Torture, Rendition, Health Care Reform Patriot Act, Iran's Nuclear Ambition, Congressional Focus, Fort Hood Terror
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Wednesday November 11, 2009
Today's Zinger:
The Morning Briefing:
I have to admit that I am becoming very disillusioned by the actions of Congress and the administration. We have heard a lot of talk about America’s values, future direction, rebuilding our international partnerships, health care for all, green jobs (or any jobs for that matter) and cutting our national debt. But, if I look at what is actually being done, and I don’t rely on the words but rather the actions, a very different story is emerging.
Now that we have the best and brightest running the country, someone has to tell me how massive federal borrowing to fund the debt, massive state deficits and new legislative actions that impose large federal spending won’t lead to higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher unemployment and lower disposable income. This must be new economics because the macro economic model that I taught in graduate school would have said we are heading to a long, hard stagnant economy and not the recovery we keep hearing about. But then again, I didn’t win the Nobel Prize.
Zinger looks at the lies of torture, the Patriot Act II, Iran’s nuclear nose thumbing, how Congress is totally out of touch with the country's priorities and the health care abomination. I said that I was becoming disillusioned. There is still time for this administration to turn things around but the chances of the administration recovering are getting more difficult.
Who Said It:
“Americans will no longer tolerate the .. continued abuses of power and catering to corporate special interests.”
Answer at the end of the full story.
The Discussion:
Patriot Act
Can you believe that the Federal Government eavesdropped on an American citizen’s private phone conversations? While many fought to overturn this, as well as other attributes of the Patriot Act, the Obama Administration has decided that the Patriot Act may not be such a bad device to secure the nation. Unfortunately, the information overheard by the Federal Government was passed along to the Army and nothing was done with it. As a result, Major Hasan, a member of the Muslim nation and of America’s armed forces committed an act of terrorism at Fort Hood, Texas. Thirteen Americans are dead and 30 others are wounded.
Government Torture Through Rendition
Do you remember the outrage over torture. The administration proclaimed to the world that the United States does not torture. Instead, as Zinger commented on this 3 months ago, the administration employs rendition. The Left applauded the President’s stand on torture while anyone with a dictionary took the time to understand rendition knew that this was a sham. Last week we learned that Iraq was passing prisoners to Egypt for interrogation. The information gathered was passed to the United States. Pakistan, Egypt and several other allied countries employ torture as a form of interrogation. We are now learning of how Egyptian prisoners are being tortured, but don’t despair, the United States didn’t actually commit the torture (we leave that to our friends). Personally, I would rather have the United States control interrogation techniques. Somehow I believe that our techniques are nothing compared to what Egypt and Pakistan can think of.
Iran’s Nuclear Weapon
The President was emphatic that Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have now become quite clear and we have a President who speaks loudly and carries a small stick. The question now is what is the next round of tough rhetoric that the President will pose to the Iranians? I’m not sure if the rhetoric is for America and its allies or if it is for Iran.
Congressional Focus
The American public is concerned about three things: 1) Jobs, 2) The war in Afghanistan, 3) The National Debt.
Congress is diligently working on two things: 1) Health Insurance Reform, 2) Cap and Trade which is the environmental legislation to increase the costs of a person's carbon impact on the planet.
Does anyone else feel that Congress is not in touch with the real problems?
Health Care Deformed
The House of Representatives passed a health care bill. It is an absolute sham. This is clearly a case of Speaker Pelosi wanting to declare victory on health care regardless of the consequences. In my opinion, the only people that will applaud this vote for Health Insurance reform are those that blindly follow the party line and those that don’t read and understand what is in the bill. A travesty.
Do you remember the reasons for Health Care reform? Let me remind you. It was to: 1) reduce the cost of health care, 2) provide health care to 47 million (or 35 million depending on the time of the speech) Americans that don’t have health insurance, 3) make health insurance more affordable for all.
The House bill that was passed last weekend fails to achieve any of the objectives that were stated for Health Care reform. Not only that, the bill stipulates that if an employer doesn’t provide health insurance to an employee, the employer must pay an 8% tax on the payroll. This implies that any business with employees earning less than $45,000 a year will be economically better off paying the penalty rather than buying the insurance. Seventy percent of Americans earn less than $50,000 per year. It won’t be long before employees earning less than $45,000 will have to enter the new health exchange to find insurance because if they don’t buy the insurance they will be fined 2.5% and if they don’t pay the fine they can go to jail for 5 years and face a $250,000 fine.
