Obama’s fraudulent drilling policy

During the presidential campaign Barack Obama favored domestic drilling for oil and natural gas, but throughout the first year of his presidency he imposed numerous delays on American energy production. Now, out of the blue, he has announced he will open up portions of the Outer Continental Shelf to offshore drilling.

He portrayed the idea of needing more domestic production as something new, a great revelation that was the product of a year's worth of investigation by his administration; something nobody had thought of until this “aha” moment.

This decision has prompted a variety of responses. Proponents of developing our oil and natural gas resources are guardedly optimistic, while the anti-domestic-energy-production folks on the left are appalled that the president would abandon his more recent “sensible” position against conventional energy sources and his near-manic drive for imposing “green” technologies on the nation.

But those on the right are correct to be skeptical and the left has no reason to worry: Mr. Obama has no intention of making it easier for the country to do what is in its best interest where energy production is concerned.

If he really wants to increase domestic oil and natural gas supplies, why did this proposal not allow drilling in the Pacific Ocean, or in a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean, in some of the most promising areas of the Gulf of Mexico, or in much of Alaska? Why are there no areas for land-based exploration? And why will most new drilling will not occur until after 2012 at the earliest.

This is a head-fake by the president, who wants to force a massive new energy tax on Americans.

The Waxman-Markey energy bill would do serious harm to the economy, killing more than one million jobs per year and raising energy costs, but many in Congress believe that bill is dead. However, a new effort is being developed by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, and Democrat Senator John Kerry.

This bill is expected to be less offensive to opponents of Waxman-Markey, and given the suspicious timing of the president’s announcement, his newly discovered need for domestic production is just a part of a plot to push through cap and tax in one form or another.

Despite a study by the American Energy Alliance that reports offshore drilling may well create millions of new jobs and would provide billions in new government revenue at the levels, we should expect an array of delays before any actual drilling takes place, such as court challenges and bureaucratic red tape.

Barack Obama continues to govern in opposition to the will of the people he serves, who understand what he does not understand: the way to energy independence is developing domestic supplies of those fuels that we have been using and are prepared to use, and who also recognize that however attractive wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources may be in terms of “cleanliness,” the technology needed for them to be utilized to any significant degree are as yet unavailable.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Politics, Government, Liberalism

The health care reform bill has passed; now we know what’s in it

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a short while before the House of Representatives voted on the health care reform bill that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” that arrogant statement indicating that there were some surprises tucked neatly away.

During the 14 months the fight over this bill raged, Americans were opposed to most of what they knew about it, every House Republican opposed it, and 34 Democrats voted against it. Clearly, there was more to dislike than to like. Now, the bill has passed and we know what’s in it.

The attacks on the elderly and the seriously troubled Medicare program are truly breathtaking. Medicare now pays providers substantially less than their services cost, and more cuts begin this year.

In 2011: cuts begin for Medicare Advantage; the elderly are no longer allowed to use Health Care Account (FSA, HSA, HRA, Archer MSA) distributions for over‐the-counter medicine; Medicare cuts to home health begin; wealthier seniors begin paying higher Part D premiums (not indexed for inflation in Parts B/D); new Medicare cuts to long‐term care hospitals begin in July; Medicare reimbursement will be cut when seniors use diagnostic imaging like MRIs, CT scans, etc., and cuts begin for ambulance services, ASCs, diagnostic labs, and durable medical equipment.

And, additional Medicare cuts to hospitals and to nursing homes and inpatient
rehab facilities begin after October, along with cuts for dialysis treatment; Medicare will reduce spending by using an HMO‐like coordinated care model; new Medicare cuts to inpatient psych hospitals begin in July; Medicare cuts to hospice begin in fiscal 2013, accompanied by cuts to hospitals that treat low‐income seniors. In 2014 more Medicare cuts to home health begin.

Who said there won’t be rationing? And with even lower reimbursements, more providers likely will decline to treat Medicare patients.

President Obama said he wanted a bill to help people; apparently he wants to help them at the expense of the elderly.

“But those changes only affect old people,” you say? Everyone will be old someday, but at the rate Medicare cuts are being implemented, that program may not exist in 20 years.

Next year your government will impose a new annual tax on brand name pharmaceutical companies. Do you think that might cause drug prices to rise? Well, it will. And Americans must also begin paying premiums for federal long‐term care insurance.

Employers are required to report the value of health benefits on W‐2s starting in 2011, meaning folks will then have to pay income tax on the value of their health benefits.

In 2013: there will be a new tax on all private health insurance policies;, an increased Medicare wage tax of 0.9 percent; a general increase from 7.5 percent to 10 percent in the threshold at which medical expenses, as a percent of income, can be deducted; and your government will impose a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, all of which will make medical care more expensive, not less expensive.

And then in 2014 individuals without government‐approved coverage are subject to what the government calls a “tax” of the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of income. This is not a tax, however, it is a fine: How can you be taxed on something you didn’t buy and don’t own?

If you make $30,000 a year and don’t have insurance, you’ll be fined $750. Earn $50,000 and you get a $1,250 fine, just for not following your government’s demand to buy something you don’t want and may not need.

Employers who fail to offer "affordable" coverage (whatever that means) would pay a $3,000 fine for every employee that receives a subsidy through the Health Care Exchange, and employers who do not offer insurance must pay a fine of $2,000 for every fulltime employee.

What do you suppose will happen to small businesses that are marginally profitable, but can’t afford either to buy health insurance for their employees or to pay a $2,000 fine per employee for not doing what they cannot afford to do? How many people will lose their job as a result of this mandate?

Larger companies are not immune from these punishing effects. AT&T, John Deere, and Caterpillar, among others, have said effects of the reform bill will be millions of dollars each, with AT&T’s hit to be $1 billion. These additional costs will have a negative impact on how all businesses operate. Will they create new jobs or lay people off? Will they raise prices on their products?

So, while President Obama, and Congressional Democrats are popping corks on the champagne celebrating a bill that will cost $940 billion over ten years and wreak havoc on the elderly, the rest of us are wondering how we are going to handle the cost increases and health care service restrictions this bill will produce.

Opponents of this approach to health care reform said all along that a lot of improvement could have been achieved by addressing health care problems individually, instead of this massive, costly, and horribly flawed approach.

We should have listened to them.

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The Government Can!

This is a truly excellent and well done perspective!

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Words of wisdom from a common-sense conservative

Thaddeus McCotter, Representative from Michigan, is a common-sense conservative Republican who doesn't get nearly enough exposure.

Please take a few minutes to watch and listen to this commentary on "Change" and the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in today.

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Washington in 2010: Bribery and scheming and corruption, oh my!

Most Americans know who Thomas Jefferson was. He was the principle author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most influential of the founders of this nation. He was Governor of Virginia, the first Secretary of State of the United States, and the nation’s third president, serving eight years beginning in 1801. As a major figure in the founding of the United States of America he fully understood the reasons the colonies split from Great Britain, and his beliefs were fairly representative of the people of the times who decided the oppressive and tax-crazed British government was destructive of the freedoms the Creator intended for human beings.

Mr. Jefferson had a lot to say about the form of government that best allows people to live in freedom, and one of his most famous quotes is, “That government is best which governs the least ...”

Sometime before he died in 1826 he said, “I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labour of the industrious.” If he believed that statement was true in or before 1826, what do you suppose he would think today?

The federal government has been too big, too expensive and too authoritarian for quite a while – nearly 200 years, according to Mr. Jefferson – but it has become intolerable this year, as so capably illustrated by the health care reform fiasco: Even though most people don’t like the bill, the leaders were determined to pass it with only Democrat support, if enough Democrat arms could be twisted to get the votes required for passage. If not, they would force it through in an underhanded scheme to pass it without actually voting on it. And while all of this was going on, states are passing legislation to prevent the feds from forcing their citizens to participate in the program, an intrusion into states rights, and are threatening to sue the federal government over it. What a circus!

Our gargantuan, wealth-consuming, non-attentive government has a legislature that is isolated from the citizenry it represents. In the early days we had a part-time citizen legislature made up of farmers and merchants, and so forth, who went to the capital for a month or two, did their work, and returned to their normal lives as farmers and merchants, and were in close touch with the people who elected them.

Today’s career politician is as far from being a citizen legislator as the Earth is from the Sun. They aren’t in Washington for 60 or 90 days and then home again; they are there their entire term of office. They have a second residence in or near DC where they live during their tenure, and even if they use the scheduled work sessions at home, going back to their home state or district is more like a vacation or a business trip. Their home is Washington, DC, not the state or district they represent.

We pay them well to be isolated from their constituents. Rank-and-file members of the Congress receive $174,000 per year, Majority and Minority Leaders receive $193,400, and the Speaker of the House receives $223,500, and all get generous retirement and health benefits funded by tax dollars, though most make contributions of their salary and also pay 6.2 percent of their salary in Social Security taxes.

If legislators were in office for only a couple of years, being separated from their constituents might not be so much of a problem, but many of them are there for decades. No wonder their priorities get confused and they forget who they work for. Combine this isolation with the pressures of partisan politics, and you have an atmosphere ripe for the sort of malfeasance we see today in the health care reform movement. If nothing else screams at you that we seriously need change in how Washington works, this should do the trick.

Anyone who participated in that disgraceful process should be removed from office, and that would be a good start to restoring honest representative government to the United States. After that, three beneficial changes should be considered:

1. Term limits for Congress. The president can serve only eight years; why should Congress be different? So, Senators get one eight-year term and Representatives get up to two four-year terms, and then home they go to become normal Americans again.

2. Limit Congressional sessions to one three-month session or two two-month sessions. Between sessions members go back to their real job and the pay that goes with it.

3. Members of Congress will be paid a salary that is a bit higher than the U.S. average income, and a housing allowance. Real emergencies may warrant longer sessions, but with reduced pay. Being in the service of your fellow Americans should not be a lucrative venture for public servants.

America’s journey from greatness to mediocrity – once a long, slow decline – has been dramatically sped up by our president and his fellow statists in Congress. Unless something dramatic happens very soon, we will live in the once-great United States.

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Some serious questions about the motives of our political leaders

Are the Democrat leaders in Washington out of touch with the mood of the country? Do they have a death wish? Are they insane?

Those are serious questions, prompted by the almost incomprehensible behavior of the country’s three most visible leaders, as well as a fair number of members of Congress and administration officials.

President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem either unable to understand that Americans are not in favor of their idea of health care reform, or they simply do not care what the people think.

Three nationwide polls reflect the mood of the country quite plainly:

• A CBS News/New York Times Poll conducted Feb. 5-10 asked, "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" The economy and jobs topped the list at 52 percent, while health care garnered only 13 percent.

• The liberal Web site Daily Kos poll conducted by Research 2000 from March 8-11 asked, "Do you feel the country overall is heading in the right direction or wrong direction?" Thirty-nine percent answered the right direction, but 60 percent said the wrong direction.

• Perhaps the most telling of all is the Gallup Poll from March 4-7, which asked, "In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" Nearly four to one, Americans are dissatisfied (79 percent to 19 percent).

These polls reflect dissatisfaction with the country’s direction, which includes a dangerously intrusive and unpopular health care reform effort, but the leaders ignore this message, still obsessed with jamming through health care reform. And, not only do Americans not like the reform bills, many senators and representatives don’t like them, either.

The Senate bill needed 60 votes to pass and it took Majority Leader Harry Reid buying votes with sweet deals for a few key members to get 60 votes, and the House bill passed with only two votes more than needed. The Senate bill had no Republican support, and the House version had one Republican vote.

The next step in this compulsive exercise is for the House of Representatives to vote on the Senate bill. But some don’t like public funding of abortions, and thus don’t support the bill, and others don’t support it because it doesn’t have a public option. All in all, there’s enough stuff in the bill, and enough stuff that’s left out of the bill, that the 216 votes needed for passage may not materialize. If it passes and becomes law, the Senate will then vote for a reconciliation bill to the fix problems.

Or not. There is no guarantee that once the House passes the bill and the president signs it that the Senate will do anything, leaving features in that many object to, and leaving out things people want in. Many House members will likely support the bill only because their objections can be dealt with through reconciliation.

Undaunted by the lack of popular and legislative support for the bill, Ms. Pelosi now may resort to a scheme referred to as the “Slaughter Solution,” dreamed up by New York Democrat Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, where the House will simply “deem” the Senate bill passed by the House, which means that the president will be signing a bill into law that the House of Representatives never voted on, an act of desperation that is said to be unprecedented in U.S. history. This is underhanded, unacceptable, and probably illegal.

Here are some more serious questions: Is a bill that has the support of only one party a good piece of legislation? Isn’t good legislation that which has a broad and substantial majority of support? Did we elect these people to enact partisan legislation? And, is that the best way to run the country? The answers to those questions are: No. Yes. No. No.

What a revealing situation: In spite of negative poll numbers, in spite of crumbling support in both houses of Congress, President Obama, Mr. Reid, and Ms. Pelosi charge ahead to force health care reform through, apparently at any cost.

This behavior defies common sense. These three individuals are committed statists, and are determined to increase the size and authority of government, even if they take themselves and their party down in the process.

Their ideology is sharply at odds with America’s founding principles and is contrary to what the American people want from their public servants, but it is controlling so much of what is happening in Washington today. It appears to be more important to these leaders than their political future and the political future of other Democrats, whose re-election they expect those members to sacrifice to satisfy this lust for big government legislation with socialistic overtones that these three believe in so strongly.

Sensible Americans – Democrats, Republicans and independents – will oppose this desperate and tawdry process. They will oppose it despite what they think about the health care reform bills because they believe in the principle of good government, which is sadly missing in Washington, DC, and has reached a new low since the 2008 election.

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The grassroots Tea Party movement flummoxes the left

Watching the left try to cope with the Tea Party movement is fascinating. Some evidence suggests that fear is in control, like the desperate marginalizing and demonizing of the Tea Party movement that so effectively shows the dissatisfaction of millions of Americans with government over-reaching. The left resorts to name-calling and tries to paint the Tea Party participants as a bunch of wild-eyed radicals, bent on revolution, perhaps even violence. But that is a gross distortion of these Americans, the vast majority of whom are everyday citizens merely taking advantage of their God-given and constitutionally-protected right to speak their mind.

Some on the left are unable to accept this movement as a genuine citizen protest against Big Government excesses and intrusions into personal freedom. That perspective is represented by columnist Reg Henry, who wrote last week, “If you happened to see the health care summit that President Barack Obama hosted the other day … you saw the Republicans insist with great certainty that Americans don’t want health care legislation.” Well, Mr. Henry, that’s not what Republicans said, which is that Americans don’t like “this” legislation, and are saying so loud and clear.

And as for their certainty in saying so, well, it’s because Republicans aren’t deaf or blind. They hear from their constituents, both Republicans and Democrats. They recognize that Tea Party participants are fed up with the over-bearing nature of the federal government, and the arrogant way the president and the leaders of Congress ignore their objections, and they say Congress had better not enact legislation affecting 17 percent of the economy by a 50 percent-plus-one vote when the country is so sharply divided on the issue, and Republicans are finally paying attention.

They also realize that opinion polls conducted by respected polling organizations portray the mood of the country pretty accurately, using proven and accepted methodology to randomly sample Americans who usually are registered voters, and whose statistically relevant opinions can be extrapolated to the citizenry at large with 96 percent accuracy.

They know multiple polls conducted repeatedly over several months continue to show a consistent disapproval of the direction the country is heading, ranging from 60 to 73 percent, and a small percentage of approval, in some polls as low as 22 percent.

But Mr. Henry seems to think the 2008 election was the definitive statement by the people of what they want the president and the Congress to do, even though President Obama’s campaign was one of cavernous rhetoric, devoid of detail. Furthermore, Mr. Obama’s victory margin was only seven points, 53 to 46 percent, and that isn’t a mandate to do anything. In fact, seven points is a fraction of the margin between Americans who dislike the country’s direction and those who approve of it.

Another columnist, Ann McFeatters, relies on superficial thinking and insufficient research to help her misunderstand this phenomenon, in her column taking President Obama to task “for wasting political capital and failing to get as much done as he could have.”

