Some recent media meltdowns call attention in the worst way to the continuing failures of much of the American news and information media. Bad judgment and abandonment of basic principles in three recent cases call attention to a long-standing slide from respectability to corruption for the nation’s news purveyors. Some examples from the recent past include:
First, the Rolling Stone rape story, in which contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely wrote about a female freshman at the University of Virginia identified as “Jackie,” detailing an alleged sexual assault by seven members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
Ms. Erdely did a poor job of fact-checking the story and failed to interview key individuals involved in the episode. The story was unfit to be printed in any credible publication, and caused quite a bit of turmoil at UVA.
In defense of this journalistic malfeasance, the following notion has been floated: “Just because it wasn’t true in the Rolling Stone case doesn’t mean it isn’t true somewhere.” Such foolishness is a common defense of beliefs thought to be so important that truth takes second place.
Although Rolling Stone is a pop culture magazine, not a “real” news source, it is not excused from following the rules.
The New York Daily News, however, is a real news source, and has no excuse for this failure:
“Sarah Palin has gone rogue again - this time, giving her fans a fleshy surprise as a holiday gift,” wrote Adam Edelman in the Daily News, describing a video of Ms. Palin.
“In the episode, Palin demonstrates how to make her favorite iteration of blueberry pie, but as she delicately kneads the dough, her sweater falls down to her arms, revealing a whole lot of sun-kissed Alaskan skin and a sexy black undergarment,” wrote Mr. Edelman, a political writer for the paper.
Clearly implying that Ms. Palin was deliberately provocative, the headline blared: “Ho, ho, ho! Sarah Palin wishes fans holiday cheer as sweater falls down,” alleging she “gifted them with the naughtiest Christmas present of all – flesh.”
Perhaps Ms. Palin’s good looks dazed Mr. Edelman, confusing him about what he saw. Or didn’t see. She wasn’t wearing a sweater, as anyone who watched the video knows. The political writer’s imagination ran wild, and visions of underthings danced in his head.
It appears the delicious opportunity to ridicule Ms. Palin easily overpowered whatever journalistic ethics he and the newspaper might once have had.
For the third example, when a white police officer in Ferguson, MO shot and killed an 18 year-old black youth, the media widely portrayed the black youth as a gentle giant who had his hands up in surrender, saying “don’t shoot.”
The reaction to this seemingly tragic event was swift and angry. And wrong.
You see, it never happened. The “gentle giant,” Michael Brown, who was a giant, but was anything but gentle, had just minutes before the confrontation with officer Darren Wilson stolen cigars from a store and assaulted a store worker, disobeyed the police officer’s lawful instructions to move out of the middle of the street, attacked the police officer in his car and attempted to take his gun, then ran from the police officer. An autopsy revealed that he had marijuana in his blood, and according to grand jury testimony, never put his hands up and never said, “don’t shoot.” Instead, he attacked the officer again and died from gunshot wounds in response to his attack.
The media rushed to judgment, accepting without examination the idea that an innocent 18 year-old black youth was murdered while he was surrendering to police with his hands up. Was it because this scenario fit the preconceived notions of much of the mainstream media?
It is the reporter’s duty to scrupulously avoid injecting opinion in his or her reporting, and to carefully label unverified information, so that those in the audience have reliable information from which to form their opinions.
American journalist and educator Walter Williams founded the world's first journalism school at the University of Missouri in 1908, and in 1914 created the Journalist’s Creed. Among the elements of the Creed are the following:
**I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that all acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.
**I believe that clear thinking, clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.
Now, one hundred years after its creation, after witnessing so much news coverage that falls so far short of the lofty standards of the Journalist’s Creed, one may justifiably wonder whether the Creed was ever a part of the training of so many practitioners, or has merely been forsaken by them, and is as carefully concealed from journalism students as so much information is hidden from the public by our government.
The three examples listed previously only scratch the surface of the of the failure of modern news journalism to adhere to its moral and ethical mandate. Like our nation’s founding principles, journalism’s ethics and morality need to be restored.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Interesting polls, other than the North Pole, that are in the news
As the year-end draws nearer, polling organizations provide
a look into the likes and dislikes of Americans.
