Bob's Political Digest for August 6 2009

Veterans groups have ‘grave concerns’ on health bill
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/veterans-groups-have-grave-concerns-on-health-bill-2009-07-31.html
Excerpt: the groups state “the legislation could limit the health care choices for veterans, increase the cost of health care for veterans, deny coverage to dependent family members of veterans, and threaten the quality of health care offered to veterans through the VA health care system.”

Police called on retirees at senator's LA office
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/30/state/n184320D61.DTL
Who do they think they are? Citizens?

Christian woman faces 40 lashes in Sudan for wearing trousers
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/027074.php
Waiting for the outcry from American feminists.

Lashley's Letter To Crowley
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/20230991/detail.html
Excerpt: One of the major problems stemming from the events of July 16 is that I, now known as 'the black Sergeant', have had my image plastered all over the Internet, television and newspapers. Subsequently, I have also become known, at least to some, as an 'Uncle Tom.'

You can bet on it: Obama will raise your taxes
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/You-can-bet-on-it_-Obama-will-raise-your-taxes-8060649-52382632.html
Excerpt: Obama is solidly popular (64 percent job approval) with voters making less than $24,000. But after that, his support starts to slide. Among the group making between $24,000 and $60,000, it's 53 percent. In the group between $60,000 and $90,000, it's 52 percent. Among those above $90,000, it's an even 50 percent. (While that last group includes anyone from Bill Gates down to a welder who works a lot of overtime, it's safe to say that most are clustered in the lower end of the scale, sharing many of the same concerns with those in the next-lower category.) In January, Obama's job approval rating among the two highest income groups was 69 and 67 percent, respectively. Now, more than a quarter of that support has disappeared. Put another way, a large segment of the broad middle class is dropping away from Obama.

One Year after Universal Car Care
http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2009/one-year-after-universal-car-care/
Too funny

Is Race for Governor More About Obama?
Some Voters Who Backed President Disillusioned Over Economic Pledges
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/04/AR2009080402787.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Excerpt: For Cleland, it was another example -- one of many this day -- of the broken promises of a president who she thought would be different. Obama pledged to change a Washington culture that favored corporations and the connected and instead lift families such as the one sitting next to Cleland out of their economic funk. Rather, she said, Obama has backed billions of dollars to banks that continue to "act like they're broke" and started the country down a path that Cleland said she thinks will lead to more grief for the middle class. "He's just not as advertised," she said. "Nothing's changed for the common guy. I feel like I've been punked." (Gee, who would have guessed?)

How to Fix the Health-Care ‘Wedge’
There is an alternative to Obamacare
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574324361508092006.html
Excerpt: The health-care wedge is an economic term that reflects the difference between what health-care costs the specific provider and what the patient actually pays. When health care is subsidized, no one should be surprised that people demand more of it and that the costs to produce it increase. Mr. Obama’s health-care plan does nothing to address the gap between the price paid and the price received. Instead, it’s like a negative tax: Costs rise and people demand more than they need…. A patient-centered health-care reform begins with individual ownership of insurance policies and leverages Health Savings Accounts, a low-premium, high-deductible alternative to traditional insurance that includes a tax-advantaged savings account. It allows people to purchase insurance policies across state lines and reduces the number of mandated benefits insurers are required to cover. It reallocates the majority of Medicaid spending into a simple voucher for low-income individuals to purchase their own insurance. And it reduces the cost of medical procedures by reforming tort liability laws.

Obama Energy Policies Will Hike Prices By 20 Percent
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/04/obama-energy-policies-will-hike-prices-by-20/
Excerpt: Barack Obama recently claimed — incorrectly — that he had yet to sign a bill that raised taxes, but the worst burdens will avoid the clear label of taxation. A new study by the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy, determines that the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House in June would hike energy costs to consumers by 20% by 2025.

Lawyers Emerge As Winners
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18287
No surprise-- and the Congress & many legislatures are now controlled by the Lawyers’ Party.

