hypocrisy

Paul Ryan Attacked Because His Father Died Early, Resulting in Survivor Benefits

by Hans Bader on April 22, 2011

in Healthcare, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

At the age of 16, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) suffered the death of his 55-year-old father. Because of his father’s early death, the government made survivor payments for a few years to Paul Ryan’s family — including for Paul Ryan himself, for the two years until he turned 18.

The death of Paul Ryan’s father probably cut government spending on Ryan’s family, since his father never got to collect a dime in retirement benefits despite paying into social security for many years, and since retirees typically collect at least a decade’s worth of benefits. Thus, the Ryan family got no special breaks.

But the liberal magazine The American Prospect, and liberal blogs like Crooks and Liars, Firedoglake, and Daily Kos, are using Ryan’s father’s early death against him, falsely accusing him of hypocrisy. For example, a Daily Kos diary attacks Ryan as an “evil hypocrite” in a post entitled, “Entitlement-hating Paul Ryan collected Social Security benefits until he was 18.” Never mind that Ryan’s recent budget proposal doesn’t in fact seek to abolish entitlements, much less get rid of Social Security, and doesn’t seek to reduce the survivor benefits he once received. It merely seeks to cut the rate of growth of exploding Medicare costs by eventually giving its recipients vouchers they can use to shop around for medical care.

Not all Daily Kos diaries reflect the views of Daily Kos as a whole, but this one does, since it was briefly featured on the top of the front page of Daily Kos, and was listed as a “recommended” blog post in the sidebar on the right side of Daily Kos’s main page in recent days. 282 Daily Kos readers have commented in response to it, seemingly all agreeing with its hateful sentiments.

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Herbert W. Obama

by Hans Bader on March 20, 2009 · 5 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere

In the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover raised marginal tax rates to 63%, and went on a deficit spending binge. He also signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which helped turn a recession into the Great Depression by triggering a trade war with other countries.

Obama is on the same path. His deficit-exploding $800 billion stimulus package blocked 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads. That NAFTA violation “caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade.” The CBO admits that the stimulus package will actually shrink the economy in the long run.

Yesterday, Obama praised the House’s passage of a bill to impose a 90% tax on bonuses at banks that received federal funds. He did so even though some of those banks are healthy and accepted federal TARP money under federal pressure so that unhealthy banks that also took TARP money would not be stigmatized. The bill passed in the furor over bonuses that AIG, being bailed out by taxpayers, paid to its employees. (Republicans only wanted to block the bonuses at AIG, which is a major donor to liberal politicians like Obama and the corrupt Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT); Democrats successfully extended the tax to major companies receiving TARP money).

The AIG bonuses were publicly disclosed in November, as Michael Kinsley and others note in the Washington Post today. The Administration became aware of them and signed off on them long before a public furor arose over the bonuses, at which point Obama switched positions and began cynically condemning the bonuses to curry favor with the public. (Treasury Secretary Geithner has steadily backtracked about what he knew and when, first falsely claiming that he didn’t know of the bonuses until less than a week before they were paid; then falsely claiming he knew of the bonuses but didn’t know quite how big they would be — even though AIG’s public SEC filing last November predicted the full amount of bonuses ultimately paid; and even though the Administration was reminded yet again by a Congressman in a committee hearing on March 3 about $163 million in bonuses to be paid “in the coming weeks“)).

The Administration now admits that it itself suggested to Senate banking committee chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) the very language Dodd added to the stimulus package that shielded AIG’s bonuses. “After explicitly denying responsibility, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd eventually admitted to including the exception under pressure from the administration,” notes a columnist in the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, AIG’s current employees, who don’t deserve big bonuses, but are needed in their current positions to clean up the complicated mess left behind by AIG’s managers (and unload the arcane financial instruments in its portfolio), are receiving death threats aimed at them and their families as a result of all the demagoguery by disingenuous politicians claiming to be shocked by the bonuses. The politicians are feigning surprise even though many of them (like Elijah Cummings (D-Baltimore)) have known of the bonuses since as far back as November 27. AIG employees’ homes are being staked out by left-wing demonstrators.

If the Administration didn’t want AIG employees to receive their (mostly undeserved) bonuses, it should have quietly blocked them by putting limits in prior legislation it helped pass — not publicly demonized them, which will drive them away, leaving AIG (which is now 80-percent government-owned) losing even more money at taxpayer expense. Bonuses cost the taxpayers money; but so do death threats, which discourage talented employees from working at banks and companies taken over by the government.

Obama’s more than $8 trillion in new spending commitments will require far larger increases in marginal tax rates than he proposed in his 2008 campaign.

