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Saturday, December 12, 2009
And Now, For Some Really Important News
Posted by on 12.12.09 @ 9:42PM
Let's see: There's the 13-0 record, the SEC Championship, and making Florida QB Tim Tebow cry. What else could the Crimson Tide accomplish?
Mark Ingram becomes the first player in University of Alabama history to win the Heisman Trophy.
Congratulations on an excellent season. I understand that the folks in Pasadena, Calif., have scheduled Alabama for a Jan. 7 exhibition game against some second-rate team before officially presenting the championship trophy to the Tide.
War Doves Protest Obama in Front of the White House
Posted by on 12.12.09 @ 5:55PM
"Hey, hey Obama, say! How many kids did you kill today!?"
The above quote was a chant led by former Senator Mike Gravel at an anti-Afghan War escalation rally in front of the White House today. Around two hundred upset citizens came out to protest President Barack Obama, and his move to add 30,000 troops to fight in Afghanistan.
Among those in attendance were Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and former Green Party Presidential nominees Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney.
The makeup of the rally was mostly an older crowd, with some young people. I would say that the age distribution was somewhat similar to that of the tea party rallies -- although the similarities between tea party goers and anti-war protesters basically end with the age ranges except for one person with a "Ron Paul" sticker. Much of the crowd was sporting Green Party gear and had posters voicing their opposition. Among the signs read "War: The Audacity of Compromise", "Arrest OBusha", and "I don't vote because of people like Obama."
When a crowd member burst out during Nader's address "What about Bush!?", Nader replied "it's a seamless transition" -- saying that the war policies of the current president and the last president were the same and both were unacceptable to him. For a small but vocal crowd, Obama is not far enough to the left for them.
If the anti-war movement gains any steam, it could make things problematic for the Democrats in 2010. "They [the Democrats] have nowhere to go politically. We can go for third party candidates or go home," Nader said.
He then pointed out the threat of a Republican takeover in
2010 as a reason why the Obama coalition would need support from
the anti-war wing of the party. The reaction by the crowd was
pretty silent on the thought of a Republican takeover, but did
give Nader an energetic applause when he concluded his address a
few seconds later.
The war movement will need to do better than a couple hundred or so people in order to make much noise politically, and will need to gain favor with some more moderate members of the Democratic Party if it is to have any success. But if casualties rise as the escalation is implemented, then the movement will likely gain some steam and could cause problems for the Obama coalition.
Harry Reid in Political Trouble
Posted by on 12.12.09 @ 12:50PM
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
According to Rasmussen Reports:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continues to lag behind all potential Republican challengers in next year's U.S. Senate race in Nevada, according to new Rasmussen Reports telephone polling in the state.
For now at least, his championing of the president's health care plan appears to raise further red flags for the Democratic incumbent. Fifty-four percent (54%) of Nevada voters oppose the plan, while 44% favor it.
More significantly, however, those numbers include 49% who strongly oppose the plan while only 23% strongly favor it.
It increasingly looks like "success" in ramming through the federal health care takeover could cost Harry his job!
Can Rhonda Lee Welsch Change the World?
Posted by on 12.12.09 @ 12:25PM
"Can't never could," my father always told me. If you tell yourself you can't do something, that's a pretty good guarantee you won't do something.
Because I've extensively covered the Tea Party movement -- and actually spoken at three Tea Party events -- people often ask me what it's all about. Perhaps the best answer is that a lot of people who once thought they couldn't do anything about politics have been persuaded that they can. Richard Viguerie writes at American Thinker:
Rasmussen reports that the Tea Party Movement, which percolated only months ago, is beating the Grand Old Party.
That's amazing -- a nascent grassroots movement is more popular than a long-established political party -- and it's good news.
Republican Party leaders should be embarrassed. Instead, the Republican establishment disdains this populist uprising. . . .
What's driving the Tea Party phenomenon? Robert Stacy McCain writes at American Spectator about one tea partier, Rhonda Lee Welsch, who says, "'It's a systemic problem,' discussing the top-down approach of leaders in both parties who seem indifferent to the concerns of ordinary Americans." . . . (Emphasis added.)
Why does political leadership so easily succumb to this indifference? In part because leaders become isolated in centers of power, surrounded by sycophants who seek to advance their personal ambitions through flattery ("You're doing a great job, boss!") while constantly besieged by wealthy interests seeking to influence policy.
During the Bush years, and especially in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 election, when it seemed that Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority" had become a reality, those much ballyhooed "values volters" went home and told themselves they'd done their job. The Republicans they'd elected told themselves that they could do anything they wanted -- including amnesty for illegal aliens -- and still win re-election.
The Republican leaders would lead, and the Republican followers would follow -- or so the leaders imagined, until the back-to-back electoral disasters of 2006 and 2008. Those disasters caught the GOP elite by surprise and, as usual, they tried to blame their blunders on scapegoats, including Sarah Palin ("Stickin' With the Hockey Mom," American Spectator, Oct. 31, 2008) and the conservative grassroots who are the heart and soul of the Republican Party ("You Did Not Lose," American Spectator, Nov. 5, 2008).
A few weeks ago, I had a long conversation with a liberal journalist who asked me, "Who do you see as the leader of the conservative movement?" I didn't have an answer, but Richard Viguerie is onto something when he emphasizes the "leaderless" quality of the Tea Party grassroots, quoting a historical study of the Apaches: "You wanted to follow Geronimo? You followed Geronimo. You didn't want to follow him? Then you didn't. The power lay with each individual." Viguerie comments:
From the tea parties, the grassroots, and the alternative media, we are seeing new leaders emerge. Like our Founders, they understand that their strength of leadership does not come from a political party, but from consent of the governed. That is why they don't hitch their wagons to one person or one party.
Talk radio host Mark "The Great One" Levin discussed recently how Reagan spoke not of "his" administration, but of "this" administration. Levin noted how Reagan understood his power came from the people, not from the office he held.
Elitists who disparage the Tea Party movement have argued that such chaotic populism is un-Reaganesque, portraying the Gipper's triumph as primarily the work of intellectuals and policy specialists. Perhaps you should ask Viguerie and Levin about that. Better yet, ask Craig Shirley, whose new book Rendezvous With Destiny chronicles in fascinating detail the 1980 campaign that elected Reagan.
You don't hear Craig Shirley dissing the Tea Party people, do you? No, nor will you. Elitists who think that only pundits, policy "experts" and think-tank wonks should have a say in the political process are, in fact, the antithesis of what the Reagan Revolution was about.
Rhonda
Lee Welsch has a vision: Thousands of bikers on Harleys,
rallying for
freedom in Daytona Beach in February, and then roaring into
Washington later next year. If you think a rowdy bunch
of Harley riders can't make a difference . . . Well,
can't never could.
Spending Bill Advances, and Other Senate Developments
Posted by on 12.12.09 @ 11:05AM
The Senate just voted by a 60-34 margin to advance a $447 billion spending bill by invoking cloture, and a vote on final passage is expected tomorrow.
The chamber will remain in session today and tomorrow and will be debating the spending bill and health care, but it's unlikely that there will be votes on any health care amendments this weekend, a Senate Republican aide tells me.
Meanwhile, the Hill reports of growing doubts among Senate Democrats that they will pass a health care bill by Christmas, because at this point virtually everything will have to go perfectly for them. One big factor is how long it will take for the Congressional Budget Office to get back to them with an estimate on the new Medicare expansion idea being touted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as a "compromise."
To pass a bill before Christmas, Reid would have to get a good CBO score early next week, get all 60 Democrats on board, give 72 hours before voting to advance the final bill, clear three 60-vote procedural hurdles that would have to be spread out over six or seven days, and then hold the final vote.
Yet 10 Democrats have already sent a letter to Reid expressing concerns about the Medicare expansion idea, and the liberal Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida has called it a "non starter."
A Senate Republican aide also tells me that they'll need to vote on a defense appropriations bill by next Friday, and it's still unclear whether Democrats will try to attach legislation to raise the federal debt limit to it.
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Paleo Case for the Afghan Surge
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 5:09PM
Daniel Larison argues in favor of President Obama's decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan.
The Administration's Strained Relationship with the Truth
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 4:19PM
For those who were tempted to buy EPA administrator Lisa Jackson's implausible denial that the risible CO2 "endangerment" finding had anything to do with getting a nice reception at the Copenhagen "Kyoto II" talks and posturing in the face of their embarassing ability to force cap-n-trade through Congress in time, take a look at her agency-wide email sent today, excerpted in pertinent part:
"MEMORANDUM
SUBJECT: A Week to Remember
FROM: Administrator Lisa P. Jackson
TO: All EPA Employees
Colleagues:
This week we made history.
On Monday, I signed the finalized endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, a decision that has been years in the making. The long-overdue finding cements 2009's place in history as the year when our government - and our agency - truly began addressing the challenge of greenhouse gas pollution and seizing the opportunities of clean energy reform....
Our actions also send a clear message to the global community that the United States - with EPA leading the way - is committed to acting on the greatest environmental challenge of our time.
That message to our global partners was absolutely critical this week in my talks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. I can't tell you how proud I was to represent the United States and all of us here at EPA in the meetings I attended. The world is watching - and they are excited about the hard work you are doing..."
This is fairly typical Obama administration sniveling and dissembling: Don't blame us it was in the works since our reckless predecessor but oh this marks the first time our government ever showed responsibility. It had nothing to do with Copenhagen posturing and what a great thing for us to do as Copenhagen began the Euros really dug it.
Tiger Woods' Real Sin
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 3:19PM
Acknowledging his multiracial background in an interview with Oprah Winfrey twelve years ago.
If it had been written by the late Sam Francis, people would recognize this kind of commentary for what it is.
Cataloguing Taibbi's Errors
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 3:12PM
Yesterday I noted one giant error in the opening of Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece on the Obama economic team, but demurred from cataloguing the rest of the piece on the grounds that it is "truly too convoluted and half-baked to critique here, except to say that that Taibbi better have been high when he wrote it."
Well, Tim Fernholz of The American Prospect, bless 'im, did the spade work and fact-checked the rest of the piece. What he found was a series of mistakes and inaccuracies so damaging that the piece literally could not have passed must at an average college or even high school paper. Here's a taste:
- Jamie Rubin. James P. Rubin is a former Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration and not Bob Rubin's son. He informally helped Hillary Clinton transition into her role as Secretary of State. James S. Rubin is Bob Rubin's son, and had a similarly unofficial role in the economic transition. Neither were on staff, on the advisory boards, or on an agency review team.
- Austan Goolsbee "didn't make the cut." Goolsbee remains one of Obama's key economic advisers and has the president's ear from his posts on the National Economic Council and the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He skipped transition work and went to work immediately in those posts.
Fernholz has a lot more. But he misses quite a lot, and doesn't even get into the larger problems that go beyond errors of fact: the piece is chock-full of conspiracy theories, false narratives, shoddy and selective reporting, and also bad writing. Rolling Stone would be better off retracting the whole thing in the next issue, if that's even possible.
Although I notice that the glaring problems with the piece haven't prevent the Huffington Post from pimping it at the top of the site.
Very Encouraging
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 1:42PM
The Hill reports that the number two Democrat in the Senate -- Majority Whip Dick Durbin -- says he's "in the dark" about the health care compromise legislation. And so is everyone else.
Diane Francis is Killing the Planet
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 1:23PM
Diane Francis, Editor-at-large for the National Post, contributes this pure drivel to the commentary page of the Financial Post. She argues that a "planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate" and stem the tide of global warming.
She complains that world leaders in Copenhagen "don't even have this on their agenda," and worries that unless governments limit couples to one kid, the human population will decimate the planet and wars over "water, scarce resources and spatial needs" will erupt.
The only problem: Ms. Francis has two kids (I mean, carbon emitting units) herself. Worse, her sister also has two kids.
Oppps.
Blatant hypocrisy aside, how would Ms. Francis intend to implement an international one-child policy? It might work in leftist European nations already committed to erasing their populations through rampant birth control and abortion, but Muslim nations would send the U.N. child police home in a body bag, probably headless.
With a world population of 6.7 billion, good luck with this one.
How About Some Real 'Traditional Values'?