**The Gallup organization’s daily tracking poll of December
16-18 shows that only 23 percent of Americans are satisfied with the direction
of the country. Not surprisingly, a breakdown shows that 38 percent of
Democrats and 21 percent of independents said they were satisfied with the way
things were going in the U.S. throughout 2014, compared with just 10 percent of
Republicans.
**The U-3 unemployment rate stands at 5.9 percent and the
underemployed rate at 14.9 percent, based on Gallup’s thirty-day rolling
average, and President Obama’s approval rating stands at 43 percent approval to
52 percent disapproval, having moved from a virtual tie at 46 percent in August
of last year.
**Gallup finds Congress just a hair higher than its all-time
record low approval rating of 14 percent, at 15 percent. Just 13 years ago
Congress was rated at a record 56 percent, but its rating has not been higher
than 20 percent in the last five years, or in six of the last seven years.
**A Rassmussen poll found that 86 percent of U.S. adults are
proud to be Americans, and 92 percent believe that U.S. citizenship is very
important. However, only 40 percent of voters like President Obama’s unilateral
amnesty for up to five million illegal aliens to remain in the country. Roughly
half think the U.S. will suffer because of the amnesty and that it will increase
illegal immigration.
**The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index tracks daily how Americans
evaluate their lives on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. The Index
shows 55 percent are thriving, 42 percent struggling, 4 percent suffering, and
12 percent are under stress.
**A USA Today poll in November asked whether respondents
favor approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project. By 60 percent to 25
percent, respondents favor approving the project, with 14 percent unsure.
**On its Website, Gallup notes “U.S. federal government
workers are less engaged than the rest of the U.S. workforce. On average, 27 percent
of federal government employees are engaged in their jobs in 2014, compared
with 31 percent of all other workers in the U.S. With more than 2 million
federal employees, this lack of engagement is costing the federal government an
estimated $18 billion in lost productivity annually, or approximately $9,000
per employee.”
Gallup says that engaged employees feel connected to their
organization and work to move it forward, while those who are not engaged may
meet the expectations of their job, but don’t do anything extra for it, and
those who are actively disengaged actually undermine their engaged co-workers. “Those
federal government employees who are actively disengaged, combined with those
employees who are not engaged, translates into 11 percent lost productivity
across the government, according to a Gallup analysis. This suggests that
nearly $9,000 of the average $78,467 federal employee salary is not producing
benefits for the agency or the general public.”
**A Rassmussen Reports poll found that respondents believe
America’s Founders would view the nation today as a failure by a margin of 46
percent to 36 percent, with 18 percent being unsure. The Founders, a group that
includes Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison, would not
approve of what is going on in America today, according to this poll, and it is
comforting to note that contemporary Americans agree with the Founders. But,
will this dissatisfaction actually lead to a return to the founding principles
of limited government and a high level of personal liberty?
**Fully 78 percent of participants like the health care they
received before the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare was passed, but they believe
that the health care they have been getting in recent years will get worse
under Obamacare.
**Gallup found that among 11 professions nurses have the
highest honesty and ethical standards, with 80 percent ranking them high or
very high. Doctors, pharmacists, police officers and clergy round out the top
five, while Members of Congress rank last at 7 percent.
**A Rassmussen poll in April reflected that 54 percent of
participants consider the federal government a threat to individual liberty,
while just 22 percent see government as a protector of individual rights, a
number that stood at 30 percent five months earlier. Thirty-seven percent
actually fear the federal government, while 47 percent do not, and 17 percent
are uncertain.
**Gallup asked public school teachers if they have
experienced each of seven possible emotional reactions to the Common Core State
Standards (Worried, Frustrated, Resigned to it, Hopeful, Confident, Angry, or
Enthusiastic), and 65 percent said Worried, 62 percent said Frustrated, and 57
percent said Resigned to it, while only 20 percent said Enthusiastic, 24
percent said Angry, and 27 percent said Confident. Forty-nine percent said they
were Hopeful.
