen.

John Hayward at What on Earth?

It’s a predictable, if unfortunate, end to a career that included setting up the subprime bomb that nearly destroyed the U.S. economy. If you’re upset about the big bonuses paid to executives of the bailout-sucking Fannie Mae, remember that Frank was literally sleeping with a top Fannie Mae executive while he sat on the House Banking Committee. Frank lied repeatedly to protect the Fannie Mae racket from oversight, and the resulting cost to the American people was nearly incalculable. And yet, it remains the official Democrat Party storyline that absolutely no one in government had anything to do with the subprime crisis.

Sister Toldjah:

[K]nown for being one of the most vociferous defenders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, claiming there was no problem while those two agencies were at the core of the building sub-prime mortgage disaster. He’s also been a loud advocate of raising taxes and gutting the defense budget. Saying he has a “caustic wit” is a euphemism; he truly is one of the biggest jackasses in our national life.

Jennifer Rubin:

Good riddance. ... [H]is real legacy will be his cluelessness and indifference to reforming Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. … To paraphrase William F. Buckley, Jr., Massachusetts would be better served by picking a name out of the phone book than by another two years of Barney Frank. Hopefully, they’ll get someone (Democrat or Republican) a heck of a lot better.

Jimmie at The Sundries Shack:

Most folks, if they had Frank’s history of scandal –see if the name Stephen Gobie and the phrase “whore house run out of Frank’s apartment by his boyfriend and personal aide” ring any bells – wouldn’t be in Congress right now but Barney Frank has never been like most folks. He put that whole sordid story behind him and, thanks to one of the most securely Democratic districts in the country, became the member of Congress who almost sunk the economy and destroyed the housing market all by himself.

Tom Maguire at Just One Minute:

The obvious guess is that this signals a tough environment for Massachusetts libs, but I think that on net it will help Elizabeth Warren, who now becomes the undisputed center of the liberal universe in MA and won't be dragged down by Barney's baggage.

AD at Unelected:

What Barney Frank should be remembered for is not the easy to digest, gossip-like trash the media will feed you; it’s the fact that he was the chief architect of the subprime mortgage crisis / the housing bubble that left hundreds of thousands of Americans homeless and millions more in destitution. The repercussions of Frank’s actions, chiefly pushing the Community Reinvestment Act, and his strong-arming of Fannie Mae to lend to people who obviously couldn’t repay large loans, will outlast his his terms in office.

W. James Antle in Barney's Bubble:

According to one report, "Frank pushed [Fannie Mae] to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively." ... When new regulations were proposed, Frank accused supporters of worrying about the GSEs' [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's] financial soundess "to the exclusion of concern about housing." He steadfastly denied that there was anything wrong with the government-backed mortgage finance firms. Frank insisted "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis." Yet Fannie and Freddie failed, racking up at least 12 million risky loans and accounting for roughly 40 percent of those still outstanding.

Peter Wallison at The Enterprise Blog:

[H]is career was marred by excessive partisanship, defensiveness, and an intellectual arrogance that prevented him from recognizing his errors until it was too late to save Fannie and Freddie or prevent the 2008 financial catastrophe in which they played the primary role. By the time Fannie and Freddie failed, they had accumulated 12 million subprime and other low quality and risky loans—about 40 percent of the 27 million outstanding—mostly for the purpose of meeting the affordable housing goals he fought to protect. The defaults on these loans, which are continuing, will ultimately cost the U.S. taxpayers $300 to $400 billion.

Joel B. Pollak at Big Government:

Barney Frank is also a quick wit–all too rare on the left–and will be remembered well for being the first openly gay member of Congress, among other achievements. Yet his most damaging legacies–the housing crisis, the financial “reform” that bears his name, and the hyper-partisanship to which he eagerly contributed–outweigh Frank’s positive contributions. How unfortunate that his constituents did not eject him much sooner.

Karl M at Patterico’s Pontifications:

Frank won in 2010 with 55% of the vote — but that was his worst showing since 1980, when he was first elected.  Of the many bad things I could say about Frank, he’s not dumb when it comes to politics, which is why he now shuffles off to some quasi-private sector gig, likely a lucrative one.