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 12:35PM
Jenny Sanford has filed for divorce from her adulterous husband, which inspired some utterly irresponsible speculation:
Forgive me for exposing myself to the accusation of "inciting violence," but if Jenny would have shot that two-timing lowdown polecat the minute she found out he'd hiked the Appalachian Trail all the way to Argentina, she'd be more popular among conservative women than Sarah Palin.
Note the "if" in that sentence, denoting a hypothetical speculation. Utterly irresponsible, but who will dare disagree?
Rubio Would Have Accepted Stimulus Funds
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 12:05PM
On Thursday, former Florida House Speaker and Senate candidate Marco Rubio said in an interview that he would have "ultimately" accepted some federal stimulus money had he been governor. A rallying cry against his opponent, Governor Charlie Crist, is that Crist accepted the stimulus, publicly rallied with the president for the package, and even physically embraced President Obama during the rally. Conservatives have jumped on board the Rubio bandwagon, but his recent comment on the stimulus leaves many Florida movement conservatives wondering if they are being sold a lemon.
Continue reading…HHS Actuary Finds Senate Bill More Expensive Than "Unsustainable" Status Quo
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 11:48AM
The chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, has estimated that if the Senate health care bill became law, it would make the United States health care system more expensive than if we simply did nothing -- undermining the primary rationale for Obama's health care push.
In a report released last night, which reaches similar conclusions to its analysis of the House bill, CMS found that if the Senate health care bill passed, America would spend $234 billion more on health care over the next 10 years than if we did nothing.
As Obama put it in his June speech to the American Medical Association, "If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade." Yet if we adopt the Senate bill, spending will actually rise to 20.9 percent of GDP, according to CMS, compared to 20.8 percent if we simply do nothing.
CMS, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid, also found that if the proposed cuts to hospital payment rates go into affect, then medical providers would start losing money and be forced to drop Medicare. Specifically, it said that 20 percent of providers to Medicare's hospital insurance program "would become unprofitable within the 10-year projection period."
By 2019, CMS estimates the bill would insure 33 million more people, while still leaving 24 million without insurance. Of the 33 million who have new insurance, 18 million would be added to the Medicaid rolls.
CMS also suggest that the CLASS Act insurance program was actuarily unsound, contrary to the claims of its supporters. The CLASS Act, a program envisioned by Ted Kennedy, has received less attention in the health care debate, but it is essentially a new entitlement program contained within the larger health care entitlement bill. Should the health care bill become law, Americans would be enrolled in a governement-run insurance program in which they would pay premiums that would enable them to collect long-term care benefits down the road, though people would be allowed to opt out.
The program would start collecting premiums immediately but wouldn't begin paying out benefits right away, so it would initially run a surplus. But CMS found that by 2025, "projected benefits exceed premium revenues, resulting in a net Federal cost in the longer term."
CMS suggested that this problem could be compounded because the program would tend to attract sicker patients -- a problem known as adverse selection. The report said, " there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection would make the CLASS program unsustainable."
"Make no mistake: The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy," Obama told AMA. "It's an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It's a ticking time bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America."
But now the chief actuary in his own HHS department has said that the legislation he backs would make this problem even worse.
It's Getting Less Lonely in the Pro-BCS Club
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 11:48AM
Today, economist James Hamilton came out in favor of the BCS over a playoff system for college football. As far as I know, that makes two of us.
As is his wont, Hamilton approached the question quantitatively:
...if you do believe in such a thing as the (probabilistically) best team in the country, the more teams you put in the playoffs, the less likely it is that the best team ends up being declared the champion. Suppose for example that there's a team that with 80% probability would win its game against any other team that might make the playoffs. With a single championship game, that superior team gets declared the champion with probability 80%. With a 4-team playoff, the best team must win both its games, the probability of which is (0.8)(0.8) = 0.64. With an 8-team playoff, the best team is only going to be declared the champion about half the time.
So a playoff system actually makes it less likely that the "best" team will be declared the national champion (assuming that the BCS chooses the best two teams for the title game, which is admittedly a weak assumption).
I would add another danger of the playoff system, which is that it makes championships weighted equally across years, despite the huge disparity in overall competition from year to year. For instance, no one would compare the 2005 BCS bowl game to the 2007 edition. The first featured undefeated USC, led by Heisman winners Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart, facing undefeated Texas, with the legendary Vince Young. Those were clearly two of the best teams of recent memory. The 2007 game had a one-loss Ohio State out of a weak Big-10 playing a two-loss LSU, and the contest wasn't that good. I don't see why those two titles should be counted equally, since the 2005 one is obviously better in almost every way. The BCS allows for easier comparisons between years like this, since the teams didn't advance through the same system of playoffs.
Of course as important as football is, the larger point is that this is a discussion right now because Congress, unbelievably, is gearing up to legislate on the college football postseason. Hamilton writes,
But whatever you may think of the merits of a college football playoff, doesn't it bother you to see the U.S. Congress acting as if it's the nation's ruler on this matter?
It does me. Which is why I wrote this.
You wonder where it ends. I thought I got a pretty raw deal when I was picked 11th for pickup basketball when I was in 8th grade. Is Congress going to look into that?
The Persecuted Larry Summers
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 10:56AM
Larry Summers will always be a whipping boy for the left. I can only imagine that Obama's appointment of Summers to the National Economic Council still rankles those who had hoped on the campaign trail for a less centrist Obama economic team and instead got Summers.
But the latest charges against him, leveled by Yves Smith, seem a little unfair.
Why hasn’t a group of disgruntled Harvard alumni circulated a statement itemizing the damage that Larry Summers wrought as dean of the University? Yeah, I know, it would be divisive, grown-ups are discouraged from raising uncomfortable questions, or worse, demanding accountability of leaders.
But Summers did a great deal of damage to Harvard, and has a less than operational moral compass.. He clearly aspires to have another big job in DC, like the Fed chair, so it is important to shine a harsh light on his abject performance (and that’s before we get to the biggest issue, that he is a long-standing protege of Bob Rubin, who still seems to wield considerable influence).
From the New York Times:
"Harvard announced Thursday that it would indefinitely suspend construction on a high-tech science complex in the Allston neighborhood of Boston because of money problems….
As part of a larger long-term expansion into Allston — a pet project of Lawrence H. Summers, Dr. Faust’s predecessor at Harvard and now President Obama’s chief economic adviser — the university also bought a string of buildings there over the last 20 years. But many have remained vacant, to the chagrin of Allston residents who have accused the university of buying land and holding onto it....
The charges about the mistakes Summers made in managing Harvard's assets are probably true. But then again, why would Harvard alums feel especially vituperative toward Summers when almost all other comparable endowments suffered similar losses? In fact, it would have been very difficult for Obama to find any economists active in the market who don't have terrible losses and bad calls on their recent track record. Such miscues are the simply the price you pay for being an investment manager during a financial crisis.
Furthermore, the line about "a less than operational moral compass" (zing!, by the way) is a link to an earlier post worrying that banks connected to Summers did suspiciously well with the bailouts. I think we can all agree that it doesn't look good. But that's how politics works. If you're going to criticize Summers on that basis -- as you should -- you should also keep in mind that you don't have to look too far to find Obama team members with similar records. It's only fair to judge them the same as Summers, even if they are a little more politically correct.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 10:32AM
- Federal employees making six-figure salaries jumps from 14 percent to 19 percent of all civil servants since the beginning of the recession (USAToday)
- Baucus gave girlfriend staffer a $14,000 raise at the time they began dating (Politico)
- Even Al-Qaeda is tightening up on hiring during this recession -- five Americans were denied because they reportedly "lacked references" (Scotsman)
- Congressional Black Caucus gets $6 billion in pork from TARP funds added to legislation after walking out on Barney Frank (Breitbart)
Republicans Seize on CNN Poll Showing 61% Oppose HC Bill
Posted by on 12.11.09 @ 10:20AM
In his opening remarks on the Senate floor this morning, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell jumped on yesterday's devestating CNN poll that showed 61 percent of Americans oppose the Senate health care bill, to accuse Democrats of ignoring public opinion.
"What I keep hearing on the other side is no reference to what the American people think," McConnell said. "I hear these arguments about making history. Well, I think ignoring the public is not a great way to make history."
In addition to finding that 61 percent of the public opposes the bill, the poll also found that just 36 percent supported it. In response to other questions, 79 percent of respondents in the poll said they thought the bill would increase the deficit, and 85 percent said it would raise their taxes.
"We're looking for one courageous member of the other side of the aisle, just one," McConnell said, "to stand up and say he or she is not going to ignore the overwhelming opinions of the American people. He or she will not be so arrogant as to assume that we have the right answer here, and 61 percent of the American people somehow, don't know what they're talking about."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in his opening remarks, said that he expected to hold two votes today related to the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending package that arrived from the House.
A deal has not yet been struck on when to hold votes on a number of health care related amendments.
Among the amendments being considered is one by Sen. Byron Dorgan to allow for reimportation of prescription drugs, which has attracted bipartisan support, but according to the Hill, has been delayed because of a deal between the White House and the pharmaceutical industry.
Republicans are also offering several tax-related amendments. One, by Sen. Mike Crapo, would make sure that the health care bill keeps with President Obama's campaign pledge by stripping out all the taxes that would hit those making under $250,000 per year. Another, being offered by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Thune, would make sure that no taxes start being assessed until the benefits from the bill start being doled out.
Neither amendment will pass, because they each would unravel the existing legislation. Democrats need to raise taxes to pay for the bill, and the middle-class tax hike in the form of an insurance mandate is central to their plan. Also, taxes couldn't be delayed until benefits start, because it would mess up the accounting gimmicks Democrats are using to achieve a more favorable score from the Congressional Budget Office. Under the current legislation, the government would begin collecting taxes in 2010, but the new benefits wouldn't be offered until 2014 -- that allowed Democrats to claim that the bill cost less than $900 billion under the CBO's 2010 to 2019 budget window, and that it would lower the deficit. Changing this dynamic could lead to a CBO analysis saying the bill cost trillions, and would increase the deficit.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Quashing Dissent Not Limited to CRU
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 11:15PM
The stifling of scientific dissent on the issue of global warming is not limited to the Climategate story. Last month I blogged about how American Geophysical Union scientists Willie Soon and David Legates, both realists on climate change, had a planned alarmism rebuttal session at AGU's annual meeting suddenly yanked away from them under suspicious circumstances.
Now there's conflict within the American Physical Society over its official position on the issue, as CBS News's excellent blogger (on climate reporting, at least) Declan McCullagh reports:
The scientist who will head the American Physical Society's review of its 2007 statement calling for immediate reductions of carbon dioxide is Princeton's Robert Socolow, a prominent supporter of the link between CO2 and global warming who has warned of possible "catastrophic consequences" of climate change.
Socolow's research institute at Princeton has received well over $20 million in grants dealing with climate change and carbon reduction, plus an additional $2 million a year from BP and still more from the federal government. In an interview published by Princeton's public relations office, Socolow called CO2 a "climate problem" that governments need to address.
"It is Socolow whose entire research funding stream, well over a million dollars a year, depends on continued alarm over global warming," says William Happer, a fellow Princeton University professor and head of the Happer physics lab who has raised the question of a conflict of interest. The reason: the ostensibly neutral person charged with evaluating a statement endorsing man-made global warming is a leading proponent of precisely that theory whose funding is tied to that theory.
It's amazing how we keep finding these alarmist scientists who are funded by big oil. And it's also amazing the effect that Climategate has had on media organizations: debates on climate science are breaking out all over the cable news networks.
Save Our Property Rights
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 5:48PM
That's my topic in my column today at The Washington Times, along with a Times editorial that is related that is called "Leave our fish ponds alone," and along with a hat tip to some think tanks here. It's an important topic. Our rights as freemen depend on it.
An Appropriate Hamster Wheel for Spitzer
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 4:22PM
I've argued before that Eliot Spitzer needs to spend a lot more time gnashing his teeth in the outer darkness before he returns to public life. But now that the NY Post reports that he is considering a run for statewide office in New York, I find that my mind is changed.
Eliot Spitzer, who stepped down from the governor's office amid scandal, is now strongly considering a run for state comptroller, sources told The Post.
