President Barack Obama says he’s confident the economy will turn around in the short term and the nation will prosper in the long term despite another dose of bad unemployment news.

Obama spoke Thursday in the Rose Garden shortly after a meeting with chief executives from energy companies. Earlier, the government reported that employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June.

The unemployment rate climbed to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent. Obama called that report sobering news. He said that while it is better than the last economic quarter, it is little comfort for those who have lost their jobs. He said it took years to create the economic mess and it will take time to reverse the downward slide.

It’s true that he didn’t cause this recession. Bit by bit, though, people don’t care that he didn’t cause it. He got elected because people wanted him to fix the mess he inherited. Bit by bit, people are noticing that Obama’s solutions have been worthless. They’re noticing that his policies, especially his pork-infested, less-than-stimulating stimulus bill and his bailout of the UAW and his budget, have given Wall Street and Main Street alike reasons to not trust his economic policies.

The Ellie Mae ad is a great touch. Mocking President Obama’s and the congressional Democrats’ policies will highlight their ineptitude and cause a shift in who the American people vote for in 2010. In 2006, the Democrats’ slogan was that we needed “to change direction.” In 2010, a potent argument can be made for changing directions away from the Democrats’ disastrous direction.

Articles like Larry Kudlow’s don’t give people confidence in the economy:

Donald Marron, a former senior economist with the Council of Economic Advisors and the CBO, calls it “a grim jobs report.” Marron, digging deep into the Labor Department Statistics, says the continued decline in hours worked by private-sector employees, now 7 percent over the past year, is especially troublesome. He writes, “The economy is thus losing jobs and, for the jobs that remain, is losing hours worked. That double-whammy is bad news for the economy.”

I would add that along with manufacturing and construction, the service sector continues to shed jobs, with a 244,000 drop in June. Inside that category, the important professional-and-business-services sector lost 118,000 jobs. The wage data is equally disconcerting. Over the past three months, average hourly earnings barely rose at 0.7 percent annually.

The average length of a deep recession is approximately 17-19 months. I’m guessing that, right now, we’re 6 months past that with at least another 6 months to go before bottoming out.

Predictably, here’s Kudlow’s prescription for recovery:

As an old-fashioned supply-side guy who is out of date with contemporary Washington policies, I would add that Obama’s biggest mistake was not cutting marginal tax rates for individuals, businesses, and investors. Instead of the fiscal profligacy that is driving spending and borrowing sky-high, lower tax rates with true incentive-reward effects would have reignited the animal spirits that are sagging so badly.

Until President Obama learns that capitalists need incentives to do things, this economy will stagger along. While I think it’s likely that we’ll have some economic growth along the way, I think it’s far more likely that we won’t have a noticeable, sustained jump in economic growth.

Until that changes, Ellie Mae will have her work cut out for her.

Technorati Tags: Economy, Unemployment, Bailouts, Stimulus, President Obama, Democrats, Change Directions, Election 2010

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

• Fifty-six percent (56%) of Americans say they are not willing to pay more in taxes and utility costs to generate cleaner energy and fight global warming.
• A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, taken since the climate change bill was passed on Friday, finds that 21% of Americans are willing to pay $100 more per year for cleaner energy and to counter global warming. Only 14% are willing to pay more than that amount.
• Fifty-two percent (52%) of all adults say it is more important to keep the cost of energy as low as possible than it is to develop clean, environmentally friendly sources of energy. But 41% disagree and say developing cleaner, greener energy sources is the priority.
• Sixty-three percent (63%) rate creating jobs as more important than taking steps to stop global warming. For 22%, stopping global warming is more important.

By an almost 3:1 margin, Americans favor keeping their money vs. paying more to “save the planet.” That’s nothing short of shocking. NOT!!! If Congress passes this bill and President Obama signs it into law, it will be just the latest proof that this Democratic administration and this Democrat Congress care more about their special interest allies than they care about the American people or science-based environmental policy.

Let’s be clear about something: This legislation isn’t about climate change. I think many of the people polled haven’t bought into the climate change hyperbole that Rep. Waxman and former VP Gore have been yapping about. That’s speculation on my part. What isn’t speculation is that this polling proves that people are significantly more worried about keeping money in their wallets than they are about saving the planet.

By a 3:1 margin, 63% to 22%, voters put a higher priority on policies that create jobs than on ’save the planet’ issues. If Republicans want to win this issue and draw big blocs of independent voters, they should stand firmly against the Democrats’ National Energy Tax.

I believe that this position is this year’s expression of last year’s anxiety over $4 a gallon gas prices. People haven’t stopped worrying about how high fossil fuel prices affect huge parts of their budget, whether it’s the gas they pump, their electric bills or higher grocery prices.

Democrats are painting themselves into a difficult corner with this. By passing this bill, Democrats are saying that they’re opposed to fossil fuels, that they’re ok with high gas prices and that they’re willing to pass legislation that drives companies from the United States and into China, Mexico and South Korea.

There’s a couple of reasons why that’s a difficult position to see, the biggest being that people care more about their wallets and the opportunity for prosperity than they care about ‘the environment’. Another reason why the Democrats’ position is a difficult position to defend is because driving businesses to other countries gives voters additional reasons for questioning the Democrats’ commitment to prosperity-inducing policies.

Simply put, this Democrat administration and this Democrat-controlled Congress are giving voters lots of reasons to question the Democrats’ economic stewardship.

Isn’t that the only question that voters will remember in November, 2010?

Technorati Tags: Energy, Polling, National Energy Tax, Taxes, Tax Increases, Environment, Outsourcing, Unemployment, Democrats, Election 2010

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

There is much in the House cap-and-trade energy bill that just passed that I absolutely hate. It is too weak in key areas and way too complicated in others. A simple, straightforward carbon tax would have made much more sense than this Rube Goldberg contraption. It is pathetic that we couldn’t do better. It is appalling that so much had to be given away to polluters. It stinks. It’s a mess. I detest it.

Now let’s get it passed in the Senate and make it law.

Why? Because, for all its flaws, this bill is the first comprehensive attempt by America to mitigate climate change by putting a price on carbon emissions. Rejecting this bill would have been read in the world as America voting against the reality and urgency of climate change and would have undermined clean energy initiatives everywhere.

I’m tempted to tell Friedman to interview Bob Weisman on the realities of the effect Waxman-Markey would have on climate change. Here’s what Professor Weisman said in April about the National Energy Tax:

Despite disagreeing with him “100 percent, politically,” Weisman said he agreed with Horner that the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade program likely won’t do anything to effect climate change. “Like the Kyoto treaty, it won’t bring down global warming,” Weisman said. “You’d need something more like a 40 percent cut in emissions (to do that).”

Let’s summarize what Waxman-Markey will and won’t do. It won’t affect climate change one iota. We’d need a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas emissions to accomplish that, something that won’t happen with China dramatically increasing their greenhouse gas emissions. Something that Waxman-Markey is is a huge job-killing tax increase. People living in America’s heartland understand that this is destructive legislation that doesn’t have anything to do with improving the environment.

Only those people who are insulated by the Beltway echochamber think that the Democrats’ legislation is worthwhile. That’s because everyone in their echochamber tells them it’s important. If I hear that a journalist, perhaps even Mr. Friedman, actually asked a why question about how the Democrats’ legislation will affect the Earth’s climate, I’ll faint straightaway.

Now that the bill is heading for the Senate, though, we must, ideally, try to improve it, but, at a minimum, guard against diluting it any further. To do that we need the help of the three parties most responsible for how weak the bill already is: the Republican Party, President Barack Obama and We the People.

HINT TO MR. FRIEDMAN: We The People think this legislation stinks. We The People don’t want our utility bills to skyrocket. We’d prefer that we could keep more of our money. We The People don’t want the Democrats’ National Energy Tax to cause groceries to skyrocket like they did last summer when gas hit $4 a gallon. More We The People types are rejecting the premise that we’re destroying the planet with greenhouse gases.

Finally, We The People understand that this is just the Democrats’ latest attempt to control our lives. Especially as we approach Independence Day, We The People reject the Democrats’ attempt to control yet another portion of our lives.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Environment, Emissions, Economy, Taxes, Kyoto, Greenhouse Gases, China, United States, Ed Markey, Henry Waxman, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Socialized medicine. Government-run health care. Rationing. Bureaucrats in charge. “Cookbook” medicine. Waiting lines. It’ll break the bank.

Welcome to the health care debate 2009. Sound familiar? These notions aim to instill fear. And once again, they bear no more relation to the reality of what is being debated in Washington than was the case when the Clintons had a go at health reform in the 1990s. Don’t be misled this time. In fact, far more bipartisan agreement exists on many core elements of reform than you might think.

Socialized, government-run health care? Nothing President Obama or Congress is proposing would replicate the Canadian, British, or French systems or remotely resemble nationalized medical service. Rather, the proposals offer repairs to an American system that is both broken and going broke. Those proposals build on our current private system where most people younger than 65 get coverage through their employers and treatment through private-sector doctors and hospitals.

What would be new is that people who don’t have access to such coverage (and some who do) would be able to get coverage through insurance “exchanges.” They’d be able to choose from a batch of private plans and policies that would have to accept all comers, offer comprehensive coverage, and be barred from “cherry-picking” only healthy people.

Guess what? Democrats and Republicans embrace the idea of exchanges and broad new federal insurance rules. They also agree that this new proposed system would be a boon to private insurers, doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and drug companies. That’s because tens of billions of dollars of government funds would help many of the 46 million uninsured get coverage.

Those subsidies are one big reason insurers are so opposed to the idea of a “public plan” being offered in the exchanges; they don’t want to lose any of those new customers to a government-run plan.

Here’s the fatal flaw that I’m refering to:

Guess what? Democrats and Republicans embrace the idea of exchanges and broad new federal insurance rules.

Consensus doesn’t mean that the majority is right. A perfect example of that is global warming, now fashionably called climate change because people tune out when they hear the term global warming.

The point I’m making is that there are too many GOP senators who willingly play the go-along-to-get-along game. That they’re willing to be spineless doesn’t mean that they’re making the right decisions. It just means that they don’t have a set anymore.

Findlay’s right about one thing, though. I’m trying to ‘put the fear of God’ in people. If you haven’t read Jim Hoft’s latest column for the American Issues Project, then you should read it ASAP. Here’s a portion of Jim’s column:

Ava Isabella Stinson was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario on Thursday of last week. Ava was 13 weeks premature. She weighed only two-pounds, four-ounces at birth. Ava needed special care and equipment to keep her alive. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joesph’s Hospital. In fact, there were no open neonatal care beds in her entire Canadian province. Ava had to be transferred to the United States.

If that isn’t enough information by itself to change your opinion of government-run health care, then you’re more heartless than people accuse conservatives of being. What’s worse is that this isn’t an isolated happening.

If people attempt to say that this isn’t relevant, that this couldn’t happen in the United States, I’ll simply direct people’s attentions to this post. Last week, King Banaian and I sat down with Dave Borgert to talk about health care. What Dave told us about Medicare is slightly less disturbing than the case involving Ava Isabella Stinson.