Where parents of public school students are concerned, 35
percent view Common Core negatively, 33 percent view it positively, and 32
percent aren’t familiar with it or don’t have an opinion. Gallup found a shift
toward negative feelings since April when 35 percent were positive and 28
percent were negative.
Best wishes to all for a Happy Chanukah and a Merry
Christmas!
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
America’s Dilemma: Terrorism at home versus the high moral ground
A young pilot was flying a mission over enemy territory long
ago and far away when defense forces badly damaged his plane, forcing him to
eject. The ejection was violent, breaking both arms and one leg, and the young
pilot landed in water, nearly drowning before enemy soldiers found him, dragged
him ashore, crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, stabbed him with a bayonet,
and then hauled him away for interrogation. Badly injured, he was given no
medical aid, but instead was put through brutal questioning sessions during
which he was beaten.
He spent six weeks in a hospital where he received marginal
medical treatment before being sent to another military camp. In a chest cast
and being badly emaciated, he was expected not to last a week.
His condition improved slowly as time passed. But while he
was ill with dysentery he was again subjected to interrogation and torture that
included rope bindings and beatings every two hours, punishment so severe that
he tried to kill himself to escape the brutal treatment. Eventually, he reached
his breaking point, and cooperated with his captors.
A second story of actual treatment of an enemy involved the
capture, interrogation and detainment in military custody that lasted several
years. During this time the captive was subjected to sleep deprivation for a
period of more than seven days, rectal hydration, forced standing for prolonged
periods, and was water boarded five times. Eventually, the captive’s will also broke,
and he cooperated with his captors.
While the treatment in the second example would certainly be
unpleasant, it is less severe than the experience of the pilot in the first
example, inasmuch as the captive’s life was never in danger. Some Americans,
however, believe the two equally represent torture.
The pilot in the first example was now-Senator John McCain,
R-Ariz., and he was shot down over Viet Nam, captured and tortured by the Viet
Cong.
The person in the second example was Khalid Sheik Mohammad,
the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon
in Washington, DC, and a foiled attempt likely aimed at the U.S. Capitol
building or the White House, claiming the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent
people.
Torture is the action of inflicting severe pain on someone
as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, and has been practiced
through the ages, and has included the most brutal treatment imaginable.
In interrogation sessions, some techniques are clearly
torture, and some techniques are clearly not torture. Somewhere in the middle
of these extremes, strong interrogation crosses the thin and fuzzy line into
torture. Where that point is seems to be a matter of personal preference.
Having released a controversial partisan report on the CIA’s
enhanced interrogation techniques, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee
charges that the CIA’s techniques constitute torture.
The CIA vigorously disputes the Democrat leadership’s report,
saying the methods were thoroughly analyzed and approved by legal consultants prior
to their implementation, and that Congressional leaders were briefed on them and
accepted the program. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is said to have encouraged
the program.
The United States does indeed profess and uphold high-minded
ideals, and most Americans oppose torture. And through this $40 million report
and comments by individual senators, we are told that torture is always and
forever wrong.
But is there never a circumstance where torture is
justified?
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., thinks not. “In the wake of
9/11, we were desperate to bring those responsible for the brutal attacks to
justice. But even that urgency did not justify torture,” states the Chair of
the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The United States must be held to a higher
standard than our enemies, yet some of our actions did not clear that bar.”
We learn that al Qaeda has placed a suitcase nuke in a major
city set to detonate in a few hours. We have captured a member of the group and
Sen. Feinstein questions him. He refuses to tell where the bomb is. “Okay. Thank
you. Have a nice day,” she says. “After all, we are a people of principle and
high morals, and won’t stoop to forceful interrogation.”
Who and how many American lives have to be at risk before those
like Sen. Feinstein, clinging to the high moral ground, resort to forceful
interrogation methods to save lives? Her spouse? Her hometown? Her Capital office?
Or would she sacrifice American lives just to maintain the idealistic moral
high ground?
