The US government is spending $18 million to redesign the recovery.org website to help us keep track of government spending, with half of that money being spent over the next 6 months. $18 million for a website? Smartronix definitely has the connections. How can $18 million for a website be anything more than a payoff to friends?
Add up all the taxes we pay and it tops 50% of our income for most people, and this is a reason why. Our government considers $18 million for a website a good deal.
Some people just need to relax. A New Jersey brewery has taken New Jersey’s reputation for being all highways and named some beers in honor of highway exits in Jersey. This has got the turnpike authority and MADD concerned that it might promote drunk driving. I don’t know what to fear more, that people are stupid or bored enough to try to drum up controversey where these is none, or that they might be right and someone will take a slug from “Exit 4 Beer” and say “Hey, let’s throw the case in the car and go see what exit 4 is like.”
First I see this posting on the Planet Money blog – After Sanford’s Affair, Putting a Price on Adultery.
Then I see Nevada Senator John Ensign had an answer – his own affair cost $96,000. It seems that was the bill to get out. But the good news for him was his parents paid.
My previous post was about the influence of money on politics. This is along the same lines but is a case of Democrats customizing the tax code to benefit their union base. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has been advocating taxing our health plans in order to pay for universal health care, or at least health care reform. His proposed policy is to tax “gold-plated” health insurance plans, defined as those better than a the health plans for federal employees. Examples given by supporters of the plan are commonly highly paid company execs. But as Bloomberg.com points out, $11/hr employees of Zappos would also be taxed as they have good insurance benefits.
Guess who else has “gold-plated” benefits. All those union workers that Democrats count on for votes. But they don’t have to worry, Senator Baucus is proposing that health insurance in collective bargaining agreements won’t be taxed. That’s right, the tax code is based upon who you work for.
The Bloomberg article includes many good reasons for not applying the tax to union agreements. But that’s a straw man to the real point – each and every one of those arguments applies to each and every other working stiff and is a reason not to tax them either, they aren’t reasons to tax non-union people.
I’m not sure what to be more pissed at:
I’d like to hope I’m wrong about one of those points, but with the broken system have today I rather doubt I am.
This Is Health Care Reform?
Some politicians are saying the current health care “reform” bills will reign in costs. But the facts don’t seem to back up those statements. The Congressional Budget Office (which does non-partisan estimates) says all the proposed bills will actually increase costs. The bills seem to be targeted at increasing the income of health care providers by collecting more money for health care. That money will come from higher taxes. I haven’t seen any ideas that would actually lower health care costs across the board. It will still be cheaper to drive to Canada to get our meds.
If the “reform” is supposed to lower health care costs then the following paragraph from the NY Times article needs to be explained:
So a bill that costs $1 trillion will lower costs? Sounds like an oxymoron to me. When they talk about lowering costs they just mean they’ll find new taxes to pay for it so the budget deficit won’t grow. Not all of that will come from taxes on personal income. Companies will get additional levies related to health insurance. Let’s lead the entire country down the path of the bankrupt automakers and the bankrupt California.
So, on top off all the deficit expanding bailouts and paying for the Iraq war we need to come up with another trillion bucks to add the insurance company and health care provider profits.
Why do we think we can control costs by forcing people to buy insurance but not limiting the profits of companies providing the services. Yes, a free market is better, but the reform bills kill the free market and are just a forced transfer of money. While I’m not a fan of government control, if you want to nationalize the payment system through taxes and forced payments by employers then nationalize the whole system (again, I think it’s a bad idea but it makes more sense to me than the current proposals). At best we’re removing any incentive for health care providers to lower costs and at worst we’re giving the health care an incentive to charge more.
And now the proponents of the bills are trying to ram them through before anybody has a chance to fully analyze them. Any law has unintended consequences, especially something this complex so even the best of intentions can lead to disaster. Yet we again have a government trying to push through their pet projects before they can be fully scrutinized. They care more about meeting a date on a calendar than coming up with comprehensive health care reform.
Out government is again failing to server the interests of the people it’s supposed to represent.