Just the Facts - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Just the Facts
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A FEW INCONVENIENT FACTS
Re: Philip Klein’s The Myth of the 46 Million:

I have often wondered what facts were put forward when Medicare was under consideration by the Congress?  What were the numbers of uninsured elderly and were they truly going without health care? Or, did it just seem like a good thing to do for the senior citizens (especially when life expectancy was so much lower)? Why are the proponents of government health care for all so reluctant to examine the facts?
Martha Francois
Portland, Oregon


Our Democrats in Washington have decided to nationalize health care this year. Our health care costs about $1.5 trillion annually (it should be called sick care — care of the healthy costs little or nothing) in order to decrease this cost while extending health insurance to all 300 million citizens from the 250 million insured now. Of this total cost of $1.5 trillion about one third or $500 billion is spent on malpractice insurance and defensive medicine.

The combined population of Japan, Germany, and Great Britain is some 250 million; those three countries have a total of 35,000 lawyers. We maintain some 1,100,000 lawyers in this country in the style to which they have become accustomed, which is very much higher than that of an average American professional.

How come this enormous difference? Well, in all developed countries except ours the loser in a court case pays all the costs — of the court and of the defendant, both direct and indirect; here the loser just walks away to sue somebody else, preferably a private drug corporation, a doctor, a hospital, or anybody with a deep pocket. Our trial lawyers are hyenas sucking the blood of this country’s economy, with the help of phony experts and primitive juries.
Marc Jeric
Las Vegas, Nevada

WE’RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD
Re: Joseph Shattan’s The Day Our House Caught Fire:

I had thought that President Obama was really Rand’s Mr. Thompson. Having seen him off-teleprompter recently, I’m beginning to think he is really Kosinski’s Chance the Gardener. I wonder if you can get a handheld teleprompter with canned responses to expected questions? You simply can’t make up this stuff! We may be on the road to a brave, new stagflation, but at least we’ll have a rollicking good time on the way there as we continually experience the Obamamessiah’s verbal pratfalls. Bush was supposed to be the dumb one? The comedians have been unable to find anything funny about Obama? Come on, get real! We need to pull back the curtain and find out who is behind the great and glorious Oz…er, Obama.
Stephen Zierak
Kansas City, Missouri


NOT AS PERFECT AS IT SEEMS

Re: Ben Stein’s Straight A’s for AA:

I enjoy listening to you and admire you, but you do realize how draconian and AIG-like AMR management has been, don’t you? 

Whilst the employees of American Airlines have given back BILLIONS in concessions and thousands of lay-offs, the management at AMR has reaped almost $300,000,000 in bonuses in the few years.

When the strikes at American start happening due to stalled negotiations, you will understand our deep-seated despise of AMR management. If we are nice to you, it is because that is the way people should treat people at all times, especially in business.  It is sad that you have to write an article about being treated nice. Also, we, as employees, are intimately aware of where our bread is buttered. That cannot be said about AMR since the employees are their customers.  As is said on a daily basis at Southwest Airlines where my wife works, “Take care of your employees, they will take care of business.”
Jim K. Walton
Captain, American Airlines
Chicago, Illinois


DEPT. OF INVIDIOUS COMPARISONS
Re: W. James Antle, III’s Red Ink and Blue Dogs:

Does not anyone else see the irony?

Obama and Congressional Democrats are burdening Americans with taxes that will deprive workers of income for substantial portions of their entire working lives.

Requiring people to work without compensation is — you guessed it — slavery. That a half-black American should enslave his fellow citizens as well as their children and grandchildren is an irony too painful to contemplate for long.

A prediction: When Republicans regain the White House and Congress, they will attempt to undo as much of Obama’s buffoonery as possible, Democrats will encourage civil violence. Count on it.
David Govett
Davis, California

Has anyone else noticed that more and more photographs of Obama show one of his teleprompter screens with him looking straight at it? [As in the photograph used to illustrated Mr. Antle’s piece.]

Subliminal criticizing.

Do you think Obama has had a set of teleprompters installed at his seat at the breakfast table?

(From left teleprompter -> )  “Good morning…” (from right teleprompter ->) “…children” (From left teleprompter ->) “Have you finished…” (from right teleprompter ->) “…your homework yet?”  (Engaging smile).
A. C. Santore


AT WHAT COST?
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Cap-and-Trade Socialism :

Bob, brilliant piece. So glad there are people out there like you with a brain, not afraid to call it like you see it, and wade through the subversive, oblique politics.

One important piece that might be worth following up on.

Jason Furman of the National Economic Council spoke to senate staffers in late February and told them that the CBO thinks they can bring in closer to $2 trillion over the next 10 years via their cap and trade program. This far exceeds their publicly stated estimate of $646 billion. 