Roll Call:

State leaders lauded Frank's years of service, with Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh saying in a statement that Frank "will take his place in history as a shining son of Massachusetts."

Huffington Post:

More than two decades ago, Frank was reprimanded by the House for using his congressional status on behalf of a male prostitute whom he had employed as a personal aide, including seeking dismissal of 33 parking tickets. "I should have known better. I do now, but it's a little too late," Frank said at the time.

The Boston Herald:

The open secret is that, as a congressman, Barney Frank has been wrong about almost every major policy in his long public career. From Reaganomics to Obamacare, his predictions of future performance have been wildly, embarrassingly off the mark. When he’s attempted to lead, he’s almost always taken off in the worst direction.

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Bryce Vickmark, Ben Protess, Edward Wyatt and Jess Bidgood wrote the "Barney Frank, a Top Liberal, Won't Seek Re-election" story yesterday for The New York Times, and guess what? Those four crack reporters came up with 1,200 words on Barney Frank and never once brought up Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. They couldn't mention Frank's colossal crime and then face their fellow Democratic reporters. Why not? Maybe it's because they're cowardly hacks.

Some of the Democrats' more partisan blogs were careful to follow The Times' self-censorship, pretending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac never existed. Barney Frank pressured the mortgage giants to back $1 trillion in bad home loans, destroying the U.S. economy, but these Democrats are doing their best not to blink at a $1 trillion disaster or the destructive chain reaction that followed.

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Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:

[I]t’s worth pausing to appreciate the fact that Barney Frank has had an extraordinary and consequential career — the nation is better off for his efforts — and Capitol Hill is losing its smartest lawmaker.

Laura Conaway at The Maddow Blog:

Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) is not running again, maybe, in part, because of redistricting. Mr. Frank has been a frequent guest on our show and a YouTube star. … Barney Frank has been one of a kind.

John Cook at Gawker:

Maybe there's a scandal coming! Maybe his district is getting chewed up in Massachusetts' redistricting process. Maybe he's just sick of this shit. Either way, we're losing one of the greats.

Jed Lewison at Daily Kos:

There's a million great things that you could say about Barney Frank, but the one that pops most quickly into mind is this: Newt Gingrich revived his campaign shortly after saying Barney Frank should be thrown in jail for having ties to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As he's pointed out, if Gingrich rides that to the GOP nomination, then Democrats owe Barney Frank a lifetime of whatever he damn well pleases.

* * *

Auld Lang Syne. I hope Barney Frank has a long retirement, long enough for him to pay back the hundreds of billions of dollars he cost American taxpayers by sabotaging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and long enough for him to atone for depriving millions of Americans of their jobs, their dignity, their homes and their hope.

Frank Warner

 

Barney Frank, man who destroyed U.S. economy, is retiring

Congressman Barney Frank, who destroyed the U.S. economy by recklessly lowering lending standards in the 1990s and the first years of the 21st century, has announced he will not run for another term.

Frank was the critical player in opposing all expert advice to compel mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to back or buy $1 trillion in home loans for people who could not afford to pay them back. Many of these loans later were bundled into securities and re-sold to investors who had no idea how risky they were.

As a result, disaster in 2008.

When President Bush tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003, Barney Frank was the first to oppose anything that might restore safe and sound lending practices.

Frank 'no crisis.' The New York Times reported on Sept. 11, 2003:

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Frank wasn't doing poor home buyers any favor. By sucking them into loans they couldn't afford, he burdened them with unbearable mortgage payments and, in many cases, defaults that will blemish their credit ratings for decades.

Frank Warner

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See also: THE HUSHING: In 2004, Democrats told Fannie-Freddie watchdog to shut up about financial risks. All of the congressional Democrats who abused the oversight director won re-election. Congressman Christopher Shays, the Republican who spoke up most strongly for ending the malfeasance at Fannie and Freddie, lost his re-election bid.

Kadafy is dead

For one thing, Kadafy's death means we know can spell his name any way we want.

What is says for Libya's immediate prospects for a free democracy is hard to say. Let's hope the victorious rebels set up a democratic government, but the risks of a tyrannical successor are high when the world's established democracies have no boots on the ground.

Good luck, local freedom fighters.

Frank Warner