-
Neighborhood Watch, Anyone?
May 14, 2013 | 19 comments
-
We’re Still Going Backward
April 18, 2013 | 30 comments
-
Street Level Anti-Capitalism
April 8, 2013 | 71 comments
-
Snazzy Sequestered Screeners
March 8, 2013 | 13 comments
-
Welfare’s Failure Amid Red Ink
February 7, 2013 | 23 comments
The Right Prescription
Survival of the Well-Connected
Obamacare is all about winners and the rest of you.
Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got all wound up in March 2010 about the passage of Obamacare and told the assembled conventioneers at the National Association of Counties that the bill’s reforms were going to make health care in America “very, very exciting”?
To lift “the fog of controversy” off the legislation, all Congress had to do, she explained, was “pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”
None of us, in short, were supposed to play any part. Pelosi, Obama, and Reed had it all figured out, just as Hillary mistakenly thought she had it all figured out 16 years earlier.
The central planners were saying that we didn’t need to know what was in the legislation before it was passed and, hence, there was no reason for us to bother our members of Congress with our fact-less opinions.
In fact, it was the same for the members of Congress. The marching order from the Obama administration was to pass the legislation post-haste without reading it, without finding out “what’s in it.”
There was no time allocated to read the 1,017 pages of Washington double-speak and bureaucratic legalese in the bill.
Like in the children’s game, we were all to play Follow the Leader. No one needed to look inside the bill in order to buy it.
That used to be called “a pig in a poke,” an expression that warned against buying something when the content was concealed. The phrase is rooted in a time when buyers in farmers’ markets were cautioned to check inside the pokes, or sacks, lest they might get home and find that the farmer had sneakily dropped a worthless cat into a sack in place of a costly suckling pig.
As it’s turned out, no small number of businesses in Nancy Pelosi’s home district have opened the poke and discovered that it’s filled with some real rubbish. Their response, increasingly, is “No thanks.”
“Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide,” waivers providing a year-long pass from Obamacare, reported Matthew Boyle in the Daily Caller last week.
“Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers the Obama administration approved in April,” Boyle reports, “38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.”
Infusion Lounge has a waiver, a self-described “sophisticated nightlife destination,” perfect for “dancing hipsters” with its “Asian inspired sub-rosa lounge fashioned by Hong Kong’s hottest designer, Kinney Chan.”
Boboquivari’s restaurant with its $59 porterhouses also got a waiver, says Boyle, along with Café des Amis and its “timeless Parisian style,” plus the fancy four-star Campton Place hotel and the four-diamond Hotel Nikko.
At Boboquivari’s, add a soup appetizer, a house salad, a baked potato and a glass of Groth cabernet and the tab increases, respectively, by $9, $9, $9 and $20, taking the $59 to $106.
Add cheesecake at $8 a slice and you’re at $114. Finish up in style with a small glass of Chateau D’yqem dessert wine and your tab for one person jumps another $69 to $183, not counting tax and tip.
Still, even with all this high-end money rolling in, it appears that Boboquivari’s found Obamacare to be more unaffordable than “exciting.”
The question: If these San Francisco hot spots can’t afford to pay for Obamacare, how is a truck stop in Breezewood selling trucker-sized hot turkey sandwiches at $7.95, a big pile of mashed potatoes included, supposed to survive?
About the Author
Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (37) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Ralph R. Reiland
More Articles From The Right Prescription
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/25/survival-of-the-well-connected
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- Wincing at Cumberbatch
- The Demise of Money and Credit
- Peace in Our Times
The Spectacle Blog
The #FreeKate Narrative Melts Down: Lies Exposed in Florida Teen Sex Case
Robert Stacy McCain | 5.25.13
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
H/T to National Review Online
ADVERTISEMENT
Darin| 5.25.11 @ 6:49AM
Supporters of Obamacare (e.g., unions and AARP) are seeking waivers from what they supported.
And the saddest part is they don't even see the hypocrisy of the situation. Actually, it's more pathetic than sad.
Melvin| 5.25.11 @ 7:47AM
This is exactly why us who reside here at American Spectator already know, and who are trying to warn those who don't.