Dave told us what I’ve often suspected: that Medicare payments to clinics, hospitals and doctors aren’t based on whether their payment covered the cost to clinics, hospitals and doctors. I knew they didn’t cover that. That’s why cost-shifting is one of the biggest problems haunting health care these days. What I didn’t know prior to last Friday was that their payments were solely based on a budget passed by politicians.

Dave confirmed for us that Medicare bureaucrats don’t negotiate with hospitals, clinics and doctors. They simply set prices. How long can a system function efficiently if they’re losing money on a daily basis? How long before hospitals, clinics and doctors start begging for a federal bailout?

I’d point out to Mr. Findlay that if something isn’t scary, it isn’t possible for Republicans to scare people. It’s that simple.

This statement is another thing that Findlay said that can’t go unchallenged:

Nothing President Obama or Congress is proposing would replicate the Canadian, British, or French systems or remotely resemble nationalized medical service.

This video says that Mr. Findlay isn’t telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:

How can anyone view that video and say with a straight face that the goal isn’t single-payer? It’s intellectually insulting to hear Findlay say something that dishonest.

The debate over the public plan also puts the distorting rhetoric on full display. Opponents say the idea is the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent toward a European-style “single-payer” system. But the reality is that it wouldn’t be that difficult to design a public option that abides by the same rules as private insurers and has no competitive advantage.

First off, yes, it’s difficult to design a public option that abides by the same rules as private insurers. Yes, it’s impossible to picture a public option that didn’t have a serious competitive advantage.

I’ve stated elsewhere that Medicare doesn’t negotiate prices. It sets prices. There’s no back-and-forth. There’s no reaching consensus. It’s negotiation at gunpoint. It’s totally a my-way-or-the-highway situation.

I’ve said in numerous posts that Medicare and Medicaid set payment schedules without consideration of whether the payment covers the cost of the test or operation. It’s based on a budget passed by politicians. Supply and demand have practically nothing to do with the payment structure.

Can we afford reform? This is the real toughie. Proponents insist that not reforming the system is the real financial risk. On the current trajectory, medical costs will soar to 28% of the U.S. economy by 2030, from 18% today, and the average family will have to pay about $25,000 for insurance by 2025, from $12,000 today.

This isn’t a justification for reform. It’s just proof that our population is aging. The prices, from premiums to out-of-pocket expenses, rise as more baby boomers move into their maximum usage years. This is something that actuaries have talked about for the past 15+ years.

The only way prices will stabilize while keeping the quality of our care high is if we limit the cost-shifting that Medicare causes. That means that providing seniors with more private options is needed to prevent Medicare from going bankrupt. It’s also what’s needed to prevent Medicare from bankrupting the U.S.

The medical industry must be challenged to cuts costs; its bloated General Motors gas-guzzler mindset must be radically re-engineered (just as GM is being). Enforceable targets on reducing waste must be set. New, more efficient care systems must be invented. Government must use its buying clout more assertively as it pays for the care of millions of Americans enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and other public programs.

That’s another fatally flawed paragraph. Findlay is arguing for the public option while insisting that “more efficient care systems must be invented.” If ever there was a paradox, this is it. Even after they’ve been streamlined, government bureaucracies aren’t efficient. More importantly, goverment bureaucracies aren’t flexible enough to adjust to constantly changing health care realities because government bureaucracies are intentionally cumbersome.

If a company becomes aware of a better way to do things, all it takes is a directive from management to change how it does things. If government becomes aware of a better way to do things, it literally takes an act of Congress. All too often, it requires the herding of cats and getting them pointed in the right direction.

That’s assuming that bureaucrats even think about looking for opportunities to change things for the better, something I’m not willing to do.

It’s intellectually dishonest to say that the Kennedy-Dodd legislation or the Baucus legislation won’t induce rationing of health care because government is utterly inefficient. If government is efficient, why is Medicare going broke?

Technorati Tags: Reforms, Health Care, Medicare, Single-Payer, Eva Isabella Stinson, Rationing, Price Controls, Kennedy-Dodd, Max Baucus, Fearmongering, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

In the U.S., electricity is produced from these sources. If you are reading this on a handheld and can’t read Wikipedia’s wonderful pie chart, here is the breakdown:

48.9% — Coal
20% — Natural Gas
19.3% — Nuclear
1.6% — Petroleum

Got that? A tick over 88% of U.S. electricity comes from three sources: coal, gas and nuclear. Petroleum brings the contribution of so-called “evil” energy–that is, energy that is carbon- or uranium-based–to almost 90%.

Despite the fact that the overwhelming amount of electricity is created through fossil fuels or through nuclear power, Pelosi’s Democrats want to destroy the United States’ ability to generate electricity. Let’s remember that President Obama said that he was perfectly comfortable with bankrupting coal-powered power plants:

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

How can a thinking person attempt to bankrupt coal-powered power plants? What priorities is such a man setting? What type of people vote for these radical policies? HINT: Blue Dog Democrats like Collin Peterson vote for such things.

QUESTION: Rep. Peterson, was it worth those thirty pieces of silver, aka concessions, to betray your constituents?

The Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House on Friday by a 219-212 margin will punitively tax energy sources that contribute 90% of current U.S. electricity (or 71% if you want to leave out nuclear). The taxes will be used to subsidize the 10% renewable contributors (but really just 3% after you leave out hydro).

In other words, Waxman-Markey is betting the future of U.S. electricity production on sources that now contribute 3% or supply 10 million Americans with electricity. That’s enough juice for the people in Waxman’s Los Angeles County. Or, if you prefer, for Nancy Pelosi’s metro San Francisco plus Markey’s metro Boston.

Well, what about electricity for the other 295 million? You can’t get there from here with Waxman-Markey. At very best, solar, wind and cellulosic ethanol will make 20% contributions by 2025. The smart money would bet on 10%.

What bunch of geniuses would pass a bill that would put the vast majority of power plants on life support? Here’s a better question to ask: Why would anyone think that we’d be able to build the infrastructure needed to dramatically increase production from alternative energy sources?

Meanwhile, traditional sources of electricity that are progressing in the direction of cleaner and more efficient are being ignored (or dissed by Waxman-Markey). Here are two must reads–the first on clean coal by Gregg Easterbrook, the second on fission energy by Robert Metcalfe. Study them if you take electricity production seriously.

Bottom line: There is no way the U.S. economy can enjoy future prosperity without the big three electrical energy sources of clean coal, natural gas and nuclear.

It’s time we took this simple math seriously. Its time that we didn’t put our stock in Pelosi’s pie-in-the-sky projections.

Finally, it’s time that we changed directions away from Pelosi’s special interest-driven energy policies and towards a serious energy policy.

Technorati Tags: Energy, National Energy Tax, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, Collin Peterson, Speaker Pelosi, Democrats, Coal, Nuclear Power, Natural Gas, Fossil Fuels

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Obama said House members who narrowly voted to pass the climate bill on Friday had put progress before petty Washington politics, and urged Senators to do the same ahead as they embark on a rocky road to their own vote.

“The House of Representatives came together to pass an extraordinary piece of legislation,” Obama said, at an event in the White House announcing new plans to improve energy efficiency across the United States. “In the months to come, the Senate will take up its version of the energy bill. And I am confident that they, too, will choose to move this country forward.”

What the 219 representatives did wasn’t to put progress ahead of petty politics. They voted to increase taxes on the middle class, the working poor and small businesses.

This isn’t “an extraordinary piece of legislation.” It’s a huge job-killing tax increase that will kill jobs in hard hit places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky. Here’s House GOP Leader Boehner’s response to President Obama:

Americans need real solutions to create jobs, lower energy prices, and clean up the environment, but Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax is a recipe for driving up prices for middle-class families and small businesses and shipping more American jobs overseas. The President repeated his claim that this bill will create jobs, but independent analysts suggest it’s a job killer, while one of his prominent supporters, Warren Buffett, calls it a huge, regressive tax.

Republicans believe there is a better route to more jobs, reliable energy, and a cleaner, healthier environment. Our all-of-the-above plan will increase American energy production in an environmentally-safe way, encourage the use of alternatives such as nuclear and clean-coal energy, and promote new technologies and efficiencies. Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress and the Administration have chosen to go it alone with their costly, jobs-killing national energy tax scheme. Middle-class families and small businesses struggling during this recession won’t support it. It’s time for Democrats to work with Republicans on real solutions to create jobs and pave the way for a cleaner, more reliable energy future.

Why would Democrats even think about bankrupting fossil fuel-burning power plants? Why would they want to kill the economies of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming and Kentucky while we’re in the midst of a terrible economy? Is it that Democrats don’t care about the blue collar workers in those states? Is it because they’re so blinded by their ideology that they refuse to rethink things? Or, perhaps, is it because they can’t afford to ignore the environmental extremists because they’ll need their campaign contributions?

I think it’s most of the above. I think they’re blinded by their ideology and I think they can’t afford to bite the hand that writes the campaign contributions. (You’ve noticed that they didn’t give consideration to doing what’s right for the country, right?)

The White House certainly will try justifying their actions with clever spin. The bad news for the Obama administration is that people are tired of the spin. The worst news for the Obama administration is that people are tired of his administration not producing cost-effective solutions.

Thus far, the Obama administration hasn’t shown that they’re problem solvers. Thus far, the only thing they’ve proven is that they’re world class ideologues.

That won’t cut it when people’s wallets are stretched to the breaking point.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Environment, Tax Increases, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, President Obama, Elections, Democrats, John Boehner, Republicans

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.

This ruling isn’t likely to keep Judge Sotomayor from becoming the next associate justice but it’s bound to open up a great line of questioning for Republicans serving on the Judiciary Committee. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask her what her reasoning was in reaching that ruling.

Technorati Tags: SCOTUS, Sonia Sotomayor, Discrimination, Confirmation Hearings, Judiciary Committee

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

EPA has not yet released the final, suppressed report that was written by career EPA staffers Dr. Alan Carlin and Dr. John Davidson, an MIT Ph.D. economist and a University of Michigan Ph.D. physicist, respectively. But here’s some of what they write in the 80-page draft report:

We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies…have paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC and CCSP, as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation.

…we believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA before any attempt is made to reach conclusions on the subject.

After reviewing uncertainties, they note, at page 62:

Hence it is not reasonable to conclude that there is any endangerment from the changes in GHG [greenhouse gas] levels based on the satellite record, since almost all the fluctuations appear to be due to natural causes and not human-caused pollution as defined by the Clean Air Act…

There is strong possibility that there are some other natural causes of global temperature fluctuations that we do not yet fully understand and which may account for the 1998 temperature peak… This possibility needs to be fully explained and discussed in the DRAFT TSD [EPA’s technical support document].”