OK, as long as Spitzer is bound and determined to return to the scene one way or another, comptroller might just be the perfect office for him. The comptroller's job is mechanical and doesn't entail a lot of opportunities for mischief. "Spitzerism" works a lot better from the attorney general or governor's office. Spitzer is intelligent (at least in the sense that he has a high IQ) and should be capable for the job, and doing so will preoccupy him from angling for bigger positions with more discretionary powers or writing any more misbegotten Slate pieces.
Obama and Big Business, What a Surprise
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 3:52PM
In the introduction to what is, on many levels, one of the worst pieces of journalism I've ever encountered, Matt Taibbi observes,
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich.... Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.
Here is a picture of Obama on the campaign trail literally flanked by a banker from Citigroup, Robert Rubin. The other person flanking him in the picture is Laura Tyson, a member of the board of directors at Morgan Stanley.
Here is a list of the top contributors to Barack Obama's campaign:
University of California $1,591,395
Goldman Sachs $994,795
Harvard University $854,747
Microsoft Corp $833,617
Google Inc $803,436
Citigroup Inc $701,290
So Taibbi chose the 2nd and 6th largest Obama donors as examples of people who were not Obama backers.
Now that you have a general sense of the quality of the piece (if you still aren't sure, let me mention that it doesn't improve after that first paragraph), I can disclose what it's about. The reason he sets the bankers in opposition to Obama in the introduction, however monstrously erroneously, is the better to shock the reader when he reveals that Obama is actually a huge ally of...wait for it... big business.
The piece is entitled "Obama's Big Sellout." It purports to demonstrate how the improbable (to Taibbi) alliance of Obama and Big Finance came about, through a narrative casting arch-villain Robert Rubin and vampire squid Goldman Sachs as the only bad guys that is truly too convoluted and half-baked to critique here, except to say that that Taibbi better have been high when he wrote it.
But the reason it's worth mentioning at all is to show how even the most naive liberal observer -- Taibbi's understanding of American government would elicit a derisive laugh from the average 3rd grader -- is or should be starting to notice the Democratic Party's cozy relationship with big business. Taibbi concludes his 6,400 word disaster:
What's most troubling is that we don't know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different.
It is your fault.
Senate Pauses on Health Care to Move to $450 Bln Spending Bill
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 3:43PM
The Senate just voted to take a pause on the health care debate after 11 days, and move to a $450 billion omnibus spending bill.
Sen. John McCain opened up debate on the measure, which combines six spending bills into one, by blasting it for containing 4,752 earmarks costing $3.7 billion.
Lieberman "Increasingly Troubled" With Medicare Expansion
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 3:16PM
The Politico reports that the much-hyped public option "compromise" involving an expansion of Medicare to those aged 55 to 64 is making Sen. Joe Lieberman skittish.
“I am increasingly troubled about the proposal,” he told reporters. “I am worried about what impact it will have on the Medicare program’s fiscal viability and also what effect it will have on the premiums paid by people benefiting from Medicare now and whether the whole thing is viable. If you separate it from Medicare, it will be an extremely expensive program.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Olympia Snowe, said she can't see voting for it.
If Reid cannot get Snowe and Lieberman on board, then he won't have the 60 votes needed to pass the health care bill.
Pet Food For Students
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 3:12PM
Remember that questionable meat the lunch ladies served at your school cafeteria — the kind that always seemed, well, horribly off? It turns there was plenty of reason to be afraid.
USA Today reports that meat in public school lunches frequently "wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program "meets or exceeds standards in commercial products."
That isn't always the case. McDonald's, Burger King, and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.
And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.
For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called "spent hens" because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders — KFC won't buy them — and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on "quality considerations."
Holy cow. Or maybe that should be unholy cow.
Update: Oh that fickle finger of fate. The Washington Post says that the USDA will treat some lucky lawmakers and congressional staffers to a school lunch next week — to show "the improvements the department has made in the nutritional quality — and taste — of the $1.2 billion of school commodity foods and to win support to fund further improvements."
My advice: have some Tums handy.
Health Care Bill Polling Worse than Bush Social Security Plan in '05
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 2:04PM
The Democrats' health care legislation is now polling worse than President Bush's failed effort to reform Social Security did in 2005.
As I noted below, a new CNN poll
asked, "As you may know, the U.S. Senate is considering a bill
that would make major changes in the country's health care
system. Based on what you have read or heard about that
bill, do you
generally favor it or generally oppose it?"
It found that that 61 percent of Americans oppose the Senate health care bill, compared to 36 percent who support it.
Back in May of 2005 -- as the Bush Social Security reform effort began to fizzle -- CNN released a poll asking, "As you may know, a proposal has been made that would allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market or in bonds, while the rest of those taxes would remain in the Social Security system. Do you favor or oppose this proposal?"
It found that 52 percent opposed it, compared to 44 percent who favored it.
So, while Bush's failed Social Security drive had a net 8 point disapproval rating according to CNN, the Senate health care bill has a net disapproval rating of 25 points.
CNN Poll: 61% of Americans Oppose Health Care Bill
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 1:37PM
A new CNN poll is an unmitigated disaster for Democrats.
Among the key findings:
--61 percent now oppose the Senate health care bill, compared to just 36 percent who support it.
--Just 22 percent of Americans say that the proposals would help them/their family
-- 79 percent of Americans say that the Senate bill would increase the deficit.
-- And 85 percent of Americans think the Senate bill would increase their taxes.
Meanwhile, on the political front:
40 percent of people questioned say the U.S. would be better off if Democrats ran Congress while 39 percent feel things would be better if Republicans took charge on Capitol Hill. The 1-point margin is a statistical tie.
Support for Democrats is down from a 10-point advantage in August and a 25-point margin in January.
This poll, which comes amid other similar ones (see Quinipiac), shows that Democrats are losing the health care debate on substance. Whether they try to ram it through anyway under the assumption that passing nothing would be even worse for their political prospects, is another matter.
Via Brian Faughnan.
DeMint Not Affirmative on Patrick Hughes
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 12:46PM
UPDATE: Senate Conservatives Fund issued a statement late on Thursday saying that Patrick Hughes is still being considered for endorsement
As Jim mentioned, it was announced earlier today that Senator DeMint and his Senate Conservatives Fund are supporting Michael Williams for Senate in Texas.
DeMint appears to be picking fights he believes he can win. Patrick Hughes, a conservative candidate from Illinois running against a much more moderate Mark Kirk, has received little support. The Illinois businessman had reached out to DeMint in November, and the Conservatives Fund conducted an online poll asking who it should support. Hughes won 73.9 percent of the unscientific vote. In an interview with David Brody released today, Senator DeMint seemed to suggest that Hughes would not receive his endorsement:
"I've talked to Patrick. He is very intriguing. I can only help a certain number of candidates. I want to make sure we have viable candidates; folks who have at least some base out there that they can raise some money put together a campaign organization."
It looks as though Congressman Mark Kirk will not face that much national conservative opposition as the February 2 primary approaches. Kirk has been criticized by the right for his "yes" vote on Cap and Trade as well as his pro-choice views. In 2008, the congressman received a lukewarm "48" rating from American Conservative Union -- second to lowest among GOP Congressmen. But as I mentioned last week, there are several reasons why electing a conservative Republican in Illinois this late in the game would be very difficult.
DeMint Endorses Michael Williams
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 12:12PM
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) today endorsed Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams for the Senate seat that will become vacant when Sen. Kay Baily Hutchinson (R-Texas) resigns to run against Gov. Rick Perry in the GOP primary. Williams is seen as the conservative favorite to take the seat; DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund has endorsed four candidates for 2010: Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Marco Rubio in Florida, Chuck DeVore in California, and now Williams in Texas.
"Michael Williams is the Democrat Party's worst nightmare. He's a principled, outspoken conservative who will fight to stop the massive spending, bailouts and takeovers that have destroyed millions of jobs and piled a mountain of debt on our children and grandchildren," said Senator DeMint in s statement. "Michael Williams has a compelling life story, a proven conservative record and an energetic grassroots following that make him one of the most exciting Senate candidates in the nation."
I'll have more to say about Williams' candidacy later.
Who's Big Global Warming's Daddy?
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 11:54AM
USA Today's house editorial today bemoans the fact that Climategate "gives ammunition to the skeptics," but concludes that "the overwhelming scientific consensus remains that the Earth is warming, largely because of human activity, with potentially calamitous consequences involving melting ice caps, rising sea levels and shifting agricultural patterns."
So do they get a skeptic to fill the daily "Another View" slot they offer to rebut their editorial? No -- they get another alarmist! Under the panicky-but-now-tired headline "We need to act quickly!", Melanie Fitzpatrick of the Union of Scientists Concerned About Their Grant Funding writes:
Now that the United States and other countries are finally moving to seriously address global warming, polluter-funded front groups and their allies in Congress are making exaggerated claims about stolen e-mails from climate scientists in a last ditch effort to derail action.
I guess Ms. Melanie missed the memos about the vast wealth that flows to alarmist science and environmental pressure groups, which they extract both from taxpayers and extort from those same "polluters" she's talking about. And what a shock -- she's yet another politically disinterested, principled scientist who contributes to the Huffington Post.
As Dodd Goes By
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 11:17AM
There are a lot of reasons to have a low opinion of Sen. Chris Dodd -- his liberal agenda, general smugness, and sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide, just to name a few. But he may have reached a new low today.
Responding to Republican criticism about Democrats' crafting the health care bill in closed door meetings, Dodd tried to reference the film Casablanca. He started off by referring to the main setting of the film as "Nick's Café." (I'm sorry Sen. Dodd, but Bogart wasn't running a Greek diner.) Then he badly mangled his attempt to quote Claude Rains' famous line.
Here was Dodd, on the Senate floor moments ago:
“It’s that old line of Claude Rains, from the famous movie of Casablanca, walking into Nick’s Café. He looked around with Humphrey Bogart standing there and said, ‘Is there gambling going on in here?’ Shocked to believe such a thing. Is politics going on in the Senate? Yes it is.”
In the interest of redeeming the memory of Rains, here's the actual clip from the movie:
ABC: Reid Asks For Weekend Off So He Can Attend Fundraiser
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 10:59AM
Last weekend, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was quite dramatic about the need to work over the weekend to pass health care legislation.
"Fourteen thousand people lose their health insurance every day in America,” he said in remarks on the Senate floor. “The American people don’t get weekends off from this injustice."
Yet yesterday, Reid began whistling a different tune, asking Republicans to agree to allowing for a weekend off. "I see no reason to punish everybody this weekend and I hope the minority will give strong consideration to the proposal that I've made," Reid said.
Why the change?
ABC reports:
"It turns out Reid has a 1,000 plus per plate fundraiser scheduled for Saturday in New Orleans, according to one local paper, which also reports that Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-LA, a key swing moderate in the health care debate, will also be in attendance."
Holiday Cheer
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 10:54AM
Over at Resurrection Song my pal David is streaming a slew of holiday music oddities and classics amidst his usual flood of smart cultural/political commentary. And The Blog Around the Corner is running a typically clever online Advent calendar for your daily edification and amusement.
Click on over. Don't worry, the thumb of state will still be pressing down when you get back.
Sanford to Be Rebuked, Not Impeached
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 10:42AM
A special state house panel voted against impeaching embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford but unanimously approved a resolution of censure. Interestingly, all the committee's Democrats voted against impeachment and the one pro-impeachment vote came from a Republican.
Flashback: Obama Claimed "Health Care Reform Is Entitlement Reform"
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 10:25AM
Now would be a good time to remember that at the beginning of the health care reform push, the White House was arguing that it needed to act on health care in order to rein in entitlements.
You may recall that days after signing the $787 billion economic stimulus package, the White House hosted a Fiscal Responsibility Summit.
Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, declared that:
In charting a new fiscal course, we need to be clear in diagnosing the problem. The single most important thing we can do to put this nation back on a sustainable long-term fiscal course, is slow the growth rate of health care costs.
As Bob Greenstein already emphasized, health care is the key to our fiscal future.
So, to my fellow budget hawks in this room and in the rest of the country, let me be very clear. Health care reform is entitlement reform. The path to fiscal responsibility must run directly through health care.