This is the way Communism and or Socialism works. One needs to look no further than the former Soviet Union, and now modern Russia. Most if not all the the Russian Multimillionaires are oligarchs from the former Soviet system, and those who befitted off it.
I don't care what Nancy Pelosi says or John Boehner, I'll wager a triple A prostrate exam that Nancy, Chuck, Harry, Chris, Barny, and cronies on both sides of the political isle are extremely, extremely knee deep in the pharmaceutical and medical care game. I'm not talking about the health care end of it, I'm talking about the dividend, subsidized end of it.
This is how the Obama Care monster is going to finish us off. Billions of dollars of untraceable government subsidies.
A multimillionaire once told my father, "Melvin, if you think that I made all these millions of dollars honestly, and the Moon is made out of Swiss Cheese."
Any of the usual cast of unethical, and corrupt characters on Capitol Hill that overwhelmingly support legislation such as Obama Care, we can be assured that they they're cronies have a vested financial interest in the medical game.
Now that the tax payer supported Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae have been bled dry. The Capital Hill Oligarchs have created another government entity to siphon off billions of dollars.
Come let us be honest here people. Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, I'll narrow it down to those two because the graft and corruption in Washington D.C. is so vast. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can give a rats backside about if you and are are healthy and receiving adequate health care. They just plain don't care, because they wouldn't be multi millionaires if they did. Just ask and American Samoan on American Samoa why they are still getting paid below the minimum wage in one of the fish canneries that Nancy Pelosi and her husband are major stock holders in.
Dee See| 5.25.11 @ 8:10AM
CHECK OUT
'The NEO Eugenists War Against Humanity'
-ALAN WATT on youtube
ALLLLLL we need to know.
GO --------check it out!
And for more fun ---punch up that video
'Fabian Socialists Win'
Watch the Australian PM unfold the agenda
speaking Chinese and addressed secretly to
the RED Chinese leadership.
CHECK IT OUT
Get back and let us know what you think.
IS THIS REAL?
If it is------------------------------------WOE!!!!!!
C Smith| 5.25.11 @ 9:43AM
Pravda, Russia's oldest newspaper predicted, almost a year ago, what is culminating this Sunday. In American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper Stanislav Mishin writes:
"... the American decent (sic) into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple [people].... the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then (sic) the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing (sic)burger than for their constitutional rights.... So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort.... Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.... The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker."
But why?
"... their faith in God was destroyed... their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then (sic) Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then (sic) happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power."
Why do I feel more at peace with my enemy then with those now gathering in the once hallowed halls of Washington? Gathering to deliver our Constitution the final coup de grâce. A formality previously administered to our nation now convulsed with a death rattle confused with talking points, argumentum ad nauseam.
But why?
The church has forgotten her witness and her Lord. She has become like the world, giving the world her blessing. Like Esau, who would have inherited, but for a morsel sold his birthright and found no place of repentance, though he sought it with tears (c.f. Heb 12:17).
And as the abominable assembly gathers for their Sunday circus in the once hallowed halls of our forefathers, halls sanctified by their witness and their blood, we are rendered slaves not free "For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? " (1Pe 4:17).
http://popularapostasy.blogspo.....ircus.html
Gretchen| 5.25.11 @ 5:05PM
C. Smith
Thank you!
Dave | 5.25.11 @ 9:48AM
The latest red flag.
Yesterday, the Republicans lost that special election in New York state by giving the district yet another typical candidate apparently unable to communicate/explain to voters what her party's proposal (the Paul Ryan plan) was for revamping the current MEDICARE system. As they've done in past elections, the Democrat candidate took advantage of yet another less than able opponent, saddled with a continuing inability to, as Ricky Ricardo used to say ... "SPLAIN."
Throughout the campaign, the Democrat candidate continued to lie about what the Ryan plan to save MEDICARE actually was and simply kept called it ... MEDISCARE and how the Republicans' deal would cut, slash and burn the healthcare coverage for MEDICARE seniors today and beyond.
As I said, that was an ongoing, bald face lie, but it seems the Republican wasn't able to dissect and refute the bogus b.s. Or as referred to earlier --SPLAIN IT!
When the votes were counted last night in N.Y. , the Dems had won (again) by way of the simple and water carried ... spin. Meanwhile, the Boehner bunch and their candidate were sent packing by the locals.
