blog.thelemur.com » Politics

Trickle Up Economy

lemur — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:29:07 +0000

I’d like to take a moment to think about a trickle up economy and the repercussions it might have on our society.

First we need to:

Close tax loopholes for millionaires, like Reagan wanted to do.
Close tax loopholes for large corporations, like Reagan wanted to do.
Make sure large corporations pay their fair share. Because right now most pay $0 in taxes.
Simplify the tax code like Reagan wanted to do.
Lower taxes on working individuals and families so they can save more of their income.

Lessening the financial pressure on the working class allows workers to keep more of their money earned. I believe this will allow the following to take place:

Workers will have more money in their savings accounts. This will help prevent personal/family financial catastrophes like bankruptcies and foreclosures because workers have a “rainy day fund” set up. This will help stabilize credit markets because fewer people are defaulting.
Workers are able to make consistent payments to their credit obligations over time. This improves their credit score and keeps credit markets flush with cash. A better credit score allows workers to borrow more money.
Workers will be able to contribute to their retirement accounts. Thinking long term works best here because we have a group of individuals with a retirement strategy. When these workers retire they will be able to continue injecting cash into our economy because A: they’re still buying things, and B: they have the money to do so because they were able to save. If workers can’t save for retirement there is a generational gap in our economy’s stability because an entire generation has less purchasing power.
Workers will buy more goods and services because they have more discretionary spending money. New businesses and products will emerge because people are spending their money.
Workers will buy better goods and services instead of “just what they can afford” because they have more purchasing power. This will reward the most innovative and forward thinking companies instead of the ones that produce a mediocre product at a low price. This force businesses to compete and strengthen their products. American businesses will be pushed to build the best products we can, which will in turn help our nation’s exporting capability.
Business owners are able to hire more people, because they are selling more products, because workers are able to go out and buy them.

Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Campaign

lemur — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:27:23 +0000

Michelle Obama announced her “Let’s Move” campaign in 2010. Shortly after her announcement, Fox News railed the white house for indoctrinating our children, controlling our diets, and manipulating us with socialism. The odd thing about this particular issue is that childhood obesity and diabetes is at an all-time high. This article details one reason Fox News might have had a problem.

Michelle Obama’s plan is simple: watch what you eat, and exercise. I suspect Fox News did not agree with this approach because it is so similar to Ronald Reagan’s endorsement of a similar initiative: the Presidential Physical Fitness Award program (started by Lyndon Johnson).

Voter Registration Fraud

lemur — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 03:11:23 +0000

Fraudulent voter registrations from ACORN hit the air waves during the 2008 presidential election. The level of coverage made me start thinking about why voter registration fraud was portrayed as a serious threat.

Voter Registration vs Census

Census records are gathered every 10 years and used to:

Redistrict states (a.k.a. Gerrymandering)
Issue funds and subsidies to counties and states
Build appropriate transportation infrastructure
Ensure there are enough schools and hospitals
…and more¹

Voter registration records are gathered/updated constantly and used by the local and state government to:

Verify that a citizen’s personal identification matches a valid voter record
Confirm that a citizen lives inside the district in which they are attempting to vote
Prevent citizens from voting multiple times
Calculate voter statistics and trends

Voter Registration vs Votes

Elections are won by the politician with the most votes. Election results, state funding, schools, roads, prisons, etc. are not affected by voter registration data.

Faking Votes

Let’s say a citizen registers in multiple local districts in a single House of Representatives district. It is assumed that polling station workers will recognize the citizen on return visits. The citizen has one fake ID per local district. The citizen drives to each polling station and casts a vote for a party. At the end of the day there are 10 extra votes for a political party.

The number of “Kiss me I Voted” stickers on the citizen’s jacket might be a dead giveaway. Even if the citizen is savvy enough to remove them after each vote – I still don’t believe in organized registration/ voter/ driving rings. It is way too cumbersome.

The only way in which voter registration fraud could actually affect an election is if the voting stations had a collusion with ACORN to submit votes on behalf of bogus registrants. If this was true, there would be thousands of poll station workers in on the secret. I find it hard to believe this many people would remain silent after all this time.