You do not have to support routine use of torture to believe
that in extreme cases, torture is acceptable. Many Americans believe nothing is
too awful to use on an enemy in order to save lives.
So the issue is not that the United States can never use
techniques generally agreed to be torture against enemies, but instead to
clarify under what circumstances the United States will use those techniques,
and how those decisions will be made?
Routine or indiscriminate torture is wrong. Any method used
against knowledgeable enemies to save lives must be encouraged. Foolishly
clinging to the high moral ground will get Americans needlessly killed.
Tuesday, December 09, 2014
If we raise the minimum wage, we’ll get these fantastic results!!
The narrative of the left is that even people who have never
had a job and/or don’t have any skills deserve and need a “living wage.” Merriam-Webster
defines a living wage as “a wage sufficient to provide the necessities and
comforts essential to an acceptable standard of living,” which varies widely
depending upon where one lives.
The drive for a hike in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour,
or sometimes as much as $15 an hour, lives on as a cause du jour for some
Americans, defying the laws of business economics. Workers, labor unions, and
politicians, support the wage hike through lobbying efforts, civil demonstrations,
and labor strikes often paid for by labor unions.
These folks reject out of hand the fact that every job has
an actual calculable value in the business it is a part of that takes into
account the benefit to the business’s entire operation, the qualifications of
the worker, and other real factors, unlike what drives the minimum wage hike:
it is a nice idea, makes people feel good, helps unions raise members’ wages,
and garners support for politicians.
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) notes that
minimum wage hike proponents support an increase because it would save the
government money in social support services, since those whose wages rise will
be less likely to seek and need welfare benefits.
Research by the Economic Policy Institute shows that
increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would reduce welfare spending by
$7.6 billion, but that is only 3.8 percent of the total of $200 billion in
welfare spending that taxpayers fund. Not that saving seven or eight billion is
a bad idea.
However, in its efforts to give to people things they should
earn through personal effort, the left focuses on the benefits of their ideas,
and ignores the negative consequences.
This erroneous reasoning is responsible for a long and
growing list of government programs the negatives of which far outweigh their
benefits. The Community Reinvestment Act combined with repealing Glass-Steagall,
and Operation Fast and Furious spring quickly to mind.
Addressing the negative impact of a wage hike, NCPA cites
research by Ben Gitis of the American Action Forum asserting that raising the
minimum wage will result in lost jobs. His analysis shows that 2.2 million new
jobs would not be created, totaling a stunning $19.8 billion in lost earnings,
if the minimum wage is increased.
The truth is that the number of minimum wage earners who really
need a living wage is tiny. Only about 3.6 million workers, or 2.5 percent of
all workers, earn the minimum wage, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics,
and teenagers living at home comprise 31 percent of that group. And 55 percent
are 25 years old, or younger, mostly inexperienced and just learning skills.
Therefore, of all workers over 25, only 1.1 percent would be affected by a wage
hike that would cost 2.2 million future jobs.
Combine that small number with the fact that well over half
of workers earning less than $9.50 an hour are the second or third earner in a
family, two-thirds of whom earn more than $50,000 a year, and that critical
number shrinks even more.
As a percentage of hourly workers those earning the minimum
wage has shrunk dramatically since 1980, when they comprised 15 percent of that
group. Today, that portion is just 4.7 percent. And more than half of them are
part-timers working less than 30 hours a week.
If you earn the minimum wage it certainly is appealing to
imagine getting an increase in your wage of about half. But a hike in the
minimum wage has to have solid economics-based reasons behind it, or it
shouldn’t happen. The economic reality is that the numbers just don’t add up to
support a $10.10 an hour minimum wage.
This wildly popular idea evolves from not understanding
business and basic economics. How, in a country with education spending on
average of $11,000 per student per year, can there be so many who have no idea
about things like supply and demand, and how high costs, high taxes, excessive
regulations raise prices and decrease sales.
The United States has just lost the top spot in the world in
productivity to China, the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president that
America has not led the world.