We also must recognize that reforms to Medicare and Medicaid will only succeed in the context of slowing the overall growth rate of health care costs.
President Obama made the same point himself in an April economic speech at Gerogetown:
So if we want to get serious about fiscal discipline -- and I do -- then we're going to not only have to trim waste out of our discretionary budget -- which we've already begun -- we will also have to get serious about entitlement reform.
Now, nothing will be more important to this goal then passing health care reform that brings down costs across the system, including in Medicare and Medicaid.
So make no mistake: Health care reform is entitlement reform.
And now, the process which began with the declaration that "health care reform is entitlement reform" is reaching a conclusion with a bill that would add 15 million people to the Medicaid rolls and a last minute deal to expand the mother of all entitlements, Medicare. And to the extent that the legislation does cut Medicare spending, it is merely to finance a new entitlement.
Let us not forget, also, that so far not one official estimate has found that pending legislation would reduce the growth of our nation's overall health care costs, and when the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services evaluated the House bill, he found that it actually made our health care system even more expensive than the unsustainable status quo.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 10:22AM
- Barbara Walters names Michelle Obama "Most Fascinating Person" of 2009 (ABC)
- Democrats plan to lift debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion (Politico)
- Mark Penn received a $2.8 million stimulus contract -- Hillary's campaign still owes him $1 million (Washington Examiner)
- Bill passes through House Committee that would regulate the BCS and could pressure a playoff in college football (DallasNews.com)
Washington Post Calls Medicare Expansion a "Step Toward Single Payer"
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 9:35AM
The Washington Post editorial page laments that the health care bill is being written "on the fly" and reaches a similar conclusion as I did about the idea of expanding Medicare to those aged 55 to 64:
The irony of this late-breaking Medicare proposal is that it could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system than the milquetoast public option plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private market.
Cap-n-Trade: Now 10% Fraud-Free!
Posted by on 12.10.09 @ 8:55AM
Here's something to consider for those who wondered why the usual suspects flew up in arms earlier this week over reports that 'Circle of Commitment', countries including the U.S., were seeking to wrest control of the Kyoto revenue mechanism to the World Bank (there's no such move afoot, incidentally; that was merely an overwrought reaction to said suspects finding something that they hadn't been allowed to write).
That of course would have implications for the "global carbon offset market" if Kyoto II ropes us in and finally begins chugging down the tracks, next stop "Oil for Food on Steroids".
Today's Open Europe press briefing includes the following item (in bold in original):
A press release from the European police force Europol states that the VAT fraud afflicting the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme in the past 18 months, has resulted in the loss of approximately €5 billion euros for several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities. Europol
It seems so hard to believe that a scheme concocted by Ken Lay and the boys at Enron in the mid-1990s, adopted recently by derivatives-types as their next playground, pushed all along by Goldman Sachs and feverishly demanded by George Soros should have to suffer the indignity of such charges.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Thomas the Tank Engine and His Evil Republican Train
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 7:21PM
Brian Ledbetter at Snapped Shot calls our attention to a Canadian academic who has spotted the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's secret agenda at work in kiddie TV:
Research by the University of Alberta's Augustana Campus contends that children's programming can carry underlying political themes that may surprise parents. After analyzing 23 episodes of Thomas and Friends, a show about a train, his friends and their adventures on a fictional island, political scientist Shauna Wilton was able to identify themes that didn't seem constructive for youngsters.
"While the show conveys a number of positive political values such as tolerance, listening, communicating with others and contributing to the community, it also represents a conservative political ideology that punishes individual initiative, opposes critique and change, and relegates females to supportive roles," said Wilton, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Augustana Campus.
The Thomas and Friends TV series is shown in 130 countries around the world. Wilton noted storylines in several episodes that divided the characters into different social classes and punished those who tried to gain individual power. "Any change is seen as disrupting the natural order of things." As well, of 49 main characters listed in the show, only eight were female, reflecting a general trend among children's programming, Wilton said. (Emphasis added.)
Coming soon to a PBS station near you: "Barney Is Gay (That's Why Dinosaurs Are Extinct)," and "Let's Deport Dora the Explorer."
Conservatives to McConnell and Kyl: Block This Health Care Bill
12.9.09 @ 5:28PM
Dear Senators McConnell and Kyl,
Thank you for your leadership in opposing the Democrat healthcare legislation these past many months. Now that Majority Leader Reid has announced a so-called "compromise" please do not allow him to railroad the Senate into a quick vote on cloture on this bill. On behalf of conservative leaders we urge you to take every action and use every Senatorial prerogative to gain additional time for the American people to understand how devastating this bill is to America's economic future and quality healthcare.
Public opinion polls show Americans are opposed to the massive government makeover of our healthcare system. Based on media reports of the so-called Reid "compromise," the bill has become even worse: it is a huge and expensive expansion of Medicare, it establishes the Federal bureaucracy as a stalking horse for government regulation of health insurance, and the bill allows Federal funding for abortions. When the American people understand these points it is likely that polls will show even greater disapproval.
You have been true statesmen in leading the opposition to the bill so far. Now that the majority has put together a one-party "compromise" it is critical that Republicans make it clear that you will use every prerogative of the minority to prevent them from jamming this new bill through. Please use every procedural tool available to you to ensure there is a full debate, including full debate on each amendment, and to ensure ample time for the American people to communicate their opposition to their elected representatives.
Sincerely,
Edwin Meese
Former Attorney General
Tim Phillips
President, Americans for Prosperity
David McIntosh
Former Member of Congress, Indiana
Colin Hanna
President, Let Freedom Ring
William Wilson
President, Americans for Limited Government
Duane Parde,
President, National Taxpayers Union
Tom Schatz
President, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
Craig Shirley
Chairman, Citizens for the Republic
Brent Bozell
President, Media Research Center
Wendy Wright
President, Concerned Women for America
Alfred Regnery
Publisher, American Spectator
Tony Perkins
President, Family Research Council
Brian McManus
Council for Affordable Health Insurance
Jim Martin
President, 60 Plus Association
Jenny Beth Martin
National Coordinator, Tea Party Patriots
William Haygood Shaker
President, American Council for Health Care Reform
J. Bradley Jansen
Director, Center for Financial Privacy & Human Rights
Karen Kerrigan
President, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
Karl Ottosen
United States Federation of Small Businesses
T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.
Former Chief Domestic Advisor to President Reagan
Andrea Lafferty
Executive Director, Traditional Values Coalition
Thomas Henry
President, RealCare Insurance Marketing
Gary Bauer
President, American Values
Beverly Gossage
Founder & Director, HSA Benefits Consulting
Tom DeWeese
President, American Policy Center
Susan Carleson
Chairman & CEO, American Civil Rights Union
Ralph F. Weber, CLU
Forest Thigpen
President, Mississippi Center for Public Policy
Kerri (Houston) Toloczko
Senior Vice President for Policy, Institute for Liberty
Marion Edwyn Harrison
Counsel, Free Congress Foundation
Deal Or No Deal?
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 4:07PM
Jeffrey Young has quotes from Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu, playing down the idea of a deal having been struck on the public option.
"There’s no specific compromise. There were discussions," Landrieu said at a press conference, Young reports at the Hill.
Further:
According to Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), sending the bill to the CBO was about all the 10 senators agree to do. "We got to a point where we couldn’t go any further until we got scores," she said. "There are a lot of things on the table still and until, you know, we hear back from CBO it’s going to be hard to see whatever I can support, for sure."
Indeed, Landrieu said, "Until the package that was sent [is] scored, we don’t know what’s in it."
Read what you will into it.
Weiner: Medicare Expansion Could Get Us to Single-Payer
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 3:55PM
Rep. Anthony Weiner, an advocate of a government-run, or single-payer health care system, is a fan of the proposal to expand Medicare to those over age 55.
“Extending this successful program to those between 55 and 64, a plan I proposed in July, would be the largest expansion of Medicare in 44 years and would perhaps get us on the path to a single payer model,” Weiner told the New York Daily News.
Via TPM.
I made largely the same point in a column (except for the part about Medicare being a "successful program").
Department of Excellence
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 3:51PM
Why do so many of America's educational institutions languish in mediocrity, while the University of Alabama soars toward the triumphant pinnacle of excellence?
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - Alabama students and faculty won't have to worry about missing class to attend the national title football game in Pasadena.
The university canceled classes from Jan. 6-8. . . .
The top-ranked Crimson Tide plays No. 2 Texas on Jan. 7 at the Rose Bowl.
Let's face it, folks: Insignificant schools like Harvard and Yale simply lack the kind of commitment to excellence necessary to becoming a genuinely first-class institution of higher learning.
If you don't mind your kid becoming a loser, send him to Cambridge or New Haven. Only winners need apply at Tuscaloosa.
Anti-Free Speech Protesters in Copenhagen
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 3:29PM
I just got back from one of many gatherings across the country where freedom-loving citizens watched a live Webcast hosted by Americans for Prosperity. Policy director Phil Kerpen and president Tim Phillips reported from the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and their event almost immediately was hijacked by global warming zealots:
For those of us here in the Raleigh area, it was reminiscent of the Leftist shout-down of Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo a few months back when he visited the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
Just shows these kids are learning nothing from their parents or their schools except how to shout down opponents with meaningless platitudes, rather than how to engage and rebut positions on the issues.
The Polls Are Getting Even Worse for Dodd
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 3:03PM
Rasmussen reported Tuesday that Senator Chris Dodd is polling thirteen points behind former Republican Congressman Rob Simmons, six points behind ex-World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, and one point (statistically tied) behind businessman and former Ron Paul advisor Peter Schiff in his 2010 re-election campaign. The same polls taken in September showed Dodd ten points behind Simmons and three points ahead of Schiff. Politico suggested Wednesday that the NRSC might be laying low on the Dodd attacks so that he does not get pushed out of the race.
The Good War vs. the Bad War
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 2:38PM
Daniel Larison isn't sure there is any good that can come from Republicans who oppose President Obama's Afghanistan policy on anything other than noninterventionist grounds. He writes, "With respect to Afghanistan, this coalition of the unprincipled is particularly unwelcome, not least because the Afghan war has always been as legitimate as the Iraq war was not."
We are now learning that there were a lot of Democrats who were as opportunistic in their support of Afghanistan -- it gave them a good war to support while opposing the bad war in Iraq -- as some Republicans are in their newfound desire to get out of Afghanistan. But let's deal with Larison's statement about the two wars on its own merits: In 2001-02, I think he is absolutely right. Afghtanistan was not a preventive war, it was an act of self-defense against the terrorists who attacked America and the government that was giving them safe haven. But is this still true in 2009? Remeber that the strictest noninterventionist Republicans now opposing the Afghan surge -- Ron Paul, Walter Jones, Jimmy Duncan -- all voted to go in eight years ago.
I'm open to the argument that preventing a worse government from taking over Afghanistan would benefit our national security, in part by making it more difficult for a worse government to take over more strategically important Pakistan. But I am deeply skeptical of our ability to accomplish much in terms of nation-building there. So while I don't agree with, say, Diana West about what constitutes just military tactics, I am inclined to agree with her about the pointlessness of the course we are now embarking upon.
Baucus is Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 1:24PM
Sen. Baucus, speaking on the Senate floor earlier this afternoon, erroneously claimed that the Congressional Budget Office determined that small business owners would see their health insurance premiums stabilize, or even fall slightly, if the Senate health care bill passed. But in reality, the CBO found that the bill would have virtually no impact on premiums for small businesses, and could even slightly raise them beyond what they otherwise would be if we did nothing.
In his remarks, Baucus told the story of a small business that was scrambling to maintain its workers, and was eventually forced to sign up with a provider that raised premiums by 20 percent, to avoid a 30 percent hike from another insurer.
“That happens today, and it is wrong," Baucus declared. "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! So if you’re a small business person under this bill, you’re going to find your premiums are going to be much more stable, and there’s going to be a much greater pool into it, so your premiums, actually, as the CBO says, should be less. Not by a lot, but less. But stable. You don’t have to worry about an insurance company coming to you next year and saying, ‘We’re going to charge you a lot more.’”
