Obama addresses a Joint Session of Congress tonight at 6pm Pacific on the Economy.
400-408 – (:16) Fed Reserve Chair Bernanke: Reasonable That Recession Will End in 2009. And then the DOW jumps up 236 points.
• Fox News (2/24/09) Health Care Costs to Top $8,000 Per Person. Government report on medical costs paints a stark picture for President Obama, who is expected to call for a health care overhaul in a speech Tuesday night.
My Summary: This year, health care costs will average $8,160 per person (for 300 million people, this totals $2.4 trillion dollars). This will be over $13,100 by 2018 ($4 trillion). Meaning, taxpayers will pay for over 50% of the nation's total health care bill through Medicare and Medicaid, about $2 trillion dollars – and this doesn't even include the recent expansion of SCHIP for poor children.
Key Points to Remember: We're a population of 300 million, yet only 30% of us, or 90 million people, actually pay any federal taxes – it's these people, the 30% of tax-payers, who will be paying the way for the 70% of tax-spenders. And the total Obama has committed each of you who pay taxes, we 90 million who pay federal taxes? $62,000. Bottom line, if you pay federal taxes, your obligation to pay those future taxes just went up $62,000, while the 70%, those 210 million who pay no taxes, will end up getting nearly all the benefits. It is wealth redistribution, out of your pocket into the pockets of others.
• Since only 30% of the population, or 90 million people, actually pay any federal taxes, this $2 trillion dollar bill comes down to $22,000 per taxpayer for health care costs.
• Totaling both sums, the American taxpayer is now on the hook for $84,000 per person.
• Ed Morrissey (Hot Air, 2/23/09) Obama plans "soak the rich" class-warfare economics.
413-423 – Raul Ries, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Golden Springs in Diamond Bar (calvarygs.org), heard weekdays at 1pm with his Somebody Loves You broadcast, is hosting a free concert this Sunday night at 6pm with Kutless, Disciple, Stellar Kart, and Esterlyn. Raul will be delivering a message as well.
428-437 – Keith & Kristyn Getty (gettymusic.com), are Irish-Christian composers committed to creating and presenting modern hymns for today's Church like their "In Christ Alone," the title cut of their debut American CD. They'll be at Kindred Community Church in Anaheim this Sunday night at 6pm, tickets are $10 (call 714-282-9941).
443-452 – • Mona Charen (2/24/09) Back to the Future? Remember: Political motives often determined where New Deal money was spent.
It was May 1939. In less than two years, the Empire of Japan would spoil America's splendid isolation (a term that actually refers to a period in British foreign policy) and drag us into World War II, thus ending the Great Depression.
But on that May afternoon, electric fans cooled the House Ways and Means Committee room as the congressmen puzzled over the economy's persistent doldrums. No previous recession had lasted even half as long. The unemployment rate had again topped 20 percent — though it had been seven years since the New Deal began. Henry Morganthau, Roosevelt's Treasury secretary, was testifying, and he was brutally honest about the results of the greatest (to that time) experiment in Keynesian fiscal policy:
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong . . . somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. . . . I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot."
Burton Folsom Jr. in his new book New Deal or Raw Deal has unearthed the above quote and much more — an extraordinarily timely bit of historical housekeeping. Over the weekend we learned that several GOP governors, starting with Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, are going to decline funds from the "stimulus" bill just passed by lopsided Democratic majorities in Congress. This too has happened before.
512-523 – Gordon Turner, is running for Mayor of Los Angeles in the March 3, 2008 primary, with the general election on May 9, 2009 (gordon4mayor2009.com). He's been in the City Attorney's Office the past 14 years, starting back in 1995 at an entry-level position as a Witness Coordinator in the Hollywood Branch Court.
528-538 – • David Limbaugh (2/24/09) The Usurpers.
Those with nothing to hide don't mask their intentions in deceitful language, such as establishing deliberately and hopelessly vague yardsticks -- e.g., using "we're going to save or create 3.5 million jobs" to measure the success of the "stimulus" bill -- and calling a mostly pork bill a "stimulus bill that has absolutely no pork," a bill eliminating secret ballots in union voting "the Employee Free Choice Act," Marxist programs "measures to strengthen capitalism," taxpayer-funded health care "free medical coverage," across-the-board cuts in defense spending "shoring up our national defenses," greater-percentage tax cuts for middle- and lower-income groups "tax cuts only for the rich," government-coerced transfer payments "economic justice," the government's bailout of delinquent debtors "an act promoting financial accountability," aggressive, exclusive partisanship "a spirit of bipartisanship," a plan to triple the national budget right before "trimming it back" to levels grossly above where you started "fiscal conservatism," government suppression of political expression "the Fairness Doctrine," appointing one tax cheat after another and lobbyist after lobbyist "a new era for ethical government," already-broken promises to allow five days for public comment before signing legislation "transparency," and a government that singles out and attacks its influential critics "a government of the people."
544-554 – • Thomas Sowell (2/24/09) A Fatal Trajectory.
• Cal Thomas (2/24/09) Changing Nation.
555 – [1:30] Robert Micone/Bill O'Connor aka "The Money Guys" at Applied Financial with 5 offices around the southland, 866-SEEK-COUNSEL, and online at appliedfinancialplanning.com.
558-608 – Are our problems more economic or moral?
612-623 – • Federalist Papers #51
But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
628-638 – Calls
644-655 – Calls
• William M. Isaac (2/24/09) Bank Nationalization Isn't the Answer. Trust me. I've done this before.
• Tom Hayes And Michael S. Malone (2/24/09) Entrepreneurs Can Lead Us Out of the Crisis: It's time for the Obama administration to provide incentives for the creation of real jobs. Mr. Hayes, a long-time Silicon Valley executive, is the author of "Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business" (McGraw-Hill, 2008). Mr. Malone, a columnist for ABCNews.com, is the author of "The Future Arrived Yesterday," forthcoming from Crown Business.
• WSJ Editorial (2/24/09) Treasury's Unreality Show: Which banks will get immunity on 'Survivor: Manhattan'?
• William McGurn (2/24/09) In Obama We Trust: The president doesn't lack self-confidence.
• Human Events (2/24/09) Your Guide to the Congressional Spending Spree.
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