I wouldn't know what the WSJ is saying on their editorial page if my wife didn't love the new stuff they added: a NYC section and a Personal Journal with a different focus every day of the week. I still may try to get her to allow me to stop subscribing as I hate helping fund Rupert Murdoch's empire.
But today they angered me to new heights. Along with the actions of the GOP Congress, which I will note has an approval rating of 7%. It is no wonder that President Obama's approval rating is falling. The GOP Congress refuses to govern and at some point the people hold everybody in Washington responsible for this failure to manage the country. The GOP is succeeding in creating a failed Presidency, except for one very important item: ObamaCare.
No matter what happens in November, President Obama will still be President. And there will be a sufficient number of Democratic votes in the Senate to prevent a 2/3's override of any vetoes. So the country may not move forward, but the GOP lack of respect for the President and their lack of respect for the people of the United States of America will become readily apparent to all and I hope ruin their chances for regaining the White House in 2016.
So what did the Wall Street Journal say that angered me so much this morning? They wrote an editorial on how ObamaCare was responsible for a decline in health care spending in the 1Q of 2014 and therefore, ObamaCare was responsible for the slow growth in the American economy and the fate of the long term unemployed.
This view is so screwed up that there is no logical single place to start to dissect it and show it to be wrong. But here I go.
1st, Health Care spending is one sixth of the economy. That is unsustainable, but faces pressure to increase as the Baby Boomers age. It has to be contained because there is enormous waste in the system. ObamaCare tries to begin to control that and it is in the national interest to do so. If the WSJ were not so putridly anti-Obama (and any other Democrat), they would acknowledge that. After all, ObamaCare was designed by the right wing Heritage Foundation as an private sector insurance alternative to a single payer plan. I am sure somewhere in the archives, theWSJ supported this design.
2nd, the biggest problem in U.S. labor global competitiveness is the fact that our employers must offer health insurance to their workers where other countries have a national single payer plan payed for through taxes and worker payments. One reason these other countries can afford this is they do not spend 4% of GDP on their military. But you will only see the WSJ seeking more spending on the military because that will raise GDP growth. Why doesn't the WSJ support spending on infrastructure to raise GDP? Do they think crumbling roads and bridges and underground pipes are going to last forever?
3rd. they are observers of the Global Economy and have been for decades. They well know (but refuse to admit it) that when a country suffers a Real Estate Bubble Burst, it takes 7 to 10 years to recover from that and the U.S. is actually doing much better than that norm. In addition, we have a demographic reality to deal with which is the retirement of the baby boomers, many of them early as a result of the Real Estate Bubble Burst, and the widespread business practice of age discrimination. When you retire, you consume less: Less House, less travel, less spending on clothes, appliances, home improvements, less eating out. And the young people coming into the job market have student loans to pay off, so they are not replacing the retiring baby boomer spending in the aggregate. So for the WSJ to say the Obama Presidency social and political priorities have generated slow growth is a joke. The President would have spent more on infrastructure if the Congress would have passed the authorizations and GDP growth would be higher if that had happened.
4th, they acknowledge that income inequality has grown but they refuse to acknowledge that globalization has defeated the benefits of supply side economics and they refuse to acknowledge that government spending has been pretty much cut to the bone in some areas of discretionary spending, but there is a refusal on the part of both parties to cut the tax subsidies that flow to business and the WSJ is silent about that. You cannot cut taxes to raise prosperity at this point.
I know that basically the WSJ editorial board is insular and crazy. Their view of the world is lock step in line with the Koch Brothers and always has been even under the former WSJ ownership.
And that is ultimately what makes me so angry. Lying!! The GOP/WSJ promulgate lies after lies after lies. As a manager, if one of my staff lied to me, I fired them as soon as I uncovered the lie. Hell hath no fury, as this writer being lied to. I detest lies with a passion that has no boundaries.
I accept differences of opinion, but I cannot tolerate lies. And that is what the conservative movement has become today. They are trying to Swift Boat America and believe if you put forth lie after lie after lie eventually you convince a sufficient number of people that lie is the truth. But eventually, reality about the truth will have to occur, and I hope the American people are as angry about lying as I am.
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