All serious, credible estimates of the cost of CO2 emissions reduction policy via cap and trade are somewhere between 2-4% of GDP (Lomborg, Nordhaus, Tol, others).  We are a $14 trillion GDP economy.  I’ll trust you to do the math, but the point is that even $2 trillion is likely low.

Most importantly, and not included in your article, is that Furman told the senate staffers and CBO has stated publicly that they intend to use up to 80% of the tax, errr, revenue to fund middle class tax cuts. Therefore, the bulk of this money won’t go to “alternative energy” R&D, won’t go to “green jobs” or similar measures that are targeted at environmental improvement. Nope, this money is just part of the administrations wealth redistribution plans, plain and simple.  That’s a huge, tangible socialist maneuver, and has NOTHING to do with the environment.

You might also chase this thread.  Many credible scientists and environmental economists and statisticians in this area all have calculated what the expected difference in temperature would be in the year 2100 if all Annex I and II nations under Kyoto implemented Kyoto, met their targets, and extended those CO2 reductions into perpetuity.  The calculated difference vs. “business as usual” (IS 92a scenario in the UN IPCC reports, for reference) is between .15 – .20 degrees Celsius, in the year 2100.  At a cost of 2-4% of global GDP, not once, but every year! 

Please continue to expose this scam. It isn’t about the environment in the least. 

But ask yourself, as an intelligent person: what could be done for the world’s 1-2 billion who live off less than $2/day, and who do not have adequate access to clean water, basic sanitation, even modest amounts of basic energy a few hours/day with even 1% of this 2-4% of GDP? What improvements could be made to real environmental issues here at home with even 1% of the money from cap & rape, in terms of air quality, water quality, ecosystem services, etc., etc.

Call this out for what it really is. And feel free to use my term for the fearmongering speech used by neo-environmentalists: gaiarrhea.

Keep up the good work.
Alan Bressler

WAKE-UP CALL
Re: Quin Hillyer’s Monstrously Anti-Life:

May the truth of this article awaken the truth in the hearts and minds of those who need it. 

And in a peaceful and profound way take a stand and say “thus far and no farther!”
Maria D.


Great article but I believe he missed one very important point about the monster Obama is.

That is the fact that Obama doesn’t only promote abortion — he is on tape passing a law in the Illinois Legislature that a baby who survives a botched abortion has to be left to die, no medical care, nor sustenance. The only pro-abortion person that would support this is one who has no respect for human life.  This is not a fetus…this is a baby.  Please have the author check into this and add it to his article as an addendum. This will really get people who are tired of reading about abortion involved when they realize that they have elected a monster to President of the United States. 

I am not a radical, President Obama is.

Also, Martin Luther’s grand-niece is against abortion and says and I agree with her that Obama’s position on abortion keeps the black community down.  Between welfare which is paid to keep the dad’s out of the home and that 75% of abortions are in the black community…do we have a president that speaks out of both sides of his mouth?  I have forgotten her name, but she was on Raymond Arroyro’s EWTN World Over and spoke and she was fascinating.
Jan

Thank you so much for your courageous act in speaking out through your revelation of the truth. Having been raised in a journalism family, I developed early-on a deep respect for the “truth-tellers”…journalists. Your vocation is important. You have a ministry to the world. Yes, I know, that sounds a bit over-inflated; but you are supposed to be the defenders of the truth!  You are warriors.

“You done good”! Keep it up! The world needs to hear your words.
Barbara Humphrey Cramer
Las Vegas, Nevada
member of the Susan B. Anthony List


THE TRUST FACTOR

One of the reasons newspapers and TV news are suffering is due to stories they offer that cannot be trusted, and instead are more representative of a political agenda being advanced.  Specifically, the AP story of protesters demonstrating in front of AIG executives’ homes, and not one word who these protesters were. I saw the same protesters on TV news, and they were clearly identified by their red shirts with a big Acorn symbol, somewhat reminiscent of the Nazi Brownshirts during the thirties. Not that I am supportive of AIG’s role in this current debacle, but ACORN is no angel either. They had a big role in this mess, too, with their intimidating Stormtrooper tactics threatening bankers at their homes, that if they didn’t approve the culprit sub-prime loans, they would then visit violence upon them. That should have been the real story, not that they were some innocent victims. Remember, this is the same ACORN that got caught stuffing ballot boxes in recent elections and now wants to help conduct the 2010 census, the latter which controls congressional districts and funding for them.  It is because of ACORN, the genesis of this mess, that seniors now are barely getting by with interest on their meager savings.
Anthony B. De Angelis

IF THEIR LIPS ARE MOVING…
Re: Angelo Codevilla’s Osama Bin Elvis :

Angelo Codevilla’s article on bin Laden was terrific. May I add my own reason to believe why he is long since dead: Because his friends say he is alive.
— Colin Flaherty
Dillon, Colorado


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