“The tide began to turn against health insurance reform, aided brilliantly by Republicans who began talking nonsensically, but effectively, about ‘death panels’ and socialistic medicine,” she wrote. But just because the bill does not say specifically “in our socialized medicine system there will be death panels” doesn’t preclude a mechanism evolving that will make life and death decisions based on budget considerations, nor does it mean that the system won’t become one where private health insurance cannot survive against the government’s monopolistic tendencies, and in a few years we will have socialized medicine. What Republicans did – and folks on the left didn’t do – was to look at the reform measures, and project them into the future to see what might happen.

After revealing that she didn’t look into the future to see where reform measures may lead, she blamed “Wall Street fat cats” for the recent financial crisis, showing that she also didn’t look far enough into the past to find out what really caused the financial crisis. It’s true that Wall Streeters and big bankers contributed to the collapse, but they were only playing by the rules past Congresses and administrations created for them. Ms. McFeatters only looked back a couple of years, but the government meddling that created the environment for the problem began decades ago.

She criticizes the president’s failure to fulfill promises like closing Guantanamo Bay, ending the Iraq war, and capturing Osama bin Laden. Here, she fails to consider the ramifications of his promises, or obstacles to their fulfillment. So much of what Mr. Obama promised was unrealistic, and an objective analysis showed that. But Ms. McFeatters, the news media, and 53 percent of voters didn’t analyze his promises.

No surprise that the left doesn’t understand the Tea Party movement; and no surprise that it fears its opposition. Many liberals are unable to cope with logical disagreements, and because they don’t think things through cannot present logical arguments for their ideas.

Hence, instead of working with the opposition to find common ground on the nation’s problems, the majority party tries to force its ideas on the country, which is government at its worst.

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Demonizing for political gain

When you want to generate a lot of support for some political program, a common ploy is to create in the minds of those whose support you seek the idea that somebody is mean, evil, wicked, bad and nasty.

The demon in the effort to impose greater government control over our health care is health insurance providers, who are attacked for all manner of improper and/or self-serving behavior, both imagined and real. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leading the charge, calls the insurers “villains,” but speaks in generalities and fails to show evidence of actual “villainy.”

We’ve heard the criticisms of health insurers, and some of them have done bad things. However, people in every industry and type of business occasionally do bad things, so insurers are no worse than anyone else.

The most questionable of these allegations is that the insurance companies do horrible things to their customers, such as dropping someone’s coverage when they have a serious illness; rejecting coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, or charging them higher premiums; and imposing large rate increases, in pursuit of excessive profits.

Last August Dr. Mark J. Perry, professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the University of Michigan at Flint, demonstrated that health insurers like Cigna, Aetna, and WellPoint, had a profit margin of just 3.3 percent, ranking last on a list of 86 business categories.

People often mistakenly judge whether a company makes excessive profits by how many dollars it made. But what really is important is how much money it kept from what it collected from selling what it produced: profits divided by revenue. A multi-billion-dollar profit figure isn’t really meaningful without knowing how much revenue the company had. A company with $13.2 billion in profits and $400 billion in revenue achieved only a 3.3 percent profit margin. You can get a 3.3 percent return on your money by investing it in a three-year CD, even in today’s depressed market.

Compare that margin to more profitable business groups, like beverage producers/brewers at 25.9 percent, wireless communications at 11.1 percent, and general entertainment at 6.8 percent. If health insurers are mistreating customers for high profits, their strategy is a failure.

Most business decisions have a fundamental economic reason behind them, even large rate increases like WellPoint’s 39 percent hike in California. Fox Business Channel’s Stuart Varney explained this in the “Back of the Book Segment” on Fox News’ [begin ital] The O’Reilly Factor [end ital] recently in a segment titled “Making money off people’s illness.” "There's a recession in California and 800,000 [new participants] have gone onto Medicaid [roles],” he said. “Doctors who treat Medicaid patients lose money on every patient, and they transfer that loss to privately insured people,” which raises the insurer’s costs and creates the need to raise rates.

The title of that segment, “Making money off people’s illness,” indicates that the often- sensible Mr. O’Reilly believes health insurers are behaving immorally. But think about it: if you are in a business that deals with illness, you have to make money to stay in business and pay your employees. You must therefore make money off people’s illness. Millions of Americans are guilty of this “crime,” and we should be thankful for that. This is an example where emotion impeded clear thinking, and when this occurs people are easily taken advantage of by demagogues like Nancy Pelosi.

The Government Accounting office informs us that in 2008 the median number of insurers in individual states was 27, although that varies from a low of eight or fewer in three New England states to a few dozen in other states, and that the five largest insurers provide 75 percent or more of the policies nationwide.

Consider that there are 1,262 companies in the United States that provide health insurance, according to the business information provider, Manta. However, insurance companies are licensed by each state individually, which means that every health insurance provider might be faced with 50 different sets of criteria in order to qualify to sell to everyone in the U.S. That, and widely differing population numbers, explain why some states have dozens of providers and others have only a handful, and also why the largest companies are able to adapt to such a wide and varied set of rules, and smaller companies cannot.

Obviously, it would improve the cost and performance of health insurers if we could foster greater competition among them, and surely if we freed up all 1,262 companies to sell to anyone in the country, the variety of plans and cost levels that would emerge would satisfy the needs of the vast majority of Americans, and do so at much lower costs than we have now.

Since the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (supposedly) protects state sovereignty against encroachment from the federal government, Congress cannot mandate uniformity of requirements for health insurers. However, that does not preclude a federal recommendation of sensible requirements that states can voluntarily adopt.

This is a vastly superior solution to health insurance reform than the destructive government takeover now being jammed down our throats by a blind, deaf and ideologically controlled Congress.

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Obama's Idea of "Stimulus"

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Washington in the 21st century: Failing to learn from history

The brilliant economist Dr. Thomas Sowell looks back on the Great Depression: “Nothing established the idea that government intervention in the economy is essential like the Great Depression of the 1930s. The raw facts tell the story of that historic tragedy: National output fell by one-third between 1929 and 1933, thousands of banks failed, unemployment peaked at 25%, corporations as a whole lost money two years in a row. Prior to this time, no president had attempted to have the federal government intervene to bring a depression to an end.” Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt opted for government intervention and the results of that ill-advised approach are a painful part of our history.

Contrast that with the stock market crash of 1987, which was similar in size to the crash of 1929, but the recovery from it was years shorter in duration. President Ronald Reagan’s administration, in sharp contrast to the administrations of Hoover and FDR, and despite media outrage at the government's inaction, did nothing; no bailout, no stimulus, nothing, according to Dr. Sowell.

Those two experiences have taught our elected leaders nothing. Beginning with the administration of George W. Bush and continuing with, and accelerated by, the administration of Barack Obama, we have embraced the failed policies that gave us the Great Depression and, interestingly, the same policies that brought on the financial crisis of 2008: excessive government intervention in the private economy.

On October 14, 2008, the Bush administration announced a series of initiatives to stabilize the markets, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Then on February 18, 2009, in Colorado, Mr. Obama signed the $787 billion– now up to $865 billion – stimulus bill. How have these measure fared in ending the recession that began in December of 2007?

The Government Accountability Office said last October, a year after TARP was born, that it found no evidence that the program prevented a financial meltdown, nor did it stimulate banks to start lending to business again at needed levels. Although $500 billion in TARP loans have been repaid to the federal treasury, the program did not accomplish the vast majority of its goals.

The president and other supporters of the stimulus bill touted its investments in job creation, saying it would save or create 3.5 million jobs. Without this bill, the president predicted, unemployment would rise from eight percent to more than nine percent. In fact, after its enactment, unemployment shot through the nine percent level to above 10 percent. Clearly, the stimulus did not succeed in stopping job losses, and since it aimed more money at pork barrel projects than actual stimulus activities, and delayed most payments for a year or more, little real stimulation has taken place.

We can’t know for certain what would have happened if TARP and the stimulus hadn’t been implemented, but evidence from both the 1929 and 1987 examples strongly suggests that doing nothing back in October of 2008 and February of 2009 would have been the better decision. And, the country would be $1.5 trillion better off.

Dr. Sowell points out something else we should think about: “This administration and Congress are now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s – use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations. To this day, we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s. We have the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie Mae") taking reckless chances in the housing market that have blown up in our faces today, because FDR decided to create a new federal housing agency in 1938. Who knows what bright ideas this administration will turn into permanent institutions for our children and grandchildren to try to cope with?”

Well, how about a nationalized health care system, an economy-busting energy tax, and enormous deficits as far as the eye can see?

Despite massive public disapproval, the president and Congressional leaders seem hell-bent on creating a healthcare system heavily controlled by government. And despite the fraud and deceit in climate change science, they still want to impose economy crippling levels of carbon dioxide emissions.

President Obama says that when he "walked in the door" in January of 2009 he inherited a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion. But he misstated the Bush deficit, which actually was slightly less than $800 billion when correct computations of the deficit and TARP money are used, and his deficit for 2010 is double what he inherited.

The budget deficit forecast for 2010 is 10.6 percent of GDP, up from 9.9 percent of GDP in 2009, and according to Reuters, “the budget still forecasts U.S. public debt rising above 71 percent of GDP by 2013, up from 53 percent in 2009, and almost 80 percent by 2020 -- levels that could spook investors.” Americans recognize how serious this situation is, even if their leaders do not.

They are following White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s dictum “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” even if that means wrecking the country to push through their ideological agenda.

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It has been a challenging year for Global Warming/Climate Change

The recent epidemic of snow, ice and cold temperatures has given rise to lots of joking about global warming, such as, “How’s that global warming working out for you?” and “we have 10 inches of global warming on the ground.” The Associated Press noted on Saturday, “Forget red and blue - color America white. There was snow on the ground in 49 states Friday. Hawaii was the holdout.”

The story went on to quote David Robinson, head of the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University, that on Friday morning “67.1 percent of the U.S. had snow on the ground, with the average depth a healthy 8 inches. Normally, about 40 or 50 percent of the U.S. has snow cover this time of year.”

Everyone who has ever looked into it knows that the Earth goes through alternate cycles of warming and cooling that last thousands of years, and shorter cycles of warming and cooling within the longer cycles.

The global warming/climate change advocates (warmists) believe human activity since the onset of the Industrial Age is producing rising global temperatures. Skeptics point to other reasons for the increase, such as normal cyclical change and changes in Sun activity, among other reasons, and note that for the last several years there has actually been a cooling trend.

Warmists, however, behave as if the question is finally and unquestionably resolved, claiming there is a “consensus” and saying that it is “settled science.”

GreenFacts.org’s glossary says this about consensus: “The Scientific Consensus represents the position generally agreed upon at a given time by most scientists specialized in a given field. Scientific Consensus does NOT mean that:

• all scientist[s] are unanimous: disagreements may occur and can be necessary for science to progress,
• the position is definitive: the consensus can evolve with the results from further research and contrary opinions.

