My Health Care Bill

If I could do my own health care bill, here’s what it would have:

1) Lawsuit costs lowered. Limiting the scope of lawsuits would have an impact beyond just the costs insurance companies have to pass on to doctors (who pass those on to consumers). It would lower

.. a)health insurance costs because less medical care costs the less the insurer has to pay – and the less premiums they would need from consumers.
Defensive medicine (i.e. the extra treatment doctors/nurses have to do to cover their butts in case they are sued.)

.. b) Legal fees. Even when patients win lawsuits, you know who wins really, don’t you? The lawyers, of course.

2) More medical schools to address the doctor/nurse shortage in America. We’ve been covering that through our immigration policies but every doctor we steal from the rest of the world means that someone out there has to do without. There’s plenty of Americans who want to be health professionals, who would be good at it, but there’s no place for them because our nation’s medical schools are so limited. That’s the bottleneck.

We can build more – lots more – but that costs money. Spending health care money on doctors and nurses instead of lawyers and bureaucrats is a spending program we can understand. It puts our health care priorities right.

It will also ultimately address doctor fees. - Law of supply and demand: shortages drives prices up; abundance drives them down.

3) Insurance portability across state lines. Maybe the Department of Commerce will have to do some regulating but the ease on the insurance pressure on a mobile America will be worth it.

Now for something really, really radical . . . (Drumroll!)

4) Start New Health Insurance Companies. Why not? This is something those limosine liberals could easily do. Obama wants to give the insurance companies some “competition”. he calls their profits “obscene”. Then just reducing profit margins to the “spectacular” level so they can produce more generous insurance provisions would quickly transform the industry. – And they wouldn’t have to worry about Republicans, filibusters, or even Senate reconciliation provisions.

Icing on the cake (listen up Charles Rangell, Christopher Dodd, et al) you can make yourselves a whole pile of money, to boot! - Of course, this last presumes that Obama’s rhetoric against the insurance companies were true.

- Alright, so 3 out of 4 ideas isn’t such a bad batting average!

Quote of the Day 3/6/10

You can name it anything you want—I don't recommend Constellation or Orion.

- Michael Coats, Director of the Johnson Space Center, explaining Agency efforts to retain existing programs while appearing to comply with White House directives to cut them. (Constellation and Orion are their present names.)

From Wall Street Journal.

Health Care Summit

I watched most of the summit Thursday. Obvious points:

1) Obama wasn't really looking for agreement. It was just an act. Else, why would he try to refute every single one of the Republican statements, no matter how sincere, and trivialize the statements of even the most senior R leaders?

2) The most egregious D statements he let pass without comment.

3) He wound up the meeting with D only speakers, cutting the Republican leaders out of any role in ending the meeting.

This meeting was run to make O and his Democrats look good and R's look bad.

Fox vs CNN 2/27/09

My best vid picks: CNN wins.

Quote of the Day 2/24/10

At least they served beer at the last White House summit this stupid and pointless.

- Ann Coulter, talking about the Health Care Summit tomorrow.

Quote of the Day 2/20/10

But if I had a choice of the Republican Party's problems right now or the Democratic Party's problems, I think you could triple the Republican Party's problems and I'd still rather have their problems than the problems facing Democrats.

- Charles Cook, in National Journal.

Quote of the Day 2/17/10

It is a collapsed soufflé in an unused kitchen in the back of an empty house.

- Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, writing of the demise of the Health Care Bill.

Sarah Palin and the Media

Here's a silly article from Politico titled, Why the mainstream media loves Sarah Palin.

All this research and the reporter still misses the central point: The Media don't love Sarah Palin; they love to hate her. There is a difference.

Obama on Campaign Finance

If actions speak louder than words, then Obama's actions on the issue ought to outweigh his words supporting campaign finance laws and the Supreme Court rejection of them. Why did he opt out of the campaign finance system for his Presidential campaign in 2008? If he hadn't done that, he would be in far better shape on this issue today. The problem is that everyone is wondering how sincere he is on this issue.

Barone 1/30/10

Democrats Heading for Epic Disaster

My take on Michael Barone's latest. His column was published in The Washington Examiner.

Summary: Polling shows Republicans doing better than ever mostly due to opposition to the Democrats.

Quote:

Nonetheless, what we have here are the makings of an epic party disaster. Whether it comes to pass is still uncertain. But it certainly could.

