25 thoughts on ““No Plan B””

  1. OK, let us be careful with calling people associated with the President or a Presidential candidate “clowns.”

    President Bush 41 let slip with such language in a campaign speech in his failed bid for reelection running against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. “Clowns” may have been an apt and prophetic description of aspects of the gestating Clinton Adminstration, but that language was not becoming a sitting President.

    With respect to the Woodward book, it may not be sure whether “clowns” refers to the Obama people or someone, say, in the Fourth Estate. Emmett Tyrrell presented a case that Mr. Woodward “makes stuff up.” At issue is a putative interview with Bill Casey, where one-time CIA Director Casey provided Mr. Woodward with all manner of inside details at a time when Mr. Casey was on his deathbed and in all likelihood sedated into unconsciousness given what he was suffering from.

    Even Mr. Woodwards breathless Watergate reporting is suspect inasmuch as the motives of the key players were never made clear, including those of Mr. Woodward. One knock on Mr. Woodward is that he came out of a stint in U.S. Navy Intelligence, and maybe Mr. Woodward has a spook’s hidden agenda.

    So anyway, to make a reference to intelligence community tradecraft, I am moving in the direction of suspicion of people talking about a “slam dunk” case, in this instance, that Mr. Obama is completely clueless.

    I mean the narrative in the Right Blogosphere is that Mr. Obama is a scheming Socialist, and Mr. Woodward presents a case that the President is a bumbling Doofus? Are we to believe this, are we to salute this, “See, see, the President in incompetent, vote him out!” Or is this possible misdirection?

    The other version of the narrative is Mr. Obama as the “empty suit front” for, say, George Soros. But apart from being hard Left, Mr. Soros is a very intelligent man, and don’t you think he would prep his client better?

    1. He doesn’t have to be both smart and incompetent to fit the pattern.

      1) He likes socialism.
      2) He can be an excellent orator.
      3) He handed Obamacare off to Reid and Pelosi. 99% of the ‘scheming’ to is in the long-term enactment. But he recognizes the basic shape “This will necessarily kill private healthcare … eventually.” (Not a -direct- quote, but he said something damn similar.)
      4) He’s an empty suit that happens to narcissistically feel he’s the smartest man in any room. “There might be three smarter Presidents. Maybe.”
      5) But the narcissism prevents him from being a -complete- puppet. You can’t prep a potato that thinks its a god.

    2. “OK, let us be careful with calling people associated with the President or a Presidential candidate “clowns.” ”

      Why?

      I want that clown that’s presently in the White House out..I want all the clowns that work for the Head Clown…out.

  2. OK, let us be careful with calling people associated with the President or a Presidential candidate “clowns.”

    President Bush 41 let slip with such language in a campaign speech in his failed bid for reelection running against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. “Clowns” may have been an apt and prophetic description of aspects of the gestating Clinton Adminstration, but that language was not becoming a sitting President.

    I didn’t realize Rand was running for reelection.

  3. Obama swoops in after an agreement was made, where Republicans agreed to massive tax increases and very fer cuts, and demands more taxes. The talks fall apart and somehow the TP gets blamed instead of the negotiator in chief.

  4. People still don’t get the point. There has never been any intention to have a plan A on the deficit, much less a plan B. Omarxist and friends are going for a modified Cloward-Piven hypothesis with regards to the deficit. Run up the debt to death dealing levels, and the country is on the verge of total economic collapse, and then try to ram through a a really big valued-added tax, and a big tax increase on high earners under the guise of debt reduction. Then you have the money for your full-fledged welfare state.

    1. A value added tax, despite being annoying, at least has the benefit that it is harder to escape collection and can be used to reduce consumption of goods in countries with import led economies. However it will also depress the economy especially if the rates are high.

      1. Unless you repeal the 16th Amendment, very quickly you’ll find that you’ll have an income tax and the VAT. As Fletcher points out, administering a VAT can become just as complicated and expensive as the income tax as various interests give campaign contributions (bribes by another name) to get special treatment.