But the CBO found that whether or not the bill passes, premiums would go up on small businesses. The only question was whether they would be marginally higher or lower in 2016 than they would otherwise be. Specifically, the CBO estimated "that the change in the average premium per person resulting from the legislation could range from an increase of 1 percent to a reduction of 2 percent in 2016 (relative to current law)." Get that? Relative to the current system that is "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!" the bill could lower premiums modestly, but it could also increase them slightly.
Put in dollar terms, the CBO found that, "average premium per policy in the small group market would be in the vicinity of $7,800 for single policies and $19,200 for family policies under the proposal, compared with about $7,800 and $19,300 under current law."
So that means that under an optimistic scenario, a typical small business could hope to save $100 seven years from now on an expensive family policy, compared to what the business would have paid under the unsustainable status quo. At the same time, it's also possible that the business could end up paying even more for insurance than if we simply did nothing.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 1:21PM
- Feinstein says it is morally correct to force taxpayers to federally fund abortions (CNS)
- The British are upset that they don't think Obama sees the special relationship as that special (Daily Mail)
- Western countries aren't the only nations facing immigration issues. In Southern China, Nigerian immigrants struggle against poverty, deportation, in the "Chocolate City" of Guangdong (Asia Times)
- Social Secretary Desiree Rogers reportedly said that the Obamas wanted a "nonreligious" Christmas (Fox News)
Socialized Medicine -- So What?
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 1:15PM
That's the gist of this article on AOL News. Writes Andrea Stone: "Never mind that the public debate and advocacy ads depict nightmare scenarios of 'government bureaucrats' denying medical care, the recent controversy over breast cancer screening being only the latest. Taxpayers already cover nearly half of the nation's health care spending."
The question, of course, is whether we want to expand that government control of health care or move toward more of a true free-market model. Unfortunately, Republicans seldom frame the issue in that way, preferring to instead score points off of Democrats voting for Medicare cuts.
Bayh or Bye
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 12:53PM
Chris Cillizza has an interesting item about how Evan Bayh's vote for the Nelson-Hatch amendment -- which would have imposed serious restrictions on taxpayer funding of abortion in the health care bill -- signals the end of his national aspirations. Bayh, who'd previously voted to ban partial-birth abortions, would now have a really tough time overcoming the objections of pro-choice activists. And he's moved right on just enough issues to give him trouble in other policy areas too.
Cillizza's right that we probably won't see a President Bayh, but I think the rollcall on Nelson-Hatch signals something more basic: the political difficulty of representing a red state and voting for taxpayer funding of abortion. Bayh is up for reelection in 2010 and is trying to avoid handing a possible Republican challenger easy ammunition. It was the strategy employed by the last Democrat who ran against John Hostettler, current Congressman Brad Ellsworth.
Ted Kennedy in a Skirt
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 12:15PM
Or smart pantsuit. As expected, Martha Coakley easily won yesterday's Democratic primary to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. She'll face off against Republican State Sen. Scott Brown on Jan. 19.
Medicare "Compromise" Is Worse Than the Public Option
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 12:11PM
Over on the main site, I just posted a piece explaining why the so-called "compromise" that would expand Medicare eligibility to those over 55 is actually worse than the current incarnation of the public option.
Lowden: Harry Reid's "Greatest Fear"; Health Care Will Doom him
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 11:09AM
Nevada Republican Senate hopeful Sue Lowden hit incumbent Majority Leader Harry Reid hard on health care reform this morning at an American Spectator press breakfast. Lowden knocked Reid's Senate draft bill, predicting that the attempted health care reform will be "his Waterloo." Lowden premised her opposition to HarryCare on the grounds that it would include plans that pay for abortions and a tax on those who fail to purchase insurance that would unconstitutional. If elected in 2010 to replace Reid, Lowden stated, she would vote to repeal health care reform that looks like the current Senate bill if given the opportunity.
Lowden, a former Nevada state senator and chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, also claimed that in a large Republican primary field she is "Harry Reid's greatest fear in the general," because of her background as a state legislator and ability to fundraise. In explaining why Nevada voters seem in the polls to have become disenchanted with Reid, Lowden called Reid "not a charming guy" and "a bully," and noted that he had failed to bring Nevada major pork projects like past important Democratic senators such as Lyndon B. Johnson for Texas or Robert Byrd in West Virginia.
Lowden faces a primary battle featuring a dozen potential challengers, including Danny Tarkanian, real estate businessman and son of legendary UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, and ex-assemblywoman Sharron Angle. Lowden, holding a narrow primary lead in recent polls, declined to contrast her policy positions with those of Tarkanian or Angle, choosing instead to highlight her own personal background as an advantage in a general election against Reid.
ClimateGate Alarmists Don't Like What They've Created
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 10:36AM
So I see that the global warming alarmists exposed in their own words, computer code and other evidence as having falsified the premise for their -- what is also revealed to be inescapably -- agenda are now saying they've received death threats.
Well.
I refer them to the death threats and actual physical attacks that their side, which wholly relies upon intimidation of one kind or another, have been administering for years against those who would dare stand up for their scientific discipline. They are compiled in "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed." Incidentally, in the chapter "Stupid Science Tricks" I also name the ClimateGate actors by name and detail what they now admit to have been doing to get this hysterical campaign where it is. ClimateGate does not provide revelations, they are affirmations.
But more to the point, and acknowledging that all intimidation and certainly threats (and the attacks they have engaged in) are wrong, can we please just grasp that this is a movement whose entire existence has been one big, long running death threat, of "do what I want or everyone dies!"? In fact, in the very interviews in which they claim the death threats they can't help but lapse right into the childish and by now disgraceful routine.
Sorry that they now claim to be living the life their movement has imposed on others for year. But these people are really, very pathetic.
As Time Goes By
Posted by on 12.9.09 @ 9:35AM
Time magazine senior editor Belinda Luscombe's bio describes her as "one of TIME's most versatile writers and editors." I'll say. In an online column today she reports that Examiner.com owner Philip Anschutz "is a noted political conservative, who recently bought the American Spectator from Rupert Murdoch." You heard it there first.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
AP: Dems Drop "Public Option" As Part of Health Care Deal
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 8:29PM
The Associated Press is reporting that Senate Democrats have reached a tentative deal that would drop the so-called public option.
Although they have not yet announced details, reports in recent days have centered on a pact that would have the entity that runs the federal employee health care system oversee the creation of privately administered non-profit plans that would be offered on the new government exchanges. In return for giving up the public option, liberals would be rewarded with a plan to expand Medicare to those age 55 and over, and to expand Medicaid eligibility to 150 percent of the federal poverty level.
The new proposal would have to be evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office.
UPDATE: Brian Beutler reports that the deal still leaves open the possibility of a "triggered" public option, and that the Medicare expansion would be begin in 2011. While there would be no subsidies for the first three years, after 2014, Medicare would be offered on the exchanges to those over 55, who would be able to use the subsidies already created by the bill to pay for it. And, according to Beutler, Medicaid would not be expanded to 150 percent of the federal poverty level.
Senate Kills Nelson Abortion Amendment
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 5:37PM
The Senate just voted to table Sen. Ben Nelson's abortion amendment, by a 54 to 45 vote.
The vote could prove significant because Nelson has claimed he would filibuster any bill that did not include his Stupak-like abortion language.
The amendment would have required 60 votes to be adopted, but Democrats chose to table, or kill it, which only requires a simple majority.
In the lead up to the vote, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid tried to claim pro-life credentials before coming out against the Nelson measure. "I've consistently cast my vote against abortion," Reid said.
But he went on to claim that the underlying health care bill preserves current law and prevents taxpayer money from subsidizing abortion, while arguing that the Nelson provision went further.
"We have to keep moving toward the finish line and cannot be distracted by detours or derailed by diversions," Reid said. And echoing Obama, he insisted, "This is a health care bill, it is not an abortion bill."
UPDATE: Here's the official roll call. Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins voted in favor of tabling the amendment. Democrats voting against tabling it (and thus for the amendment) were: Sens. Nelson, Bob Casey, Evan Bayh, Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad, Ted Kaufman, and Mark Pryor.
UPDATE II: The Hill reports: "It’s made it harder to be supportive. We’ll just have to see what develops,” Nelson said after the vote. “We’ll have to see if they can make it easier.”
And on working with Reid to find common ground on abortion: "I had no Plan B," Nelson said. "Maybe somebody else has a Plan B, but I don’t see that this is one where there’s really any room for compromise."
AOL Beck "News": Shilling for Media Matters
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 4:45PM
The headline screams, if an AOL headline can be said to scream:
Glenn Beck Blasted for Endorsement
Even Fox News May Have Issue With It
Wassup with this?
Well, it seems the core of the AOL story is that "critics" claim Beck has a conflict of interest with his endorsement of gold and that Fox News has a problem with him and that…
Wait. Back up. Beck? Critics? Conflict of interest? Say again? What's that link? The actual full sentence reads:
Critics including Media Matters say it's a major conflict of interest for Beck, who has often advised the viewers of his Fox News program to buy gold to protect themselves against the collapse of the dollar -- and of Western civilization -- without informing them of his Goldline deal.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. Media Matters. You know, that non-partisan, non-conflict of interest organization with no axes to grind.
Right.
So let's re-start this story. Reporter Jeff Bercovici, who works for AOL, which is owned by the parent company of Fox competitor CNN, is using as the core of his story a hit piece provided by the highly partisan left-wing Media Matters, funded by Friends of George Soros and Barack Obama etc. etc., to zap in a highly misleading fashion Fox star Beck, who is...unbelievably enough...an Obama critic and conservative. The story is designed as if it were completely unaware of any of the conflicts presented by the news source itself. No reference by Bercovici as to the ideological and financial roots of MM, the interest that AOL might have in this story, or of reporter Bercovici's awareness that such things even exist.
In hilarious fashion, the word "shill" is used about Beck.
Another day in the life of liberal media shills who think the rest of us don't get the game.
Tom Coburn Attacks Wasteful "Stimulus" Spending
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 4:05PM
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okl.) continues to fight wasteful spending. He has released his second report on so-called stimulus spending. He explains:
Over the past ten years, the national debt more than doubled as Congress went on a spending spree-and yet we still find ourselves in the midst of an economic downturn.
Americans who have lost their job, health insurance, or home, are facing mounting personal debts, but are also faced with the question of who will pay off the staggering national debt that has grown by more than $1.4 trillion over the past year.
The federal government must join American families in prioritizing its spending by making tough decisions. When we downplay wasting money on a $6 million project, it is easy to do it again ten more times. Once $60 million is out the door, it is easy to spend another $60 million and before you know it, billions of dollars we do not have are spent on things we do not need. Sadly, this type of spending is excused in Congress because -it‘s always been done that way.‖
The American people have always rejected arguments based on -it‘s always been done that way,‖ and will continue to do so. Congress needs to make hard choices and eliminate things that are a low priority-even if doing so is unpopular-so we can preserve this country for future generations.
If President Barack Obama is sincere about his desire to trim the deficit, picking up the Cobun report would be a good place for him to start.
The Ben Nelson Test
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 3:06PM
In a recent column, I wrote: "A key procedural vote is coming -- as early as Saturday -- that will nevertheless be a moment of truth for pro-life Democrats like Ben Nelson. Do they stand with Harry Reid or Bart Stupak?" Nelson and the other pro-life Democrats failed that initial test, voting with Harry Reid to begin debate on health care legislation with substantially more liberal abortion language than found in the House bill. But Nelson has since taken the lead in trying to get Stupak-Pitts language inserted in that bill, even though there is no chance it will get the 60 votes needed for a pro-life amendment to the bill. (There are only four pro-life Democrats in the Senate and two of them -- Reid and Arkansas' Mark Pryor -- are only nominally so.)
Here's the next test: Does Nelson follow through wit his pledge to filibuster the Senate health care bill after his amendment is defeated? Or does he use the amendments he supported as cover to vote for the final bill? Nebraskans should pay close attention to their senior senator, and so should conservatives nationwide.
Snowe Opposes Medicare/Medicaid Expansion
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 2:40PM
Sen.Olympia Snowe told reporters that she was inclined to oppose a proposal to expand Medicare and Medicaid elgibility, two components that are centrai to Democratic efforts to forge a deal on the "public option," TPM reports.
