I have a sneaking suspicion that the Federal Reserve is planning to put a halt to the Trump stock market rally by raising interest rates and talking endlessly about future increases. There is an uptick in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in recent months, but that is not enough reason to raise the rates to choke off a rally. Consider two factors: 1. The long term inflation rate is trending down, and trending down sharply in recent years going back to the 1980’s. Reagan and Volcker defeated inflation in the 1980’s. The greater long term threat is now deflation, not inflation. Excessive debt is a long term deflationary factor for individual households, small businesses, large corporations, and nations. If there is too much debt that cannot be serviced, then assets must be sold to pay the debts. Deflation is a real possibility for the United States, not inflation. The Fed quite often fights the last war, with a knee-jerk reaction to the 1970’s and 1980’s, and misses other macro events, such as too much debt. Just check out the commodity prices of the last four or five years. Factor number 2: The Federal Reserve is not some right-wing bastion of conservatism. Federal Reserve Chair Yellen and all the other governors have been nominated by Mr. Obama. Only one other governor that I saw had any connection to a Republican. Partisan politics will play a role in the market.
Don’t repeal Obamacare and try to replace it with a brand new law that will be called “TrumpCare.” If you try a completely new law and it doesn’t work well, then you will make the same mistake that the Democrats made. Start with the “low hanging fruit” of:
Try these changes first and see if you can get some help from across the aisle. If you can implement these easier changes and it works effectively, then create one new document that eliminates the entire Obamacare document and incorporates all the changes that work effectively into one omnibus document called “TrumpCare.” This exercise is all about risk and reward for Republicans as you try to maintain control of both houses in 2018. You can make these incremental changes before the next election cycle.
Please consider the risk-and-reward dynamics of a 100% repeal-and-replace. If you don’t like the way Obamacare was crafted and passed by the Democrats, then try a more incremental approach. Hubris caused the train wreck of Obamacare. Don’t let Republican hubris get in the way of making incremental changes that work for all Americans.
Your December 11 editorial “Bustos’ biblical assignment” made a lot of sense through the first four paragraphs. Then you quickly reverted to the tired, old Democrat playbook and brought out race. You wrote “in many cases he wrapped it all together with a bow of racial dog whistles, easy scapegoats for all the Rust Belt’s ills.” Later you opined that “Democrats can’t follow Trump in the racial abyss within which he’s taken his followers.”
Even your partner-in-crime, the venerable Washington Post, had this analysis on November 11 that was quite at odds with your knee jerk reaction. “There are different benchmarks one can use to see how Trump performed compared with prior Republican nominees. Comparing yesterday’s results with 2012, as this Washington Post feature does, shows that Trump actually performed slightly worse among white voters than Mitt Romney did. He did, however, perform better than Romney among blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans, making it more difficult to claim that racial resentment was the dominant factor explaining Trump’s support nationally.” (By Karthick Ramakrishnan — November 11).
I am reminded how in recent years the Democrats have instructed us that Republicans will never win the White House without accepting the Democrat position on immigration and a whole host of issues. Of course Democrats wanted to help Republicans…….off a cliff!
I am happy to see the same Democratic Party leadership return to power in Washington. Cheri Bustos may help with the “rural” optics, but the party is going even farther to the left.
Why would you members of the Quad-City Times editorial board worry about the soul of the Republican Party? You’re all Democrats! Worry about your own party. Worry about your own party that brought us the disaster of Obamacare and lied through your teeth about it. Worry about the party that brought us “Fast and Furious” and the targeting of conservative groups through the IRS. Worry about your own party that would love to incrementally take away more or our freedoms through an assault on the second amendment and your holy grail of cap and trade. Worry about the party that has overseen the systemic weakening of the United States around the world. Worry about your own party that has loaded up the United States with staggering amounts of debt that will never be repaid. Worry about your own party that cannot manage Obamacare and the Veterans Administration. What you call a right-wing hatefest is what others in America call free speech. Do you remember that concept? You and the other Democrats define anyone that disagrees with you about anything as a hater. That’s pathetic. I have read your newspaper for sixty years and I worked there for over twenty-eight years. That editorial was pompous, arrogant and insulting. If anyone who signed off on that editorial considers herself a Republican, and wants to defend her Grand Old Party from the likes of Trump and Cruz, then she is operating in a foreign universe that most Republican voters will never recognize.
If 30 million, or more, Americans do not have access to health care insurance, I would contend that these Americans don’t need health care insurance through Obamacare. What they need is access to low-cost or no-cost health care.