Resolving the remaining uncertainties would appear to be of great importance before significant expenditures are made on the assumption that the GHG only hypothesis is correct…The currently favored GHG only hypothesis does not explain a number of aspects of the available data so it appears unlikely to be the sole explanation. There is an urgent need to update and improve on the IPCC reports by taking an independent perspective and including new information not included in their reports concerning all the factors summarized.

Why was Dr. Carlin’s opinion not noted in the EPA’s report? Why was Dr. Davidson’s opinion not noted in the report? These gentlemen are career EPA people. Their opinions and their questions should be noted.

I’d further suggest that EPA Administrator Jackson isn’t interested in the facts being presented. Let’s remember that she tried selling the National Energy Tax as a jobs bill, only to get discredited by Rep. Steve Scalise’s questioning:

REP. STEVE SCALISE, R-La.: Administrator Jackson, in your opening statement you talked about the jobs that would be created, green jobs that would be created under a cap-and-trade bill. Can you quantify how many jobs you estimate would be created under this legislation?
MS. JACKSON: I believe what I said, Sir, is that this is a jobs bill and that the discussion draft bill in its entirety is aimed to jumpstart our move into the green economy.
REP. SCALISE: And I think you quoted President Obama saying that it was his opinion that he would, that this bill would create millions of jobs. I think you used the term “millions.” Is there anything that you can base your determination on how many jobs will be created?
MS. JACKSON: EPA has not done a model or any kind of modeling on jobs creation numbers.

I suspect that Administrator Jackson is making this stuff up as she goes. She’s willing to make any statement that she thinks will sell this gigantic tax increase. It isn’t a stretch to think that she’ll omit statements that she thinks hurt this bill’s passage. It’s certainly provable that she made a flimsy argument to strengthen this bill’s support. At this point, why should people trust anything she says?

Rep. Barton empties both barrels in this section:

The agency gave the authors only a few days to comment on the agency’s science basis for its proposed endangerment finding. No one understands the rush on such an important topic, but the authors outline six important developments in climate research and climate observations that cut against the IPCC view and warrant EPA’s own close examination:

1. Global temperatures have declined significantly
2. IPCC global temperature projections look increasingly doubtful
3. Consensus on past, present, and future Atlantic hurricane behavior has changed
4. There have been changes in the outlook of Greenland’s ice sheet
5. Long-term water vapor feedback may be negative – thus dampening climate response to greenhouse gases
6. Greenhouse gas contributions to global warming may be much smaller than alleged by the IPCC and others, due to recent understanding related to solar influence and cycles of ocean-climate cycles (like El Nino).

Administrator Jackson’s behavior isn’t surprising. It’s quite predictable, actually. Anything or anyone that doesn’t agree with the environmental extremists’ views are either ignored or publicly ridiculed. In this instance, the extremists tried ignoring Dr. Carlin and Dr. Davidson.

Thankfully, bloggers won’t let this get buried. Thankfully, bloggers like myself and Powerline and others will hold the EPA’s feet to the fire.

Here’s the conclusion of Rep. Barton’s letter:

By all indications to date, the administration had reached a politically viable judgment on endangerment and preferred to suppress dissent from within the ranks of its professional staff rather than take the time to consider the professional staff’s views.

It isn’t a stretch to think that the EPA started with a verdict, then went in search of proof that fit their pre-determined verdict. Not only isn’t it a stretch; I’d say that’s what likely happened. Now they’ll have to dine on an entree of crow.

That’s what happens when bureaucrats try playing politics with scientific issues.

Technorati Tags: Taxes, National Energy Tax, Energy, Environment, Lisa Jackson, EPA, Clean Air Act, Climate Change, Democrats, Alan Carlin, John Davidson, Science, Joe Barton, Steve Scalise, Republicans

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Several things must be shared with you so you can better understand the health care debate.

1. When Medicare decides how much they’re paying for a procedure, it doesn’t have anything to do with whether that payment covers the cost of that procedure. The principle of supply and demand doesn’t play a significant role in determining payments. Medicare totals up how many angioplasties were done, how many MRIs were done, etc. Then they look at how much money Congress appropriated for Medicare. Once the Medicare budget is set, then a cost per procedure is established.

2. The ‘Medicare is more efficient than private insurance’ meme is a myth. Dave said that the way that Medicare can say that only 2% of the Medicare budget is spent on administrative costs is because billing is the only thing that’s counted as an administrative costs. Things like processing referrals, doublechecking what was done, whether it’s dispensing medication or IVs or whatever, are counted as patient care.

While it’s true that dispensing medication or IVs genuinely is patient care, having an administrator verify what supplies were used shouldn’t be counted as patient care. The best way to describe the administrative cost comparisons is that it’s an apples to green beans comparison. They’re that dissimilar.

3. The way that CanadaCare works is that each province is given a “global budget.” Their global budget doesn’t all go to patient care and administration. Part of their budget goes to nursing and medical schools. Another part goes to research grants. There are other things that must be paid for from this global budget, too. After these things have been paid for, what’s left is what’s actually spent on patients.

When the MRI budget reaches zero, the rest of the people needing MRIs are put on a waiting list until the next budget is appropriated.

QUESTION: How many people think that waiting 2-3 months to start chemotherapy is the type of system we should aspire to?

4. CanadaCare doesn’t include a perscription drug benefit. Let’s repeat that; CanadaCare doesn’t include a perscription drug benefit. While it’s true that perscription drugs are cheaper in Canada, it’s equally true that they’re paid for by the patient or by their supplemental insurance policy.

That’s something that you won’t hear President Obama or Ted Kennedy or other single-payer advocates talk about. You won’t hear them say that CanadaCare doesn’t pay for perscriptions. I don’t think Ted Kennedy or Max Baucus would write legislation that didn’t include perscriptions. It’s just that that’s another thing that will run up the cost of ObamaCare.

5. Medicare doesn’t negotiate prices. It sets prices. Here’s the definition of negotiate:

to arrange for or bring about by discussion and settlement of terms

Medicare tells pharmaceutical companies what they’ll pay for perscriptions. The pharmaceuticals accept this because they know that they can charge a much higher price to people with private insurances. That’s where cost-shifting starts. (The VA hospitals essentially operates the same way.)

If you want the perfect real-life illustration of what happens when a ‘public option’ or single-payer plan is implemented, just read Ed’s post about the baby that was born 14 weeks premature:

A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility and transferred across the border without her parents, who don’t have passports.

Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph’s Hospital, 14 weeks premature. A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to Buffalo.

Her parents Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson couldn’t follow their child because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States. They’re having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.

Ed’s commentary is spot on:

But why wasn’t there a NICU bed for the child in the entire nation of Canada? The government of Canada won’t pay for more. They don’t exist to expand supply to meet demand; their single-payer system exists to ration care as a cost-saving mechanism. In a free-market system, supply expands to meet demand, which is why Canada could subcontract out to a US hospital for capacity. Michael writes that paragraph as if it was mere luck that an NICU bed happened to be open in the US, but that’s a function of the system, and not luck. These parents are separated from their child at the moment through the fault of Canada’s government and not the US.

As I mentioned earlier, Medicare’s payment system doesn’t care about supply and demand. They’re just interested in keeping costs down by utilizing a low-profile const control system. Medicare can’t afford to start paying according to the principles of supply and demand; their cost controls won’t allow them to consider supply and demand principles.

Our health care system can’t function in a price control world because there wouldn’t be an incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invest in R & D. The minute that that incentive disappears, then the race to the bottom is just an eventuality.

That’s a race that’s best not run.

Technorati Tags: Reforms, Health Care, Single-Payer, Public Option, CanadaCare, Medicare, Perscription Drugs, Overhead, Patient Care, Rationing, Supplemental Insurance, Price Controls, Max Baucus, President Obama, Ted Kennedy, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

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

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

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

President Obama has said that it’s important to have a public option to “keep insurance companies honest.” Greg Makiw skewers that argument in this NYTimes op-ed:

Even if one accepts the president’s broader goals of wider access to health care and cost containment, his economic logic regarding the public option is hard to follow. Consumer choice and honest competition are indeed the foundation of a successful market system, but they are usually achieved without a public provider. We don’t need government-run grocery stores or government-run gas stations to ensure that Americans can buy food and fuel at reasonable prices.

Simply brilliant point.

I’m convinced that President Obama isn’t interested in true competition but rather that he’s just playing word games with the American people. I’m betting that President Obama knows that the words government-run are toxic. I’m further betting that he knows that if he sounds disinterested in market-based solutions, that this type of legislation doesn’t have a chance of getting enacted.

Here’s what happens when people opt for the universal coverage model:

A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility and transferred across the border without her parents, who don’t have passports.

Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph’s Hospital, 14 weeks premature. A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to Buffalo.

Her parents Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson couldn’t follow their child because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States.
They’re having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.

The Canadian blogger who wrote about this made this statement:

I won’t get into the relative merits of the American and Canadian health-care systems here. Suffice it to say that there obviously need to be more neo-natal intensive care unit beds up here. Thankfully, and this doesn’t mean that the American system is better (after all, at least the couple and their baby are guaranteed care up here, thanks to our public system, even if it’s not perfect), there was an opening south of the border.

The fact that the government “guarantees” health care to everyone certainly didn’t mean that they’d guarantee that they had the capacity to deal with all possibilities. It isn’t uncommon for babies to be born 1-2 months premature. The Canadian government’s single-payer system didn’t do this couple a bit of good.

That’s because their system is built on the premise that health care costs are kept low artificially because they set a “global budget”, which includes a pricing table. This pricing table isn’t about whether it covers the cost of an MRI or EEG or other procedure. It’s simply a figure that the government pays.

Whichever way you slice it, that’s government-mandated price controls. Everytime that I’ve seen them used, price controls didn’t just fail, they failed in such a way that they turned bad situations into terrible situations. If they’re the cure, I’d rather deal with the disease.

Technorati Tags: Reform, Health Care, President Obama, Public Option, Medicare, CanadaCare, Single-Payer, Price Controls, Democrats, Free Markets, Competition, Conservatives

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Democrats narrowly passed historic climate and energy legislation Friday evening that would transform the country’s economy and industrial landscape.

But the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect politically vulnerable Democrats by corralling the minimum number of votes to pass the bill, 219-212, proves that there are limits to President Barack Obama’s ability to use his popularity to push through his legislative agenda. Forty-four Democrats voted against the bill, while just eight Republicans crossed the aisle to back it.

Politico.com says that this is historic climate and energy legislation in these paragraphs, then undercuts that claim here:

Despite the tough path to passage, the legislation is a significant win for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and the bill’s two main sponsors, House Energy and Commerce committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) and Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey (D), who modified the bill again and again to get skeptical members from the Rust Belt, the oil-producing southeast and rural Midwest to back the legislation.

In other words, they threw environmental considerations aside when it fit their needs. Collin Peterson’s early dissent was bought off by a tiny smattering of meaningless trinkets. I’ve said repeatedly that the National Energy Tax was a tax increase masquerading as environmental policy. Tonight, I’m adding that this bill’s intent was to control people’s lives with government regulations and exhorbitant taxation.