A friend who ran a company doing business in several foreign
countries was talking about his company’s expansion into China a few years ago.
At the time China had 1.35 billion people, he said: 100 million communists, and
1.25 billion capitalists.
While Communist China embraces capitalist principles and
becomes the most productive nation, the United States, once the bastion of free
enterprise, increasingly embraces socialistic mechanisms and lost the lead in
productivity for the first time in more than 130 years.
Most likely few of the proponents have ever had to make a
payroll or keep a business viable in the face challenges like competition, high
taxes and onerous regulations.
Foolish ideas like raising the minimum wage without sound
reason helps explain our loss to China and our overall anemic economy.
Tuesday, December 02, 2014
November surprise: Happy Thanksgiving from the Regulator-in-Chief
Fridays. That’s when the federal government finds it most advantageous
to release ugly surprises. You’ve heard of the Friday document dump? The
weekend is coming, most people are winding down from the work week, getting
ready to relax for a couple of days, and they aren’t really paying attention to
the news, and even the news folks are getting ready for the weekend, and are
unprepared to respond to the release of a bunch of government documents.
This practice offers added value right before a holiday,
when millions of people are not only readying for the weekend, but are preparing
to travel to visit relatives or to host family and friends for the holiday, and
therefore even fewer are paying attention to the news. So the Friday before
Thanksgiving is when the Obama White House informed the nation, without fanfare,
of 3,400 new regulations ready to go into effect next year.
Sam Batkins, the American Action Forum’s director of
regulatory policy, told The Daily Signal, “The administration has been really
aggressive on the regulatory front.” He added, “They drop [the Unified Agenda]
on a Friday right before a holiday, and no one critical of their regulatory
policies will have a chance to criticize it.”
The Unified Agenda is a document that serves as the
administration’s roadmap for regulations it intends to finalize in coming
months, and is usually released in the spring and fall.
The Regulatory Information Service
Center of the U.S. General Services Administration, describes this document:
“The Unified Agenda provides uniform reporting of data on
regulatory and deregulatory activities under development throughout the Federal
Government, covering approximately 60 departments, agencies, and commissions.
Each edition of the Unified Agenda includes regulatory agendas from all Federal
entities that currently have regulations under development or review.”
In 2012 the Obama administration issued 4,000 rules, so it’s
good news that this year’s total is lower, although it is 100 rules larger than
the 2013 Agenda.
Mr. Batkins notes that under the administrations of Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush the Unified Agenda was “a normal, boring list of
regulations,” but he warns that the Obama administration’s release of the
Agenda near a holiday portends a group of regulations that have strong
political implications. This year’s edition contains 23 “economically
significant” rules, which are those with an economic impact of at least $100
million, two more than last year.
The Obama administration has introduced rules costing the
economy $16 billion a year, on average, according to James Gattuso, senior
research fellow in regulatory policy at the Heritage Foundation.
The American Action Forum states that the $16 billion annual
average costs imposed on the country by the Obama administration is “tantamount
to having a $160 billion tax increase over 10 years.” The Daily Signal quotes
Mr. Batkins as saying that $18 billion to $20 billion in new regulatory costs equals
an approximate increase in the payroll tax of 1 percent. “Payroll tax going up
1 percent — that would get everyone interested. But $20 billion in regulatory
costs is the equivalent of that,” he said.
An increase in the payroll tax affects only employers and
employees, but regulatory costs affect nearly everyone. Mr. Batkins analyzed 36
economically significant regulations issued by the Obama administration and shows
price increases for the individual consumer in the following categories:
- Vehicles: $9,150
- Household consumer products: $1,639
- Mortgage: $362 annually
- Energy: $135 annually
- Health Care: $108 annually
- Food: $14 annually
That $11,000 effect is the result of just 36 rules of the
thousands put into effect each year, and that estimate of costs comes from the
government. Other estimates suggest costs are actually even higher.
New regulations push costs higher, and when things cost more
people buy less of them. When sales drop, fewer workers are needed to produce,
transport and sell those items, and people lose their jobs.