You might say - "Well, what'd you expect? It was New York. They're all nutz." Sorry, kids, the district up for grabs yesterday was and "has been" blanketed with a majority of registered Republicans, but they STILL lost. And this morning, not only are the Obama Dems crowing and clucking, but that New York swamp water (MEDISCARE) will now be carried forward until the next national election by our (so-called) mainstream media, while we here in the cheap seats continue to be stuck with the Kleenex poster boy John Boehner to lead us out of the encroaching Obama swamp.
The words limp and pitiful are seeping back into my brain. I guess it comes from too many years of watching those we elect -- bend over and grab ankles in their classic "go-along-get-along" position.
For now ...
Keep an eye on that red flag. It's up, and as Dylan said, Blowin' In The Wind.
Indiana Alex| 5.25.11 @ 10:17AM
Apparently it's not simple enough to SPLAIN that the Ryan plan wouldn't impact current medicare recipients at all, and in fact wouldn't impact anyone over 55.
Of course the Dem's medicare plan will impact everyone on medicare...
It's really not difficult to beat back this nonsense in a very rational manner, but the Libs play on emotion, and use sound bites, which can have a much bigger impact on the typical voter, who by and large refuse to engage in anything but reality TV.
Die Fledermaus| 5.25.11 @ 6:07PM
If it still comes down to the responsibility of the messenger to out message his opponent, then the electorate is truly doomed.
Don't the voters have some sort of requirement to even know what is really being proposed? As long as elections are treated as popularity contest by the ignorant voters amongst us then the message is useless. Just the delivery.
Petronius| 5.25.11 @ 9:56AM
The booboise will finally relize what they voted for when our medical professionals surrender their licenses and say "We quit!"
PCC| 5.25.11 @ 10:22AM
I live in Hong Kong. I've never heard of Kinney Chan.
Oldefarte| 5.25.11 @ 11:26AM
Hopefully in November of next year, readers of Ralph's excellent article and others as well, will simply tell Nancy the Pig & Company to STICK IT WHERE THE SUN DONE SHINE AND TWIST IT SIDEWAYS!!!!!!!!!!!
George S| 5.25.11 @ 11:38AM
A waiver is nothing more than permission to break the law. Where there is freedom, there is the equal application and enforcement of the law and safeguards are in place where you cannot buy your way out of them (i.e., points on drivers license plus the fine). Where there is tyranny, however, laws are random and capricious, and being able to buy your way out of them is a means of survival.
Jack London| 5.25.11 @ 2:45PM
What pompous nonsense. At last we have something approaching universal coverage to come but you'd rather chuck these low-paid workers under a bus. (And of course this article is another stupid scam - the waivers were applied for by a third party health plan administrator.)
And with the 'alternate' Ryan plan totaled now and a hopeless line-up of GOP challengers to come there's no way Obama is going to lose.
Oldefarte| 5.25.11 @ 3:26PM
BULL EXCRMENT, fool. The MORON can't even properly toast the Queen of England. What an embarrassment to the USA, but it will definately end in November of next year [when this sordid EXPERIMENT will be over]!!!!!!!!
Jack London| 5.25.11 @ 3:52PM
Hey 'farte', you silly silly fool - do learn how to spell - it's definitely not definately.
And why should we show any deference to a hereditary ruler? I thought we fought a war to get rid of that and we should help the Brits get rid of them too.
And your GOP 'leaders' couldn't work their way out of a paper bag.
Curtis Rasmussen| 5.25.11 @ 7:11PM
George S. is spot on. Obama behaves like a king and ruler by directly or indirectly handing out waivers to his favorite cronies. This is the rule of man, not the rule of law, with deference to the supreme ruler, Obamao, something we fought a war to eliminate. Now we elect despots with open arms.
If Obamacare stays, the only people to be thrown under the bus will be the poor who won't be able to find work as business fringe expenses go thru the roof to cover the skyrocketing healthcare premiums of a shrinking pool of existing employees. It's a self-feeding cancer, decreasing employment, increasing healthcare costs as the pool of working taxpayers shrinks, leading to increased health costs to cover the expanding unemployed, on into perpetuity.