The Heritage Foundation has a chart showing the economic damage that this legislation would’ve caused in each congressional district. Here’s a brief summary of what the chart will show:

The table below lays out six congressional district specific data points:

1.Gross State Product Loss in 2012: This number is the amount of economic destruction that will occur in that district in the first year of the cap-and-trade regime.
2.Average Gross State Product Loss, 2012-2035: Same as above, only it is the average economic destruction in the district for the bill’s first 24 years.
3.Personal Income Loss in 2012: This number represents the reduction in consumer spending power in a district in the first year of the cap-and-trade regime.
4.Average Personal Income Loss, 2012-2035: Same as above, only it is the reduction in consumer spending power in the district for the bill’s first 24 years.
5.Non-Farm Job Loss in 2012: Jobs are jobs, and in the first year of the cap-and-trade regime, each district will have significantly less than they otherwise could.
6.Average Non-Farm Job Loss, 2012-2035: This number is crucially important because it demonstrates that no district gains jobs, even in the long run; the increase in “green jobs” does not outweigh the decrease in jobs elsewhere.

The NRCC is poised to go after Blue Dog Democrats that caved to Speaker Pelosi on this legislation. This will be the undoing of many Democrats that sit in swing districts. Voting against Waxman-Markey won’t help Southern Democrats much either.

Fred Krupp’s quote is mostly hyperbole:

“The American Clean Energy and Security Act is the most important environmental and energy legislation in our nation’s history,” said Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). “Today’s vote is a huge achievement for the country and the climate.”

This bill has nothing to do with the environment. It’s always been a huge tax increase, nothing more. That isn’t my opinion. It’s what Rep. John Dingell said about it:

Then Candidate-Obama said this about his National Energy Tax bill:

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

In addition to this bill’s being a major tax increase, possibly the biggest in U.S. history, it’s also about killing jobs and destroying our economy at a time when it’s in bad shape. Before the House passed the stimulus bill without reading it, President said that the U.S. economy was headed for a catastrophe if his bill wasn’t enacted. If this bill becomes law, it will be a catastrophe of his own making.

If this bill becomes law, it might well be the end of Speaker Pelosi’s reign of terror. We can only hope.

Technorati Tags: Taxes, National Energy Tax, Energy, Environment, Economy, President Obama, Bankruptcies, Speaker Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

In recent years, America’s fiscal story has been one of steady decline, from record surpluses to record deficits. In 2001, the federal government had a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Today, we are looking at a fiscal year 2009 deficit of $1.7 trillion.

A number of factors have brought us to this cash-strapped point, including reckless tax cuts, the cost of two wars, entitlement programs that have grown on autopilot, and the necessary, though costly, efforts to get our economy out of recession. But by far the worst decision was the abandonment in the Bush years of the principle that our country should pay for what it buys. It’s time to learn from that error and establish that principle in law.

President Obama has made the pay-as-you-go rule, a.k.a. “paygo”, a central part of his campaign for fiscal responsibility. Under paygo, Congress is compelled to find savings for the dollars it spends. In the 1990s, paygo proved to be one of our most valuable tools for climbing out of a budgetary hole. As President Obama put it earlier this month, “It is no coincidence that this rule was in place when we moved…to record surpluses in the 1990s, and that when this rule was abandoned, we returned to record deficits that doubled the national debt.”

First off, PAYGo doesn’t compel Congress “to find savings for the dollars it spends.” In Speaker Pelosi’s House of Representatives, PAYGo’s requirements are met with a job-killing tax increase. What’s insulting is that these jackasses are now preaching fiscal responsibility after rushing through a stimulus bill that (a) they didn’t read and (b) that was at least half pork, after passing a super-sized omnibus bill and after passing President Obama’s budget, which will cause $9,300,000,000,000 in additional debt.

Mssrs. Hoyer and Miller lecturing people on fiscal restraint is akin to O.J. Simpson lecturing people on family values. It’s insulting in the extreme. Here’s another hypocritisy-filled paragraph:

Democrats, on the other hand, understand that we owe it to our fiscal future to pay our bills up-front. As soon as our party took back Congress in 2007, we made the principle of paying for what we buy part of the House rules. To be sure, Congress hasn’t always lived up to that commitment, usually when the Senate rejected House bills that were paid for. But that is all the more reason to give paygo the force of law. On Mr. Obama’s behalf, we have introduced legislation to keep Congress, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, from sacrificing our fiscal health to the political pressures of the moment.

It’s true that the Democrats made PAYGo part of the House Rules. It’s just that they’ve ignored that rule since installing it. Could Rep. Hoyer and Rep. Miller pass a lie detector test if I asked them whether PAYGo rules were followed when they filled out their special interest groups’ wish list, aka ARRA?

Let’s hear them explain how that bill left us $787,000,000,000 deeper in debt while following PAYGo. Ditto with passing President Obama’s budget.

It’s disgusting that these miscreants are lecturing us about fiscal responsibility. They’ve never met a tax increase they didn’t vote for. The only time that they’ll vote against increasing spending money this session is when missile defense appropriations is the subject.

Fiscal responsibility will take much more work, from controlling the spiraling health-care costs that consume more and more of our GDP and budget each year to reforming our rapidly-growing entitlement programs. It is daunting work, but it can begin here. And if we fail to take even this step, to hold to a rule of responsibility that governs even the smallest family budgets, then we are in deeper trouble than even the worst pessimists feared.

Let’s see if the Democrats say no to the second stimulus bill that President Obama is thinking about. Let’s see these Democrats say that they’ve spent too much already. Let’s see if Pelosi’s minions exercise fiscal restraint rather than just flapping their gums about it.

The Democrats’ record is replete with proof that they’re comfortable talking about saying no. The Democrats’ record is thin in actually saying no to foolish spending. Their votes for ARRA is proof of where their heart truly lies.

Talk is cheap. This time, we won’t trust the Democrats until they take action to curb spending.

Technorati Tags: Spending, Fiscal Restraint, PAYGo, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, George Miller, ARRA, Deficits

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

After nearly three decades of self-serving research and a trillion wasted tax dollars, AIDS has never been identified as a leading cause of death and two large prizes for proof of HIV and AIDS causation remain unclaimed.

In the latest sign that the wheels are falling from NIAID’s little red propaganda wagon, Apartheid’s mercenary offspring are starting to get reckless.

In the past 45 days I have reported that:

• HIV/AIDS drug cocktails are comprised of two components; 1) Zidovudine (AZT), a poison that compromises immune function and kills, and 2) Efavirenz (Sustiva), a powerful hypnotic that is so powerful that addicts now smoke it like crack. When stopped, Efavirenz also produces withdrawal symptoms that clinicians identify as the onset of AIDS.

• After years of unanswered criticism and questions about the alleged co-discoverer of HIV, Robert Gallo MD hired part-time security guard and filter salesman Nick Kontaratos to write Gallo’s definitive defense – a book praised by esteemed Nature and Science writer/editor Barbara Culliton as well as three of Gallo’s own research scientists. Either Kontaratos is the savant-like James Bond of filter-hawking security guards or Gallo’s well-funded enablers helped him promote a fake investigation – just as they promoted all of his other fake research.
• Groups like Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and AIDSTruth have nothing to do with AIDS or truth but are actually malevolent South African mobs that help these 1600+ international mining companies sack Africa of its mineral wealth by misdiagnosing the majority of mine-related lung diseases as a sexually-transmitted virus. In this way, these mining companies avoid billions of dollars in liability that would otherwise shut down strategic mining operations throughout the African Continent by killing off their dying laborers before they and their impoverished families can sue for compensation.

Because of these revelations, investors who support groups like TAC and AIDSTruth are pressuring other financially-compromised university researchers like Seth Kalichman, Steven Siegelbaum and Cornell’s John Moore to promote the propaganda.

In the latest attack, TAC-funder George Soros directed Jonny Steinberg (one of Soros’ well-paid but scientifically incompetent South African shills) to propagandize AIDS in the pseudoscientific magazine New Scientist. Soros appears to have chosen Steinberg and NS for the same reasons that Gallo picked a security guard to investigate his career in HIV research.

NS’ reporting is so sloppy that when science fiction writer Greg Egan noted its combination of a sensationalist bent and a lack of basic knowledge by its writers, the editor admitted that NS is “an ideas magazine (that writes) about hypotheses as well as theories.” Unfortunately, NS rarely makes that distinction for readers who must speculate about the accuracy of its reports and the qualifications of its guest writers.

Like Nick Kontaratos, Kalichman, Bergman and the rest, Steinberg parrots the milk-fed propaganda – this time blaming the death of Christine Maggiore and her daughter on her scientific skepticism. It was no surprise that the truthers reflexively praised Steinberg – just as Gallo’s esteemed scientists praised Gallo’s security guard.

This incompetence was NOT an “accidental oversight” by NS.

Although the story and shills like Kalichman and truther Nick “Snout” Bennett accused Maggiore of killing her baby (160+ comments now), investigative journalist Liam Scheff posted a comment that NS viewed as unfit for its pages.

Ask yourself what was inappropriate about Scheff’s remarks?

I am wondering why the writer, Jonny Steinberg, focuses on one mother, who may have simply been a bad mother, or someone who didn’t know much about health, instead of focusing on the dozens to hundreds of deaths buried in the AIDS drug Uganda trials?

Or in the death by AIDS drug of tens of thousands of people over the years, as the drugs have been cycled down and down and down in dose, (often to no improvement in health, that is they still kill the patient)? Mr. Steinberg, will you try, for your next article, to contact Jonathan Fishbein, who lost his job and career for blowing the whistle on the NIH fraud in Uganda? Will you talk to the family of Joyce Ann Hafford, who was killed by Nevirapine, or by anyone whose friend or relative died on any AIDS drug?You paint a one-sided picture, and it reeks of pay-for-play. You have no previous articles in New Scientist, and one is left to wonder what your motives are?The political attack arm of the AIDS industry infiltrates media and creates smear campaigns in order to deflect from the hundreds and thousands of tragedies, errors and crimes perpetrated by the AIDS pharma industry, in selling its wares to the public.

Journalism is supposed to serve the public good by putting a light on the dishonesty of institutions. You have uncovered, badly, what was already in public view - a woman with some health issues and many enemies has died. There are sufficient political reasons to think that she was killed, but that question is never raised.

She was hounded by the AIDS pharmaceutical industry, and many prayed loudly and openly for her demise and downfall, and death, for over a decade.What effect will that have on a human body?

I do not have the details necessary to answer the questions of Christine Maggiore’s fitness or lack of fitness as a parent. I would say she was perhaps too zealous or highly naive in taking such a political stand against such a juggernaut.

On the other hand, please see the cases of the tens of thousands who died on high dose AIDS drugs in the 80s and 90s. Please review the Uganda trial. Please review the case of Joyce Ann Hafford, among others, and put some perspective in your histrionic and political article.

Dangerous words indeed.