ACORN has never been charged with stuffing ballots or altering legitimate ballots.

Faking Signatures

rottenacorn.com² has a list of charges brought against the organization. Falsified ballot initiative signatures appear to be the most severe infraction (in my opinion). These ballot initiatives were asking for an increase in the minimum wage to be added to the ballot.

When a ballot initiative receives the minimum number of required signatures, the initiative is added to the ballot for the next election. Ultimately, the voters are responsible for passing or blocking the proposed legislation.

Conclusion

It appears that ACORN stepped over a legal line while attempting to help lower income individuals and families. In my opinion, they have only helped get the ball rolling on certain issues.

References

Tort Reform Part 1

lemur — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:51:35 +0000

Tort reform became an increasingly popular topic during the health reform debate. Tort reform is the legislative process of reducing outrageous payouts in civil lawsuits. This article is the first in a series and examines how tort reform works.

How Tort Reform Works

Tort reform only affects civil lawsuits. A civil lawsuit is where a victim “brings a case for money damages against the offender or a third party for causing physical or emotional injuries.” ¹

The logic of Tort Reform follows this (or a similar) pattern:

Malpractice Insurance Companies

The government sets limits for the amount of money rewarded in valid civil lawsuits. The government also creates litmus tests to prevent frivolous lawsuits coming into fruition.
The number of frivolous lawsuits decline. The amount of money paid out declines as well.
Malpractice insurance companies retain more capital and can reduce premiums for doctors and hospitals.

Doctors and Hospitals

Doctors are able to perform better services because they’re treating patients based on symptoms instead of running unnecessary tests to “cover their ass.”
Doctors and hospitals pay less for malpractice insurance because their premiums are lower (see above).
Clinics and hospitals can charge less for goods and services.

In short: when the malpractice insurance companies are happy, doctors and hospitals are happy.

Patients

Patients will not be subjected to unnecessary medical procedures just because the doctor is afraid of losing their license.
Health insurance companies can reimburse less for office visits and treatments (see above).
Patient premiums go down.

In short: when doctors and hospitals are happy, patients are happy.

Conclusion

The success marker chains start with the most powerful entity (insurance companies) and ends with the least powerful (consumers). This is known as “Trickle-Down Economics.” The idea is that by helping private companies increase revenue, their wealth will “trickle down” to consumers.

According to the most recent CBO estimate tort reform could reduce the federal deficit by $54 billion over the next 10 years. The current health reform bill does not apply a particular tort reform strategy. Instead, it offers grants to states who wish to experiment with different approaches to tort reform.

Food for Thought

The positive budget implications of tort reform are tangible and blocking any Tort Reform laws is short-sighted. At the same time, where do we draw the line? Is it right for the government to tell you how much you’ve suffered? Why do individuals feel entitled to money they did not earn?

References

Congress at your Fingertips

lemur — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:38:42 +0000

I believe it is the responsibility of every American to familiarize themselves with major legislative actions of Congress. Unfortunately, the process of fact-checking, cross-referencing, and researching can be time consuming. I find most news outlets unsatisfactory, as most of them are pushing an agenda or are completely full of shit. Instead, I prefer reading the actual legislation. The process is a lot simpler (and much less boring) than you might think.

The Library of Congress has a website for accessing proposed and passed legislation at: http://thomas.loc.gov/. Searches can be conducted with text criteria or bill numbers. Advanced searches allow visitors to break searches down by: session of congress, date ranges, congressman, and so on.

Every bill in Congress is available through the website above. More importantly, every bill has an Excerpt page which explains the bill’s provisions in plain English.

Example Search

Let’s try to find the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

Visit http://thomas.loc.gov/.
Select the search by ‘Bill number’ radio toggle.
Enter “hr3590″ in the search field and click Search.

The bill’s summary page will appear next. The summary page provides quick access to:

List of everyone involved in writing the bill.
The entire bill text in HTML or PDF form.
Any Congressional Budget Office estimates requested.
And so on…

Click the ‘All Information (excerpt text)’ link to view the Layman’s explanation of the bill. This particular bill is a bit heavy (full text is ~900 pages, excerpt is ~60 pages).