          1. …which means nothing going forward in a repeal situation: a repeal amendment could easily render all income taxes unconstitutional.

      2. “A value added tax, despite being annoying, at least has the benefit that it is harder to escape collection . . . ” Wow, what a keen “benefit”! Because God forbid any one escape Godzilla and his gang of redistributionists lifting their wallet.

  5. Godzilla – Take it from me that VAT will depress the economy no matter what the rate is. The reason is that administering VAT is expensive, and the money to do it has to come from somewhere.

    A related point is that VAT administration cost is disproportionately high for small businesses; a retail chain can simply include VAT in their software, a small corner hardware store (for example) not so much. And anyone with any sense knows that small businesses, in the aggregate, are the principal driver of economic growth.

    Another point is that VAT is just about never universal; basic food items and children’s clothes, for example, are excluded from VAT in the UK. This led to such nonsense as the three-year legal battle, immensely expensive no doubt, over whether Jaffa Cakes were chocolate-coated biscuits (VAT) or small cakes (non-VAT).

  6. I’ve never understood the attraction to the VAT. Seems to me highly regressive – lower income people MUST buy some things that are not excluded – and it’s a direct drag on consumption.

    I’m willing to be convinced otherwise but right now it looks like a dumb idea to me.

    Besides which, the problem in Washington D.C. is NOT revenue…..

    it’s spending.

    We don’t need no steekin’ new tax schemes. We need wholesale elimination of major Federal departments.

      1. An interesting question for sure. I am particularly interested in your own thoughts, Jim…would you be willing to stack rank them in order of greatest value provided to least value provided (and I will be willing to do the same when I see your list)

      2. Jim Writes:

        “Which departments? How much money would be saved?”

        I’ve answered this several times in this forum alone. I’ve listed many departments that would save half a trillion a year. I’m not going to do it all again although I suppose if I did it one more time, I could make a file and just re-publish if for you every time you forget the list.

        The departments I would eliminate would include the following. The values are from the 2012 requested budget – but they will give you an idea of the size of savings:

        Dept. Billions

        Agriculture – 23.8
        Commerce – 9.0
        (Keep Census – Constitutionally required) – 1.3B
        Education – 72.9
        Energy – 17.1
        Health and Human Services – 83.4
        Housing and Urban Development – 41.6
        Labor – 14.0
        Transportaion – 14.0
        Environmental Protection Agency – 10.0
        National Science Foundation 7.4
        Small Business Administration – 1.0
        Corp. For National and Community Service – 1.4
        Homeland Security – 43.6
        Other Agencies (whatever they are) – 20.7
        ————
        359.9 Billion

        State and Other International Programs – 53.1 (cut in half, let’s say)
        Fannie and Freddie Mac – 68.0 in Treasury Securities
        – 105.0 in cash
        – 150.0 Treas. Senior Preferred Stock
        (not to mention GSE Debt Outstanding of 1,539B)
        ————-
        709.45

        Obamacare goes – what is the latest estimate of how deep into the hole it is? 1 Trill? 2 Trill over 10 years?
        I cut State in half. That’s a WAG because I don’t know the breakdown. But there is a half trill with about 10 minutes research.

        I would cut those departments wholesale. Other things – like Medicare and Medicaid I would not allow them to be Federal programs – block grants to the States as a first step to backing out of the programs altogether.

        Eliminate the departments entirely. Should it then be revealed that a particular program REALLY IS NECESSARY and that the Federal Government is the proper place for it, perhaps add that program AFTER a for-real, no-kidding, Constitutional test.

        1. Thanks Gregg, where did you get your dollar savings? I checked Wikipedia and it said, for example, the 2011 estimated annual budget of the Dept of Agriculture was $132 billion. Some of the others tracked pretty closely to your estimates

    1. I’ve never understood the attraction to the VAT.

      It’s a way to grab more money, especially from those who are good at compounding their interest elsewhere.

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