In this case, NS found it easier to kill Scheff’s comment than admit their magazine posts unproven and unscientific hypotheses and theories.

If HIV/AIDS was a scientific disease, the proof would speak for itself. But as a political disease, US Government agencies like NIAID refer inquiries to AIDSTruth in the land of Apartheid, where the mountains of Africa’s dead miners continue to grow. So much is at stake that hedge fund managers like Soros now pay the offspring of Apartheid to beat the dead woman with her dead child.

The role of the Ford and Tides foundations and Soros Hedge Fund also explains why pro-Soros websites like Huffington, Daily Kos, TruthOut and MoveOn entirely ignore this 30-year controversy and their complicity in the mine-related genocide of Africa’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

Democratic aides said leaders had been building up to this decision as they monitored negotiations between Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) over the weekend.

At press time, Waxman and Peterson emerged from a meeting with the Blue Dog Coalition and announced that they reached an agreement. “We have something that I think works for agriculture,” Peterson said.

The crux of the deal is a concession from Waxman to allow the Department of Agriculture, not the Environmental Protection Agency, to develop and monitor offset and land use provisions the legislation creates. Waxman said he would not only retain the votes of the environmentalists, but also gain votes from those who represent the agriculture community.

By giving the Agriculture Department the authority to “develop and monitor offset and land use provisions the legislation creates”, the Democrats are admitting that their primary goal isn’t cleaning up the environment, that it’s really about increasing taxes on people that they don’t agree with.

I’ve said from the outset that the National Energy Tax wasn’t about the environment, something that Bob Weisman verified with this quote:

Despite disagreeing with him “100 percent, politically,” Weisman said he agreed with Horner that the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade program likely won’t do anything to effect climate change. “Like the Kyoto treaty, it won’t bring down global warming,” Weisman said. “You’d need something more like a 40 percent cut in emissions (to do that).”

This won’t play well for Democrats politically. For instance, how do you think Michigan or Ohio voters will respond to rising home heating bills while they’re unemployed and while their states are running deficits that limit how much help they’ll be able to provide for people?

Andy’s right in saying that the media will never be able to accurately call Collin Peterson a moderate again. He struck a deal essentially to stay out of Nancy’s doghouse. Collin Peterson has tried portraying himself as a reasonable moderate. There’s proof in his voting record that he’s nothing more than Pelosi’s lapdog.

Earlier this year, Peterson opposed Pelosi on the stimulus bill, something that said he opposed wasteful spending. Now we’ve got proof that he’s opposed to wasteful spending but that he doesn’t have a problem voting for massive tax increases. If that’s the definition of a moderate Democrat, then I’d rather side with rabid right wing ideologues. At least I’d know that I wouldn’t get killed with tax increases.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Economy, National Energy Tax, Taxes, Tax Increases, Collin Peterson, Speaker Pelosi, Environment

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Our nation has lost nearly three million jobs this year, yet the President did not lay out a clear path for how his Administration will keep its promise to create jobs for middle-class families and small businesses. House Republicans have offered better solutions to create jobs, control spending, and curb the debt. Unfortunately, Democrats have taken a go-it-alone approach, choosing old-style Washington politics over the new way Americans expected after the last election.

Today the President again claimed that the Democrats’ government takeover of health care would not force Americans off of their current plans, yet independent analysts have reported that at least 23 million Americans would lose their coverage under the bill drafted by Senate Democrats. House Republicans have introduced a better alternative to make health care more affordable and accessible, ensure that Americans can keep their health plan, and keep doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats, in charge of critical and personal medical decisions.

It is unfortunate, at a time when millions of Americans are struggling in today’s economy, that the President would continue to support a national energy tax that will ship millions of American jobs overseas and force Americans to pay energy costs that he has acknowledged will ‘skyrocket.’ The House GOP’s ‘all of the above’ energy plan will create more jobs, lower energy costs, and clean up our air and water.

The President continues to underscore the need for all stakeholders to have a seat at the table as we craft key reforms in Washington. I hope Democrats in Congress hear that message and work with Republicans to expand affordable health care, forge a cleaner and more reliable energy future, and create more jobs for middle-class families and small businesses.

Ed Morrissey has a devastating live blog account of President Obama’s presser. Here’s one of Ed’s best zingers:

13:02 - Tapper notes Obama’s “Spock-like” answer on the public plan, and challenges him on employer retreat on private plans. Instead of answering, Obama first asks Tapper if he’s making fun of his ears with the Spock reference. Obama says that a public plan that “feeds at the public trough” would do that, but that a public plan can deliver better administrative performance. Er, then please explain Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA.

Here’s Ed’s best zinger:

13:13 - Do we need a second stimulus package? “Not yet…we need to see how effective the first stimulus will be.” Obama also says that no one predicted how bad the economy would tank, but in fact, many people did, and said that big-government programs wouldn’t help in any case.

BINGO on all counts. There wasn’t a shortage of people who predicted that the stimulus bill wouldn’t provide a jolt to the economy. At one point, I ridiculed it by saying that it was more honest to call it PAPA, aka the Political Allies Payoff Act.

Economists weren’t the only people predicting ARRA’s failure, though it’s fair to say that none of the people predicting ARRA’s failure were Obama apologists.

The Obama administration can’t afford another stimulus bill from a PR standpoint. Passing another stimulus bill would be an admission that their policies have completely failed. It’s the political equivalent of throwing one’s hands up in the air and yelling. People would notice that admission. They wouldn’t think Hopenchange at that point. They’d be thinking panic and anger; panic over what direction the country is heading in and anger for having been duped by a smooth-talking lightweight.

Technorati Tags: Economy, Stimulus Package, Health Care, Reform, Medicare, Medicaid, President Obama, Press Conference, Democrats, John Boehner, Positive Agenda, Republicans

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson warned those at the event of the costs of some proposed health care reform bills. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that one bill drafted by Sen. Max Baucus of Montana would cost more than $1.5 trillion to implement.

“They talk about a $1 trillion price tag, and then they try to…tell you they’re not going to raise taxes but will save $1 trillion by increased efficiencies,” Hutchinson said. “Do you all believe that can happen with a government-run program? I don’t think that can happen.”

The Obama administration has already buried us in tons of debt thanks to his budget, the omnibus spending bill and with his stimulus bill. Now he wants to dump several more tons of debt on us for health care reform that will deliver an inferior product to the American people?

Only in Washington, DC could something be called reform when it delivers an inferior product at a higher price. That’s what’s happening here. This isn’t speculation, either. That’s what Rep. Charles Boustany told me about his dealings with the Medicare and Medicaid bureaucracies when he was a heart surgeon.

Another thing that’s guaranteed with any health care bill that Ted Kennedfy or Nancy Pelosi writes: tons of costly mandates. When I interviewed Rep. Paul Ryan, I asked him about the negative impact that government mandates have. Here’s what he said on that:

Shouldn’t people, working in concert with their physician, have the option of putting together a customized health insurance policy?

Yes – that’s a great idea and just the type of innovative thinking we don’t want the federal government to squash. Patients have different needs, and that’s exactly why health insurance shouldn’t be run by the federal government. The government does not know what is best for patients. Patients and doctors should be able to make decisions together about the types of health plans that best suit their individual needs. That concept is exactly what motivated the Patients’ Choice Act. We don’t want the federal government taking over these decisions – and we want to show people that there is another way that allows the individual to maintain control over these personal decisions.

That’s a no-brainer. We can either let a bureaucrat decide what’s the best health insurance policy for us or we let the health care consumer and their physician decide what’s best. In every type of product, custom made is superior to one-size-fits-all.

Why should we settle for Ted Kennedy’s one-size-fits-all plan when we have Paul Ryan’s custom built plan available?

Technorati Tags: Reforms, Health Care, Ted Kennedy, Speaker Pelosi, President Obama, Mandates, One Size Fits All, Democrats, Patients’ Choice Act, Paul Ryan, Charles Boustany, Republicans

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 33% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -1. Today is the second straight day the President’s rating has been below zero.

Most voters still place the blame for our nation’s economic woes on the Bush Administration, but a growing number say it’s Obama’s economy now. The number blaming Bush has fallen to 54%. That’s down eight points from a month ago.

People are starting to express their worries about President Obama’s policies, especially his spending, the Democrats’ health care ‘reform’ proposals and his takeovers of GM and Chrysler. Young people are getting worried about the mountain of debt that President Obama is piling onto their backs.

Normally, deficits aren’t an animating issue. They are this time because they’re so imposing this time. Last year’s $450,000,000,000 deficit seems tiny in comparison to this year’s $1,800,000,000,000 deficit. Think of Obama’s deficit as deficit squared on steroids. They’re beyond imagination. There’s also no relief in sight.

There’s more to Rasmussen’s polling than just that, though. There’s been a huge swing on who’s to blame, too:

While most U.S. voters still blame the Bush Administration for the nation’s economic problems, a growing number are inclined to blame President Barack Obama.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of voters now say the country’s economic problems are caused more by the policies Obama has put in place. That’s a 12-point jump from a month ago.

Ed has some great analysis of the crosstabs data here:

Nor does it look good for the future of Obama’s economic policy. This question had less to do with the current crisis and more to do with Obama’s policies for reversing it. A large majority believes they know better than Obama about economic issues, 60%-30%.

People understand that the economy started going downhill under President Bush. That’s becoming irrelevant because they hired Obama to fix what President Bush broke. People are becoming increasingly certain that President Obama’s solutions have failed. The longer unemployment stays high, the more disenchantment will set in.

That’s the biggest reason why President Obama is speeding up spending of the stimulus money. Still, people are frequently asking whether the price that’s being paid is worth the outcomes. They’re doing a cost/benefit analysis and they don’t like what they’re seeing.

That can still change before 2012 but it isn’t helping Democrats for 2010.

Technorati Tags: Polling, President Obama, Economy, Bailouts, Spending, Deficits, Unemployment, Democrats, Election 2010

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

In testimony to a committee of state lawmakers June 11, state Budget Director Pari Sabety said unemployment in Ohio could peak at 11.5 percent late next year or early 2011. In a worst-case recession, the jobless rate could hit a record 15.4 percent in 2011, Sabety said, basing her testimony on national forecasts by Moody’s Investors Service.

But George Vredeveld, professor of economics at the University of Cincinnati, said there are thousands if not millions of variables that could push the monthly rate up or down, “I don’t know how people can go out like this and make forecasts,” he said Friday, noting that the impact of federal stimulus money coming to Ohio can’t even be factored in yet. Ohio unemployment hit an all-time high of 13.8 percent in December 1982 and January 1983. Comparable monthly statistics are only available back to 1970.

When Strickland took office in January 2007, the unemployment rate was 5.3 percent. The Democrat is up for re-election next year. “Ohio has lost nearly 300,000 jobs on Ted Strickland’s watch,” said Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine of Fairborn. “He promised to turn around Ohio’s economy if we elected him governor, and he failed.”