If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cannot win over Snowe, that means he'll have secure the votes of all 60 Democrats. The problem is that Sen. Ben Nelson has said he would support a filibuster of any bill that did not include abortion language along the lines of the Stupak amendment that passed the House. Nelson has offered a similar measure in the Senate, but it is expected to be defeated later this afternoon.
Also, it remains unclear how Sen. Joe Lieberman, who said he would block any bill with a government-run plan, would feel about the new compromise being worked out.
Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad has also criticized plans to expand Medicare.
GOP Strategy Makes It More Difficult to Oppose Medicare Expansion
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 1:59PM
I've been frustrated by the decision of Republicans to focus their attacks on the Senate health care bill on the fact that it would cut Medicare benefits. As I've noted before, it's philosophically incoherent for Republicans to claim that that they're against government-run health care while they sanctimoniously try to protect a massive existing government health care program from any sort of cuts. Preserving the third rail status of the program will only make it more difficult to cut it down the road to avert an entitlement crisis.
But the GOP strategy is looking even more problematic now that Democrats are talking about ditching the "public option" as currently structured, and replacing it with a plan that would, in part, lower Medicare eligibility age to 55. After spending the first week of debate offering amendment after amendment reinforcing the idea of Medicare as a sacred institution, will Republicans be able to pivot and suddenly argue that those aged 55 to 64 cannot have access to this awesome program? Is the new GOP position that the government should provide individuals with unlimited health care benefits once they reach age 65, but not the option to buy in if they're 55 to 64?
Democrat Wars, Cont'd
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 1:20PM
I've argued here and elsewhere that we are likely to see Republicans become more willing to oppose military interventions now that we have a Democratic commander-in-chief. Reihan Salam made a similar argument in the Daily Beast. Daniel Larison has a couple of posts up pointing out that some of the Republicans who oppose Obama's Afghanistan plan hold radically different views about the use of military power than the Ron Paul noninterventionists who dominate the paleocon antiwar right.
This is absolutely true and something that was evident during the 1990s, when most congressional Republicans opposed Bill Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the Balkans and elsewhere. Some of these Republicans were paleocons giving noninterventionism a new hearing. Some were hawks who preferred to be projecting military power elsewhere. Some were Jacksonians who just didn't like using the military to perform social work or deliver groceries to starving countries. Other were partisan opportunists who just wanted to oppose anything Clinton did. Consider that at least one of the Republicans who took Clinton to court over Kosovo (alongside Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) later contemplated bombing Mecca under Bush.
These disparate views and motivations did not prevent these Republicans from working together to act as at least a partial brake on Clinton's military interventions. This has the potential to hold even truer in cases like Afghanistan, where the potential for casualities is vastly higher than during the airstrikes against Serbia. That doesn't mean that we should expect a plank on Just War theory in the next GOP platform. But it is the flipside to the Democrats being most antiwar at election time under a Republican president.
House Progressive Leader Slams Senate Compromise as "Inadequate"
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 1:16PM
Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the 80-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, on Tuesday blasted the government plan compromise taking shape in the Senate, saying the deal was "not even reminiscent of a public option."
Grijalva said that the White House and Senate Democrats have "have already compromised far too much. At some point in this process, the question became not what was the best policy for the American people, but what could be done to appease a recalcitrant handful who have negotiated in bad faith. We need strong leadership so close to the finish line, not efforts to water down a bill to the breaking point in a misguided attempt to win votes that were never there.”
The broad outlines of a deal would have the government body that oversees the health plan for federal employees create a number of plans administered by private non-profit companies, while also expanding Medicaid and lowering the Medicare elgibility age to 55. Grijalva said the proposal, "does not create enough private sector competition, which we desperately need to benefit working families.”
“We need a public option, period,” Grijalva concluded. “I cannot support a system that forces Americans to buy private insurance and then allows those companies to collect government subsidies without competition. Our final health care bill should be based on policy outcomes and the needs of consumers, and the direction the Senate is taking does not give me confidence.”
Although it's the least of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's concerns at the moment, Grijalva's views cannot be completely discounted, because any bill that emerges from the Senate must be reconciled with the House version and pass both chambers again.
Reid's Other Leading Nightmare: Sue Lowden
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 12:52PM
Danny Tarkanian was not the only GOP Senate candidate from Nevada upset with Harry Reid's remarks yesterday. Sue Lowden also made a statement demanding Reid apologize for his comparison of opponents of the current healthcare reform to defenders of slavery:
"Now, he compares the majority of Nevadans opposing his government-run health care scheme to proponents of slavery. ... Senator Reid should apologize -- once again -- for his unfortunate comments about our citizens."
The currently leading candidate, Lowden has polled ahead of Danny Tarkanian in the last two Mason-Dixon primary polls. The latest poll, conducted from 11/30-12/02, shows the former State Senator ahead of Tarkanian 25-24, with 33 percent undecided. The same poll indicated that Lowden was ahead of Reid by 10 points in the general election, while Tarkanian was ahead by 6 points. Both candidates claim to be pro-life and fiscally conservative -- Lowden is former President of Santa Fe Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Given the close margins and the chance of knocking off the Senate Majority Leader, this race will be interesting to watch.
You Say You Want A Revolution
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 12:31PM
Well, you know. A.C. Kleinheider has a column about a Ron Paul Republican's ouster from a local GOP leadership position. I've put in my two cents on Matt Collins' refusal to shake hands with Zach Wamp before. I don't have any position on how the Davidson County Republicans should have dealt with him. But I do agree with Kleinheider that this is a poor way to mainstream constitutionalist ideas (and when somebody as conventional as Howard Fineman is talking about you, your ideas are starting to permeate the mainstream). I understand Collins and company think they are going to be able to ostracize Republicans who support unconstitutional legislation. It looks to me that the main result has been self-marginalization, which is ultimately self-defeating.
Harry Reid's Armenian Nightmare
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 11:34AM
Philip Klein noted yesterday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's attack on ObamaCare opponents came in the immediate aftermath of a poll showing a majority of Nevada voters oppose ObamaCare.
Smearing 53% of his own state's voters is the latest political blunder for Reid, whose re-election in 2010 is looking increasingly doubtful. Reid provided fodder for his leading GOP opponent:
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian -- a community activist with a history of working with at-risk African-Americans in Las Vegas -- called on Senator Harry Reid to apologize on the Senate floor for comparing his health care opponents to defenders of slavery.
"Harry Reid's comments comparing opponents of his health reforms to defenders of slavery are a disgrace to the institution of the Senate and an embarrassment to Nevada. If there is any dignity left in this man, he will apologize on the Senate Floor," said Tarkanian.
Danny Tarkanian has been personally active in Las Vegas' African-American community through the Tarkanian Basketball Academy which teaches young Las Vegans -- many of whom are African-American -- life lessons through sports.
Tarkanian
-- a former UNLV point guard and son of legendary coach Jerry
"Tark the Shark" Tarkanian -- is
leading Reid in the polls. Tarkanian is only one of nine
candidates seeking the Senate nomination in next
June's Republican primary, but benefits from
strong name recognition from his basketball career.
Another advantage: Tarkanian has Tea Party credentials, while his main rival for the nomination, former state GOP chairwoman Sue Lowden, has been called the "preferred candidate of the Republican party establishment" -- the kiss of death in a year when GOP primary voters are clearly in a populist mood.
Medicare for More
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 11:29AM
Yesterday, I wrote about Democrats mulling a public option "compromise" that would allow Americans aged 55 to 64 to buy into the Medicare program. Now the Politico reports that in addition to the Medicare buy in, Democrats would want to expand Medicaid to 150 percent of the poverty level, rather than the 133 percent level in the current bill. So I thought I'd take a moment to discuss the cost implications of such proposals.
Without knowing how the Medicare buy-in would be structured, it's difficult to say how costly it would be, but we do have some sense of what factors would affect the proposal's cost. In a December 2008 report, the Congressional Budget Office evaluated a theoretical proposal to allow people aged 62 to 64 to buy into Medicare, and found that the proposal would essentially be budget neutral, because it assumed that Congress would set premiums to cover the cost of coverage. There would be a small increase in Social Security obligations because CBO assumed some people would retire earlier if they didn't have to work to receive health benefits. But annual premiums would reach $7,600 for an individual in 2011, and therefore it assumed only 300,000 people would buy into the program. This presented a risk that it would have only a modest impact on the number of uninsured in that age group, and that the people willing to pay the high premiums would be the sickest (a problem known as "adverse selection").
In another study, the Kaiser Family Foundation explored the issues involved in allowing people 55 and older to buy into Medicare. It noted that 4 million people over 55 were uninsured, and concluded that to significantly reduce that number and to attract healthier people to the program, there would have to be subsidies, which would increase government spending. The magnitude of the spending increase would obviously depend on the value of the subsidy. Given that Medicare is already bankrupting the country on its current trajectory, it would be risky to woo millions more into the system.
Meanwhile, we already have some idea of the costs involved in the Medicaid expansion. The Congressional Budget Office has evaluated the House health care bill (which expands Medicaid to 150 percent of the poverty level) and projected it to cost $425 billion from 2010-19, with an additional $34 billion passed on to the states. That compares to the $374 billion cost, and $25 billion added cost to the states under the Senate bill. (Part of the lower cost of the Senate bill is attributable to implementing the bill a year later.)
I'm still baffled as to how this would count as a compromise for moderate Democrats who were concerned about the creation of a new government-run insurer. The hope among single-payer advocates was that by creating a new government-run plan, they could gradually shift people to government health care over time. But the idea became watered down, so as it stands now, liberals could get more people under a stronger government health care umbrella by simply expanding the main two existing government programs. All of the arguments against creating a "public option" still exist in the case of a Medicare buy in, and if anything, are stronger.
One of the big fears of creating the new government plan in the first place was that it would pay doctors and hospitals at lower Medicare payment rates, forcing those providers to cut services and/or shift costs onto those with private coverage. But in the current version, the new government plan cannot tie rates to Medicare. Even Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad made this point yesterday, saying that his issues with the proposed Medicare expansion are "many of the same problems I had with previous variations of the public option, which is that then ties you to Medicare levels of reimbursement for a whole new population. For states like mine, that's a big problem."
Given Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's intention to try and ram something through the Senate by year's end, it isn't clear whether we'd even have a CBO analysis of the modified bill before a vote, even though such changes could significantly alter the cost of the legislation, in addition to the affects it could have on the solvency of government entitlements, and on payments to doctors nationwide.
Ted Kennedy to Be Posthumously Reelected
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 11:05AM
Today Massachusetts is voting on who will replace the late Ted Kennedy in the Senate. Attorney General Martha Coakley is the heavy favorite to win the Democratic primary, with Rep. Michael Capuano -- the man who holds Joe Kennedy's old House seat -- likely to come in second. Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca spent a lot of his own money (about $9 million) for no obvious impact and City Year co-founder Alan Khazei managed to wangle the Boston Globe endorsement.
Republicans will nominate state Sen. Scott Brown, a solid candidate who will put up a valiant effort before almost certainly losing on Jan. 19 to the winner of the Democratic primary. All four candidates in the Democratic race are boringly liberal and will keep Ted Kennedy's voting record alive in the Senate for the remainder of his term.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 10:42AM
- Tea party organizations in VA-5 are holding their own debates for the GOP nomination, but want a party convention rather than a primary (Altavista Journal)
- Man arrested for trying to hit Sarah Palin with tomatoes at a book signing (NY Daily News)
- Obama will talk about the Afghan war during peace prize acceptance speech (Reuters)
- Barney Frank opts in favor of purging Arlen Specter, endorses Joe Sestak for Senate (CBS)
Will the Supremes Stand Up for Religious Liberty?
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 10:32AM
Should the Christian Legal Society be forced to accept as members non-Christians who violate the tenets of historic Christianity? The correct answer shouldn't be hard to come by, but, naturally, Hastings Law School got it wrong, and its bad judgment was affirmed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
So it is on to the Supreme Court. Reports the New York Times:
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from a Christian student group that had been denied recognition by a public law school in California for excluding homosexuals and nonbelievers. The case pits anti-discrimination principles against religious freedom.
