Health Care Rationing

Long time readers of this site know that my biggest concerns about a "universal" government run health care plan center around the very real possibility of health care rationing. That concern is, in large part due to the circumstances surrounding the health of my 73 year old mother. The Logical Mother has (among other conditions) a weak immune system, rheumatoid arthritis, no thyroid, a bad heart, bad circulation and myriad of other ailments large and small. Four years ago, due to an undiagnosed electrolyte imbalance, she collapsed in her home. She lived alone and my sister (who lives nearby) was out of town when it happened. She had just moved into this home and I had no phone numbers for neighbors when it happened. When my sister and brother in law found her, she was hours from death. It was only due to the heroic efforts of the EMTs and the phenomenonal staff at Alexian Brothers Hospital in Hoffman Estates IL that she is alive today. Based on what President Obama said last Wednesday night - she would have been allowed to DIE THAT DAY under his vision of health care reform. After her collapse, my mother spent the next year and a half in the hospital trying to figure out the cause of her collapse and the many others that followed. We moved her into an assisted living facility annd it was there that a cut on her foot got infected with a MRSA infection. After weeks of fruitless treatments, her doctors went out on a limb and prescribed a long series of treatments that included heavy doses of antibiotics and treatment in a hyperbaric chamber. After 9 weeks of some pretty grueling (for a clausterphobic) treatments, the infection was cleared up and the blackouts, borderline dementia and heart issues that were unrelated to her heart blockage she is healthy (for a 73 year old with rheumatoid arthritis) and talking about travelling - something that 5 years ago would not have been discussed. Again - none of this would have been possible in a Canada Care/Britian care type system that lacks neo-natal ICU beds and mandates that only women between the ages of 39 and a half and 40 are eligible for in-vitro fertilization treatment (among other odd restrictions).

President Obama, last Wednesday night said that we needed to face the reality that we can not treat everyone for everything that sometimes "heroic" measures need to be stopped. Even my mother, a STAUNCH Obama supporter and former health care worker, realizes that his health care plan would have meant that she would not be around today...and she is not fond of that idea at all.

Dissent Is Patriotic But Only....

Once upon a time, dissent (from the President's policies) was the HEIGHT of patriotism. Leftists across the country assured those on the right that they didn't hate the country - they just disagreed with President Bush. Well now that the shoe is on the other foot, we start to see that maybe they didn't believe that as much as they claimed to have.

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

It is good to know that the people who were so demanding that we conservatives be "tolerant" of others opinions are so tolerant of other opinions themselves. I have no doubt that this will be remembered the next time that there is a majority change in the Government.

Open Primary?

Last week, the Deseret News ran a very interesting column on the pros and cons of the open primary. As someone who grew up in a primary state and who spent the last 15 years in a caucus state, count me as being squarely in the caucus camp and here is why....

Lavarr Webb brings up the obvious cons of an open primary system - out of control 3rd party special interest ads, cronyism run amok (what you have here and now is no where NEAR what it would be in a primary system) and the perrenial rule of incumbents with name recognition that no amount of money can buy, but oh the money that name recognition draws. What he doesn't tell you is that the same con that Frank Pignelli uses against the caucus system is one of the same cons of the primary system. You still only have about 3000-4000 people deciding who will be the nominee....the ones who bother to show up to vote in the primary! The biggest "pro" caucus argument that I can give is how EASY it is to get involved. All you have to do is SHOW UP on caucus night. Once you show up, decide how far "up" you want to go and odds are, you will get there. You want to go to the state convention to decide who runs for Senate, come to caucus and run for a delegate position! It's that simple!

Mr. Pignelli starts off his argument against the caucus system with a contradiction. He starts off stating that "Powerful incumbents are shifting their focus of attention to those who will determine their fate: 3,000 or so current and potential delegates that will attend the Utah Republican convention in June 2010. History demonstrates millions will be spent to influence this small universe of activists, a fact LaVarr ignores." and then he turns around and uses the Chaffetz/Cannon race in 2008 as his example. The problem is that the Chaffetz/Cannon race shows the exact opposite. Representative Cannon had a 6-1 campaign warchest advantage over the neophyte Chaffetz. All Jason Chaffetz had was drive, determination and a cadre of dedicated volunteers to help him overcome a HUGE disadvantage and they did it. Come to think of it, he reminds me of another outsider who overcame a huge monitary and name recognition deficit who became one of the progressive movements patron saints - Paul David Wellstone!

Mr. Pignelli calls the caucus system "an archaic throwback to the early 20th century." What he misses though is that the caucus system is also the most "progressive" system. It is there that a virtual unknown who has a vision and the will to push him or herself to the limit can succeed. It is the ultimate equalizer when you have an incumbent who is suffering from a severe case of DC-itis.

I can think of no better outlet for the average Joe or Jane Voter who cares about who represents them to truly have their say than in a caucus state. For you never know when or where the next Jason Chaffetz or Paul Wellstone will show up - but boy when he or she does the excitement that this person brings to to electorate is almost always ELECTRIC!

Legislative Malfeasance

Once again our US House of Representatives voted on a bill that NO ONE EVER HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO READ, just as they had done on the "stimulus" bill. The chairman of the Energy Committee, Henry Waxman, even threw in a 300 page amendment at 3am on the day that they voted on the bill and when some legislators had the nerve to ask for a copy of the bill to read, they were told "it's here somewhere!"

I just have one question for the defenders of the actions of the House Leadership - if these bills are so good, why can't the House abide by their own rules (and their President's rule) and post the bill for 72 hours on their website before the vote? Are they so afraid of the voters that they can not handle a little criticism?

Bring In The Stunt Groom

So today was a very busy outside of the house day. Most of our gardening done and the Junior Logician is off visiting his grandmother so the Logical Husband and I spent most of the day at the farmers market and walking the dogs and taking pictures of the capital area and basically just enjoying an absolutely splendid early summer day in Utah. As a result, I didn't get to any of my emails until very late today. One of the daily must reads is my electronic version of the New York Times. They honestly do have some decent stories....unless they are reporting on President Obama and then the love fest starts.

It was a bit like planning the dream wedding only to have a hurricane rip away the chapel roof as you make your way down the aisle. ABC News and the White House probably thought they had scored a coup in arranging “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” a prime-time opportunity (with a followup session on “Nightline”) for Barack Obama to explain his health care proposal to the voters and for ABC to monopolize an hour-plus with the most famous man in the world. And then came Iran. And Mark Sanford.

Wait - Mark Sanford??? The story broke on Sanford before the President's hour long market re-rollout (because the program has been out for a while now). If he had mentioned the latest trio of celebrity deaths (Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson) I could maybe see making a case for it. But then again how could the "most famous man in the world" be overshadowed by a mere electon or a couple of celebrity deaths.