Negro X| 5.25.11 @ 7:06PM
London,
Why the need for the waivers? Answer the question. You are an idiot.
cicero| 5.25.11 @ 2:53PM
It is amusing that the Repubs are losing elections because they cannot explain (SPLAIN) their support for their Medicaire reform. So far, no one has explained to me the logic of non-means tested Medicaire in the first place. Add to that the fact that Medicaire is primary payor even when the recipient has private insurance, and it makes even less sense.
I have no problem understanding Medicaide (if the poverty line is set realistically low), to help the truly poor. But, I have a big problem with Medicaire that has my children and grandchildren paying to provide medical coverage for people who can pay their own way. Warren Buffett is covered by Medicaire, and his private carrier is secondary to Medicaire. Good grief! If our reps in Washington can't figure this one out, there truly is no hope.
Oldefarte| 5.25.11 @ 3:43PM
Idiot, learn how to SPELL! It's Medicare, not Medicaire! What a moron! Oh, and the essential difference between Medicare and Medicaid is that the former recipients PAY FOR their Medicare premiums/benefits by payroll deductions throughout their working lives, whereas your bleeding-heart liberalism preferred Medicaid recipients DO NOT PAY FOR either/or their premiums or benefits. Moreover, Medicare recipients cannot collect their benefits until reaching age 65, whereas Medicaid's can begin collecting about the time that they are illegitimately birthed to their indigent mothers, and ALL AT TAXPAYERS' EXPENSE. In fact, taxpayers have to pay for both the medicare benefits which they will recieve at 65 and for the Medicaid which these indigents recieve throughout their whole lifetimes. If anything should be eliminated [as opposed to Medicare], it should be this Medicaid-Welfare, as it is a waste of taxpayers' hard earned money [and instead its beneficiaries should be forced off of welfare and required to perform menial labor for the free, taxpayer-funded benefits that they enjoy]. Most wealthy persons do not collect on Medicare anyway, as they prefer to use the benefits of their Cadillac-styled health insurance plans that provide much more substantial health insurance be nefits than does Medicare. Like with everyting else in life, the wealthy not only pay THEIR OWN WAY FINANCIALLY SPEAKING, BUT FOR SOCIETY'S INDIGENTS' WAYS AS WELL. As a solution for your asinine arguments, I'll make a play on the old saying that you and everyone else of the liberal political persuasion should simply FIGHT WELFARE BY GETTING A JOB [and paying your and your indigent friends' ways]!!!!!!!
Die Fledermaus| 5.25.11 @ 6:15PM
You are correct. Means testing is just another way for a tyrant to tax your labor all of your life and treat you differently if you are stupid enough to be successful in your life.
And not only the "rich" forego Medicare. My father isn't rich and at 75 he still works 30 hours a week to get insurance coverage because he knows Medicare is expensive and awful coverage.
Hey Marxist tyrants - keep trying! But if you really think you are going to be able to put a gun to a 21 year olds head and tax his labor (slavery) 6.2% for Soc Sec and 1.45% for Medicare until he retires while promising him the moon for his vote to your Dem candidate, then how dare you tell him 50 years later that because he worked hard and earned himself a nice income and retirement that, too bad, he's out luck?
Not only are you tyrants hiding behind the Constitution, you are just plain old assholes and deserve to be KICKED hard.
AZ Gal| 5.25.11 @ 4:18PM
All of you are wrong. The waiver is temporary and appllies only to a small part of the Affordable Care Act. Specifically, to the maximum annual coverage amount (ei: $750,000) per insured. ALL waivers automatically expire in 2014. Read the bill.
Negro X| 5.25.11 @ 7:07PM
Yeah, right, you need to re-read the bill you buffoon. What is the need for the waviers in the first place if the plan is so great?
Bob Grant| 5.25.11 @ 7:47PM
Are you so naive to think these "small, temporary" waivers will end in 2014?
The truth is, and what's the worst part obamacare, this bill will be in a perpetual state of adjustments, "temporary waivers", "improvements", and a constant state of flux. This includes prices which will go through the roof.
You might want to wear more sunscreen when you go outside in beautiful Arizona. The sun is penetrating your soft head.