The group, the Christian Legal Society, says it welcomes all students to participate in its activities. But it does not allow students to become voting members or to assume leadership positions unless they affirm what the group calls orthodox Christian beliefs and disavow "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle." Such a lifestyle, the group says, includes "sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman."
The law school, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, part of the University of California, allows some 60 recognized student groups to use meeting space, bulletin boards and the like so long as they agree to a policy that forbids discrimination on various grounds, including religion and sexual orientation. The school withdrew recognition from the Christian group after it refused to comply with the policy.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled in favor of Hastings in March.
"Hastings imposes an open membership rule on all student groups - all groups must accept all comers as voting members even if those individuals disagree with the mission of the group," a three-judge panel of the court said in a brief unsigned decision. "The conditions on recognition are therefore viewpoint neutral and reasonable."
Three years earlier, the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, ruled to the contrary in a case involving a different chapter of the same group at an Illinois law school.
"It would be very difficult for C.L.S. to sincerely and effectively convey a message of disapproval of certain types of conduct if, at the same time, it must accept members who engage in that conduct," Judge Diane S. Sykes wrote for the majority of a divided three-judge panel. "C.L.S.'s beliefs about sexual morality are among its defining values; forcing it to accept as members those who engage in or approve of homosexual conduct would cause the group as it currently identifies itself to cease to exist."
This will be a good test whether the forces of forced diversity are ascendant on the high court.
Of course, if CLS loses, I suppose that means that Christians could retaliate by taking over the campus atheists club!
Kashkari Cashes In
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 9:59AM
Felix Salmon notes an unseemly epilogue to the story of Neel Kashkari, the Hank Paulson-picked TARP supervisor dubbed "The $700 Billion Man" for his oversight of the bailout funds prior to his spectacular DC burnout.
Having spent months recuperating from the stress of financial crisis-era government work with a retreat to a remote cabin in California, Kashkari is now set to return to business. He is going to work for the investment giant Pimco -- a firm significantly affected by Kashkari's previous work at the Treasury Department.
Salmon highlights the coinciding interests:
Remember too what Kashkari’s job was at Treasury, before Hank Paulson came out with the Plan B of simply buying equity stakes in the banks: he was meant to be putting in place a mechanism to value precisely the kind of complex debt instruments that Pimco considers itself an expert in. In doing so, he doubtless spent a great deal of time with very senior Pimco officials who were probably flattering him daily in an attempt to bring him round to their way of thinking on the matter. It hardly matters whether or not they explicitly said at the time that they’d be interested in hiring him when he left government — Kashkari’s a smart guy, and he knows how the revolving door works.
Whatever Pimco's planning on paying Kashkari, it's probably worth it. The only thing more valuable right now than knowing how the revolving door works is knowing how the federal government works. I'd think Kashkari has a pretty good idea.
Deval Backs Out for Women
Posted by on 12.8.09 @ 9:43AM
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick has struck a major blow for women's rights, reports the Boston Globe, by backing out of a scheduled speech at Boston's men-only Glover Club.
Patrick’s office explained his cancellation in a brief statement Sunday, blaming the governor’s staff for failing to alert him to “a full understanding of the club’s traditions’’ and saying, “When the governor recently found out about the fact that women were not allowed to attend such functions, he expressed his concern to the organizers and decided not to attend.’’
One interesting note from the article: apparently the Glover Club was itself founded as a tool against discrimination.
The club was founded in 1883 by leading Irish-Americans in Boston who were responding to their own exclusion from the city’s Brahmin social clubs, which were dominated by the Yankee elite.
Clover Club members wanted “to demonstrate that they were indeed gentlemen, and they knew how to behave, and use a knife and fork, and they could be a group who invited illustrious speakers, and their sons were good enough to go to Harvard,’’ said Thomas H. O’Connor, university historian at Boston College.
I guess the moral of the story is that if you go long enough without reminding everyone you're a victim of discrimination, eventually you'll be discriminating against someone else.
It's interesting that Deval Patrick refuses to participate in men-only activities when Barack Obama, who copied much of his political style, recently responded to a similar situation -- White House guys-only basketball games -- by more or less shrugging off feminists' concerns.
Monday, December 7, 2009
I Love the Smell of Tolerance in the Afternoon!
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 5:40PM
A partner at a law firm seeks advice from an ethics website when he is unable to determine whether it is right or wrong to block Federalist Society members from being hired to associate positions. Hilarity ensues. (And, per the post addendum, the partner does, indeed, dump Federalist Society tainted resumes...)
Hire whomever you want for whatever reasons, but if, say, a right-wing movie producer were wrestling with the same conundrum, Newsweek would not doubt be rushing into production a cover story, Return of the Blacklist?
Comments Created or Saved
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 5:05PM
In response to my defense against his attack on a blog post I wrote concerning the recent CBO analysis of jobs created by the stimulus, Menzie Chinn has commented on his blog:
Regarding your over-arching critique of the CBO approach, perhaps an analogy would be helpful in illuminating which approaches make sense, and which don't. I give a patient with a fever aspirin. However, the fever continues to rise. I could conclude that aspirin caused the fever to rise relative to what would have occurred otherwise. Or I could use information regarding the effect of aspirin on fevers, obtained from previous experiments/experiences, and use that information to infer what the fever would have been in the absence of dosing with aspirin. How would you conduct inference in this case?
To which I responded:
Maybe extending your analogy could illustrate the point I've been trying to make.
Imagine that a second doctor warns that the first doctor that the evidence available is actually inconclusive, and that the prescription of aspirin won't cure the fever. After the dose, the fever continues to rise. But the first doctor advertises to the world, on the basis of the same earlier studies, that he has successfully treated the patient, without bothering to mention that he has no new evidence to support that claim. I would not think that the second doctor would have any reason to be newly persuaded that the aspirin worked in this case or in general.
This is all part of a larger point I've been trying to make regarding the stimulus. The administration has been trying to chalk it up as an unmitigated success, and although the CBO's recent report didn't tell us anything new about the stimulus, that hasn't prevented the administration from pretending that the report is the straw that broke the anti-stimulus camel's back. Joe Biden:
This new report from the Congressional Budget Office is further evidence of what private forecasters and government economists have been saying: the Recovery Act is already responsible for more than 1 million jobs nationwide. From independent economists to Congress’s own nonpartisan research body, the experts have spoken and the debate is no longer whether the Recovery Act is creating and saving jobs, but how we provide even more opportunities to drive growth and support American workers.
I think that the stimulus has marginally improved the current economic outlook, although my fear is that it may have worsened the medium- and long-term outlooks. But the point is that the administration should not be allowed to trumpet huge, politically consequential victories when they have little evidence for those victories.
Does Reid Believe Most Nevadans Would Have Supported Slavery?
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 3:00PM
As I noted earlier, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared opponents of his health care bill to those who supported maintaining the institution of slavery. Yet by making such a statement, Reid was smearing not only his Republican Senate colleagues, but a majority of his constituents, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
The telephone poll of 625 registered voters found that 53 percent of Nevadans oppose the president's attempt to provide a remedy for problems in the nation's health care system. Support for the plan is at 39 percent.
HuffPo Reports Dems Mulling Lowering Medicare Age to 55
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 2:15PM
Democrats seeking to forge a compromise among themselves on the government plan are considering lowering the age of Medicare elgibility to 55, according to the Huffington Post. Described as an olive branch to liberals in exchange for watering down the so-called "public option," the idea would represent a fiscal train wreck that could be even more damaging than the creation of a new government-run plan.
As it stands now, Medicare is effectively bankrupt, and faces a long term deficit of $89 trillion. One of the few realistic ways to avert catastrophe would be to actually shrink eligibility by extending the retirement age. But lowering eligibility to those aged 55 and older would likely add millions of beneficiaries to the program, putting it in an even more dire position, and ensuring that the looming entitlement crisis hits sooner, is much more devastating, and much more difficult to dig ourselves out of.
Further, throughout the debate over the creation of a new government plan, one of the fears was that it would use the kind of low Medicare reimbursement rates that would hurt doctors and hospitals, and ultimately force them to cut services and/or shift more costs onto those with private health care. Throughout the process, the government plan was weakened, to the point where eligibility is now limited and it cannot use Medicare reimbursement rates. It's still worth opposing in my view, but it's not as dangerous when it was originally conceived. Yet the expansion of Medicare would, presumably be based on Medicare reimbursement rates, and in practice it could very well add more Americans to a government-run health care plan than the "public option" itself.
Michelle Cover Up
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 2:01PM
At least three times during the two-week run-up to the Copenhagen climate change conference (and despite the cold and snow outside), Michelle Obama wore strapless or sleeveless dresses in the 18-foot-ceilinged White House, the 5-storied Kennedy Center Opera House, and the heated and electrified South Lawn State Dinner tent.
Michelle Cover Up
By Asher Embry
The press, they love Michelle Obama when her arms are bare.
Not us. We ask the obvious: How warm d'they keep it there?
What carbon does it take to run that Kennedy Honors thing?
Or throw an ornate tented bash for India's PM Singh?
We don't begrudge a minute of Barack's festivities;
But don't then go and tell us how to live our own
lives, please!
(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)
Nelson Files Abortion Amendment
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 1:32PM
The Politico has the text of Sen. Ben Nelson's amendment on abortion, which has language that is virtually identical to the Stupak amendment to the House bill, which you can read here. Essentially, the measure would block women from using federal subsidies toward the purchase of a health care plan that includes abortion coverage, and it would prevent the government plan from covering abortion. The amendment is being co-sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, as well as Sens. Bob Casey, Sam Brownback, John Thune, Mike Enzi, Tom Coburn, Mike Johanns, David Vitter and John Barrasso.
Casey is the only other Democrat in that bunch, and the provision is expected to fail. Nelson has said he's prepared to support a GOP filibuster of any bill that does not include such language on abortion.
Approaching Convergence
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 1:20PM
President Obama's approval rating has sunk to a new low of 47 percent in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll, while his disapproval rating has reached a new high of 46 percent. Here's the full trend.
Reid Compares Opposition to Health Care Bill to Support for Slavery
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 1:10PM
Harry Reid made made the following statements today, which come to me via Brian Faughnan:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.
The Nevada Democrat, in a sweeping set of accusations on the Senate floor, also compared health care foes to those who opposed women's suffrage and the civil rights movement.
"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said. "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"
Reid is right. There were those who were stubbornly opposed to abolishing slavery. They were called Democrats.
Romney Still Defending His Big Government Health Care Plan
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 12:12PM
Currently, the only people left defending the Massachusetts health care reform are liberals who want to see Obamacare passed ... and Mitt Romney.
On Sunday, while the Senate debated a bill to have the government takeover the health care system, Romney went on CNN and argued that his state takeover of health care worked out quite well for Massachusetts. Asked by John King to respond to criticism offered by his likely 2012 presidential rival Tim Pawlenty about how spending exploded in Massachusetts after the implementation of RomneyCare, Romney responded:
I'm afraid facts are stubborn things, and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has taken a good look at the Massachusetts plan some three or four years after it was passed, and it is well within the original forecast. It's about -- a little over 1 percent of the state budget. And in fact, virtually all of our citizens are insured.
And there's an important difference between what we did and what President Barack Obama is proposing. Number one, we solved our problem at the state level. Let states deal with the problem of uninsured individuals.
And, number two, we have no public option. There's no government option. And what's primarily wrong with the president's plan is that he wants to get the federal government into the health insurance business. It's going to require massive subsidies, a trillion dollars of costs down the road.
That is not the right way to go. Instead, let states solve this problem and let them find their own plans. And by the way, if other governors can come up with something better than I did, congratulations. We'll copy one another. But the states should be the laboratories of our democracy, not a federal government, one-size- fits-all plan imposed by Congress.
This is problematic on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin, so I'll just start with stubborn facts. As Cato Institute's Michael Cannon noted about that Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation study Romney trotted out:
First, the “annual incremental cost” — $88 million — is not the total amount that the law added to the state budget each year, but the average increase from one year to the next. In other words, the total “cost from the state budget” in 2009 is not $88 million but three times that ($264 million).