How can Gov. Strickland feel good when Ohio has lost 300,000 jobs and unemployment rates are at near-record levels? What’s worse is that he’s signed a cap and trade bill that he admits will cause Ohio’s energy costs to rise:

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland Thursday signed into law the state’s new energy bill, which while everyone says it will lead to higher energy prices in the near term will also pave the way for what a panel of economists, energy experts and advanced-energy employers said could lead to massive job growth if action to turn the tide on global warming is addressed now through a marketplace system for reducing carbon emissions known as cap and trade.

None of this is good news for Gov. Strickland. According to Taegan Goddard’s post, Strickland’s JA Rating has dropped to 43 percent:

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Ohio finds Gov. Ted Strickland’s (D) approval rating is down to 43% and he leads John Kasich (R) by just two points, 44% to 42%, in a likely 2010 contest.

“Strickland has seen a decline in popularity among both Democrats and Republicans. Where previously 70% of voters within his party gave him good marks, now just 62% do. And the percentage of Republicans disapproving of him has increased from 59% to 72%. His numbers with independents are relatively steady.”

John Kasich has worked hard in putting a great organization together. Kasich is also a charismatic, appealing candidate on the stump. In the past, I’ve called him the Tim Russert of the Republican Party. I’ve even advocated for him to be McCain’s running mate.

Most importantly, Kasich’s credentials as a common sense fiscal hawk are impeccable. Bizzyblog has it laid it out in this post:

This sentence in the played-straight AP report should be emblazoned on the forehead of every voting-age Ohioan:

Kasich, a 9-term Congressman from Ohio, was the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Budget Committee in 1997 that balanced the nation’s budget for the first time in more than 30 years.

No one else in America can make that statement.

Kasich and his committee (with his senatorial colleagues) balanced the budget. Bill Clinton did NOTHING on the spending side to balance the budget except sign the related bills. What Clinton deserves some credit for is getting on board with the supply-side capital gains tax cut in 1997 that created a gusher on the revenue side, a cut passed by the GOP Congress over strenuous objections from some Democrats.

A bunch of new voters have grown up since John Kasich last ran for office in 1998. I suspect that his appeal with young voters will be considerable, especially once they hear about fiscally conservative credentials. Generally speaking, if there’s one thing that’s got young voters worried, it’s Washington’s out of control spending. If there’s anything that Ohioans should be worried about, it’s Gov. Strickland’s record since getting elected in the 2006 landslide. With rising energy prices as a direct result of Gov. Strickland’s cap and trade bill and with unemployment approaching Ohio’s record levels, Ohio natives don’t have alot to feel good about.

These are exactly the types of conditions that turn politicians into one-term wonders. Combine the conditions with a charismatic, appealing opponent and it isn’t difficult to envision a Kasich victory eighteen months from now.

Technorati Tags: Economy, John Kasich, Balanced Budgets, Fiscal Restraint, Job Creation, Economic Growth, Ohio, Republicans, Ted Strickland, Tax Increases, Unemployment, Cap And Trade, Democrats, Election 2010

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Because these individuals and organizations are tied directly or indirectly to this gay South African advocacy group, mounting evidence suggests that South Africa may be ground zero in AIDS mythology.

Why South Africa?

Several months ago, I described how companies like Shell and DeBeers could benefit from the promotion of AIDS and, years earlier, investigative journalist Janine Roberts reported how the diamond mining company DeBeers uses AIDS to avoid asbestosis and silicosis liability.

In this report (2009) RMIT Professor Jock McCulloch exposes a motive for the land of Apartheid to promote the mythology of AIDS in Africa:

Mbini worked at the President Steyn mine in Welkom from 1958 to September 1997. Prior to his retirement due to silicosis he was earning (~$109) a month as a stope team leader. Mbini has silicosis and tuberculosis and he is claiming damages of (~$110,000). That consists of the loss of past and future earnings of (~$49,000). Mbini’s claim of (~$18,500) for pain, suffering and loss of amenities of life is very low compared with claims made routinely before United Kingdom, US and Australian courts. His condition is almost certain to worsen and he will need annual X-rays, lung function tests, and medication for chronic pain. Bacterial infections will require periodic hospitalization. For that reason he is claiming (~$42,000) for future hospital and medical expenses. Silicosis is a vile disease for which there is no effective treatment. It is bad enough for those who have access to modern medical care; in South Africa the burden of disease among gold miners and their families is much heavier.

Mbini’s case is being led by the British lawyer Richard Meeran. It falls into three parts: the duty of the defendant to the plaintiff, the breach of that duty, and the level of compensation to be paid. Mbini claims that Anglo American knew or should have known that silica dust causes silicosis and tuberculosis. It knew that the risk could be reduced by preventing the release of dust during mining or by providing miners with respirators. It should have provided clean overalls, and adequate washing and laundry facilities. Finally, Anglo American should have removed all dust from the hostels in which Mbini lived, and funded testing for lung impairment.

McCulloch also cites the Leon Commission, which reported that between 1900 and 1995, “69,000 mineworkers had died… and more than a million were seriously injured,” mostly suffering from lung diseases like asbestosis, silicosis and tuberculosis. As a result of liability claims, 250,000 jobs were lost and the JCI mining company went bankrupt.

However, by paying company physicians to blame their politically-defenseless (and mostly illiterate) black laborers for “irresponsible sex” (HIV/AIDS), these 1600+ mining companies (and their shareholders) can save billions in liability by simply diagnosing HIV infection and distributing poisons like Retrovir and addictive hypnotics like Efavirenz as “life-saving medications.” In this way, these mining companies kill off their sick laborers before the Hottentots can sue.

Based upon the demands of Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) founder Zackie Achmat, mining companies like AVGold, AngloGold, Gold Field, AngloAmerican and RandGold now boast aggressive HIV/AIDS testing and treatment. Some now project the elimination of silicosis by 2013.

The group pushing the AIDS mythology hardest is TAC, which is funded by the Treatment Action Group (TAG) – which is not only funded by a who’s who of pharmaceutical, mining, gay rights, entertainers and politicians, but is also the lead defendant in Celia Farber’s libel lawsuit.

The Ford Foundation also funds TAC, as well as the University of Cape Town units that control, operate and manage the attack dogs at AIDSTruth. The gay activists at the Tides Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) are also key players.

Because Ford, Tides, and OSI funding is a well-guarded secret, it’s hard to tell exactly how their donors influence those funds. But based upon the dots collected so far, it’s hard to ignore how or why 1,600 mining companies, their UN member countries and their funding of the World Health Organization (WHO) would push the AIDS mythology as hard as they do in the highest levels of government. Because slavery is considered bad political form, AIDS gives the world the next best thing – in the name of compassion. It’s brilliant!

By the way, £50,000 is still available to anyone who proves HIV exists and causes AIDS. After so many years, one would have thought that pot would’ve been collected my now. ]]> http://www.californiaconservative.org/activism/aids-in-africa-connecting-the-dots/feed/ http://www.californiaconservative.org/technology/technology-thirst-for-liberty-powerful-forces-against-mulllahs/ http://www.californiaconservative.org/technology/technology-thirst-for-liberty-powerful-forces-against-mulllahs/#comments Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:32:44 +0000 Gary Gross http://www.californiaconservative.org/?p=7099 Iran’s mullahs, like President Ahmadinejad, once seemed too powerful to topple. Since the mullahs tried stealing the election for President Ahmadinejad, though, young people equipped with cell phones and Twitter accounts have brought the Iranian power structure to the brink of collapse.

While the outcome still hangs in the balance, there’s no doubt but that the ‘peasants’ have the mullahs worrying. This article in the SF Chronicle raises a couple salient points:

This isn’t the first uprising to tap the Internet, but it’s the latest to test limits on controls and deploy new ideas to evade the government muzzle. Iran maybe the perfect place to beta-test attempts to fight a censorship lockdown. It has a lively blogger culture in a nation where two-thirds of the 70 million population are under 30 years of age. Some 45 million have cell phones and 23 million have Net access. Talk about ideal demographics.

This information is the mullahs’ worst nightmare and the biggest weapon in the revolutionaries’ arsenal. Because secular Iran is mostly comprised with people raised entirely in the internet age, this generation is perfectly equipped to outflanked the mullahs.

Here’s more important information:

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are the new soapboxes and organizing centers. One sign of the times: a message from the U.S. State Department to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters to delay a maintenance shutdown to a late-night hour in Tehran so anti-government tweeting wasn’t halted.

“These sites didn’t create a revolution,” said Leslie Harris, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. “But they provide essential tools for civil rights and democracy.”

Once Iran’s leaders launched a crackdown on protests, a new game emerged. Twitter, with relatively few users inside Iran, became an international town square. Its avatars, the small, identifying pictures used on its pages, turned green to match the campaign color used by challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi.

The use of this technology has brought the revolution to the world. I have to believe that it’s also giving Iranian patriots the understanding that they aren’t alone, that the world is standing with them.

That isn’t insignificant. All the proof we need is Natan Scharansky’s book telling the world that Ronald Reagan’s words spoke to the dissidents languishing in Soviet gulags gave the dissidents the will to keep fighting for freedom. Scharansky said that there were times when the dissidents felt so encouraged that they felt like the liberated and the guards were the prisoners.

Likewise, Facebook became a rallying point. The Palo Alto-based operation was safely outside the reach of government gumshoes. YouTube and Flickr are stocked with photos and videos that the mullahs would just as soon you don’t see. These new uses showed that censorship and Internet controls had the main effect of producing ingenious ways of evading the crackdown.

This is a watershed moment in world history. From this moment forward, people with the will to stage revolutions will have the tools they need to rally the world to their cause.

It’s also worth noting that there were reports that some of the forces sent in to break up the protests were turning a blind eye to the protests. This was the big question as recently as Friday. If more troops abandon the mullahs, chances that the revolution will be successful increase. While it’s still a longshot, the revolutionaries’ odds keep getting better.

Mousavi’s declaration that he was willing to be a martyr for the cause has emboldened the Iranian revolutionaries, too. The young people are getting energized thanks in part to Twitter and Facebook but also by Mousavi’s taking a stand.

People shouldn’t underestimate what a lifechanger it is to have a shot at being liberated from oppression. For all his faults, President Bush got that part exactly right.

This article illustrates the important role that software technicians are playing in the revolution:

Rafal Rohozinski, CEO of Psiphon Inc., the man who recently led the team that busted an international cyber espionage network known as Ghostnet, and his team have been flooding Iran with secure network connections to servers located in other countries.

The Iranian government strictly monitors and filters Internet connections within Iran, blocking websites such as YouTube and Twitter as well as foreign sources of news.

Psiphon’s unfiltered connections are allowing Iranian citizens to get news from outside sources such as the BBC and to connect to online social media services, including Twitter and Facebook, which are being used to arrange demonstrations against the Iranian government.

“We have gone on the offensive,” said Rohozinski. “Ensuring that Iranians have access to the information they need and deserve so that they can make informed decisions for themselves during this time of crisis.”