The Conclusion:
Our country is heading toward an economic showdown. In the next several years our economy will struggle. Yes there will be some improvements, but the over arching factors indicate a long, slow, protracted recovery. High interest rates, inflation, massive debt and the need by Federal, State and Local governments to raise taxes to meet current obligations will stifle consumer spending and a recovery. We are reliving the FDR years and that resulted in almost ten years of pain. If it hadn’t been for WW II the economy would not have recovered in the 40’s. I only hope we won’t need a war to get out of this mess.
Who Said It:
“Americans will no longer tolerate the .. continued abuses of power and catering to corporate special interests.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Today's ZingerToon:
Recent ZingerKing Articles:
Articles can be found under “Recent Articles” in the purple sidebar. Older articles can be found in the archives that are stored by month. These are found at the bottom of the purple sidebar. Here is a list of the most recent articles.Click here to access the archives www.ZingerKing.com
2009 Elections. How Losers Become Winners
The Cost of The Olympics. Chicago's Bid
Health Care and Illegal Immigrants
Obama's Eight Month Report Card
Climate Change and Afghanistan
Missile Defense in Czech Republic and Poland
Escalating the War in Afghanistan: Pelosi and Obama
President Obama's Speech To Congress Regarding Health Care
Part I: Implications of a Radical Change in Life Expectancy
Zingers Alternative For health Care Reform
The Tug Of War Of Special Interest Groups and Health Care Reform
Credibility Of The Administration Is Challenged
Taming The Angry Mobs
Creating A Free Market Alternative to Government Health Care
Cash For Clunkers
You can access these and other articles at www.ZingerKing.com
Shameless Request For Support:
ZingerKing operates without advertising or government funding (obviously). The purpose is to inform and educate its readers about economic and political issues that affect our lives.
Help ZingerKing grow. Have you Zinged someone lately? Please forward a link to ZingerKing to a friend, family member or neighbor. If you enjoy reading the Zinger please subscribe (see the subscribe box at the top of the article in the purple side band). Subscribers receive the"Morning Briefing" when published with a link to the full article.Periodic alerts are sent to subscribers only with important updates and insights into critical issues. Your email address will not sold to others and will not be shared.
Write To Us:
You can comment on any article by clicking on the comment button at the bottom of each article or you can write to us at ZK@ZingerKing.com
____________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday November 11, 2009
Today's Zinger:
Be Bold In What You Stand For; And Careful What You Fall For.
The Morning Briefing:
I have to admit that I am becoming very disillusioned by the actions of Congress and the administration. We have heard a lot of talk about America’s values, future direction, rebuilding our international partnerships, health care for all, green jobs (or any jobs for that matter) and cutting our national debt. But, if I look at what is actually being done, and I don’t rely on the words but rather the actions, a very different story is emerging.
Now that we have the best and brightest running the country, someone has to tell me how massive federal borrowing to fund the debt, massive state deficits and new legislative actions that impose large federal spending won’t lead to higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher unemployment and lower disposable income. This must be new economics because the macro economic model that I taught in graduate school would have said we are heading to a long, hard stagnant economy and not the recovery we keep hearing about. But then again, I didn’t win the Nobel Prize.
Zinger looks at the lies of torture, the Patriot Act II, Iran’s nuclear nose thumbing, how Congress is totally out of touch with the country's priorities and the health care abomination. I said that I was becoming disillusioned. There is still time for this administration to turn things around but the chances of the administration recovering are getting more difficult.
Who Said It:
“Americans will no longer tolerate the .. continued abuses of power and catering to corporate special interests.”
Answer at the end of the full story.
The Discussion:
Patriot Act
Can you believe that the Federal Government eavesdropped on an American citizen’s private phone conversations? While many fought to overturn this, as well as other attributes of the Patriot Act, the Obama Administration has decided that the Patriot Act may not be such a bad device to secure the nation. Unfortunately, the information overheard by the Federal Government was passed along to the Army and nothing was done with it. As a result, Major Hasan, a member of the Muslim nation and of America’s armed forces committed an act of terrorism at Fort Hood, Texas. Thirteen Americans are dead and 30 others are wounded.
Government Torture Through Rendition
Do you remember the outrage over torture. The administration proclaimed to the world that the United States does not torture. Instead, as Zinger commented on this 3 months ago, the administration employs rendition. The Left applauded the President’s stand on torture while anyone with a dictionary took the time to understand rendition knew that this was a sham. Last week we learned that Iraq was passing prisoners to Egypt for interrogation. The information gathered was passed to the United States. Pakistan, Egypt and several other allied countries employ torture as a form of interrogation. We are now learning of how Egyptian prisoners are being tortured, but don’t despair, the United States didn’t actually commit the torture (we leave that to our friends). Personally, I would rather have the United States control interrogation techniques. Somehow I believe that our techniques are nothing compared to what Egypt and Pakistan can think of.
Iran’s Nuclear Weapon
The President was emphatic that Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have now become quite clear and we have a President who speaks loudly and carries a small stick. The question now is what is the next round of tough rhetoric that the President will pose to the Iranians? I’m not sure if the rhetoric is for America and its allies or if it is for Iran.
Congressional Focus
The American public is concerned about three things: 1) Jobs, 2) The war in Afghanistan, 3) The National Debt.
Congress is diligently working on two things: 1) Health Insurance Reform, 2) Cap and Trade which is the environmental legislation to increase the costs of a person's carbon impact on the planet.
Does anyone else feel that Congress is not in touch with the real problems?
Health Care Deformed
The House of Representatives passed a health care bill. It is an absolute sham. This is clearly a case of Speaker Pelosi wanting to declare victory on health care regardless of the consequences. In my opinion, the only people that will applaud this vote for Health Insurance reform are those that blindly follow the party line and those that don’t read and understand what is in the bill. A travesty.
Do you remember the reasons for Health Care reform? Let me remind you. It was to: 1) reduce the cost of health care, 2) provide health care to 47 million (or 35 million depending on the time of the speech) Americans that don’t have health insurance, 3) make health insurance more affordable for all.
The House bill that was passed last weekend fails to achieve any of the objectives that were stated for Health Care reform. Not only that, the bill stipulates that if an employer doesn’t provide health insurance to an employee, the employer must pay an 8% tax on the payroll. This implies that any business with employees earning less than $45,000 a year will be economically better off paying the penalty rather than buying the insurance. Seventy percent of Americans earn less than $50,000 per year. It won’t be long before employees earning less than $45,000 will have to enter the new health exchange to find insurance because if they don’t buy the insurance they will be fined 2.5% and if they don’t pay the fine they can go to jail for 5 years and face a $250,000 fine.
The Conclusion:
Our country is heading toward an economic showdown. In the next several years our economy will struggle. Yes there will be some improvements, but the over arching factors indicate a long, slow, protracted recovery. High interest rates, inflation, massive debt and the need by Federal, State and Local governments to raise taxes to meet current obligations will stifle consumer spending and a recovery. We are reliving the FDR years and that resulted in almost ten years of pain. If it hadn’t been for WW II the economy would not have recovered in the 40’s. I only hope we won’t need a war to get out of this mess.
Who Said It:
“Americans will no longer tolerate the .. continued abuses of power and catering to corporate special interests.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Today's ZingerToon:
Recent ZingerKing Articles:
Articles can be found under “Recent Articles” in the purple sidebar. Older articles can be found in the archives that are stored by month. These are found at the bottom of the purple sidebar. Here is a list of the most recent articles.Click here to access the archives www.ZingerKing.com
2009 Elections. How Losers Become Winners
The Cost of The Olympics. Chicago's Bid
Health Care and Illegal Immigrants
Obama's Eight Month Report Card
Climate Change and Afghanistan
Missile Defense in Czech Republic and Poland
Escalating the War in Afghanistan: Pelosi and Obama
President Obama's Speech To Congress Regarding Health Care
Part I: Implications of a Radical Change in Life Expectancy
Zingers Alternative For health Care Reform
The Tug Of War Of Special Interest Groups and Health Care Reform
Credibility Of The Administration Is Challenged
Taming The Angry Mobs
Creating A Free Market Alternative to Government Health Care
Cash For Clunkers
You can access these and other articles at www.ZingerKing.com
Shameless Request For Support:
ZingerKing operates without advertising or government funding (obviously). The purpose is to inform and educate its readers about economic and political issues that affect our lives.
Help ZingerKing grow. Have you Zinged someone lately? Please forward a link to ZingerKing to a friend, family member or neighbor. If you enjoy reading the Zinger please subscribe (see the subscribe box at the top of the article in the purple side band). Subscribers receive the"Morning Briefing" when published with a link to the full article.Periodic alerts are sent to subscribers only with important updates and insights into critical issues. Your email address will not sold to others and will not be shared.
Write To Us:
You can comment on any article by clicking on the comment button at the bottom of each article or you can write to us at ZK@ZingerKing.com
Posted by ZK at 11/10/2009 9:07 PM 
Categories: Politics, economy, Congress, Terrorism, Economics, Health Care, Taxes, Environment, Obama Administration
Categories: Politics, economy, Congress, Terrorism, Economics, Health Care, Taxes, Environment, Obama Administration
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