Some of the employees subject to the 90 percent federal income tax on bonuses passed by the House will actually end up with negative pay, not only receiving nothing after taxes, but having to pay countless thousands of dollars they don’t even have. This is because they will have to pay other income-based charges on top of the 90 percent rate, including but not limited to Medicare tax (1.45%), state income taxes (up to 10.3%), and other legal obligations, such as family-court orders based on pre-tax income (in Massachusetts, divorced fathers pay 25% of pre-tax income, for just one child, in child support! Child-support payments are not tax-deductible. Some courts have formulas for alimony that are based on pre-tax income, ranging up to 30% of gross income.).

The combination of death threats and negative pay will discourage talented employees from working at AIG and other companies being propped up by the government, resulting in even greater taxpayer losses.

Hypocritical Posturing By Obama Over AIG Bonuses

by Hans Bader on March 17, 2009 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Employment, Labor, Odds & Ends, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere

In response to public outrage, Obama is belatedly criticizing the millions of dollars in bonuses that AIG, which is being bailed by taxpayers at a cost of $170 billion, is paying to its executives. But his criticism is hypocritical and dishonest, both because his administration had known about the bonuses long before they became public, and because the stimulus package he himself signed contains language specifically designed to shield those bonuses.

Who put that provision there? Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), who received $280,000 in campaign donations from AIG. (Obama himself received $103,000 from AIG). Since 2003, AIG has made most of its vast campaign contributions to liberal lawmakers — including 68 percent of its contributions in 2008. (Dodd, the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is under an ethical cloud after having received a sweetheart deal from the ailing sub-prime mortgage lender Countrywide).

While executives at AIG get bonuses courtesy of the taxpayer, unions will be receiving billions in inflated and wasteful contracts courtesy of restrictions on state projects contained in the stimulus package.

Liberal lawmakers have also taken steps to insure that illegal aliens and people who lied on their loan applications will benefit from the bailouts.

Obama claimed an economic catastrophe would happen if Congress didn’t pass the bloated $800 billion stimulus package, which guts welfare reform. But now the Congressional Budget Office admits that the “stimulus” will actually make the economy smaller “in the long run.”

Rule of Law at Stake in the UK

by Iain Murray on December 9, 2008 · 1 comment

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, International, Legal, Zeitgeist

Yesterday the UK saw a large group of protesters bring a major London airport to a halt. Plane Stupid (you can’t get them for false advertising, that’s for sure) managed to cancel over 50 flights as the airport closed for five hours while police arrested 56 people, of whom 49 have now been charged.

As Christopher Booker reminds us, eco-activists in the UK were encouraged when a jury found a gang of Greenpeace protesters not guilty of criminal damage to a power station on the grounds that they had a lawful excuse in that they believed they were stopping further global warming. The jury was swayed on what should have been an open-and-shut case by the testimony of none other than James Hansen, NASA’s climate bigwig.

I am not sure if the same “lawful excuse” defense applies in the case of aggravated trespass (perhaps m’learned friends could advise), but it is clear that the Plane Stupid types felt they had such an excuse, declaring that they were “terrified” by the threat of global warming. If it does apply, and Hansen flies in (dwell for a second on the hypocrisy involved) to support these protesters, with the Crown Prosecution Service once again failing to challenge or even balance his evidence, we may be set for a cascade where climate protesters can essentially do anything they want. Property rights will cease to have meaning and the rule of law will collapse, for the law can be set aside in the name of the environment. Britain’s unwritten constitution will have adopted a clause similar to that just adopted by Ecuador. What happens in this case will be of profound importance.

Private Jet Travel for Me, But Not for Thee

by Richard Morrison on October 14, 2008 · 3 comments

in Environment, Global Warming, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Steve Milloy and Neil Hrab, both friends of the Institute, have picked up on the amazing travel opportunity (mentioned in today’s Daily Update) that’s being offered by the World Wildlife Fund to potential donors.


Who cares how much carbon we’re emitting? We’re the good guys!

That’s right, you can join the elite of the international environmental activist class on a “remarkable 25-day journey by private jet.” This luxury trip will enable participants to “Explore natural and cultural treasures in remote areas of South America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and Africa.” These remote areas include the Amazon Rain Forest, Easter Island, Borneo, Nepal, Madagascar, Namibia and…Orlando. I’m sure that while visiting these remote and exotic locales WWF’s well-heeled donors will take only photographs and leave only (carbon) footprints.

The price for such eco-vanity? It can all be yours for a cool $64,950. Meanwhile, the WWF website warns readers of the future impact of global warming and the vital need to address our changing climate. Apparently the greatest threat to life on planet earth in human history doesn’t require jet-setting orangutan fans to curb their CO2 emissions. Not when the itinerary is stamped with WWF’s cuddly panda bear seal of approval.