During the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, I left a comment on a blog called the Postmodern Slog. I said then that that revolution “will be blogged.” (SIDENOTE: That’s how I learned about a blogger on the SCSU campus named King Banaian.) It’s appropriate to say that this revolution will be tweeted.

Let’s hope that this revolution succeeds in ways that that revolution didn’t. Most importantly, let’s lend our support for the Iranian patriots flooding the streets and confusing the mullahs.

Technorati Tags: Revolution, Twitter, Facebook, Rafal Rohozinski, YouTube, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Liberty, Mullahs, Ahmadinejad, Oppression

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

The bill also calls for the creation of a national, government-run insurance exchange, in which individuals would receive government subsidies to purchase either the government plan or chose among government-designed private plans.

The common theme in my interviews with Rep. Charles Boustany and Rep. Paul Ryan was their advocating giving people the option to design their own custom health care policies. That’s why the House Republicans’ plan is titled the Patients’ Choice Act.

This is the biggest philosophical difference between conservatives and progressives. Generally speaking, conservatives want to give people the freedom to choose what works best for them. Generally speaking, progressives think that they have to design policies because people aren’t capable of thinking things through and finding the best solutions.

TRANSLATION: Conservatives trust people and put a high priority on sustaining a high level of personal liberty. On the other hand, progressives trust only wonks, which naturally means that they try controlling everything as much as possible.

QUESTION: What makes progressives think that they know what’s best for me in terms of health care policies?

One of the central themes to Rep. Boustany’s thinking was that the doctor-patient relationship was important in the patient getting the highest quality health care possible. Rep. Boustany said that anytime a DC bureaucrat gets in between a doctor and his patient, there’s cause for concern. He’s absolutely right. That’s precisely when the patient should start worrying.

Klein does a great job in highlighting this part of the House Democrats’ legislation:

One key fact worth highlighting: “Over time, the Exchange will be opened to all employers as another choice for covering their employees.”

As Klein notes, “this directly contradicts President Obama’s pledge that everybody who is happy with the health care they receive can keep it.” This isn’t surprising, especially in light of the video that Verum Serum put together. That video, combined with CBO’s scoring of the Kennedy-Dodd bill, have put the Democrats on the defensive on this issue.

That’s why it’s vitally important that we keep increasing the pressure by exposing the parts of the Democrats’ bills that people disagree with. That’s why it’s vitally important that we keep increasing the pressure by highlighting the popular provisions in the Patients’ Choice Act. Here’s how Rep. Ryan chose to sell PCA:

“Both parties need to step up to the plate with specific solutions to our nation’s health care crisis,” added Ryan. “The Patients’ Choice Act represents a clear alternative to those who seek to empower Washington at the expense of the individual, and I am hopeful that our efforts can help push Congress to enact a more sensible health care reform bill this year. The Patients’ Choice Act proves that America can have universal health care coverage without the government running our health care system.”

I’ll just refer you to my interviews with Rep. Paul Ryan and Rep. Charles Boustany on why they think it’s important to get government out of the way. First, here’s an exchange I had with Rep. Ryan:

Shouldn’t people, working in concert with their physician, have the option of putting together a customized health insurance policy?

Yes, that’s a great idea and just the type of innovative thinking we don’t want the federal government to squash. Patients have different needs, and that’s exactly why health insurance shouldn’t be run by the federal government. The government does not know what is best for patients. Patients and doctors should be able to make decisions together about the types of health plans that best suit their individual needs. That concept is exactly what motivated the Patients’ Choice Act. We don’t want the federal government taking over these decisions, and we want to show people that there is another way that allows the individual to maintain control over these personal decisions.

Here’s what Rep. Boustany said about giving people multiple (private sector) choices:

The next subject we talked about was whether government was capable of efficiently administering the changing world of health care. Rep. Boustany said that, based on his personal experiences dealing with government regulators, that the answer to that question was a definite no. Rep. Boustany said that the government is incapable of the type of flexibility that’s needed.

Rep. Boustany also said that the doctor-patient relationship shouldn’t be discounted in these considerations. He said that doctors, working in concert with their patients, make the type of quality decisions that bureaucrats can’t possibly make.

Another topic that we discussed was regulations/mandate-oriented health care vs. cafeteria-style health care. Rep. Boustany said that giving patients the widest variety of choices is the centerpiece of the Patients’ Choice Act. He said that minimizing the number of mandates will drive down both health costs and health insurance premiums while giving the patients a high quality insurance policy.

Anything that government gets its hands on, it strangles with mandates.

In the end, the Democrats’ public option plans will be defeated because people prefer having lots of private sector choices more than they prefer having bureaucrats and politicians putting health insurance policies together.

Technorati Tags: Reform, Health Care, Patients’ Choice Act, Paul Ryan, Charles Boustany, Republicans, Ted Kennedy, Jan Schakowsky, Jacob Hacker, Bureaucrats, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

WASHINGTON — After a fairly smooth opening, President Barack Obama faces new concerns among the American public about the budget deficit and government intervention in the economy as he works to enact ambitious health and energy legislation, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. These rising doubts threaten to overshadow the president’s personal popularity and his agenda, in what may be a new phase of the Obama presidency.

“The public is really moving from evaluating him as a charismatic and charming leader to his specific handling of the challenges facing the country,” says Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster who conducts the survey with Republican Bill McInturff. Going forward, he says, Mr. Obama and his allies “are going to have to navigate in pretty choppy waters.”

Ed’s citing of Michael Barone’s article tells the same story:

• 69% say they have a great deal or quite a bit of concern about government ownership of General Motors and a 56%-35% majority opposes government aid to General Motors in return for a share of its stock.
• 58% say the president and Congress should concentrate on keeping the budget deficit down, even if it takes longer for the economy to recover.
• By a 52%-41% margin they prefer reducing the budget deficit to stimulating the economy.
• Only 30% think Obama has developed a clear plan for dealing with the budget deficit, while 60% believe he hasn’t.

The trend is so noticeable that even Dan Balz is noticing:

Polls show concern about the size of government and the mushrooming deficits under Obama’s policies. For some time, the polls also have shown public skepticism about the president’s efforts to use federal money to save General Motors. Obama’s effort to include a public health insurance plan as part of the overall health care reform package has become a flash point in that debate.

Those findings represent flashing yellow lights for the administration, which is why the president has moved, symbolically and rhetorically at least, to counter any suggestions that he is a big-government Democrat. His rhetoric has consistently emphasized his commitment to restoring fiscal discipline as quickly as possible. But his efforts have been minimal in comparison to what he’s done to grow government, and there is little he can do in the short run.

President Obama can talk until he’s blue in the face about restoring fiscal discipline but people won’t buy his happy talk until he does something to actually restore fiscal sanity. Nothing that President Obama has done indicates that he’s even willing to consider anything that doesn’t consist of dramatically bigger government.

In fact, there’s a good possibility that President Obama is hurting himself by constantly talking about PAYGo, fiscal responsibility, etc., then doing nothing. People will eventually conclude that he isn’t serious about fixing the overspending problem that he’s responsible for. In short, he’s being seen more and more as a hypocrite whose policies are putting future generations at risk.

Prior to his inauguration, I said that President Obama’s biggest problem would be that he’d now be measured by the success of his solutions, not his speechmaking ability. That truth is slowly catching up with him. People like him on a personal level but they aren’t reluctant to tell pollsters that they disagree with his policies.

The Obama administration’s economic team has been a laughingstock thus far, starting with Tim Geithner’s disastrous briefing of Wall Street executives on the specifics of TARP. (As I recall, the market dropped almost 450 points that day, almost solely on Wall Street’s disgust with Geithner’s unprofessionalism. Instead of giving them a detailed briefing on TARP II, Geithner gave them a brief outline sketch of TARP going forward.)

The stimulus bill is another thing that’s giving the Obama administration headaches. President Obama invested alot of political capital on the bill, telling the nation that we were headed for a catastrophe if it didn’t pass. It’s passed and the Obama administration’s worst case unemployment scenarios have come true and then some.

This administration’s job creation projections are ignored or laughed at because they’ve been so badly wrong.

That’s before talking about foreign policy and national security. This week, President Obama said that the United States shouldn’t meddle in Iran’s affairs even though there’s a revolutionary uprising against the reigning mullahs’ oppressive tactics.

At the same time, President Obama hasn’t hesitated in jawboning Israel for defending itself against Hamas’s rocket attacks into Israel.

Polling shows President Obama losing ground on the foundations of his policies:

First, the people have little confidence in government as an effective instrument of public purpose. Trust in government remains near an historic low and has not improved significantly since the beginning of Obama’s presidency. Only 34 percent think that government should do more to solve national problems, down seven points in the past three months. Sixty-nine percent express “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of concern about the expanding role of the federal government in areas such as automobile companies, corporate compensation, and health care.

Second, people are unsure about Obama’s overall economic strategy. Only 46 percent say that they are “extremely” or “quite” confident that the president has the right set of goals and policies to improve the economy; 53 percent are not. According to Pew, approval of the president’s handling of the economy has declined by eight points (from 60 to 52 percent) since mid-April.

Third, evidence is accumulating that the administration misjudged the public’s reaction to increased spending and rising budget deficits, which now rank second in the list of top concerns in the NYT/CBS poll, behind only job creation and economic growth, and ahead of health care costs as an economic issue. Indeed, Pew finds that concern over spending and deficits is now the most frequently cited reservation about the administration’s economic policies. Only 30 percent think the administration has developed a clear plan for dealing with the deficit; 60 percent do not.

Fourth, while there is majority support for the broad architecture of health reform that the administration espouses, doubts about specifics are multiplying. The people are evenly divided on whether the president’s plan should focus more on costs (41 percent) or on coverage (43 percent). But only 18 percent think that his plan in fact gives priority to controlling costs, versus 64 percent who believe it is mostly about expanding coverage. And while majorities favor imposing “play or pay” requirements on businesses and raising taxes on Americans with incomes over $250,000 to pay for health reform, only 33 percent favor taxing people with “expensive health plans,” and 70 percent say that a broader tax on employer-provided health plan is “not acceptable.” The Pew survey also suggests that, relative to 1993, there is less support for radical change in the system, more support for cost containment as the top priority, and a decline in support for universal health insurance among both Republicans and independents. In light of these doubts, it is not surprising to discover that while 44 percent approve of the president’s handling of health care, 34 disapprove, while 22 percent remain unsure.

While President Obama’s speeches are often pitch perfect, his policies frequently are greeted with skepticism and outright disdain. That’s because there’s little proof that President Obama has thought his policies through.

It won’t be long before Republican advertisements start asking the question whether people are better off now than when the Obama administration started. Once that question starts getting discussed, the Obama administration, and congressional Democrats, will have a new set of headaches.

That’s what happens when people vote the wrong way based solely on ideology rather than on what’s best for the American people.

Technorati Tags: Polling, President Obama, Personal Poularity, Policies, Economy, Recession, Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Health Care, Spending, Deficits, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Before he became Rep. Boustany, he was Dr. Boustany. Rep. Boustany was a practicing physician for over 20 years, with the last 14 years specializing in heart surgery.