Therefore, Scientific Consensus is NOT a synonym of ‘Certain Truth.’"

NASA’s Home Page informs us that: “It may surprise many people that science -- the de facto source of dependable knowledge about the natural world -- cannot deliver an unqualified, unanimous answer about something as important as climate change.”

The idea that consensus does not equal certain truth – indeed, that in science certain truth does not exist because of the possibility of new information being discovered – is a major feature of the scientific method.

The University of Rochchester Physics Department defines the scientific method as “the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.

Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, ‘Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view.’ … It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory. "

The certainty with which warmists dismiss skeptical views of their pet theory seems to run counter to the spirit of scientific investigation.

Worse, warmists’ attitude toward and treatment of skeptics are clearly non-scientific. They include ridicule, intimidation of skeptical colleagues, personal destruction and calls for legal prosecution, all because they disagree on a scientific theory.

Worse, yet, is that in an effort to perpetuate their alarmist scenarios, some warmists have resorted to deceit and outright fraud at Penn State University and England’s University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The UK Telegraph reports that “perhaps the most damaging revelations … are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.”

A hacker broke into computers at the CRU, releasing 61 megabytes of confidential emails and documents onto the Internet. Knowing what these documents and emails contain, it is clear why the CRU scientists are upset that their duplicity has become public, a scandal some believe could be the greatest in modern science. These documents and emails involve some of the most prominent scientists advocating anthropogenic global warming theory and suggest conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organized resistance to disclosure, efforts to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process, manipulation of data, and private admissions of flaws in their public claims.

We can justifiably ask, “If man’s activities truly cause the Earth to warm, why do they need to deceive the public?” What do they fear from being honest?

As the science of global warming crumbles, the reaction of warmists to the revelations is interesting. The scientists say these revelations are a petty issue, while the policymakers go merrily on as if man-caused warming is settled science and everything is just hunky-dory.

All of this supports the idea that “saving the Earth from humans” is more about an ideology turned into a religion than about a real threat to the environment.

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Technorati Tags: Science, Politics, Environment, Liberalism

Courts sometimes thwart justice

An interesting situation has developed over the last year or so regarding challenging the qualifications and eligibility of people to hold the offices they hold.

In one, Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State has been challenged on the basis that when she was a U.S. Senator, immediately prior to being appointed by President Obama as Secretary of State, the Senate increased the salary of that position three times. The U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 6, clause 2, provides: "No senator or representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been [increased] during such time."

That language prohibits Mrs. Clinton from holding the office of Secretary of State, despite a “legislative fix” to roll back the compensation increase before she actually took office, according to a challenge by Judicial Watch, which disputed the appointment in the name of a State Department employee.

The details of the complaint are less important than the reason for it being dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Court concluded the State Department employee lacked legal standing to bring suit.

Another similar case involves President Barack Obama, whose citizenship, and thus his eligibility to be President of the United States, has been called into question by some citizens. A number of suits have been filed, and most have been dismissed, some of them because, again, those filing the suits lack legal standing to sue a candidate or office holder.

Here is a definition of legal standing:

The legally protectible stake or interest that an individual has in a dispute that entitles him to bring the controversy before the court to obtain judicial relief.

Standing, sometimes referred to as standing to sue, is the name of the federal law doctrine that focuses on whether a prospective plaintiff can show that some personal legal interest has been invaded by the defendant. It is not enough that a person is merely interested as a member of the general public in the resolution of the dispute. The person must have a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy.

If a senator or representative is prohibited by constitutional provision from holding an office for which the body he/she served in has voted a pay increase, exactly who has standing to challenge that individual’s eligibility? If the employees of the State Department – who are sworn to uphold the Constitution and are thus prohibited from acting on orders from a Secretary that is ineligible for the office – don’t have standing to challenge their boss’s eligibility, who does have standing?

The people who question Mr. Obama’s citizenship are held in contempt by his supporters, and others who believe that Mr. Obama is a citizen as required by the Constitution. But taking the personalities and party affiliations out of the question, the fundamental issue is an important one.

Suppose for the sake of discussion that someone who isn’t a naturalized citizen manages to get through the campaign and is nominated at his/her party, wins the election and is sworn in as President, and at no time along the way was he/she required to prove citizenship. This seems an absurdly unlikely possibility, but the fact is that a candidate’s citizenship is assumed, rather than ascertained. In such a case, how do the American people remove a President from office who isn’t a citizen if no U.S. citizen has standing in the courts to bring the action?

Put another way, what is the point of having laws and established procedures on the books if no one has the standing necessary to apply them by bringing a court action?

In a country where virtually anyone can file a suit against virtually anyone else for any reason (or no reason), citizens are prohibited from filing suit against an elected leader unless they have “standing,” which seems to be so tightly defined as to eliminate nearly everyone who might believe there’s a reason to sue a leader.

If a citizen had irrefutable proof that an elected or appointed official was for some reason ineligible to hold that office, the citizen would be unable to file suit to remove the ineligible official unless he/she met the very thin definition of standing; the citizen would have to show that his/her personal legal interest had been invaded by the illegal President or Secretary in order to remove him/her from office.

And if no one has standing to sue for dismissal, or if those with standing do not sue, the ineligible official would continue to hold office. That is fundamentally wrong in this country, which prides itself on freedom and the rule of law.

For judges to view standing so narrowly in cases of eligibility to hold office is judicial tyranny. It should not be difficult to hold officials accountable to the requirements of the offices they hold or seek.

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Technorati Tags: Society, Politics, Justice, Government

Defeat the EFCA and Card-Check

Still looming on the legislative horizon is something deceptively called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, H.R. 800), the provisions of which will make it easier for union organizers to impose union representation on a group of workers by circumventing the current secret ballot method of deciding for or against union representation with an odious mechanism called “card check.”

Secret ballot voting has been a feature in US elections for more than two centuries, and that includes union elections. However, if the EFCA were to become law, the federal government will have tilted the playing field toward labor unions by giving them a tremendous advantage in the effort to organize workplaces.

Unions arose in the US more than a hundred years ago in response to issues in the workplace, but those issues no longer exist, due to an effective set of labor laws that have been enacted through the years that regulate the workplace and how employers deal with employees. Of course, if workers want some organization to represent them they certainly have that right, but the steady decline in union membership over recent years reflects workers’ comfort with the effectiveness of labor laws in satisfying their needs.

The most persuasive factor against the pro-union EFCA, however, is that labor unions produce negative rather than positive results for the economy and society at large.

There are 22 states, mostly in the south, which have right to work laws that allow workers to opt out of joining a union, even if there is union representation where they work. In non-right to work states, primarily in the north, if the business is unionized, all workers must belong to the union to work there. Right to work states have fewer unionized companies, because employees generally see no need to belong to a union and to pay expensive dues each year.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy reports that not only is unionization down in right to work states, but those states also experience lower unemployment levels. “In December 2008, states with right-to-work laws had an average unemployment rate of 6.2 percent compared to 7.0 percent for states without right to work laws.” Michigan is the heaviest unionized state, and had the highest unemployment of all 50 states at 10.6 percent, and Rhode Island, another non-right to work state, had the second highest unemployment rate, at 10.0 percent. The six states with the lowest unemployment rates all have right to work laws.

Right to work states also have a better record than non-right to work states in three important categories, according to Americans for Prosperity (AFP):
• Productivity growth - 18.6 percent to 17.3 percent;
• Job growth - 17.6 percent to 8.9 percent;
• Economic growth - 41.6 percent to 33.4 percent.

The National Legal and Policy Center and The John M. Olin Institute for Employment Practice and Policy issued a report titled "Do Unions Help the Economy? The Economic Effects of Labor Unions Revisited," which states that studies that have looked at the impacts of proposed card check feature of the EFCA legislation have found:
• Real GDP was depressed by about $3.5 trillion dollars from 1947 to 2000 due to unions. If you added the decrease in real wages paid to employees, the total impact rises to more than $50 trillion.
• One study found that union-produced "deadweight" loss to the US economy of 0.91% of GDP in 1980 fell to 0.34% of GDP in 2000 as union membership declined.

AFP further states that right to work states have had significantly more population growth than union shop states since 1990, seeing “on average, a 65.5% increase in population over the 16-year period while states with union shops laws only experienced an average of a 45% increase.” Right to work states also have experienced a higher level of growth, AFP notes, as businesses move their operations to states that promote a friendly environment.

Proponents of the EFCA boast that union workers are paid higher wages than their non-union colleagues, but this contention fails the truth test. Workers in right to work states saw an average 23 percent increase while union shop states wages increased only 15 percent on average.

"Right to work laws make unions more accountable to their rank and file," said Paul Kersey, director of labor policy for the Mackinac Center. "When you make unions more accountable to workers, you make a state more attractive to employers. A right-to-work law by itself doesn't guarantee prosperity, but it does seem to help. Allowing workers to decide for themselves whether or not to support a union does attract job-creating businesses, making work easier to find. These numbers bear that out."

Unions may serve a useful purpose in select circumstances, but the evidence heavily supports right to work laws and keeping the workplace open and free, allowing employees to make a decision about joining a union based upon their own personal situation and desires, and without the coercion that will exist if the EFCA becomes law.

That will not only benefit workers, but the economy of individual states and the nation.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Labor, Liberalism

Creating rights from hurt feelings

A man went into a Starbucks in Boca Raton, Florida. As it happened, he suffered from Tourette Syndrome, which according to the Tourette Syndrome Association is a neurological disorder which becomes evident in early childhood or before the age of 18 years and is defined by multiple involuntary motor and vocal actions which may include violent acts, as well as obscene words or socially inappropriate words and phrases.

While in the coffee shop the man had a Tourette’s attack and began uncontrollably beating on a wall and cursing loudly. When customers complained, Starbucks employees called the police and had him removed from the premises.

If you’re thinking that the man probably sued Starbucks, go to the head of the class. He claims that workers at the coffee shop violated his civil rights when he began cursing loudly and punching the wall, disturbing and perhaps terrifying other patrons in the coffee shop.

The Florida Commission on Human Relations, which investigates claims of discrimination, claimed there was evidence that Starbucks did not take steps to accommodate the man's disability, but did not say, of course, what an accommodation for a man screaming obscenities and pounding on a wall uncontrollably would be.

Situations like this are troubling on several levels. We don’t want to mistreat people who have problems they can’t control. But, on the other hand, businesses like Starbucks are not therapy centers. They can’t effectively do what they do, and at the same time incorporate accommodations for every conceivable disability that might come through their doors. More to the point, how do you accommodate people who may, without notice, simply break into fits of violent behavior, or begin shouting profanity?

Furthermore, don’t businesses have an obligation to their non-Tourette Syndrome customers – who comprise the vast majority of their customers, including children – to provide an environment without such aberrant behavior?