Definition — Insurance is the act, system, or business of protecting property, life, one’s person, etc., against loss or harm arising in specified contingencies, as fire, accident, death, disablement, or the like, in consideration of a payment proportionate to the risk involved.
A key part of that definition deals with the payment proportionate to the risk. Insurance is a transaction which requires personal responsibility and personal accountability for the value given and value received. If someone does not have any money or resources to buy one’s own insurance, then call it what it is…….charity insurance. Obamacare is, therefore, money expropriated from one person and given to another person by force of law. That will not stand. I believe that America’s best health care solutions will come in two different strategies.
The first strategy is the far greater use of Federally Qualified Health Centers. Community Health Care, Inc., is one of those organizations here in the Quad Cities. What if we, the people, did the following:
• Appropriate $50 (or some other figure) per person for each congressional district for the purpose of supporting FQHC organizations and other no-cost or lower-cost health care delivery organizations. For example, if there are 315 million Americans in 435 House districts, then each House district has an average of 724,137 people in each district. That comes to $36,206,850 that is appropriated for primary health care delivery in that House district.
• Let’s say that not all House districts are the same in terms of median household income. If one district has a median household income of 100% of the national average, then that House district gets 100% of the $36,206,850. If another House district has a median household income of 110% of the national average, then that House district gets 90% of the $36,206,850. If another district has a median household income of 90% of the national average, then that House district gets 110% of the $36,206,850. For the re-distributionists of the world, this mechanism helps to get the funding to the House districts with the greatest need, without resorting to ad hoc earmarks. For those afraid of another out-of-control entitlement, this spending program has a finite amount each year. If the new system does not work, then we can stop the spending without the creation of a large bureaucracy that continues on forever. To be clear, the funding goes to each House district on the exact census population in each House district, not on some national average of population per House district.
• Who decides how the money is spent for any given US fiscal year? Here’s the fun part… The spending allocations would be determined by the member of the House of Representatives for each district. Each Representative would listen very carefully to the people in each House district through a series of town hall meetings to gather input and communicate the needs throughout the district. After numerous town hall meetings and research about the needs and the resources available, the Representative makes the choices and the money is distributed.
• The best part is that the Representative comes up for election every two years. Each election becomes a referendum on the Representative’s wisdom in making choices for health care support in the house district over the last two years. I like the political accountability for local health care decisions.
• The old joke is that “all politics are local.” I also believe that “all health care delivery is local.” I like the fact that FQHC’s are private, local organizations with local funding, local authority, and local accountability. The decision-making is pushed away from Washington, D.C., and back to the local areas from which the tax dollars come.
The second strategy is the promotion of a far more competitive private health insurance industry.
• Tort reform is essential. Doctors and other health care professionals need some relief from some of these huge judgments. Health care in America will not thrive if the professionals are unwilling to practice because of oversized costs and risks. Professionals should still be held accountable for mistakes, but we consumers must also assume some of the risk. Life is full of risks.
• Health care insurance companies should be allowed to compete and sell across state lines. Competition is good and forces all to become better at what they do.
• The federal government should help to fund state-run high risk pools to aid individuals get the care they need.
Obamacare will always be the train wreck it was designed to be. Obamacare will eventually force each of us off our private insurance because Obamacare cannot exist without the destruction of private health care insurance. This kind of collectivist mind set never has worked and never will work. (Europe is still in trouble because of that cradle-to-grave entitlement.) Use a combination of Federally Qualified Health Centers and competition to create a better American health care system.
Mr. Boehner, the best way to battle Obamacare is to implement Obamacare in its entirety as soon as possible. Negotiate for no delays, no subsidies, no exemptions. Obamacare will be stopped or greatly changed only after millions of people are adversely affected in their pocketbooks. The Democrats own this one completely!
It seems to me that Obamacare has had three different stages of life.
1. The content as it was sold. There were all kinds of promises about how much money we could save. We could keep our doctor. We could keep our plan. We would see cost-effective coverage for all Americans. Then again, we would have to pass the law to see what was in it.
2. The content as it was signed. I realize that Charles Grassley sponsored the original amendment regarding lawmakers and staff going into the exchanges. The Roll Call website reports that “Grassley sponsored the original amendment requiring lawmakers and staffers to enter the Obamacare exchanges, but he didn’t intend for them to lose the employer subsidy.” “Grassley said staff for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., did not properly draft the statutory language for his amendment, omitting language that would have allowed lawmakers and staff to keep their employer contribution while in the exchanges.” Cynicism toward the law grew because of that omission.
