Are We Men or Mice?

According to Julie Rovner on NPR the other day anyone who uses scare tactics to change the minds of the public about healthcare reform is using tactics common to rodents. The scare tactics are used, according to our 'public' broadcast system, only by those who disagree with a government run health care plan. Put aside the fact that the President tries to frighten the public with every speech, but NPR has taken the diatribe ten steps further when they interview some obscure professor who studies ultrasound emitted from rodents. According to the 'professor' rats have a way of sending out ultrasonic waves that warn other rats that there is danger ahead.

So our state-owned media is likening dissidents to rodents. Is that bad cheese I smell?

This Makes Me Sick

According to the Wall Street Journal and I won't even paraphrase or make a comment,

"President Obama has promised a "new era of transparency" in Washington, so perhaps he should talk to the Senate about getting with his program. On July 15, six weeks ago, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed an amended $1 trillion health-care bill, with acting Chairman Chris Dodd calling it a "historic achievement." Too bad the committee won't reveal this history even to other Senators, much less to the public.

Three weeks ago Republicans on the committee wrote Mr. Dodd "to reiterate our request for a full copy of the bill as amended, in the four-week mark-up." Mr. Dodd has refused to comply. The Senate bill that is available on the committee Web site is 790 pages long. While that is some 300 pages shorter than the House health bill, that's in part because it doesn't include nearly 200 amendments that passed when the committee redrafted the bill. Amended sections of the bill might as well be written in invisible ink.

The whole process was so haphazard that at one point during the committee mark-up Barbara Mikulski, the Democrat from Maryland, declared: "Giving me language on little pieces of paper on which I'm going to commit the sacred fortunes and honor of the United States for decades, this is not the way to go. We can't do this on the backs of envelopes.""

What Could Go Wrong?

We're going to pass a Health Care Plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn't read it, and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke.

What possibly could go wrong?

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Two Quotes to Ponder:

"Life's tough......it's even tougher if you're stupid." -- John Wayne

"We live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it." -- Barack Obama

Unfortunately, we are now beginning to understand what the second quote means and what the first says about us.

Tax and Spend - Why not admit it if it is so good for us?

In 2009, Washington will spend $30,958 per household–the highest level in American history–and under President Obama’s budget, the figure will rise above $33,000 by 2019.

The White House brags that it will cut the deficit in half by 2013. The President does not mention that the deficit has nearly quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it in half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush.

The public national debt–$5.8 trillion as of 2008–is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined.

And now for the real kicker: none of these numbers include the costs of Obamacare which would create another $1.5 trillion health care entitlement on top of our existing unsustainable entitlement obligations.

For those who say we really need the health care and other entitlements the government wants to 'give' us I have to ask: What about our children and their children? Are they entitled to the higher taxes to help pay for all of the 'free' stuff? Do people actually believe that the government running health care won't raise all of our taxes? Perhaps those in favor of a government takeover of health care should stop thinking about the right now and think in terms of this country ten or twenty years from now.

Beginning tomorrow I will be examining H.R. 3200 and you will be able to determine the ramifications to your family for generations to come.

Politics as Usual for the Democrat Party

So a few years back the Democrat Party and the Boston Globe in Massachusetts decided it would be a good idea to prevent the then Governor, Mitt Romney, from selecting a new U.S. Senator if John Kerry won the election and became President. They prevented this by creating a law that called for a special election to fill the vacant Senate seat.

Fast-forward to the present, and the passing of Senator Kennedy. Within hours of his passing the State Senate in Massachusetts is now saying it is ‘open to the idea’ of over-riding the governor appointment law so that an election does not need to be held to fill Senator Kennedy’s seat, allowing the current Democrat Governor permission to fill the vacant seat. The people involved have openly commented that the reason for the about face is that voting for the very important health care bill would come up before an election could be held next Spring in Massachusetts and having the vacant seat would deprive the Democrats of a vote for a health care bill.

I would not want to deprive the Democrats of a vote - after all the President said "We won, and we can do what we want." Of course the folks speaking out at the town hall meetings and elsewhere are having a difference of opinion on that, Mr. President.

Let's Just Change the Laws of Physics

Subject: FW: Automotive Industry Challenge... ARE WE IN GOOD HANDS OR WHAT?
(From a senior level Chrysler person)

Monday morning I attended a breakfast meeting where the speaker/guest was David E. Cole, Chairman Center for Automotive Research (CAR) and Professor at the Univ. of Michigan . You have all likely heard CAR quoted, or referred to in the auto industry news lately.