Second, that average “incremental cost” assumes the state will cut payments to safety-net hospitals by $200 million next year. We’ll see about that. Safety-net hospitals are already suing the state for more money. Set aside those assumed savings, and the cumulative “cost from the state budget” for 2009 is actually $408 million.
On top of that, Romney keeps boasting that the problem with Obamacare is that it's federal, but his plan imposed costs on the federal government through the expansion of Medicaid, as Cannon reminds us:
But the larger problem is that the “cost from the state budget” ignores 80 percent of the total cost of RomneyCare. As Widmer explains, state officials only have to scrape up about 20 percent of total new spending themselves. The federal government — which is to say, taxpayers in other states — kicks in another 20 percent through the Medicaid program.
Yet this cost to the state and federal governments does not include the cost of the law on the private sector as individuals and businesses were forced to comply with a series of new mandates. "That brings the total cost of RomneyCare to at least $2.1 billion in 2009," writes Cannon.
And it's pretty absurd for Romney to argue that his plan wasn't a government takeover because there was no "public option." Even if you eliminate the public option, you're still left with legislation that forces individuals to purchase insurance or pay a tax, expands Medicaid, and provides subsidies for people to purchase government-designed insurance policies on a government-run exchange.
Romney is right about one thing. The states can be useful as laboratories of policy. Massachusetts has provided us with an example of a failed experiment in health care policy that should be a warning to all Americans as Democrats push to impose something similar on the rest of the nation.
Nelson's Abortion Amendment Expected Today as Health Care Debate Continues
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 11:20AM
The Senate health care debate enters its second week today, and Senators are now debating Judd Gregg's amendment that would prevent Medicare cuts from being used to fund a new program, the latest in a series of GOP amendments aimed at protecting Medicare.
Later today, Sen. Ben Nelson is expected to offer an amendment with more restrictive abortion language, along the lines of the Stupak amendment that passed the House. It isn't expected to pass, and Nelson has threatened to filibuster any bill that did not include such language.
Meanwhile, 10 liberal and moderate Democratic Senators are meeting behind closed doors to come up with some sort of compromise on the creation of a government plan, or so-called "public option." The New York Times reports that the latest idea involved allowing the Office of Personnel Management, which handles plans for federal employees, to "negotiate with insurers to offer one or more national health plans to individuals, families and small businesses." Yet in an interview over the weekend, Sen. Joe Lieberman remained adamant in his opposition to any form of a "public option," and reiterated that he was prepared to support a GOP filibuster.
If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid loses Nelson and Lieberman, he'll have to win over the support of Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu, and then pick up Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
But then the big question is whether a bill that passes the Senate with weaker abortion language and a watered down government plan could make it through the House once representatives of the two chambers meet to reconcile their bills.
Over the weekend, the Senate voted on four amendments, all of which needed 60 votes to be adopted. On Sunday, it rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Lincoln that would have capped the tax deductible status of insurance executive salaries at $400,000, and Sen. John Ensign's measure to limit attorney's fees in medical malpractice cases. On Saturday, it blocked Sen. Mike Johann's amendment to prevent cuts to home care under Medicare, but adopted a home health benefits motion offered by Sen. John Kerry.
More votes are expected this afternoon. Reid announced this morning that the Senate wouldn't be open late tonight because of an event at the White House, but it would be in session late for the rest of the week, and would remain in session again over the weekend.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 11:03AM
- The key to Republican success: the absence of young voters in 2010 (Washington Examiner)
- Harry Reid in trouble -- Nevada voters don't approve of him or Harrycare (Las Vegas Review Journal)
- Gordon Brown calls climate change skeptics "flat earthers" and "anti-science" (Telegraph.uk)
- Spokesperson claims McCain was referring to Palin's critics' descriptions of her when he used the word "irrelevant" to describe her (Wall Street Journal)
New Black Panther Case Grows
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 10:36AM
This case about the voter intimidation by New Black Panthers really merits greater attention. Republican House members are now doing a good job at raising a ruckus, but the grass roots need to do more, and the establishment media needs to be shamed into payng attention.
Short version: There is a major subpoena battle brewing between the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice. How can that NOT be a story?
EPA Ruling Paves Way For Regulation of Carbon
Posted by on 12.7.09 @ 10:08AM
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce today an "endangerment" finding on carbon and other greenhouse gasses, which would allow the Obama administration to impose restrictions on carbon emmissions even if "cap and trade" cannot get passed through Congress.
I wrote about this possibility for an article in the December/January version of our magazine, which is now up on our main site here. This is just one example of how Obama will attempt to impose through regulation whatever parts of his agenda that he cannot achieve legislatively.
As I wrote, "Each day, throughout the executive branch, presidentially appointed bureaucrats who remain unknown to most Americans make decisions that have consequences for the entire nation. And in President Obama's case, his appointments serve as a plan B, allowing him to realize the parts of his agenda that he is unable to enact through the legislative process."
My article looked at some of Obama's appointments on labor, communications, energy, housing, and transportation. Here's the bit that's most relevant to today's decision:
But regardless of what happens in Congress, the administration is already laying the groundwork to limit carbon emissions.
Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made these intentions clear in her opening memo to employees in January 2009. "EPA will stand ready to help Congress craft strong, science-based climate legislation that fulfills the vision of the President," she wrote, adding, "As Congress does its work, we will move ahead to comply with the Supreme Court's decision recognizing EPA's obligation to address climate change under the Clean Air Act."
The Supreme Court decision Jackson referred to is Massachusetts v. EPA. Decided in 2007, the Court ruled that, pending a finding of "endangerment," the EPA was required to regulate greenhouse gases in new vehicles. Obama appointed the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the suit, Lisa Heinzerling, to be senior policy counsel on climate change at the EPA, a position that does not require confirmation. In her speeches and academic writings, Heinzerling has advocated an unabashedly activist role for the federal government in regulating carbon emissions....
Heinzerling has gone so far as to argue that since global warming kills people, a failure to address it is tantamount to somebody not acting on prior knowledge that a homicide is going to take place.
"Knowledge that death and suffering will result from our actions leads uncontroversially to a moral obligation to change our behavior," Heinzerling wrote in a 2008 article for the Georgetown Law Journal. "In the United States, knowing killing is condemned in the criminal laws of all 50 states, in modern regulatory laws at the federal level, and in civil jury awards in tort cases. These laws embody a moral commitment against knowing killing that, in traditional criminal contexts, is uncontroversial. It should be no more controversial when it occurs on a global scale."
More specifically, even though the Massachusetts v. EPA decision involved emissions from new cars, Heinzerling made it clear in March 2008 testimony before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that her view is that the ruling applies broadly to all carbon emissions.
"There is little doubt that many categories of stationary sources -- including, for example, power plants -- emit greenhouse gases and thus ‘cause' air pollution, which the Administrator has concluded endangers public health and welfare," Heinzerling said. "Under section 111, the Administrator ‘shall' include these sources on a list and then ‘shall' regulate them."
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Tough Times in Tehran
Posted by on 12.6.09 @ 12:59PM
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of thugs.
Even for a country that prides itself on its revolutionary credentials, Iran has been unusually bellicose in recent weeks, rejecting a nuclear deal it had earlier appeared to embrace and threatening to build new uranium-enrichment plants in defiance of international restrictions.
One reason, Iran specialists say, is that the embattled regime fears showing weakness in the face of persistent domestic political opposition and rising foreign pressure. Some even question whether supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Shi'ite Muslim cleric chosen to lead the country 20 years ago, is still in charge.
Ayatollah Khamenei may instead now be subordinate to the Revolutionary Guards and other paramilitary forces that keep his government afloat.
Patrick Clawson, an Iran specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the country's decision-making abilities appear paralyzed. That may be why Iran has so far failed to follow through with a deal it accepted in principle in October to transfer nuclear materials to Russia and France for further processing.
Divisions within the ruling establishment probably offer the best hope for the ultimate triumph of democratic forces. The more internal squabbling, the better!
Honduras Faces Down Uncle (Leftie) Sam
Posted by on 12.6.09 @ 10:45AM
There's nothing unusual about small countries defying the United States. Communist tyrants and commie-wannabes (think Castro and Chavez, to name just a couple) long have made political careers of standing against Yanqui Imperialism.
Now a small Latin American country has successfully resisted Washington when the latter allied itself with the left and attempted to reinstate a Chavez ally as president. Reports the Washington Post:
Just weeks ago, wealthy businessman Adolfo Facussé was shocked to be turned away at Miami's airport. His visa, he discovered, had been canceled under a U.S. crackdown on supporters of a coup-installed Honduran government
But today, Facussé and his allies seem to have won their standoff with the U.S. government. Despite American efforts to isolate Honduras -- including canceling visas and aid -- this tiny country has refused to back down on the military's ouster of the president. And the U.S. government now appears to be on its way to normalizing relations.
The Honduran dispute was a complicated legal and political mess, but that was merely one more argument for leaving the issue to the Hondurans to resolve. Naturally, the Obama administration decided to intervene. But in one of the rare cases of the (relative) good guys prevailing, the Hondurans told Washington no, stood fast, and held their regularly scheduled election to choose a new president. The Obama administration has essentially declared defeat, and most of the rest of Latin America likely will follow in time. Here's a case of right making might, as Abraham Lincoln put it.
Time to Toss Health Care Industry Overboard
Posted by on 12.6.09 @ 8:31AM
The Obama administration learned an important lesson from the Clinton health care debacle: buy off the leading interest groups. So the administration offered whatever it took to win over the drugmakers, health insurers, and doctors. But these deals are now under attack in the Senate.
After all, like Willy Sutton, the Democrats want to go where the money is. And that is the providers. Reports the Washington Post:
Heading into a make-or-break week, Senate Democratic leaders are struggling to preserve the fragile support of interest groups for an overhaul of the nation's health-care system, even as lawmakers seek to change the carefully crafted provisions that brought the groups on board.
On the floor and behind closed doors, the Senate wrestled Saturday with amendments that would impose additional cost-control requirements on hospitals, doctors and drug companies, squeezing out savings beyond the considerable sums those groups had already volunteered to give up.
Of particular concern to seniors groups is an effort to strengthen a new independent board that would determine the future of Medicare, raising the possibility of cuts much deeper than those envisioned in the $848 billion health-care bill.
It's hard to pick a side when thieves fall out. The Democrats want to nationalize the medical system. The insurers, et al., want to make money on patients as the latter receive poorer care at higher cost. There isn't much moral difference among them. Yet Republicans have tended to side with industry out of habit, principle, or both.
But there is no reason to be nice to providers who are dedicated to sacrificing the rest of us for their own gain. Rather than working against legislation that will inevitably lead to government-imposed rationing, industry is aiding the process. As the Wall Street Journal noted about PhRMA, the pharmaceutical trade association:
So how has the industry responded? More or less as Lenin predicted. Big Pharma is now running ads against Joe Lieberman, saying his threat to torpedo the Senate bill could cause drug prices to rise by 20%. It is also funding a campaign that targets the fence-sitters Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln.
In other words, the industry is trashing the very Senators who stand the best chance to rescue it from government control. Instead, the drug CEOs are making themselves complicit with the Washington mentality of seeing only the costs of medications, not benefits like longer lives or fewer hospitalizations. They are ensuring that they will always be a political target and making the extortion easier in the bargain.
The shame is that there be will fewer resources for the research and development that drives innovation, particularly for the smaller biotech companies that are the future of cutting-edge medicine. When it takes about a decade and a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market, a CEO of a smaller drug company told us recently, most firms are "living on the edge of extinction."
Almost certainly, the industry is being short-sighted. Even if the deals hold today, in a few years, as costs skyrocket, everyone will be looking for money to save. No one on the left will feel the need to respect past promises to guarantee industry profits. Whatever the Democrats fail to achieve today they will get tomorrow.
So Republicans should vote to give the providers supporting Obamacare their just desserts today. Rather than fighting to protect doctors, insurers, and drugmakers from increased regulation, the GOP should support any proposed restrictions. If industry wants the American people to suffer under government health care rationing, then the pain should be shared. Industry should give up its pound of flesh in the name of "reform" as well.
American health care is a mess and needs real reform. But not a government takeover. If industry is going to support rationing for the rest of us, it should be made to feel the full consequences of its policies.
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