A Heritage study shows that the Obama administration issued
157 major regulations during its first five years, while for the same period
under President George W. Bush, only 62 major regulations were released. Those
157 new rules cost Americans nearly $73 billion. No doubt these additional
heavy regulatory costs are responsible for some of the dire employment problems
the nation suffers more than five years after the recession ended.
Attempting to recover from a recession by issuing punishing
regulations has to have a slowing effect on the recovery from the recession,
and that is exactly what we have witnessed since the recession ended in 2009.
Consequently, unemployment is still far too high. The most
common measure places unemployment at 5.8 percent, which is above the normal
4-5 percent full employment figure. But the more accurate number counting those
who can’t find work and have quit looking is 11.5 percent.
The October labor force participation rate is 62.8 percent,
the lowest since about 1980, and lower than the 65.7 percent level when the
recession ended in June of 2009.
Perhaps it’s that people don’t understand the negative
effects rampant regulation has on them, and that enables them to believe a higher
minimum wage for the least skilled and least experienced workers is a more
critical problem than the costs of regulation.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Whatever happened to integrity and honor in public service?
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obamacare: the gift that keeps on giving … headaches, cramps, nausea, and economic insecurity. The list goes on.
From its unseemly beginnings as a one-party creation in smoky back rooms that passed a Congress dominated in both houses by Democrats, without being read and debated by anyone, with only Democrats voting for it and with few Americans supporting it, the ACA is a vast array of failings.
It’s not an absolute and total failure; nothing is perfect.
But nearly all of its promises were broken, as many had predicted: you most likely can’t keep your doctor or your insurance plan if you like them; you probably aren’t going to save $2,500 a year in premium payments; and if you see more choice, more competition, and lower costs in healthcare, you will be among an infinitesimally small minority to do so.
Jonathon Gruber has now told the world in a series of recently discovered videos how, in designing the ACA, Congressional Democrats and their staffs employed deception and opaqueness to sneak the law past the American public.
He is an MIT economics professor, the architect of the Massachusetts healthcare plan known as Romneycare that was the model for Obamacare, and who also helped the Democrats create their version of a national healthcare system that most Americans didn’t want.
In a video from October of 2013 Dr. Gruber admits that a “lack of transparency” was a blessing for the Obama administration and congressional Democrats in passing the ACA. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he said. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
In another video, he said, “So it's written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money — it would not have passed.” … “That was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” he said. “But I’d rather have this law than not.”
In effect he was saying: “I’d rather not have mugged that old lady and stolen her groceries, but I’d rather have had food to eat than not.”
Efforts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) and President Obama to distance themselves from the good professor fell well short of the mark: videos, you know.
Of course, all of this under-handedness was for our own good, you know, and if we just weren’t so stupid they wouldn’t have had to deceive us to give us what they insist we need.
But, however, we aren’t all stupid. Some of us knew all along that this bill was a sham and the promises couldn’t be kept, and that at its base Obamacare really is nothing more than a system to control the people and a huge redistribution of wealth from the young and healthy to the old and unhealthy.
And then there is Barack Obama, himself; President of the United States, leader of the free world, who not only made many promises for the ACA that didn’t come true (did he lie to the people, or just not know what he was talking about?), and over the years said twenty or more times that he can’t act alone on immigration. “That’s not how democracy works.” “That’s not how our Constitution is written.” “I can’t solve this problem by myself.” What he didn’t say, in so many words, is: “Unless I have to act alone because Congress won’t give me the bill that I want, and so I will just do whatever I please.”
And last week he did act alone to circumvent both Congress and the existing laws on immigration and illegal alien deportation to order ICE to ignore up to 5 million illegal aliens in the country, all the while falsely claiming he was doing nothing more than any other president in the last 50 years. Except that he was. The presidential acts alluded to were in response to Congressional action, not because of a lack thereof.
The process of writing and passing the ACA was one devoid of honesty and integrity. Mr. Obama’s issuing of an Executive Order countermanding existing laws on immigration because Congress won’t obey his “orders” is an exercise in petulance, arrogance and overstepping his Constitutional bounds.
Both of these situations reflect the idea that Congressional Democrats and the president think they know better than the people that elected them, and that they are paid to serve what is good for them and for the country, and they have yet again shown that they will do whatever is necessary to achieve their narrow goals, and legal and moral processes be damned. This the-ends-justify-the-means tactic reflects a level of arrogance and hubris that would make the Founders nauseous.
Our Constitution lays out a framework for doing things in our government that worked very well until we started changing it.
Allowing any president to unilaterally extend the power of the executive is dangerous and foolish. Every true American in Congress must oppose this.
From its unseemly beginnings as a one-party creation in smoky back rooms that passed a Congress dominated in both houses by Democrats, without being read and debated by anyone, with only Democrats voting for it and with few Americans supporting it, the ACA is a vast array of failings.
It’s not an absolute and total failure; nothing is perfect.
But nearly all of its promises were broken, as many had predicted: you most likely can’t keep your doctor or your insurance plan if you like them; you probably aren’t going to save $2,500 a year in premium payments; and if you see more choice, more competition, and lower costs in healthcare, you will be among an infinitesimally small minority to do so.
Jonathon Gruber has now told the world in a series of recently discovered videos how, in designing the ACA, Congressional Democrats and their staffs employed deception and opaqueness to sneak the law past the American public.
He is an MIT economics professor, the architect of the Massachusetts healthcare plan known as Romneycare that was the model for Obamacare, and who also helped the Democrats create their version of a national healthcare system that most Americans didn’t want.
In a video from October of 2013 Dr. Gruber admits that a “lack of transparency” was a blessing for the Obama administration and congressional Democrats in passing the ACA. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he said. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
In another video, he said, “So it's written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money — it would not have passed.” … “That was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” he said. “But I’d rather have this law than not.”
In effect he was saying: “I’d rather not have mugged that old lady and stolen her groceries, but I’d rather have had food to eat than not.”
Efforts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) and President Obama to distance themselves from the good professor fell well short of the mark: videos, you know.
Of course, all of this under-handedness was for our own good, you know, and if we just weren’t so stupid they wouldn’t have had to deceive us to give us what they insist we need.
But, however, we aren’t all stupid. Some of us knew all along that this bill was a sham and the promises couldn’t be kept, and that at its base Obamacare really is nothing more than a system to control the people and a huge redistribution of wealth from the young and healthy to the old and unhealthy.
And then there is Barack Obama, himself; President of the United States, leader of the free world, who not only made many promises for the ACA that didn’t come true (did he lie to the people, or just not know what he was talking about?), and over the years said twenty or more times that he can’t act alone on immigration. “That’s not how democracy works.” “That’s not how our Constitution is written.” “I can’t solve this problem by myself.” What he didn’t say, in so many words, is: “Unless I have to act alone because Congress won’t give me the bill that I want, and so I will just do whatever I please.”
And last week he did act alone to circumvent both Congress and the existing laws on immigration and illegal alien deportation to order ICE to ignore up to 5 million illegal aliens in the country, all the while falsely claiming he was doing nothing more than any other president in the last 50 years. Except that he was. The presidential acts alluded to were in response to Congressional action, not because of a lack thereof.
The process of writing and passing the ACA was one devoid of honesty and integrity. Mr. Obama’s issuing of an Executive Order countermanding existing laws on immigration because Congress won’t obey his “orders” is an exercise in petulance, arrogance and overstepping his Constitutional bounds.
Both of these situations reflect the idea that Congressional Democrats and the president think they know better than the people that elected them, and that they are paid to serve what is good for them and for the country, and they have yet again shown that they will do whatever is necessary to achieve their narrow goals, and legal and moral processes be damned. This the-ends-justify-the-means tactic reflects a level of arrogance and hubris that would make the Founders nauseous.
Our Constitution lays out a framework for doing things in our government that worked very well until we started changing it.
Allowing any president to unilaterally extend the power of the executive is dangerous and foolish. Every true American in Congress must oppose this.
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