Did Secretary LaHood lie to Congress?
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Did-Secretary-LaHood-lie-to-Congress-52514122.html
BO’s tame IL Republican.

Special interests cash in on clunker boondoggle
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Special-interests-cash-in-on-clunker-boondoggle-52473487.html
Excerpt: And who are the customers? Not poor people — they don’t shell out five figures for new cars. No, this is a middle-class to upper-middle-class subsidy, which is probably why politicians love it so much. But the real benefit to business — and harm to the economy — comes after the car sale. The law requires the dealers destroy the “clunker” engine (which, to be eligible, was drivable upon trade-in), scrap the car and shred almost all its parts. This government-required waste reduces the supply of used cars on the road. Reduce the supply of drivable used cars, and you drive up the price of all cars.

Obama would stifle military and medical creativity
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obama-would-stifle-military-and-medical-creativity-52473217.html
Excerpt: Cases in point: Most people in the rest of the world are free riders on the productivity and ingenuity of the American military and American medicine. They get the benefits of American military protection and American medical innovation without paying, or without paying in full, for them.

MS-13 Smuggles Muslim Terrorists into U.S.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.3901/pub_detail.asp
Probably they’ll get empathy from a wise Latina judge….

Canada vs. US Healthcare
http://www.larryjohnwright.com/tvspots/HeatherSandstrom.wmv
Video by a woman who has lived under both.

Care Versus Control
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/04/care_versus_control
Excerpt: Are decisions made by doctors who have treated the same patient for years to be over-ruled by bureaucrats sitting in front of computer screens in Washington, following guidelines drawn up with the idea of "bringing down the cost of medical care"?
The idea is even more absurd than the idea that you can add millions of people to a government medical care plan without increasing the costs. It is also more dangerous.

“We want a Christian-free society!”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/027127.php
Excerpt: At the urging of local Muslim leaders, police in western Bangladesh have tortured a pastor and two other Christians for legally proclaiming Christ. (Ah those tolerant Muslims we keep hearing about.)

"In principle, Jihad is an offensive Jihad, which was instated in order to spread Islam throughout the world"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/027120.php
Excerpt: An American branch of this group met recently in Chicago. No one seemed to mind. Note also that when non-Muslims point out that according to mainstream Islamic teaching, "in principle, Jihad is an offensive Jihad, which was instated in order to spread Islam throughout the world," thuggish pseudo-moderate groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations charge them with "bigotry" and "Islamophobia." But don't hold your breath waiting for CAIR's Honest Ibe Hooper or Brave Ahmed Rehab to charge Salah Al-Din 'Adhadhda or Muhammad Ibrahim with "bigotry" and "Islamophobia."

House Orders Up Three Elite Jets
http://www.rollcall.com/media/37552-1.html
Excerpt: Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies. But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress. (Do as I say, not as I do.)

Hand Salute for Vets
SALUTING the FLAG: Traditionally, members of the nation’s veterans service organizations have rendered the hand-salute during the national anthem and at events involving the national flag only while wearing their organization’s official head-gear. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 contained an amendment to allow un-uniformed service members, military retirees, and veterans to render a hand salute during the hoisting, lowering, or passing of the U.S. flag. A later amendment further authorized hand-salutes during the national anthem by veterans and out-of-uniform military personnel. This was included in the Defense Authorization Act of 2009, which President Bush signed on 14 OCT 08. All other persons present should face the flag, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Citizens of other countries present should stand at attention. All such conduct toward the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.

Political Digest for July 25 2009

After Lawsuit, Obama Administration Releases Logs of Private Meetings With Health Care Industry Executives
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/07/after-lawsuit-obama-administration-releases-logs-of-private-meetings-with-health-care-industry-execu.html
The most transparent administration in history….when forced to be by the courts.

Pelosi Puts Onus on Industry
Deals Aside, She Says, Hospital and Drug Firms Can Do More
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072303645.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
Let’s see if the goose has more golden eggs.

Health Reform Deadline in Doubt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072303929.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
As Oz meets Reality

Health Care Petition
www.freeourhealthcarenow.com
I doubt the effectiveness of Internet petitions, but what the heack.

Peer-Reviewed Study Rocks Climate Debate! 'Nature not man responsible for recent global warming...little or none of late 20th century warming and cooling can be attributed to humans'
http://climatedepot.com/a/2117/PeerReviewed-Study-Rocks-Climate-Debate-Nature-not-man-responsible-for-recent-global-warminglittle-or-none-of-late-20th-century-warming-and-cooling-can-be-attributed-to-humans
Note to Al Gore: Give the $100M you made on GW back.

Government Monopsony Distorts Climate Science
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18244
But Al told me the debate was over….

Detroit: The Triumph of Progressive Public Policy
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18245
Excerpt: In 1950, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America on a per capita income basis. Today, the Census Bureau reports that it is the nation's second poorest major city, just "edging out" Cleveland.

Dems Start To Push Back Hard To Prevent A 'Waterloo'
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/hca_20090722_6620.php
A damn near run thing, I believe the Duke said.

DeMint escalates attacks on Obama plan
http://www.thestate.com/local/story/874136.html
Excerpt: DeMint, a Greenville Republican, labeled as "blatantly false" the Democratic National Committee ad's claim he "supports no (health care) plan at all," dispatching lawyers to warn TV stations running it in the Columbia, Greenville and Washington broadcast markets. In unusually pointed terms, DeMint turned the tables on Obama, accusing him of blocking health care reforms while Obama was a U.S. senator.

Democrats Censor Speech: Don't Say "Government Run Health Care"
http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/07/democrats_censor_speech_dont_s.php
Somewhere, George Orwell is smiling…..

BO: 30% strongly approve, 38% strongly disapprove.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history
Somewhere George Bush is smiling….

Euro-liberals get big boot in elections - Hello Conservatives!
http://rmcpac.com/blog/euro-liberals-get-big-boot-elections-hello-conservatives
A bit old to be news, but not well reported in the US. I wonder why?

Quote
When a blind man bears the standard, pity those who follow. - French Proverb

Political Digest for July 24 2009

Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars
http://www.securityaffairs.org/issues/2009/16/peters.php
If you read nothing else, read this. Great article. We are losing the future.

Concerns Rise Over 2010 Census
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/22/AR2009072203695.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
Not to worry. ACORN & BO will be on the job, ensuring a fair count.

Obama: Things stink
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25315.html
Excerpt: President Obama promises something else: He will soak the rich. Getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse will pay only for two-thirds of his health care plan. The remaining third will be paid for by limiting the “the itemized deductions for the wealthiest Americans.” What about the “s” word? What about “sacrifice” for the rest of us? Happily, the future contains no such need.

Durbin Says No Health Care Vote until September
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/07/durbin_says_no_health_care_vot.html?wprss=capitol-briefing
And BO says delay is fatal.

A Massachusetts Model to Fix Health Care?
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18239
Excerpt: The state will spend $595 million more on health insurance this year than it did three years ago, a 42 percent increase. Its latest budget proposal calls for eliminating insurance subsidies for 30,000 legal immigrants in an effort to save money.

China vs. Civil Society
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574299913158787226.html
Excerpt: The Gongmeng group, or Open Constitution Initiative, was shuttered Friday for allegedly violating laws that govern nonprofits The organization was founded in 2003 and brought together human-rights lawyers and academics to research legal topics and take on politically sensitive pro bono cases. Gongmeng’s work was a rarity in a country where authorities brook little public dissent.

The Small Business Surtax
The Obama Democrats pick income redistribution over job creation and economic
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124753106668435899.html
Excerpt: Jason Furman owes an apology to Michael Boskin, the Stanford economist who wrote a year ago on these pages that Barack Obama would raise American income tax rates nearly to 60%. Mr. Furman, then in the Obama campaign and now at the White House, claimed this was wrong and that Democrats would merely raise taxes back to their Clinton-era level. House Democrats are now proving that Mr. Boskin had it right, and before it's over even he may have underestimated how high taxes will go. In the middle of a recession and with rising unemployment, Democrats have been letting it leak that they want to raise U.S. tax rates higher than they've been in nearly 30 years in order to finance government health care.

Mexican brothels coming to a neighborhood near you
http://www.examiner.com/x-5919-Norfolk-Crime-Examiner~y2009m7d16-Mexican-brothels-coming-to-a-neighborhood-near-you
Finally, change we can believe in--exploiting illegals.

Osama bin Laden’s Son Thought Killed in Predator Strike
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2009/07/22/osama-bin-ladens-son-thought-killed-in-predator-strike/
Praise Allah!

Nationally ranked hospital victim of universal healthcare
http://onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=608422
Coming soon to a hospital near you.

Obama’s Sinking Approval Ratings are Even Worse than They Look
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/peter-roff/2009/07/21/obamas-sinking-approval-ratings-are-even-worse-than-they-look.html
You can fool some of the people….

Take the red pill, Mr. President
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Take-the-red-pill-Mr-President-51473502.html
Excerpt: In last night's press conference, President Obama seemed to be reliving that famous scene from The Matrix. The main character is offered a choice between a red pill that makes him see reality for what it is, and a blue pill that allows him to continue living in a pleasant world of illusions. Last night, President Obama appeared to have taken the blue pill before his press conference. How else could he convince himself, the Congressional Budget Office's numbers notwithstanding, that his health care reform bill will not increase both health care costs and the federal deficit? How else can he continue to make the argument that a massive expansion of government spending on health care will solve rather than exacerbate the current problems? How can he repeatedly express such absolute certainty that such a measure will easily pay for itself several times over in the long run? Why can he not at least acknowledge the possibility that it will become a costly and useless trillion-dollar boondoggle that follows in the footsteps of his stimulus package?

Big drugmakers' secret D.C. meeting
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Big-drugmakers-secret-DC-meeting-51487512.html
Their exec is a former Dem Congressman, who is paid about $2M a year, according to public records. Now we know why.

Gun-Shy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/22/AR2009072203282.html?referrer=emailarticle
Excerpt: How do you outgun the NRA? Very, very carefully. Mark Pryor knows all about that. The Democratic senator from pro-gun Arkansas was nowhere to be seen on the Senate floor during Wednesday's showdown over a proposal, championed by the National Rifle Association, that would have gutted state gun-control laws across the nation. (Gee, the Senate was playing games with the bill. I’m shocked.)

Quote
"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement." -- Ayn Rand

Rights, Responsibilites and Health Care

By Star Parker

Want to know what troubles our American health care system?

Consider the thoughts of psychiatrist and Nazi death camp survivor Viktor Frankl.

After spending time in our country as a visiting professor, he saw the looming dangers of freedom without responsibility. He observed: "Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."

We as Americans accept that health care is an individual right, even if someone else is paying for it. The truth that every personal right must have an accompanying personal responsibility is now lost in our self-absorbed materialistic culture. We have only rights, entitlements if you will.
Few have any idea what the costs are of the health care they receive. Many get it tax-subsidized through their employer, many get it through Medicare in a now bankrupt Ponzi scheme in which those working pay taxes to pay for care of those retired, and more than sixty million Americans do not pay at all through Medicaid and SCHIP programs.

Hundreds of millions receive health care the costs of which have little or nothing to do with their own personal realities and then we wonder why those costs are out of control.

Now Ted Kennedy has introduced his solution to all of this, which also captures the thinking of our president. Set up a new government health care plan, subsidized of course by taxes, and call this choice because you are not forced to take it (although you are forced to pay taxes for it).
As Senator Kennedy announces more free health care — meaning one group of Americans will get what another group of Americans will pay for — the disconnect between who gets health care services and who pays for them will grow even greater.

Costs will be controlled, according to Senator Kennedy, by setting up a new army of bureaucrats who will get rid of proverbial "fraud and abuse," will decide for doctors how to treat their patients, and will decide for us how we should behave by dictating the preventative measures we must take for our own good.

To put on a show for what this all might look like, a few weeks ago President Obama "invited" representatives from the major sectors of the health care business — doctors, insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, medical device manufacturers — to the White House to tell us all how much they would commit to lowering costs.

The result was a supposed commitment by these groups to cut costs by 1.5 percent per year.
Aside from the fact that shortly after the White House announcement, industry representatives began issuing statements denying that they made any such commitment, let's assume it's accurate. That these groups do not know how to run their own businesses and that they can deliver the same products and services annually for 1.5 percent less if the president threatens them.

At our annual health care bill of about $2.5 trillion dollars, savings of 1.5 percent would be about $40 billion.

Let's consider how much of our $2.5 trillion health care bill are costs resulting from behavior that individuals choose.

Googling around and totaling up, I come up with about $240 billion, about ten percent of our total health care bill. This is roughly the total reported health care costs associated with obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and sedentary life styles.
Worth noting is that these occur disproportionately in low-income groups who get their health care free. More than half our spending on HIV/AIDS, for example, is out of Medicaid. Can it be accidental that the huge health care costs related to lifestyle issues are most pronounced where individuals do not personally bear the costs of how they behave?

How can our health care problems be solved by more entitlements and bureaucrats when this is what is causing the problem to begin with?

Viktor Frankl had it right. At the heart of the solution for our health care crisis is personal responsibility. This means more freedom and more markets.

Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. She can be reached at parker@urbancure.org.

Posted with permission.

Interesting article on health care

Sweden's Government Health Care
by Walter E. Williams

Government health care advocates used to sing the praises of Britain's National Health Service (NHS). That's until its poor delivery of health care services became known. A recent study by David Green and Laura Casper, "Delay, Denial and Dilution," written for the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, concludes that the NHS health care services are just about the worst in the developed world. The head of the World Health Organization calculated that Britain has as many as 25,000 unnecessary cancer deaths a year because of under-provision of care. Twelve percent of specialists surveyed admitted refusing kidney dialysis to patients suffering from kidney failure because of limits on cash. Waiting lists for medical treatment have become so long that there are now "waiting lists" for the waiting list.

Read it all here:

http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2009/03/04/swedens_government_health_care

Health Care & Taxes

This is worth reading:

Health Care & Taxes
John Goodman, President, National Center for Policy Analysis

The worst idea candidate Barack Obama had during the presidential campaign was his pledge to finance health reform with taxes on capital. To be fair, he didn't word it that way. Instead, he promised to pay for universal health care in part by rescinding George Bush's "tax cuts for the rich."

Bush didn't cut taxes for the rich, however. He lowered the tax rate on capital gains income and substantially lowered the tax rate on dividend income for all taxpayers, many of whom have high incomes. Bush also lowered the top rate on wage income; but for high-income earners this is also frequently income from capital (pass-through profits to owners of small businesses, for example).

Obama is now proving that he keeps his word and then some. Overall, his new budget includes a slew of new taxes on businesses and investors totaling almost $1 trillion over the next 10 years (and that doesn't even count the $646 billion "cap and trade" tax). He proposes to "bank" a portion of this for health care to be matched by difficult-to-make health care spending cuts and by health care "savings" that virtually all independent analysts agree are unlikely to materialize. The only thing certain so far is the taxes.

What's wrong with paying for health reform by taxing investment income? It is always bad to tax capital to pay for consumption. Capital is the seed corn that grows businesses, creates jobs and generates the income that makes consumption possible. Taxing capital to pay for health care consumption is especially bad, considering that health care spending at the margin is already very wasteful.

Read the rest here:

http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/health-care-and-taxes/#more-2463