And, well, there was the fact that it was about health care reform. The result: the 10 p.m. show drew 4.7 million viewers, or nearly 3 million fewer than a competing repeat of CBS’s “CSI: New York” and less than half what the evening’s top draw, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” attracted in the previous hour. Well, could the president’s plan have got a second-day bump at America’s water coolers? Not likely.

Oh OK - there are the obligatory references to Farrah and MJ...Oh course there is no mention of the real news like the pending vote on Cap and Trade but then again who cares about climate change...RIGHT????

So who did tune in? Certainly more than a few people who are simply curious or worried about the future of their insurance plans, as well as a few us who are paid to pay attention and, of course, bloggers, who are simply masochists for this kind of thing.

Not this blogger - I was engaged in my weekly Wednesday volunteer activity with 4H. However, the Opiniator was gracious enough to provide us with a wrap up of the blogosphere's reaction to the whole thing. After quoting the ABC chief and the Business and Media Institute's reactions to it, the Opinator gets to the meat/light supper/salad of the reactions.....

Scarecrow at FireDogLake’s Oxdown Gazette, however, thinks the network lured the president into a devilish trap:

For its part, ABC insisted on having Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer, instead of informed, qualified health care experts, guide the conversation. That was a mistake, but not the worst of ABC’s offensive conduct.

Sawyer’s main contribution was to introduce her own uninformed biases/opinions in framing issues and introducing questioners. Gibson’s primary role was to reveal his own misconceptions and then literally read talking points from a Republican letter — an obvious ransom extracted after days of Republican whining about giving the President air time on a critical public issue.

Gibson’s other role was to interrupt the President every few minutes to announce a commercial break. The all too frequent commercial interruptions served as an apt metaphor for how private commercial interests demand our attention and extract their profits while limiting our ability to discuss critical public policy issues.

Emphasis mine...Damn those pesky commercial breaks! Maybe Scarecrow would have been happier if Donald Trump had just purchased this hour instead of "buying" Monday Night Raw - then he could have run it commercial free (as he did last Monday night). Then we could treated to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson starting the hour with the intro "Can you SMELL what Barack is cookin'?" Then all Charlie and Diane would need to worry about doing is bowing in proper deference to the President lest they suffer a three count and be "traded" to MSNBC.

The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik thinks the problem wasn’t the message, but the medium:

Let’s make one thing clear right from the start: ABC News did not give President Barack Obama a free pass in its prime-time special Wednesday night to sell his plan for a radical overhaul of the health care system.

There were people in the town hall setting who asked pointed questions, and if you listened very closely, it was obvious after a while that Obama did not have any very good answers when it came to specifics. Furthermore, anchorman Charles Gibson, who moderated the discussion, asked solid follow-up questions of the president.

But, ultimately none of that mattered much, because the majority of viewers can’t or don’t listen very closely when such vast amounts of information, opinion and statistics are thrown around as they were Wednesday night on ABC. Television does not work like that. In the manner that TV does work, Obama had his way from early morning to latenight on ABC Wednesday to push his agenda for massive social change on healthcare. In short, he owned ABC’s airwaves.

Zurawick is correct in that the media was part of the problem but I don't think he gets the "why". Most people turn on the television to tune out. With few exceptions (like political junkies) people use television to escape their daily lives - that's one reason why the moniker "the idiot box" has been used to describe the media almost from day 1.

The Opinionator then quotes Jake Tapper's and my dear friend Ed Morrissey's posts on the subject as well as a response to Ed from Pete Able at the Moderate Voice (for the record I do think calling that exchange Obama's "Dukakis moment" was a bit of a stretch Ed). He also quoted a rather common sense proposal from Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz....

We should create a legal requirement that political elites have to use the same system they foist on everyone else. They should have to wait for hours in doctors’ offices. They should have to wait weeks or months for tests. They should be fobbed off on emergency rooms if they get sick over the weekend. They should be denied any Hail Mary test, medication or procedure. They should get the entire politically-managed health-care experience.

This standard should extend to all elected officials, political appointees and their immediate families.

Such a law would create a built-in feedback loop that would prevent politicians from ignoring the health of the people.

However, the common sense quote of the piece comes from my BTRadio partner in punditry Jazz Shaw (again at the Moderate Voice).

The President once again trotted out the same quote I’ve heard repeatedly when he’s been asked about competition in the private industry. He wants to be “absolutely clear” that if you have a health plan you like, you can keep it! Of course you can keep it. But will you? If your current plan through your employer costs you a couple hundred dollars per month, like mine does, and suddenly there’s a government run plan available that promises roughly the same level of coverage for one hundred bucks per month, how many of you will stay with your old plan? I don’t see why I would. I’d like to save more than one thousand dollars per year, wouldn’t you? Sounds great, but then what happens to this huge industry and all of its various employees when most of us bail out? Is American health insurance, as an industry, too big to fail?

That is something that Jazz and I discussed on our show last Wednesday because that IS the million dollar question. IF the "public option" is so much cheaper than the private option to the point where Americans dump their private insurance en masse will we then have to bail out the insurance industry the way we bailed out the automobile industry or the financial industry? I understand that not all of those employees of the current insurance industry will probably not lose their jobs, but easily one half will and those that don't lose their jobs will grossly under-employed. What will THAT do to our economy? What kinds of jobs will President Obama "create" to replace the lost insurance industry jobs? More fast food jobs? More road repair jobs? The people that are losing these insurance jobs are not people who can repair roads or dig trenches.....and that is the dirty little secret of government job creation. It is a secret that NO POLITICIAN will tell you - but anyone who has worked in a government job, knows exactly what I am talking about.....

Climate Change - A Historical Timeline.

We had quite the spirited debate in my last post on "climate change" and during that debate I brought up a point that is often ignored by the global climate change alarmists.

Richard - some scientific "facts" to lay on ya...

Fact 1) at one time during early history of the Earth, much of the upper Midwest was covered in VAST SHEETS OF ICE. What caused them to melt? Global climate change....

Fact 2) at one time during the early history of the Earth the Salt Lake Valley was covered by the ocean - we have a remnant of that with us today in the form of the Great Salt Lake. What caused THAT ocean to recede and evaporate? Global Climate change!

Global climate change is real but as the previous two examples SCIENTIFICALLY PROVE mankind has nothing to do with it. There were NO coal-fired power plants, no SUV's, mega-opolis' full of people then. Just a living changing planet that circles a living changing sun.