Mr. Cole, who is an engineer by training, told many stories of the difficulty of working with the folks that the Obama administration has sent to save the auto industry. There have been many meetings where a 30+ year experience automotive expert has to listen to a newcomer to the industry, someone with zero manufacturing experience, zero auto industry experience, zero business experience, zero finance experience, and zero engineering experience, tell them how to run their business.

Mr. Cole's favorite story is as follows:
There was a team of Obama people speaking to Mr. Cole (Engineer, automotive experience 40+ years, Chairman of CAR). They were explaining to Mr. Cole that the auto companies needed to make a car that was electric and liquid natural gas (LNG) with enough combined fuel to go 500 miles so we wouldn't "need" so many gas stations (A whole other topic). They were quoting BTUs of LNG and battery life that they had looked up on some website.

Mr. Cole explained that to do this you would need a trunk FULL of batteries and a LNG tank at big as a car to make that happen and that there were problems related to the laws of physics that prevented them from...

The Obama person interrupted and said (and I am quoting here), "These laws of physics? Whose rules are those? We need to change that. (Some of the others wrote down the name of the law so they could look it up.) We have the congress and the administration. We can repeal that law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of the problem. That's why we are here, to fix these sorts of issues".

Brett Lorenzo Favre

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. The Vikings have sold more than 3,200 season tickets since news broke Brett Favre was coming to Minnesota. That’s in approximately a 24-hour span. Chief marketing officer Steve LaCroix said the team has sold about 11,000 single-game tickets during that time as fans clamor over the arrival of the veteran quarterback. There are roughly 6,000 season tickets remaining. The Vikings had to race to beat the blackout deadline (couldn’t fill the stadium) for several games last season, including needing two extensions from the NFL for the first-round playoff game against Philadelphia.

Merchandise is also moving. LaCroix said hundreds of pre-orders for Favre jerseys were placed online Tuesday. The purple No. 4s were to show up in stores on Wednesday. “It’s fun to be part of this and have the fans react the way that they have. To see them outside lining the streets (waving and trying to catch a glimpse as the car carrying Farvre made its way from the airport to the stadium) was something unexpected, but obviously pretty cool,” LaCroix said.

As soon as Vikings coach Brad Childress picked up Favre from the airport, the Vikings were on the phone with Reebok to get an order of No. 4 jerseys with his name on the back. The apparel company sent a truckload from its factory in Indianapolis to stock stores at malls in the Twin Cities, and more are on the way. LaCroix said that more than 200,000 people bought Favre’s Jets jersey last year, and the demand for the Vikings version figures to be even higher. “He was right up there at the top of jersey sales and so we’re ready,” he said.

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Now there are some sportswriters who wonder why all of the excitement? What were the Vikings thinking in begging Favre to return to football? Doesn’t Favre realize he is over the hill and too old to play the game? They don’t talk about his turning the Jets program around last season, selling out season tickets in New York for the first time in years, or moving the Jets from a win/loss record of 4 and 12 to 9 and 7. Some sportswriters just scratch their head and don’t understand.

And then there are some sportswriters who do understand. When legendary sportswriter Burt Sugar was asked why should any team want an old player like Brett Favre he threw his hands into the air and said, “Would anyone tell Babe Ruth he was too old to play?”

Are Our Tax Dollars Building the Economy of ... Mexico?

For all those folks in Michigan who were pushing so hard for a bail out of GM and Chrysler because they were worried about their jobs - you can sit back and collect those unemployment checks and wonder what happened. We were all told that a bail out of the big two car companies was necessary since the country could not remain solvent under the onslaught of more layoffs if GM and Chrysler went out of business.

The American people were also told that the environment would be saved by Chrysler building the newest and most innovative 'green' car for the roads of America - the Fiat. As a reminder, our government and the United Auto Workers own a majority of the stock in both companies.

And what decisions have been made by the government and the UAW to protect the workers of America? According to the Wall Street Journal, Chrysler is going to be using our tax dollars - that helped to bail them out - to build Fiats...in Mexico, employing Mexican people. Granted Chrysler's infusion of our tax dollars was called a 'bail out' not a 'stimulus' but what the heck is going on here? I think it is called lying to get control and then doing what you want after that. Sounds like health care reform.

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Personally I believe a company should build it's product anywhere it wants to, whether domestically or in a foreign country, to maximize profits. What I don't believe in is our government going into partnership with a union, selling themselves as protecting American auto workers, and doing whatever else it takes to gain control of private businesses.