3. The content as it is implemented. Exemptions and delays for some (for purely political purposes) are patently unfair while others must live by the law.
If I was a cynical guy about politics in Washington, I could be convinced that Mr. Obama picked this time to make Syria an issue to avoid the national spotlight about jobs, the economy, Obamacare, the debt ceiling, the IRS, the NSA spying, Benghazi, and who knows what else. Now the President will use more time in September to listen attentively to the discussions in Congress before he acts upon his own decision. We’ll see if Congress helps him out and gives the okay to attack Syria. He has talked himself into a corner without a strategic vision for dealing with Syria and telegraphs his moves. Gas attacks and red lines have existed since 2012; why did he pick this particular time? Conventional wisdom says we have to do something because of the horrific images of children killed by a gas attack. I contend that all images of war are horrific, regardless of the ages of the people killed. Mr. President, residents of the Middle East have been killing each other for thousands of years over race, religion and ethnicity. A few stray Tomahawk missiles will not solve a thing. Those Tomahawk missiles will, in fact, make us weaker because of the international scorn and loss of trust. If I was a cynical guy, I would not believe that your military tactics are as pure as the wind-driven snow. Are these the actions-to-come that earned you the Nobel Peace Prize?
What does it mean to be a conservative? For me, it means to live by these seven tenets, or principles, in our representative republic:
Faith: The Judeo-Christian heritage was at the heart of the founding of our nation, and it remains so today for me and many conservatives. We must respect this nation’s many faiths and creeds, but we must also respect those who elect not to believe in some higher power.
Family: A great nation must have great respect for the family unit. To me, that means one man and one woman in the support of children, but a great many disagree with that. Our nation must avoid those laws and regulations that fracture the home and tear apart the nuclear family. My faith also admonishes me not to be the judge of others. So I will leave that to a higher power. I accept that we live in a large, pluralistic society with lots of different opinions.
Work: “If you do not work, you will not eat” is an admonition thousands of years old. If you subsidize unemployment, then you will get more of it. Work is not something to be avoided. Work provides purpose and security and we should honor it.
Thrift: Debt kills household finances, corporate longevity, and national sovereignty. Save, then save some more.
Strong national defense: “Peace through strength” may be a cliché, but generations of American leadership have proven it to be true. There are forces in this world who hate the United States and our freedoms, regardless of how many times we may apologize or try to buy their friendship.
Respect for the rule of law: If we have no respect for the rule of law in America, then we have nothing. That means that our national executive leaders must enforce the laws of the land, without regard to their opinion of the law. Yes, that means enforce immigration laws. Defend our borders!
The defense of our personal freedoms: Assaults on our freedom come in the large variety (healthcare law), and the smaller variety (gun laws and dietary laws). Each new restriction makes us weaker, not stronger.
The energy policy of the United States should be to foster increased competition among existing energy sources. With an abundance of energy resources in the United States, better education and communication can best serve the American people as individuals and organizations make cost-effective choices about the vehicles, technologies, and fuels available to the American marketplace.
Drilling alone will not create more competition, and in effect, keep prices in check. If there was an oil derrick over every ten acres in the United States, the oil companies would still control the amount that is pumped out of the ground and the price at which it would be sold. The oil company oligopoly faces no real competition until consumers have the choice of whether to fill up with crude oil, natural gas or electricity. The gasoline and diesel fleet is well established.
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) refueling stations should line the interstate highways to service the trucking fleet of the United States. Those stations would also serve the infant CNG refueling needs for automobiles. When the interstates are covered with CNG stations, then CNG stations can creep into the metro areas and the neighborhoods, similar to the crude oil stations.
I think the greatest opportunity lies with the emerging technology of wireless electricity transmission. For example, a company named WiTricity in Watertown, Massachusetts, is “working to make this future a reality, developing wireless electricity technology that will operate safely and efficiently over distances ranging from centimeters to several meters—and will deliver power ranging from milliwatts to kilowatts.” Imagine the day when American coal-powered plasma converters will deliver American-made electricity to the roadways to recharge American-made electric cars on-the-go. This recharging could take place through structures above, beside, or in the road itself. The cord for the electric car can be gone for good! This kind of vision has importance for national security policy as well as transportation and energy policy.
America has vast amounts of energy. We need true competition and the courage to use emerging technologies for the years ahead. Those who see an American decline are badly mistaken.
qcconservative 