The first thing that I asked Rep. Boustany about was what he was hearing in terms of the pace at which health care hearings would be proceeding. He said that he’d heard that Sen. Baucus had delayed his initial hearing until next week, mostly because they were balking at the high price tag, which was estimated at $1,300,000,000,000.

The word is that they won’t get far with this bill until it’s trimmed below $1,000,000,000,000.

Rep. Boustany said that he’s hearing that the House Ways and Means Committee is having difficulties getting their act together. He said that they’re having trouble figuring out which taxes to increase to pay for the high pricetag for the public option.

Another question I asked was whether there was increased public pressure being put on Blue Dog and swing district Democrats by John Q. Public. Rep. Boustany said that that’s definitely happening. He reported, too, that there’s alot of grumbling behind the scenes because they aren’t willing to openly criticize House leadership.

The next subject we talked about was whether government was capable of efficiently administering the changing world of health care. Rep. Boustany said that, based on his personal experiences dealing with government regulators, that the answer to that question was a definite no. Rep. Boustany said that the government is incapable of the type of flexibility that’s needed.

Rep. Boustany also said that the doctor-patient relationship shouldn’t be discounted in these considerations. He said that doctors, working in concert with their patients, make the type of quality decisions that bureaucrats can’t possibly make.

Another topic that we discussed was regulations/mandate-oriented health care vs. cafeteria-style health care. Rep. Boustany said that giving patients the widest variety of choices is the centerpiece of the Patients’ Choice Act. He said that minimizing the number of mandates will drive down both health costs and health insurance premiums while giving the patients a high quality insurance policy.

He pointed out, too, that that’s the best way to spur competition. Rep. Boustany said that putting a high priority on innovation, both in terms of health care and with health insurance, is a great motivator to not get complacent.

Rep. Boustany said one thing that government can do is put together a user-friendly website that tells health care consumers what policies are available from which companies. This website, we agreed, would have to be the ultimate in user friendly features and that it would have to include which hospitals and clinics do the best work for the various specialties.

Rep. Boustany said that this is likely to work because “Americans love to shop”. With more people getting dissatisfied with their current health care situation each day, the greater the likelihood that these people would find such a website helpful.

Another topic that I brought up in our conversation was that the public option is nothing more than government-imposed price controls. Rep. Boustany agreed, then said that, based on his experience with Medicare and Medicaid, that this option would cause some hospitals and clinics to shut down because they can’t survive on the Medicare/Medicaid payments.

If that became the rule rather than the exception, it would hurt quality dramatically. I suggested that people whose children have been diagnosed with cancer or whose parents just got diagnosed with Alzheimers want robust innovation.

That observation drew a swift and passionate response from Rep. Boustany. He said those are the types of health care consumers who want robust research programs because in some instances, it’s literally the difference between life and death. He said that’s especially true of heart patients.

Rep. Boustany said that having a public option included in any legislation aimed at reforming health care is likely to be counterproductive to the goal of improving America’s health. I wholeheartedly agree and, based on the reports coming out of DC, so do alot of other people across the United States.

The next sign that this thing is collapsing under its own weight will be when Democrats start speaking out against a public option.
This is just speculation but I’m betting that’ll happen well before the August Recess.

Finally, I’d like to thank Rep. Boustany for taking the time out of his busy voting schedule for this interview and for his Rick Curtsinger, his press secretary for getting the interview scheduled.

Technorati Tags: Reforms, Health Care, Patients’ Choice Act, Charles Boustany, Paul Ryan, Innovation, Research, Republicans, Ted Kennedy, Max Baucus, Speaker Pelosi, Price Controls, Medicare, Medicaid, Rationing, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Use global warming only as a supporting story, not as the primary frame.
Awareness about global warming is broad, and some in the public are seriously concerned about it. But almost no one in our groups expressed such concern; for most voters, global warming is not significant enough on its own to drive support for major energy reform. So while it can be a part of the story that reform advocates are telling, global warming should be used only in addition to the broader economic frame, not in place of it.

For Democrats, their argument that we need a national energy tax lost its power because people aren’t buying into their ’save the planet’ theme. This is significant because that was the reason for the Democrats’ legislation. Selling this legislation as a job creation package is an uphill climb at best.

I suspect that because this Democratic administation job creation projections aren’t trustworthy. The Democrats said that they had to rush the stimulus package through before anyone read it so that we averted an economic catastrophe. President Obama said that passing ARRA would keep unemployent below 8 percent. It’s currently at 9.4 percent.

That’s before talking about the jobs saved or created nonsense. That notion has been discredited, first in the blogosphere, then on FNC, and now to the point that it’s being talked about in the Washington Post and on network TV.

Against that backdrop, the public will, at minimum, be wary of job creation numbers. I suspect that John Q. Public is suspicious of the Democrats’ employment projections.

Here’s another talking point:

Own and define “all of the above.”
Voters support the idea of doing everything possible to reform our energy, and they have shifted in their impressions of the two parties. Where Republicans once were the party of “all of the above” during the oil crisis, now voters are more likely to
associate that approach with Democrats, who they see as the party leading the efforts for reform and new, clean sources. Since Democrats own this valuable brand, they should use it to define their clean energy policies.

It’s laughable to think of the Democrats owning or defining the notion of an all of the above energy policy. I’ll slice that notion to ribbons in a nanosecond. Last summer, all of the above meant increasing drilling on the OCS. It meant conservation. It meant nuclear power. It meant increasing refining capacity.

It meant providing solutions to our energy needs. Eliminating fossil fuels isn’t possible because wind- and solar power are nice supplements to major power plants. They aren’t, and never will be, a baseline power supply.

The national energy tax is what it is. It’s a tax increase masquerading as energy policy.

This talking point is almost as silly:

Describe opposition to reform as “more of the same.”
We want to get America running on clean energy, while they want to keep doing what we’re doing and stand still.

That’s another argument they can’t win, especially when we’re telling people about the America Energy Act, which actually addresses clean energy issues without raising taxes.

Bit by bit, the Democrats’ agenda is dying. Public option health care reform is essentially dead. The Democrats’ National Energy Tax was unpalatable from the start. Now it’s just a matter of polishing these bills off and sending them to their respective graveyards.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Global Warming, Clean Energy, Stan Greenberg, Spin, Focus Groups, All of the Above, Democrats, American Energy Act, Republicans

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Second, ABC News prides itself on covering all sides of important issues and asking direct questions of all newsmakers, of all political persuasions, even when others have taken a more partisan approach and even in the face of criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. ABC News is looking for the most thoughtful and diverse voices on this issue. ABC News alone will select those who will be in the audience asking questions of the president. Like any programs we broadcast, ABC News will have complete editorial control. To suggest otherwise is quite unfair to both our journalists and our audience.

Saying that they’ll run an hourlong infomercial for the president, then deny the RNC time to have their say, is bad enough. To say that they’ll ask hard-hitting questions of President Obama was worse. This report suggests that ABCNews isn’t being honest:

ABC is refusing to air paid ads during its White House health care presentation, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, including a paid-for alternative viewpoint!

The development comes a day after the network denied a request by the Republican National Committee to feature a representative of the party’s views during the Obama special.

Conservatives for Patients Rights requested the rates to buy a 60-second spot immediately preceding ‘Prescription for America’.

Statement from Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients Rights:

“It is unfortunate, and unusual, that ABC is refusing to accept paid advertising that would present an alternative viewpoint for the White House health care event. Health care is an issue that touches every American and all potential pieces of legislation have carried a pricetag in excess of $1 trillion of taxpayers’ money. The American people deserve a healthy, robust debate on this issue and ABC’s decision, as of now, to exclude even paid advertisements that present an alternative view does a disservice to the public. Our organization is more than willing to purchase ad time on ABC to present an alternative viewpoint and our hope is that ABC will reconsider having such viewpoints be part of this crucial debate for the American people. We were surprised to hear that paid advertisements would not be accepted when we inquired and we would certainly be open to purchasing time if ABC would reconsider.”

This is nonsense. Saying that you’ll discuss all sides of the issue, then saying that you’re denying people the ability to buy time to air an opposing point of view, stinks to the high heavens.

What’s important to remember, though, is that the Democrats’ attempted takeover of the health care industry will fail. No amount of adoring press will change that. While it isn’t likely that Ted Kennedy and other single-payer advocates won’t give up without a fight, it’s equally true that the public option is a ‘dead man walking’ item. At this point, that option is essentially dead. It just hasn’t collapsed yet.

Conservatives shouldn’t whine about this not being fair, though it’s fine to highlight the fact that ABCNews isn’t being honest. Instead, conservatives should remind people that the Obama/Kennedy/Dodd monstrosity carries with it a hefty pricetag, perhaps as much as $4,000,000,000,000 over the next decade:

Health Systems Innovations Network, a consulting group, went ahead and estimated the full cost of a bill that included the subsidies and Medicaid expansion, and reduced the number of uninsured by 99 percent. With these assumptions, they estimated the cost at a staggering $4 trillion over 10 years, resulting in the shift of 79 million Americans to government-run health care. The report does not include possible tax increases or spending offsets, but notes that, “this would be a challenging proposal to finance with budget neutrality.”

Let’s also understand that the White House’s ABC infomercial is likely a last, desperate attempt to get something done:

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee postponed the markup of its healthcare reform bill by one day, to Wednesday. On the eve of that markup, the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce publicly ripped the bill.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) initially planned to release his bill Wednesday, but he has pushed back his timetable because of cost estimate concerns. “Will we have something out tomorrow? Not sure,” Baucus said Tuesday. “Thursday or probably Friday,” he added.

Perhaps more importantly, the unity that Democrats touted earlier this year has cracked. As conservatives lambaste Democrats, liberal healthcare groups are not rushing to their defense because so many questions about the legislation have not been answered.

The split isn’t about ideology as much as it’s about survival. Generally speaking, congresscritters that occupy safe seats will vote their beliefs; congresscritters that were elected to swing districts will vote the way they think helps them get re-elected. There are exceptions but what I’ve written is the generally accepted rule.

What’s important in this fight is that ideas and specifics matter far more than the 2008 elections. The reality is that alot of Democrats are abandoning ship because they’re reading the writing on the wall. They’re seeing polls telling everyone that this gigantic bureaucratic mess is sinking like the Edmund Fitzgerald.

It’s important to note that politicians are always more worried about their next election than their last election. That’s why keeping the pressure on the Democrats right now is vitally important. They need to feel the heat of our displeasure. They need to hear in clear terms that we won’t tolerate another trillion dollar boondoggle that won’t fix this problem.

Finally, let’s remind ourselves that Democrats panic, too. That’s what they’re doing this instant. That’s why Democrats are questioning each other and offering scaled-back alternatives.

Technorati Tags: Reform, Health Care, Universal Health Care, Infomercial, ABC News, President Obama, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog