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Are you aware that even if Obama gives up on the public option it may not matter?

Quotes of the Day:

“You could theoretically design a co-op plan that had the same attributes as a public plan.” — Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services

“Well, I think in theory you can imagine a co-operative meeting that definition.” — President Barack Obama

Subject: Beware the surrender on the so-called “public option”

The Big Government health care bill doesn’t have the votes in the Senate and it’s taking a beating in public opinion. The latest Rasmussen Report shows that 54% of Americans now think passing no health care reform at all is better than passing the current plan.

The President and Congressional leaders have responded by appearing to surrender.

President Obama claims the so-called “public option” (tax funded health insurance) isn’t crucial. They would settle for something called a co-op instead.

Beware of politicians appearing to surrender. They’re almost always “Greeks bearing gifts.” The co-op alternative to the “public option” is a Trojan Horse.

Michael F. Cannon sums it up perfectly:

“On a practical level, it makes no difference whether a new program adopts a “co-operative” model or any other. The government possesses so many tools for subsidizing its own program and increasing costs for private insurers, and has such a long history of subsidizing and protecting favored enterprises, that unfair advantages are inevitable.”

So let’s update the formula we’ve been using to describe where all this will lead . . .

Co-op = public option = single-payer, tax-funded health care = health care decisions made by bureaucrats = no consumer choice or free market competition = declining health care.

We also want to repeat our warning . . .

It will take years for the public option/co-op to bring about a politically controlled single payer system, but it will happen, as surely as night follows day.

It’s also crucial to understand that . . .

* The small amount of consumer choice and free market competition that still exists in America is what drives improved health care not only for YOU, but for the whole world.

* The more socialist systems that exist elsewhere are fundamentally dependent on the INNOVATIONS created by the small remaining sliver of American free market health care.

American health care is the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. Kill that goose and the whole world will suffer.

We must not be fooled by the politicians’ Trojan Horse surrender. We must only accept unconditional surrender. We must demand that . . .

* Every aspect of the Big Government health care bill be defeated
* Concrete steps must be taken to restore consumer choice and free market competition (including, but not limited to, an expansion of Health Savings Accounts and an end to government mandates that drive up the price of health insurance).

Please use DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System (sm) to tell your Congressional employees what you want.

Use your personal comments to say that the co-op plan is just as bad as the public option, and must be rejected.

To stay on pace to exceed the 50,802 messages Downsizers sent to Congress last month we must send 2,694 messages today.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC Army. To see how fast YOUR ARMY is growing, please check out the Keeping Score Report below my signature.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

Global Warming/Climate Change supporters, how can you say the IPCC is non bias?

If you goto the IPCC website they tell you how their process works. Most of you must not see this because your to caught up in reading new science magazine propaganda. Their process is that the GOVERNMENTS and ORGANIZATIONS HAND PICK THE SO CALLED EXPERTS.(all gov.+organizations involved are rothschild world bank+IMF controlled and funded via the money scam, to understand the money scam goto www.davidicke.com, click archives, click money scam or simply use common sense.) There are a total of around 2500 experts involved in the review process, the IPCC itself from there chooses the authors for the report. It then goes through 3 drafts and is reviewed by the governments and organizations before they publish the report. Since the governments and organizations who are trying to fear the public into accepting a carbon economy, how is that process non bias? Infact their entire process does nothing but mirror the definition of biased. About 95% of all climate scientist and geologist do believe the humans are causing climate change, the question is HOW MUCH? The IPCC is a hitler style political machine trying to hand pick “experts” who are willing to sing from the song sheet. Then to create the illusion that its not bias they go and hand pick “experts” like wm briggs or that lizdan guy that @maxx talks about(personally i think that guy is paid the other way) to express non consensus views, but only a few of those. Of the 2500 or so that review they make sure they hand pick a good 90% are song sheet repeaters that are heavily job dependent on AGW being extreme and real. Of course they will show worst case scenerio data otherwise they will not have a job in the future. There are countless scientist, scientific institutes, and universitys that have written formal letters to the IPCC saying that their “chosen process” is bunk and beyond bias, you canfind them on the web simply typing IPCC review process. Panchauri is invested in the carbon market BIG TIME LOOK IT UP.

How many people still think the recession is happening?

The technical, economic definition of the recession is when the Gross Domestic Product goes down for two straight quarters. It has been going up three quarters in a row. Also, the DOW has gone up 3000 points, to a high not seen since August 2008. Stores are reporting the strongest sales in TEN YEARS! The jobs market has been showing signs of cooling down, since dozens of thousands of private sector jobs were created last month, and unemployment should go down. Who can still doubt the recovery?
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI (up roughly 3000 points)

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm

this report says it went up Q4 of 2009 and Q1 of 2010. I cant find a report about Q3 of 2009.

Do you think McCain’s constant attacks against Obama are making him look like an angry cranky liar?

McCain said Obama would raise taxes of 23 million “small business owners”.

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Who qualifies as a “small business owner”? Anybody who’s reported as little as $1000 in business reciepts. By that definition, McCain and Obama are small business owners from the income they made from their book. Anybody who made a small profit from the stock market, is also a “small business owner.”

Of those 23 to 26 million, more than 20 million are “nonemployer firms” who have no workers. Of the remaining 3 to 6 million, only 663,608 would have their taxes raised under Obama. The rest would have their (((TAXES CUT))) under Obama because they make less than $250,000.

BUSH pulled a similar (((LIE))) against John Kerry in 2004, except Bush used 900,000 (also debunked) instead of McCain’s 23 million number.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccains_small-business_bunk.html

Recession 2007 ???

I have written about the great imbalances of the US economy. Yet in all of my previous articles on the subject I have been unable to pinpoint when these imbalances will result in a bust.

One can never be completely sure of the future, of course, as one does not have full information about all factors shaping future events. Thus, it is possible that this prediction will go wrong if the US experiences some future positive shock, such as for example a significant decline in oil prices. Australia seemed poised for a recession in 2005 after its housing market busted, but this was averted as the prices of Australia’s commodity exports soared because of increased demand from China.

However, barring such an unexpected positive shock, it seems increasingly clear that we will see a US recession this year. The main reason for this is that the housing bubble that fueled the recovery of the last few years has essentially burst.

While mortgage debt continues to climb, albeit at a slower rate than before, and while housing prices have flattened rather than declined so far, other housing market indicators point to a housing recession. New home sales have reached multi-year lows and the inventory of unsold homes reached multi-year highs. Meanwhile, residential investment has declined significantly from its peak in late 2005. From 6.3% of GDP in the third quarter of 2005 to 5.3% in the fourth quarter of 2006. However, that is still above the 4% average of the 1980s and 1990s, and also significantly above the 3.3–3.4% level of the recessions of 1982 and 1991.[1]
So far, the economy has seemingly handled this fairly well and experienced what one might call a “soft landing,” with growth being slow but still well above zero. Yet there are increasing signs that the worst is yet to come. Much of the housing bubble was financed by so-called subprime mortgages, mortgages to people with a low credit rating. Subprime mortgages were encouraged greatly by the government, with the Federal Reserve providing a cheap source of credit and with Bush encouraging it as part of the “ownership society” that he envisioned. But after the Fed was forced to raise interest rates again, and as the introductory teaser offers expired, the cost of borrowing for the subprime borrowers increased sharply. And as subprime lenders almost by definition have weak personal finances, many have proven unable to handle that.
And so we now see how the default rate has increased sharply. This will mean two things: first, new subprime loans will decline sharply. So far this year, subprime loans have declined 37% from last year.[2]
This will not only mean lower demand for new houses, but also increased supply as an increasing number of subprime borrowers are forced to leave their homes. This fact, as well as the fact that construction spending is still at historically high levels means that it is likely to decline a lot more. And if this causes outright decline in housing prices, it will have a very adverse effect on consumer spending. The household savings rate was -1.2% in January and February.[3] Meanwhile, despite record high asset valuation, the household debt to asset ratio reached record levels last year, as did the mortgage debt to housing value which hit a record high of 47% in the fourth quarter of 2006.[4] Looking beyond the aggregate number, you can see that 27% of all homeowners have less than 20% equity (more than 80% mortgage debt) in their homes and 16% have less than 10% equity, making them highly vulnerable to a fall in prices.[5]
All of this implies that the current spending pattern is dependent upon a continued rapid increase in asset prices, from levels which are historically already extremely high. Household real estate values, which in my first article on the subject I reported to be 184% of disposable income, up from the historic range of 135% to 150%, had in the fourth quarter of 2006 risen to 213% of disposable income. Meaning that there is certainly a high risk of falling prices — which, given the negative savings rate and the record high level of household debt, would imply that consumer spending will have to fall.
With residential investments likely to continue to fall and with consumer spending likely to be weak as well, the one thing that could save the US economy would be business investments. Business investments are still at a relatively moderate level, and in relation to corporate profits they are in fact historically low.
However, there are signs that corporate profits have peaked. The increase in profits over the latest year has been concentrated in the financial sector and in foreign subsidiaries of US firms. In contrast, profits at domestic non-financial industries (the sector that invests) have started to decline: in seasonally adjusted terms, they were 2.5% lower in the fourth quarter of 2006 than in the first quarter.[6] And with profits showing signs of declining, it is perhaps less important that they are still at high levels in absolute terms, because what matters for business leaders is not so much current profits, but expected future profits — or to be more precise, if businesses think additional investments will generate even higher profits.

And with the pessimism generated by the decline in profits and the trouble in the housing market, an increasing number of business leaders seem to think that the days of high profits will be over soon. Business investments fell during the fourth quarter of 2006, and judging by the weak data for non-defense, non-aircraft durable goods orders,[7] the outlook for 2007 is not particularly good.

But what about the Federal Reserve? The Fed has always been “the knight in shining armor” always saving the day by cutting interest rates — and they will do so again. At least, that’s what many people on Wall Street seem to think. And of course, Ben Bernanke would certainly be willing to provide “liquidity” — with or without helicopters — if he thought a recession was coming.

However, the fact that commodity prices continue to soar and the dollar is falling means that Bernanke will have limited scope to cut interest rates, particularly in the aggressive way that Greenspan did after the tech stock bubble burst. With businesses being reluctant to invest, and with subprime mortgages discredited, one has to wonder: where is Bernanke going to create the next bubble, the one that will mask the hangover from the housing bubble in the same way that the housing bubble masked the hangover from the tech stock bubble?