Fairness, Justice, and the Public Interest

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial…The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

What is in the public interest? This seems to be at the heart of the debate over the Health Care Bill (H.R. 3200) . The public interest refers to the common well-being or general welfare, and is central to policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of government itself. While nearly everyone claims that aiding the common well-being or general welfare is positive, there is little, if any, consensus on what exactly constitutes the public interest. The Health Care Bill (H.R. 3200) explains that the interests, or rights, of all of the people in our society should be paramount. Is it reasonable to assume you can please everyone all of the time? And what are the costs and what are the benefits to individual liberties when trying to enforce a health care bill?

In his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls used a social contract argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness: an impartial distribution of goods. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. In other words justice is a form of fairness which provides basic liberties to individuals.

Rawls’ principle requires stringent protections for certain specific liberties. He states, “Fairness is justice, and justice must not be stifled or rejected.”
Can we look at justice in terms of the Health Care Bill? Will tighter restrictions lower the costs of health care and provide medical treatment for everyone whether they want it or not, and at what cost to individual liberty? There is disagreement from economists and political scientists over whether government intervention is actually in the public interest.

Nobel Prize winning economist Friedrich Hayek said, in an interview with Thomas Hazlett of the American Enterprise Institute, in June of 1992, “…the idea that things ought to be designed in a “just” manner means, in effect, that we must abandon the market and turn to a planned economy in which somebody decides how much each ought to have, and that means, of course, that we can only have it at the price of the complete abolition of personal liberty.”

Philosopher Thomas Nagel stated that, “the range of posibilities or likely courses of life that are open to a given individual are limited to a considerable extent by his birth…his genetic endowment.” He continues, “There is nothing wrong with the State tinkering with that distribution when attempting to equalize benefits to individuals.”

Thomas Sowell explains, in The Quest for Cosmic Justice, that the “tinkering” mentioned by Nagel in the name of social justice is actually going beyond a social justice and attempting to produce a justice for the Cosmos, which cannot be achieved. Sowell and Hayek would probably agree with critics of the any health care reform bill that the current evolution of the health care system in the U.S. has already allowed the ‘invisible hand’ phenomenon to work in the marketplace of medical treatment, creating the finest medical care in the world, something to be thankful for not ‘overhauled’ for the purposes of giving government even more control over our lives.

Death Panels in H.R. 3200

If you believe the media, Sarah Palin is a mediocre intellect, if even that, while President Obama is brilliant. So how did she manage to best him in this debate? Part of the explanation is that disdain for Palin reflects intellectual snobbery more than actual intellect. Still, Obama's critics, in contrast with Palin's, do not deny the president's intellectual aptitude. Intelligence, however, does not make one immune from hubris.

While the President was denying the section on death panels existed in the health care reform bill the Senate was saying that they would take that section out of their health care reform bill.

House Health Care 1000+ Pages, Declaration of Independence 1344 Words

The house health care bill is 1000+ pages and the Declaration of Independence is 1344 words. One is a confusion of legal-eze that is trying to create a health care system giving the federal government unprecedented control over our lives and the other much smaller document created what has become the most powerful country in the world. The current idealistic arguments fall into two categories, the folks that believe government should be taking care of us from the cradle to the grave and the other that believes in "unalienable rights," the absolute rights of individuals to personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property.

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial…The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offencesFor abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

How NY Times Have Changed

This doesn't need explanation but it is a good lead in for our discussions on the House of Representatives Health Care Bill.

The Death of the Canadian Model

by Russ Roberts on February 26, 2006
in Health

Proponents of single-payer health care reform in the United States have long pointed toward Canada as a model for the US to emulate. The New York Times reports that the Canadian system is imploding. A recent Candian Supreme Court decision allowed private health care (oh, the shame, the horror) and as a result, Canadians tired of waiting for radiation therapy, eye surgery and hip replacements have turned toward private alternatives springing up under the new legal environment.

The Times reports:

Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other politicians remain reluctant to openly propose sweeping changes even though costs for the national and provincial governments are exploding and some cancer patients are waiting months for diagnostic tests and treatment.

But in a Supreme Court ruling last June it found that a Quebec provincial ban on private health insurance was unconstitutional when patients were suffering and even dying on waiting lists. This appears to have become a turning point for the entire country. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services," the court ruled.

The key paragraph:

The country’s publicly financed health insurance system — frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity — is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine.

Fast forward to 2009 and clinics specializing in everything from Audiology to Weight Loss are now in place throughout Canada. http://www.findprivateclinics.ca/