Life is not fair; people are not equal. Some of us are not equipped to play a particular sport, despite how badly we may want to. Some of us are incapable of becoming an engineer, or a computer programmer or a designer, even though that is the goal to which we aspire. And some of us have specific problems, such as a disease or disorder, which limit what we can do.

Someone with a disorder like Tourette Syndrome does not have a right to go to Starbucks and disturb other patrons by pounding on the wall and cursing loudly, and Starbucks does not have an obligation to accommodate people with Tourette Syndrome.

If you have a medical condition that produces unpredictable disruptive behavior, you simply have to avoid going to public places where your behavior will be offensive or dangerous to innocent bystanders, and you are not entitled to sue for compensation for your disability. That’s unfortunate for people with Tourette Syndrome, but that’s the way it is.

These situations prompt sympathy both for the Tourette’s sufferer and for Starbucks, but they are not legitimate subjects for law suits. To the contrary, such law suits are strong evidence in support of tort reform.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Liberalism, Law Suits

The Latest from Bones

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Technorati Tags: Humor, Politics, Liberals, Democrats

Democrats obscure shady process with "the party of 'No'"

During the early days in the health care reform effort, the atmosphere was a heady one for Democrats, who for the first time in many years held not only the White House, but also both houses of Congress by solid margins.

Consumed by having gained this high degree of power, they saw no need to consult with Republicans to develop a bi-partisan approach to improve the system, because they had the power to do what they wanted to do.

They were unable to resist the temptation to cram everything imaginable into the reform bill, and when they included measures that Republicans found unacceptable, Democrats began calling Republicans obstructionists, giving the clear impression that Republicans simply refused to participate, and only cared about stopping reform.

After locking themselves away and drafting legislation that they knew Republicans couldn’t support, then rejecting Republican proposals to modify the legislation, when Republicans predictably voted against the bill, they called them “the party of ‘No.’”

They denounced Republican opposition with comments like, “Republicans don’t want to help people who can’t afford health insurance,” “Republicans oppose health care reform,” and “Republicans want to maintain the status quo.” All of that may make for exciting political theater, but it accomplishes nothing positive.

Was the reform effort an honest attempt to create useful legislation? No. Was that characterization a fair evaluation of the Republican attitude toward reform? Again, no.

Calling the Republicans “the party of ‘No’” is an effort to distract our attention from the Democrats’ foray into the back rooms of the Capital where they worked against the wishes of their constituents behind closed – and locked – doors.

The Democrats’ contrived frustration at Republican refusal to support their radical reform measures is silly, although it serves their political purposes. They weren’t interested in bi-partisan input on health care reform in the first place, which is why they locked Republicans out of the process. But just because the Democrats say Republicans were opposed to any kind of reform doesn’t mean that it is true, and in fact that claim is demonstrably false. In May Republicans unveiled a plan that featured these 10 points:
• Lowering health care premiums for American families and small businesses, addressing Americans’ number-one priority for health care reform.
• Establishing Universal Access Programs to guarantee access to affordable health care for those with pre-existing conditions.
• Ending junk lawsuits by enacting medical liability reforms modeled after the successful state laws of California and Texas.
• Preventing insurers from unjustly cancelling a policy.
• Encouraging Small Business Health Plans to give small businesses the power to pool together and offer health care at lower prices, like corporations and labor unions do.
• Encouraging innovative state programs that reduce premiums and the number of uninsured.
• Allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines, so those living in one state can purchase insurance in another.
• Promoting healthier lifestyles by giving employers greater flexibility to financially reward employees who adopt healthier lifestyles.
• Enhancing Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) by allowing qualified participants to use HSA funds to pay premiums for high deductible health insurance.
• Allowing dependents to remain on their parents’ policies through age 25.

And in early November House Republican Leader John Boehner offered an amendment to the Democrat bill, titled the “Common Sense Health Care Reform and Affordability Act,” which stated: “The purpose of this Act is to take meaningful steps to lower health care costs and increase access to health insurance coverage (especially for individuals with preexisting conditions) without: (1) raising taxes; (2) cutting Medicare benefits for seniors; (3) adding to the national deficit; (4) intervening in the doctor-patient relationship; or (5) instituting a government takeover of health care.”

There’s a fair chance you didn’t hear about either of those things, because the Democrats certainly weren’t going to tell you about a plan that you might like better than you like their plan, and the mainstream media certainly didn’t trumpet the Republican plan with the same enthusiasm as it did the Democrat bill.

These games are not all that unusual. Whenever a political party has a controlling majority in Congress, the potential for political tomfoolery exists, and both parties are guilty of having committed legislative malfeasance when they have held power. However, Democrats are the ones with power at this moment, and they alone are responsible for this badly flawed process.

The fact is that Democrats never cared what reforms Republicans favored; they were determined to ram through their partisan ideological plan to assert government control over private sector health care, and the public and Republicans be damned. Despite resounding defeats to the liberal agenda in recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Democrat leaders still aren’t listening to – or perhaps cannot hear – the strong message against their version of health care reform from a majority of Americans, as reflected in multiple public opinion polls showing opposition by a 15- to-20-point margin.

While Republicans pray the Democrats’ deafness continues through November, the American people should pray they wake up before they ruin the world’s most technologically advanced health care system.

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Technorati Tags: Health Care, Politics, Government, Democrats

The wisdom of Cliff Clavin

Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger) explains the "buffalo theory" to his drinking buddy Norm (George Wendt):

"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But, naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."

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