Well my good friend Gary Gross sent me a graphic today that not only illustrates the previous cycles, it also documents what really caused all of the climate change (and it was not SUVs or factories....)



If you look at the far right on the graphic you can see that the last trend of global "warming" actually peaked in 1998 and we are now at the bottom (so far) of this latest cooling trend. We saw SNOW in Minnesota and Canada as late as June this year and as far south as NEW ORLEANS LA as this picture from January of this year indicates.



That does not mean that we should stop all efforts to reduce the amount of pollutants that we are putting into the air. But it does mean that we do not have to take the extremely draconian measures that are outlined in the misguided Cap and Trade bill that was just passed by the House. Our three Utah Representatives were all quite right to vote against this bill.

Grilling Bernanke

The New York Time takes a lot of heat (quite rightly) for editorializing news stories. However, today they deserve a lot of kudos for for watching the sausage being ground - one of their reporters live blogged the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee testimony of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on the Fed's involvement in Bank Of America's take-over of Merrill Lynch. For those that don't know why this is an issue, the best thing to do is scroll to the bottom and read the preview first...

Mr. Bernanke has come under heavy criticism for his handling of Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch. The House committee is investigating how the deal turned into an enormous second bailout of Bank of America and Merrill, and lawmakers are examining how Mr. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. pushed the bank to complete the transaction after it discovered billions of dollars in additional losses at the securities firm.

Bank of America’s chief executive, Kenneth D. Lewis, told the committee earlier this month that federal officials had pressured him to go through with the Merrill deal and acknowledged that his job had been at risk if he did not.

Mr. Paulson is expected to give the committee his side of the story next month.

The House investigation is heavily colored by partisanship. President Obama is seeking formidable new powers for the Fed to regulate giant institutions, including Bank of America, that could pose risks to the financial system.

Republicans, along with some Democrats, argue that the Fed already has too much power.

The apparent point of contention (in the hearing) was pressure that BOA CEO Lewis says that the Fed exerted on them when they talked about exercising the merger agreements "material adverse effect" or MAC clause. I'm not going to relay the whole thing - you are going to have to go to the NYTimes website to read it all but I wanted to highlight a couple of specific questions.

10:39 a.m. | More on the MAC: Was the MAC clause in the Merrill deal just a “bargaining chip” that Mr. Lewis used to get federal assistance? That’s what Mr. Issa asks Mr. Bernanke, who replies that, in his view, the MAC could not have been invoked to cancel the deal, and if it were invoked, it would have caused a near-collapse of the financial system.

So in otherwords, yes it probably was. I have no doubt that if the Fed believed that invoking the MAC would cause a "near-collapse" of the economy that they relayed that information to Mr. Lewis.

10:50 a.m. | ‘Was Mr. Paulson Lying?’: There’s a blunt question from Dan Burton of Indiana, who wants to know if Mr. Paulson was lying when he testified that Mr. Bernanke told him to threaten BofA’s board and management if the bank tried to walk away from the Merrill deal. “I didn’t tell him anything like that,” Mr. Bernanke says.

Asked about a conversation with Jeffrey Lacker, another Fed official, Mr. Bernanke says he can’t remember the details. In summarizing the conversation in an e-mail, Mr. Lacker has said Mr. Bernanke was going to make it clear that BofA’s management would be gone if they tried to invoke the MAC.

Ouch - that is going to sting.

Utah's own Jason Chaffetz asked a very interesting question...

11:12 a.m | What Makes a Threat?: As with the previous hearing starring Mr. Lewis, there is plenty of discussion today about whether or not threats were made to keep the Merrill-BofA deal intact. Jason Chaffetz of Utah wants to know how Mr. Bernanke’s questioning of Mr. Lewis’ management and judgment could not be perceived as a threat.

Mr. Bernanke tells him that the Fed did not control Mr. Lewis’ destiny. If he had decided to invoke the MAC “and the company had prospered. we would not have the basis to do anything,” he says.

I would be interested to know how Mr. Bernanke would feel if the shoe were on the other foot. Would he have "assumed" that the Fed's had no "basis" to punish him or not? I would venture to guess the answer is "NOT"....

While there was a couple of dips into the conspiracy theory pool (see Marcy Kaptur's non-question at the 11:28am mark) there were a lot of very indept probing questions including this one by Peter Welch of Vermont...

12:17 p.m. | Too Big to Exist?: Peter Welch of Vermont ask whether institutions that are too big to fail should “be too big to exist.” Mr. Bernanke said that it was legitimate to discuss that possibility, but that big banks had an economic role and businesses around the world.

and this one by Dennis Kucinich of Ohio...

1:02 p.m. | What About Those Losses?: Mr. Kucinich continues to believe that Bank of America knew about the losses in mid-November. He also asks if the Fed knew about the losses before it approved the deal at the end of the November, even though the central bank was getting daily updates of Merrill’s financial condition. Mr. Bernanke replied, “We didn’t know about the $14 billion.”

“It’s difficult to know what these valuations are unless they are done by professional asset managers,” he said.

Overall this exercise (by the NYTimes) was well worth it as they provided the country with an insight into the mechaniations that take place in DC. The more light that is shone on how legislation gets done (in DC or in the state capitals) the better it is for ALL citizens. For the more we know about how political business gets done, the more educated the voters will be when they next go into the voting booth - and that is a very good thing!

Of Ganders And Geese

So last night was the ObamaCare infomercial. I didn't watch it last night as we had dog training, but ABC News has an interesting story up today about one of the key exchanges in the townhall portion of the event. (HT HA)

President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face.

The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News' special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

Emphasis mine. We all want the best of care for our families Mr. President. That is why so MANY of us have been fighting the nationalization of our health care system. We want our local doctors to be the ones to make the decisions - not a bureaucrat in DC. That local doctor will know what is best for the patient while the bureaucrat in DC will not. It's that simple.

Final Day

Today is the final day of the Move America Forward "Troopathon". If you have not done so, now would be a perfect time to buy a care package for our soldiers overseas. The link in my sidebar will take you out to the donations page where you can buy a care package and help Team Hot Air (or any of the other teams competing in the Blogger Competition).

Founders Morning Quotes

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If `Thou shalt not covet' and `Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."

--John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787

A Perfect Fit

Not just a perfect fit, this is a tailor made to perfection fit.

The National Republican Congressional Committee’s volunteer program, “Call to Arms,” will host its first event of the cycle next month.

An invitation to the July 15 reception asks guests to enroll in the volunteer program or donate $50 to the NRCC. Freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah) heads the CTA program, which targets potential volunteers in the Washington, D.C., area.

Given how well motivated Rep. Chaffetz' volunteers were in the last campaign there is no doubt that he is perfect for the job.

From the Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't Department

President Obama has been taking a ton of heat from his critics for not coming out stronger in his condemnation of the Iranian regime in it's violent reaction to the protesters. Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain went on the Sunday shows and talked about the "tepid" response to the crisis in Iran. Even some leftward leaning media outlets thought that the President's reponse was less than underwhelming. Some even criticized the President for going about his "normal" business while Iran burned.

I have to respectfully disagree with all of them. Iran is an odd creature and President Obama HAS learned a little bit from our dismal past history with Iran. He made the calculated decision to hold back on comment on the situation, knowing (rightly) that the Mullah's and Iranian state run television would use anything that he said against the US...and he was right.....

The Iranian government, meanwhile, accused the U.S. for the first time of interfering in the postelection dispute. Iran protested to the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. affairs in Iran because the two nations have no diplomatic ties. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that President Barack Obama stands by his defense of principles such as the right of people to demonstrate...

So even though he took a cautious prudent approach, the President is getting what he feared, which actually should free him up to do the BOLD thing - to come out and condemn the Iraqi government for the escalation of violence. You've done the politically correct thing, now do the morally correct one! It's that time.....

Selective Memory

I had to laugh when I started reading today's op-ed by Paul Rolly in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Federal agents swooped in on dozens of unsuspecting peaceful folks who were minding their own business and doing their jobs and ripped them from their families.

They handcuffed them and dragged them from their workplace. They threw them in jail and then public officials had a press conference to boast about it. The raid on illegal artifact peddlers in San Juan County?

Nope. The one I'm talking about occurred at the Salt Lake International Airport in December 2001 when federal and state officials wanted to show the world how safe Salt Lake City was for the 2002 Winter Olympics and ended up scattering the families of non-threatening dishwashers, floor sweepers and cargo handlers. None of those arrested had committed a crime other than being in the country illegally.

Yep - Rolly spends the rest of this column taking our esteemed Senators to task for being "inconsistent" on law enforcement while blithly ignoring the inconsistencies in his own rant.

And Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett didn't say squat about the heavy-handed tactics of law enforcement in that raid. Nor did they complain about the raid that broke up the families of dozens of workers at the Champion Safe Co. in Provo, which eventually led to that company's move to Mexico.

Nor did they complain about the Gestapo-like tactics that netted dozens of harmless workers at the Swift meat packing plant in northern Utah.

The people arrested, wrenched from their families and eventually deported in those raids, were breaking the law because they had come into the United States illegally.

Except that one of the big problems that many conservatives have with Senator Bennett is his rather wobbly stands on immigration reform and enforcement of the current immigration law! While he voted "Yes" on English as the official language of the US and on building the border fence, he has voted for a guest worker program (without a path to citizenship) and for allowing more migrant farm workers into the country - something that is a bit of an issue for many on both sides of the debate. Senator Hatch has voted consistently for enforcement of our existing immigration law and against many of the forms that would allow those who are already here illegally an easy way to citizenship. So essentially Rolly does have a point with Senator Hatch....

However, he selectivly ignores his own inconsistency. He is for (you can tell by the tenor of the article) harsher treatment of those who stole the Native American artifacts, yet he wants everyone to look the other way to illegal immigration (as you can tell from his previous columns and blog postings where anyone who is anti-ILLEGAL immigration is simply referred to as "anti-immigration").

However, the biggest problem that I have with Rolly's column and arguement is the fact that he is totally ignores the biggest difference between those that broke the law in the artifacts case and those who broke the law in the case he brings up from 2002. In the latter, the people arrested were NOT AMERICAN CITIZENS and in the former case all of the accused were AMERICAN CITIZENS. There is a difference in court of law!

Me??? I think both the illegal immigrants and the artifacts smugglers should be held accountable for their actions. I certainly don't care that they have been smuggling artifacts (in that region of the country) for generations....just because it has been done for generations does not make it right. It is still theft!

The moral of the story is pretty clear - if you don't want to be arrested in a humiliating fashion - don't break the law. It's a pity Mr. Rolly couldn't see that simple fact.....

Fixing Climate Change

OK so climate change is back on the front page thanks to soon to be Governor Herbert's comments at the Western Governors Association meetings this week. Well before everyone gets back on their high horse about yes it is real or no it isn't I would like to take a look at a few FACTS about climate change, cap and trade and living the "green" lifestyle.

The below the fold headline in yesterday's SLTribune blazed "Climate change is here - deal with it, the White House says" The headline is correct - climate change IS REAL and is indisputable. If the climate didn't change we would never get rain or snow or hot or cold. Climate change can also be called the FOUR SEASONS! Cyclical "climate change" is well documented through out human history! However, it is in the body of the article that the Tribune gets off base.

Utahns have heard it before: Climate change threatens to make water more scarce. It will shrink the ski season, and swell the demand for summertime air conditioning.

I don't know if Ms. Fahys (the author of the piece) has noticed but this has been one of the coolest, wettest Junes in a long times (as the local forecasters have repeatedly pointed out). My friends in Minnesota were told this week to prepare for a year "without summer". In FACT there is a plethora of documentation out there to show that the climate is actually COOLING. The FACT is (as Governor to be Herbert pointed out) the science is far from settled as to whether vain, arrogant mankind can do anything to control climate change. There are plenty of published scientists out there who disagree with the "consensus" that climate change is manmade.

That's not to say that we can't or shouldn't reduce our use of energy. Conserving resources is a VERY conservative principle. You want to use less energy so that you spend less on heating and cooling and lighting so that you have more money to spend on other things (like increasing taxes?). That is a no brainer! But are the "conventional wisdom" ways of cutting back really that effective? Turning off unused appliances and lights most definately does help. Taking public transit....maybe not so much according to some reports!

In some circumstances, for instance, it could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city -- even in an SUV, the bete noire of green groups -- rather than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport.

...and of course no one could have know that before, right????? What about solar energy you ask. Well that does not incurr the cost savings that it's proponents thought as quickly as they thought either!

So what do we do? Well, as the details start to come out (remember my recent comments about the devil in the details...) it appears that the Waxman Markey bill is not the answer either! Things are so bad with Waxman Markey that many blue dogs (like Rep Jim Matheson of Utah and Rep. Collin Peterson of MN) initially came out against it (rumor has it a deal is in the making). Why, you may ask? The liberal leaning Brookings Institute confirms what many conservatives have long said - that Waxman Markey will cripple the already fragile economy! Even the non-partisan Congressional Budget office has said the same thing!

So Waxman Markey isn't the answer, you say - are YOU REPUBLICANS proposing anything or are you just the party of "NO"? The answer is Republicans in the House ARE proposing solutions. However, the Speaker of the House has refused to give ANY of these solutions time in committee.

The bottom line is that we should conserve, but if we are going to do it we need to look at the whole picture in order to get a good idea as to whether our actions have any positive impact (turning off lights, combining errands on one trip) or not (taking the bus, cap and trade) and then chose to engage in the activities that really work. It's that simple and that much common sense - something we don't need government action to do.

Why Do We Need Health Care Reform?

The biggest reason that government run health care proponents use as a reason why we need to do this is the "fact" that 45 million Americans don't have health insurance. Larry Elder took a look at that number and found it to be "wanting:.

About 45 million Americans lack health care insurance. Or do they? ...

Nearly half of the 45 million fall in the category of my 26-year-old nephew. He smokes cigarettes, dates, eats out, goes to movies and, like all young people, lives through his cell phone. With a slight change in priorities, he could afford health insurance, the cost of which at his age and health starts at about $100 a month. Take a look at a Reason Foundation video of interviews with a bunch of non-health-insured 20-somethings.

These Gen Xers copped to dropping money on clothes, booze, nightlife, the latest tech gizmos and other things of interest to them. With a change in priorities, these young folks -- far more representative of those without insurance than the forlorn husband and wife sitting on a porch swing -- could both afford and qualify for health insurance. They simply consider it a low priority.

So let's do the math....of the 45 million with "no" health care, some 22 million are eligible for health insurance but choose not to buy it. That is not a valid reason to take over an industry this large.

Millions more can access health care -- through SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program), Medicaid or other government programs. But for whatever reason, 11 million people simply refuse to take advantage of them.

So of the remaining 23 million without health insurance, 11 are eligible for existing government programs! That brings the total number of people "without" insurance down to 12 million - a large number to be sure but as a percentage of the entire US population.....

What about criminals without insurance? More than 2 million Americans -- with access to health care, by the way -- use jail, prison or penitentiary mailing addresses. And for every one behind bars, how many live among us who survive by theft, drug dealing, prostitution or some similar career path? Taxpayer health insurance for them, too?

Actually they already get taxpayer funded health care in the prison infirmary. That brings us down to roughly 10 million or so without health INSURANCE. I stress the word insurance here because as Mr. Elder states, not having insurance does not equate a lack of health CARE.....

Lacking health care insurance is not the same as lacking health care . By law, most emergency rooms must provide health care -- to both legals and illegals. Yes, they stand in line, but no health insurance does not equal no health care.

That is a point I have made on MANY occasions.

Mr. Elder closes asking the same questions that most thinking people are asking today.....

Do we allow a complete government takeover of the section of health care it doesn't already run, for 10-15 million or so without health insurance on a persistent basis? Again, 255 million Americans already have it. Many millions more could get it if they wanted to. And 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with the care they now receive.

There are plenty of ways to fix the problem without bankrupting the country and rationing care. One solution (from the House GOP Caucus) would give health care tax credits to low income Americans, eliminate wasteful spending (unnecessary tests and the like), allow small business to band together in a buying block in order to get insurance for themselves and their employees and introduces liability reform as ways to bring the high costs of INSURANCE down to an affordable level.

When you look at the FACTS of the situation you see that there is no real need for a complete take over of the health care system by government. The only real "reason" for it, given the facts is is simply that it is a power grab - another way for big government to take yet another piece of your precious freedom away - thanks to President Obama and the House Democrats.

Putting People First!

Now this is refreshing to see.

I knew when I ran for Congress that fighting would be part of the job description. I came here to fight for what I believe in, to fight to be heard and to fight for the interests of the people I serve. The problem is, so did everyone else.

And with competing priorities, beliefs, constituencies and approaches, there's no way we can all agree. Fighting, or more accurately "debate," is a natural and beneficial part of the legislative process.

The trick is knowing where to draw the line between productive debate and destructive debate. Quite simply, productive debate produces something positive, whether agreement or simply mutual understanding. Destructive debate sets out to destroy the character of the fighters. Fighting for ideas and policies can all too easily morph into personal attacks against those who disagree with us.

At the other extreme, we can sometimes be quick to label as mudslinging any effective argument that makes our position look bad, regardless of whether the attack was actually personal. During my campaign, I was very aggressive in talking about my opponents' records, positions and public statements. I believe these things are fair game.

But I did not and will not tolerate the politics of personal destruction from either side. Once you find yourself calling someone a name, questioning their character or insulting their friends and loved ones, you're over the line.

Now one of the things I do have to add is that disagreeing on a policy matter is NOT a personal attack. I don't think that gay marriage is healthy for society to take as a policy stand. That does not mean I "hate" gay people. I have some people in my life who are very dear who happen to be gay. We disagree on the policy without being enemies. It's not hard! I have very dear friends who voted for President Obama and we are still friends. It is a matter of putting PEOPLE (your friends and neighbors and co-workers) over ideology.

Founders Morning Quote

"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight."

--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Honoring Their Service

The Troopathon blogger competition is just barely 48 hours old and already the Hot Air Steamers have jumped to a commanding lead. If you have not done so already, please go out to the Honor Their Service blogger competition page and buy a care package or three. Thanks!

You're Fired

In 2008, on the heels of the US Attorney's firing "scandal", the Democrats on Capital Hill put together legislation to add further protections to the Inspector Generals corps as these federal employees are supposed to be more insulated from the political winds of change than US Attorneys (who serve at the pleasure of the President) are. That Legislation, the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008, was sponsored by Senator Claire McKaskill and one of the 11 co-sponsors was none other than then Senator Barack Obama! The bill (which has not made it out of committee in the House) was designed to:

• Require Congressional notification on the removal of an inspector general;
• Expand the reporting requirements for IG budget requests;
• Require IGs to have their own legal counsel;
• Establish an IG Council;
• Provide IGs with some additional investigative, law enforcement, and personnel
  authorities and require additional reports by IGs and the Government Accountability
  Office (GAO).

Another requirement of the bill was:

(Sec. 3) Requires the President, the heads of designated federal entities, the Librarian of Congress, the Capitol Police Board, and the Public Printer to communicate to Congress in writing the reasons for removing or transferring an IG no later than 30 days before such removal or transfer.

However, since this bill was not passed out of the House, the law that applies to Mr. Walpin's firing is the Inspector General Act of 1978. One of the provisions of that law is that when an IG is removed from office or transferred that the head of the federal entity doing that (in this case that would be the head of the Executive Branch - ie President Obama) must notify both Houses of Congress - something President Obama has not done according to Sen. McKaskill!

“The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service,” McCaskill said. “The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal.”

McCaskill, a key Obama ally, said that the president’s stated reason for the termination, “Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason.”

Another provision of the existing law is that the President must give the Inspectors General 30 day advance notice of their firing - something else this President did not not considering he gave Mr. Walpin 1 hour to resign or be fired. Only after Walpin refused to resign did this President decide to follow the law and tell Congress of his intent to fire the IG - but by then the die had been cast and it was too late for the President to abide by the intent of the law.

Regardless of whether you are applying the existing law, or the amendments to that law that then Senator Obama co-sponsored, it is clear that PRESIDENT Obama broke the intent of the law in his firing of Gerald Walpin. This is in no way akin to President Bush's wholesale firing of US Attorney's - a faux scandal created by the left-o-sphere to discredit President Bush. This is a real and legit scandal and something that the media and Congress need to bring light to. However, I suspect that will not happen with this President. It will be swept under the rug by a besotted media and a hyper-partisan congress.

So much for the "politics of change" that we were promised.

The Devil In The Details Part 2

The next most over-used meme to defend ObamaCare is "we are the only civilized nation to NOT have single payer care". Well as my momma used to say "if your friends all jumped off of a bridge would you do it too?" There are a multitude of reasons as to why that argument is specious at best, however my friend Gary Gross has probably the best reason why we should not rush to single payer...in a nutshell it is HEALTHIER to live here - our odds of surviving major disease is much better here than it is in any of these other "civilized" countries that have single payer health care.....

Jack Kingston cited two startling comparisons on cancer survival rates.

The survival rate for breast cancer in the United States is 84%; in Britain, it’s 69%.

The survival rate for prostate cancer in the United States is 92%; it’s only 51% in Great Britain.

That last statistic was a jaw-dropper for me. Think of the difference between 9 men in 10 surviving in the United States vs. 1 in 2 men dying of prostate cancer in the UK.

Think about it - men in the "great civilized" nation of Great Britian with it's single payer plan have a 50/50 shot of surviving Prostate Cancer. Yeah that is something to aspire to all right.

Meanwhile the Campaigner in Chief is busy back-pedaling away from the Kennedy Health care bill as more and more details about the costs and restrictions and pork attached to the bill are coming out.....

"This is not the Administration’s bill," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement following the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of Sen. Ted Kennedy's health care reform legislation, "and it's not even the final Senate Committee bill."

And yet that is exactly what the President was campaigning FOR when he went to Green Bay last week and Chicago yesterday.....

Meanwhile the estimated cost of this bill keeps climing....can you say FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS? That is what one independent group says will be the true 10 year cost of this bill when you factor in all of the variables that the CBO left off!

As I said yesterday, I agree that we need reform but this is NOT the reform that the American people were promised or wanted. It's time to drive a stake into the heart of this bill so that the discussion can turn to REAL reform - a compromise that includes voices from ALL sides of the debate - not just the side that the government and the media want you to hear.

Honoring Their Service

OK guys - it's another call to arms....


Move America Forward is running it's first annual "Troopathon" to raise money to send care packages to our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo and we would like your help. I have joined Ed Morrissey of Hot Air and a whole host of other bloggers to help raise money for this worthy project. It ends on June 25 with an 8 hour streaming video broadcast. It will be a lot of fun.

Please join all of us bloggers in this effort. I will have a link in my sidebar through June 25 that sends you out to the Team Hot Air Steamers order page. Please help - won't you?

The Devil In The Details (Or But We MUST Do Something...)

We MUST do something...that is the plaintive refrain of the defenders of ObamaCare - we must do "something"... but is this really the "something" that we want? That is the question that must be asked. For example, do we want or need a health care "reform" program that taxes the health insurance benefits as if it were income? How about one that will tax things like soft drinks or that Big Mac you had for lunch? That is what the Democrats in the Legislature are proposing. Do we want a health care reform that actually cuts health care benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recepients while spending money on "Community Make-Over" programs and spending on streetlights, sidewalks, grocery stores and jungle gyms? Do we really want a health care "reform" bill that will spend approximately $1,000,000,000,000 (that is 1 TRILLION dollars) more than we are currently spending on health care? Do we really want a health care "reform" package even the AMA finds to be unworkable?

Oh I fully agree that something needs to be done, but the devil is (as always) in the details and the details of THIS so-called reform bill shows that this Congress and this President are not serious about real reform - they are only serious about enacting single payer health care and in the process putting several hundred million more people (in the insurance industry ALONE) out of work.

Is that really the kind of reform we want?

Update: Oh and according to the CBO this plan still leaves roughly 30 MILLION people uninsured (HT Ed Morrissey)

The Congressional Budget Office has tried crunching the numbers on Barack Obama’s plan to reform health care, which Obama says will save money and protect the uninsured. The CBO director on his official blog says, “Wrong!” — on both counts. The reform plan will cost more than a trillion dollars over the next decade, and while it will put 39 million people on insurance plans, it will drive off more than 23 million more from their existing plans. The cost doesn’t include Obama’s public plan option, either:

According to our preliminary assessment, enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010-2019 period. When fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million or 17 million.

These new figures do not represent a formal or complete cost estimate for the draft legislation, for several reasons. The estimates provided do not address the entire bill—only the major provisions related to health insurance coverage. Some details have not been estimated yet, and the draft legislation has not been fully reviewed. Also, because expanded eligibility for the Medicaid program may be added at a later date, those figures are not likely to represent the impact that more comprehensive proposals—which might include a significant expansion of Medicaid or other options for subsidizing coverage for those with income below 150 percent of the federal poverty level—would have both on the federal budget and on the extent of insurance coverage.

A net decrease of 16-17 million would still leave about 30 million uninsured, according to the figures thrown around by ObamaCare advocates. It would simply exchange individuals in the uninsured category, and those most likely to lose their coverage would be those in lower-income jobs, as well as people working in small businesses and startups.

Is this really the kind of change you want?

Leadership

Eric Black, reporting for MinnPost, has the latest in the "unallotment" story.

DFL legislative leaders, union officials, attorneys and representatives of some of the groups that expect to be hammered by Gov. Tim Pawlenty's "unallotment" plans have been meeting to strategize ways to fight back.

A legal challenge is under discussion, as well as political counterattacks.

Three meetings have been held over recent days, including one Wednesday. House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher seems to be running or at least coordinating the effort. She presided over two of the three meetings and another legislator close to the speaker represented her at the third.

The first thought that sprang to my mind when I read this was "where were these people last summer when the session ended with the ANNOUNCEMENT of a huge budget shortfall?" and "What were they doing all last fall and winter when the reality of this recession was settling on us all?" and most importantly "where were they in February, March, April and the first part of May during the legislative session when they SHOULD have addressed all this?" Then my next thought answered the questions.....

Where were these people last summer when the session ended with the ANNOUNCEMENT of a huge budget shortfall? - They were all gearing up for the fall campaign by holding townhall meetings that only screened out questions that were critical of the Legislature or asked how they were going to FIX the problem.

What were they doing all last fall and winter when the reality of this recession was settling on us all? They were (in the fall) campaigning for office on the claims of fiscal responsibility and fixing the problem - promises that they never kept.

Where were they in February, March, April and the first part of May during the legislative session when they SHOULD have addressed all this? They spent the first 13 weeks of the session passing more spending bills on wants - rather than figuring out how they were going to fund the needs (like GAMC).

The same people that frittered away the last 12 months that they had to fix these problems are now complaining about the fact that someone has decided to FIX THEIR MESS (rather than kicking the can down the road some more)??? If the DFL leadership was so concerned about fixing the budget, why didn't they do it during session? Why didn't they take the compromise that Governor Pawlenty offered them (when he gave in to them on 2/3 of their objections to the his budget proposals)? WHY DIDN'T THEY DO ANYTHING CONSTRUCTIVE THIS PAST SESSION?

My dear friend Gary Gross is absolutely spot on in his analysis of the situation....the only one showing leadership in this situation is Governor Pawlenty. The DFL Leadership, on the other hand, are acting like a bunch of spoiled three year olds that didn't get candy before dinner. It's time for the DFL Leadership in St. Paul to grow up - and if they refuse to do their Constitutional DUTY then the voters need to replace them with adults who are willing to do the job that they have been hired to do!

Parallels

In the course of researching a rebuttal to this Telegraph story, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the parallels between the Steel Industry of the 1970's and the auto industry of today.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. steel industry came under increasing pressure from foreign competition. Manufacture in Germany and Japan was booming. Foreign mills and factories, built with the latest technology, benefited from lower labor costs and powerful government-corporate partnerships, allowing them to capture increasing market shares of steel and steel products. Separately, demand for steel softened due to recessions, the 1973 oil crisis, and increasing use of other materials.^[9][42] At this critical juncture, free market, anti-union policies, and deregulation, especially under President Ronald Reagan, came into play. Free market pressures exposed the U.S. steel industry's own internal problems, which included a now-outdated manufacturing base that had been over-expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, hostile management and labor relationships, the inflexibility of United Steelworkers regarding wage cuts and work-rule reforms, oligarchic management styles, and poor strategic planning by both union and management. In particular, Pittsburgh faced its own challenges. Local coke and iron ore deposits were depleted, raising material costs. The large mills in the Pittsburgh region also faced competition from newer, more profitable "mini-mills" and non-union mills with lower labor costs.^[42]

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the steel industry in Pittsburgh began to implode. Following the 1981–1982 recession, for example, the mills laid off 153,000 workers.^[42] The steel mills began to shut down. These closures caused a ripple effect, as railroads, mines, and other factories across the region lost business and closed. The local economy suffered a depression, marked by high unemployment and underemployment, as laid-off workers took lower-paying, non-union jobs. Pittsburgh suffered as elsewhere in the Rust Belt with a declining population, and like many other U.S. cities, it also saw white flight to the suburbs.^[43]

Emphasis mine. It was a potent cocktail of union, corporate and governmental errors along with free market pressures that the American steel and auto industries were unable to overcome that led, in the end, to the demise of those industries.

Where the parallels diverge comes in how the cities of Flint and Pittsburgh handled the paradigm change. Where the city of Pittsburgh reinvented itself from Steel City to High Tech Haven...

Present-day Pittsburgh, with a diversified economy, a low cost of living, and a rich infrastructure for education and culture, has been ranked as one of the World's Most Livable Cities.^[48]

... the city of Flint is tearing whole neighborhoods down...

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

...and the Obama Administration wants to bring this plan to a neighborhood near you! The reason for this is an obvious one - the cities in question are in decline....

"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she (Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley) said.

Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.

Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.

The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.

The Telegraph tap dances around many of the reasons for the flight - lack of jobs, high unemployment etc - but they never get to WHY these jobs are leaving.... usually a government climate that makes it next to impossible to attract and maintain businesses (hello Minnesota). I mean a publicly traded company is ultimately responsible to it's shareholders. If the shareholders are not making money then the company has two choices - move to a climate where it is cheaper to do business (off-shoring) or go out of business! It's that simple.

But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that "big is good" and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

Look I'm not saying that Flint should be forced into doing something that won't work for them. If shrinking the size of the town works for THEM then by all means, they should do it. Where I do depart with the idea is that this is something that should be forced on other cities due to FEDERAL MANDATE! Pittsburgh re-invented itself without federal involvement - that's fantastic - but how do you Pittsburghers will react to the Federal government coming in and telling them that their jobs and neighborhoods are being torn down because the Federal government thinks their city is "too big"? We should not be using Flint's cookie cutter on everyone else. Let the cities of Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Detroit and the 46 other "targeted" cities decide what's best for their citizens. If it is reinvention ala Pittsburgh, reduction ala Flint, a combination of the two or some other outside of the box solution - it has to be up to the city and the county...not the Federal Nanny State.

Gettin' While The Gettin' Is Good

Governor Huntsman is hosting his last WSGA Annual Conference this weekend in Park City, but it sounds like there might be some rumblings of discontent in the ranks.

Jon Huntsman, the Republican governor of Utah, has had one foot out the door since being named Ambassador to China by President Obama. But he will still be chair of the Western Governors Association when it holds its annual meeting in Salt Lake City this weekend.
Moreover, it looks like his final days in office will be marred by a controversy over just whose tax dollars are being spent on a highly controversial "Western Climate Initiative." Paul Chesser, a global warming skeptic who is a researcher with Climate Strategies Watch, submitted Freedom of Information Act requests and discovered that the initiative -- aimed at supporting dramatic reductions in carbon emissions -- has contracted or partnered with a wide range of liberal climate change groups. A full-time WGA staff member has been detailed to manage the climate project. The subsidies to pay for all this will likely be a topic of discussion at the governors' meeting because a majority of state governors didn't sign on to it. Many of them view draconian reductions in carbon emissions as a serious threat to their states' economies.
One governor I spoke with points out that the WGA is supposed to operate on a consensus basis. He says the WGA's involvement in planning climate change proposals is serious overreach. "The dues states give WGA come from tax money and I was surprised to learn just how much the WGA seems to be getting ahead of many of the states on carbon regulation," he told me.

So the Governor, like many of the Global Warming/Cooling/Whatever-it-is-today crowd over-stepped his boundaries in the name of "saving the planet" from something that we are arrogant to think we can influence? Color me shocked...

Maybe this is why he was so eager to jump on that Ambassadorship.....

Deja Vu Yet Again!

This is really getting ridiculous. First it was inserting politics into the Miss America Pageant and now the whole brouhaha with David Letterman and Sarah Palin. Now I am not going to ask the trope "What if Rush had said something like this about Sasha or Malia?" because we all know that if Rush had said something this absolutely tasteless, the left would not REST until he had been removed from the airwaves once and for all.

I don't care who you are or which side of the aisle you are on...political kids are OFF LIMITS! I don't care if it is Chelsea or Amy Carter or Sasha and Malia OR Bristol and Willow Palin - KIDS ARE OFF LIMITS! They didn't chose their parents or their parents political careers and to make them the butt of your jokes is the lowest of the low.

David Letterman should be ashamed of himself and anyone who defends this behavior is engaging in the most boorish of behavior. I said it before and I will say it again - THERE IS NO EXCUSE! Although I have no doubts that Anonymous from St. Paul will attempt like crazy to do just that.....

Well Now.....

Well, well, well.....

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says he has lost confidence in the inspector general who investigates AmeriCorps and other national service programs and has told Congress he is removing him from the position.

Obama's move follows an investigation by IG Gerald Walpin finding misuse of federal grants by a nonprofit education group led by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star.

Now half of me is curious as to how the people who called for President Bush's impeachment for doing the same thing are going to react to this, the other half of me realizes that I already know what the response will be.....stone, dead, graveyard silence.

And before you all cry "but wait you defended Bush when HE did it" let me just remind you that there is a little bit of difference between the two situations. These cases no where NEAR identical....when President Bush fired the AG's a few years back he fired a large number of them and NONE of the fired AG's were investigating supporters of the then President. While the larger point that the IG and the AG's before him serve at the pleasure of the President remains, when the President fires an IG or AG when he is in the middle of an investigation that just HAPPENS to center around a support of said President, you know a few eyebrows SHOULD be raised in the media - and you expect it in the blogosphere.

That said, I have no doubts that the left will remain deadly silent on an issue that had them HOWLING with indignation a short two years ago. Which again shows exactly where their priciples (and their priorities) really are...

But What KIND of Reform Is it?

Nicholas Kristof, writing in the NY Times yesterday doubles down on Canadian Style health care with a column under the headline "This Time We Won't Scare Off". In it he talks about one woman who had a positive experience with the system as if that one story will be enough to off sent the hundreds of reports of bad experiences with the system (many of which I have reported here). Meanwhile, President Obama was back on the campaign trail in Green Bay Wisconsin trying to sell his nationalized health care system to the American people. One of the comments that he made (in addressing the critics of his plan) was the comment that "no one in DC" is proposing socialized medicine. Or really Mr. President? Why is it then that your Administration met with the Jack Layton, the ND member of Parliment, who drew up THEIR socialized medical program? Mr. Layton even contradicted the President with this comment prior to his meetings WITH the Obama Administration.

Module body

"We know the Americans can't just simply adopt our model, walk it across the border and put it in place," Layton said in an interview Saturday after making a speech to the Ontario NDP provincial council in Toronto.

"But the principles of universality, of access and of insuring that health care's available to everybody, those kinds of principles are very much motivating the Obama administration."

Emphasis mine. Another meme that the President and his sycophants are perpuating is the meme that there are no alternatives being proposed. The only truth to that comment is that there are no alternatives that THE MEDIA IS REPORTING! The real truth is that there are alternatives as this op-ed shows.

To be effective, health care reform must include insurance coverage for everyone, encourage prevention measures, and reform the inefficiencies in our system to ensure the future strength of our economy. CPR—Coverage, Prevention, Reform—is a plan I have proposed that sets up a system where every American will be required to purchase meaningful health insurance to ensure each family will be protected against bankruptcy if a family member becomes seriously ill or injured. No family should lose their home or life-savings because of illness or injury. For those who may not be able to afford this plan, you will have assistance getting coverage. This proposal also aggressively focuses on the need for more robust preventive care and creates incentives for people and businesses to work toward better health sooner, rather than later when such measures may not work and crisis treatment is much more costly. By offering first-dollar coverage for early health screenings and immunizations, this program will create the foundation for healthy lifestyles and reduce the need for later treatments. Further, by rewarding employees for taking part in employer-sponsored programs, which often include programs to help people quit smoking, fitness club membership options, and affordable access to programs like Weight Watchers, CPR creates incentives that will motivate Americans to take control of and improve their personal health. The third component of CPR entails much needed reform of the way we pay for health care in this country. As it stands now, health care constitutes 17% of the U.S. economy, an amount that totals more than $8,000 annually for every person in the U.S. We already have more than $38 trillion in promised Medicare benefits over the next 75 years that we don’t know how to pay for. The President himself has stated, "The biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care." We don’t need more health care that spends more taxpayer dollars to grow government; we need better health care that offers Americans peace of mind and quality care at prices they can afford.

This is coming from the President's first pick for the Commerce Secretary. But wait - the sycophants say - the President says that this is going to save everyone (including the Government) money. Well I think we should wait for the CBO to weigh in on this to be certain, but if past performance (of the President's cost savings claims) are any indication, the CBO is going to be singing a different tune - AGAIN!

Senator Gregg closes with this thought.

Reform starts with paying for quality, not quantity. According to a study at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, as much as $750 billion is spent each year on procedures or health-related services that don’t necessarily help patients get better. For example, when discharging patients, hospitals have an obligation to provide patients with a care plan to ensure they don’t end up readmitted. However, Medicare pays more to hospitals when a patient ends up back in the hospital. And physicians are paid more when they order more tests, procedures and office visits, whether you need them or not.

Ask yourself: Would you pay your dinner bill if the waiter spilled your first plate all over the floor, brought you a replacement plate, and then charged you double? We have the information and ability to change how we pay for health care; we just need to begin implementing the policies to do it, such as informing providers and the public of their performance compared to other providers in their locality and around the country. Payment incentives can also be instituted to improve care by encouraging physicians to coordinate care for patients, thereby eliminating unnecessary procedures and tests. Efforts such as these will improve quality and reduce costs.

President Obama has said that health care reform needs to be passed "right away". The last time we heard that it was the stimulus package and we all know how well that has worked - right? Rather than rush this bill throw and get even more flawed legislationi (like the stimulus) let's take the time to thoroughly and completely discuss ALL options for health care reform. After all, if the reform is that necessary - isn't it a good idea to make sure that everyone's concerns are addressed?