Peter| 5.25.11 @ 4:22PM
The upstate NY election had a third Tea Party candidate that took 9% of the vote. Without that the GOP candidate would have won handily. The Tea Party has done some great things in focusing attention on the issues that matter, but when it comes to selecting candidates it has shown itself inept and has hurt Republicans in actual elections. The desire for conservative purity is admirable but it won't win elections and will leave Democrats running the show and running the nation into the ground. It seems, however, that many Tea Party members and supporters would rather lose than accept anyone with views--or votes--that don't fit precisely and neatly into a box. They need to grow up and realize that political parties don't govern from the sidelines. Democrats realize that all too clearly, and they have shown they not only want to govern but to rule--and are not afraid to use the power to do so when handed to them.
Johnny| 5.26.11 @ 6:00AM
Take a look at the "Tea party candidate", he has run as a dem several times in the past. He was not tea party backed, but used that moniker to confuse people into blowing the election, as they did.
ThatGuy| 5.25.11 @ 8:25PM
"how is a truck stop in Breezewood selling trucker-sized hot turkey sandwiches at $7.95, a big pile of mashed potatoes included, supposed to survive?"
The Gateway will sell 10,000 of them a day, as they always have. And yes, you want a slice of pie with that. Trust me.
Replica handbags&wallet; | 5.25.11 @ 9:59PM
Thanks for the nice article. It was very useful for me. Keep sharing such ideas in the future as well. This was exactly what I was looking for, and I am glad to be here!
www.shop-bag.net
Slew Bearings | 6.29.11 @ 12:01AM
Oleoresin Capsicum (OC). Oleoresin stands for blind = oil + adhesive = abstract acquired from a plant, and Capsicum is the Latin chat for pepper, so Oleoresin Capsicum agency in fact actually "pepper abstract in oil". OC is an anarchic abettor acquired from hot chili peppers such as jalapenos, chiletpin, cayenne and habaneros. Pepper Aerosol causes an acute afire sensation, acting blindness, belted breathing, and disorientation and is actual aching aloft contact. “The Journal of Investigative Ophthalmology and Beheld Science appear a abstraction that assured that individual acknowledgment of the eye to OC is harmless, but afresh acknowledgment can aftereffect in abiding changes in corneal sensitivity. They actuate no abiding abatement in beheld acuity.”
Slewing Bearings | 6.29.11 @ 12:02AM
The calefaction of the pepper aerosol is bent by the actual able alkaloid capsaicin (cap-say-a-sin). A individual bead of tasteless and odorless capsaicin in 100,000 drops of baptize creates a apparent heat. Believe it or not Capsaicin can be detected by bodies at one allotment per ten million.
The a lot of important agency in the appraisement of Pepper Aerosol authority is the Scoville calefaction rating.
The Scoville Organoleptic Test was alleged afterwards a pharmacologist alleged Wilbur Scoville who in 1912 came up with the accepted for barometer the ability of capsaicin.
Originally S
Turntable Bearings | 6.29.11 @ 12:03AM
coville would accept 5 tasters sip a admixture which included the pepper abstract and accord it a brand based aloft the akin of calefaction that the majority (3) felt.
Due to the apparatus of the computer, today the aggregate is accustomed through a adjustment alleged high-performance aqueous chromatography (HPLC). The pepper calibration ranges from aught Scoville assemblage for a anxiety pepper to 5,000 or so for a jalapeno to 200,000-300,000 for a habanero! Pure capaicin is 15,000,000 Scoville Calefaction Units (SHU). Look for the pepper aerosol by its Scoville Calefaction assemblage rating, affluence of use and assurance appearance if arcade for a pepper spray. Sizes can ambit from a 1/2 ounce claimed pepper aerosol up to 9 ounces for the buck pepper spray.
Slewing Rings | 6.29.11 @ 12:03AM
Defensive sprays appear in Keychain sizes and sizes calmly agitated on a belt or in a purse. Some are fabricated like lipstick cases and others like adornment rings. Even the aboriginal units accept abundant in them to avert an attack. In aegis situations a acceptable aerosol will attenuate an antagonist and acquiesce you to yield ascendancy of the bearings and escape. Report the adventure to the badge adapted away.