My Views: Let's assume that all of the Democrat's policies are good ones for the moment. I think that Obama's behavior over the last month will become the classic case of someone stepping on their own brand. Obama and his supporters in party, country, and in the media have spent much effort in developing the image of a careful, non-partisan, and thoughtful political leader. His biggest misstep recently was the Boston speech in the special Senate election where he tried to cast it as between ordinary persons and the "big Wall Street bankers".

His best (and most quoted) line in the speech was also his worst. "Anybody can buy a pick-up truck but you've got to look under the hood." That last clause was pretty good but it was belied by the first. How many poor voters heard that and thought, "I wish I could buy a pick-up."

The problem with the speech was not that it wasn't so very bad but that it was so very ordinary. Virtually any Democrat politician anywhere in the country could have made that speech. They've been making variations of that speech for years. Same-o, same-o.

Then there's the visual image. Why's he appearing around the country (like in Ohio last week) without the tie? A small thing, true. But the visual, together with the demogogic speeches, and the jarring policies create the wrong impression. To citizens who need reassurance that they've got competant, thoughtful leadership (the old Obama brand would have given them that), they're getting the image of a left-wing radical.

So, what can Obama do (assuming that he does not want to change his policies.)

First, he can put that tie back on and look Presidential. He's the President of the USA, for crying out loud. There is not more advantageous spot to be in, no matter how unpopular a pol may be. Stop diminishing that advantage and use it!

Second, explain what he's trying to accomplish and how his policies are going to accomplish those goals. En-passent, he can say that's why he needs those Democrat votes in the Congress.

Third, stop demogoging. This stuff only hurts the Obama brand. - And if you're going to criticize Supreme Court over-reach, go ahead. But not just when they make Conservative decisions. And be thoughtful in your criticism. His State of the Union speech wasn't thoughtful at all.

Fourth, he's just got to answer the public's concerns about his policies. Meaningfully answer, not clever evasions.

This last point is probably the one that spoils everything I wrote above. For if he cannot meaningfully address the concerns, then maybe he should just face the fact that his policies are just all wrong. Go back to demogoging becasue that's all he has left.

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Once, while flipping through tv channels, I stopped at C-Span when I heard someone say something like, "The most discriminated-against group in America today are Right-Wing Christians. The Press doesn't understand them and what little they do understand of them, they don't like." The moderator of the panel discussion quickly cut him off and said something about getting back to the topic of discussion which was discrimination in the newsroom. Another panelist began speaking, saying the things you would expect and I turned the channel. But before doing that, I marked down Michael Barone as a man I would watch in the future.

He has written a remarkable series of books, the most widely known and used is in the banner.

Interesting Reads 1/20/10

News articles that I think were interesting, so I'm passing them along.

WHERE OBAMA WENT WRONG at RealClearPolitics.com discusses the 3 big strategic decisions that made the Democrats so unpopular. Quote:

To put it bluntly, the Obama White House has been politically inept in the last year. It has made serious miscalculations, and today it is paying a price.

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OBAMA'S EEOC NOMINEE: Society Should ‘Not Tolerate Private Beliefs’ That ‘Adversely Affect’ Homosexuals at CNSNews.Com says that the nominee wrote that government ought to persecute Christians and other religeous people for private beliefs that conflict with gay rights. Quote:

“Just as we do not tolerate private racial beliefs that adversely affect African-Americans in the commercial arena, even if such beliefs are based on religious views, we should similarly not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] people,” the Georgetown law professor argued.

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MASSACHUSSETTS STILL A TOSS-UP FiveThirtyEight.com is now outdated but I like this article as a good lesson in how to analyze polling. Quote:

It should be kept in mind that a lot of Brown's support is pretty new, which would ordinarily imply that it is pretty soft.

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DEMS' LOCK ON SENATE IS MIXED BLESSING FOR OBAMA by Michael Barone says that Obama would have been better off if he had been forced to work on a more bi-partisan basis by the lack of the 60 votes in the Senate. Quote:

The 60th seat was a temptation, and like Oscar Wilde, the Democrats were able to resist anything except temptation.

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HOW COAKLEY WILL STEAL THE ELECTION FROM BROWN in the Washington Examiner discusses how recent elections were manipulated by lost/found ballots and other counting manipulations in recent years. Quote:

How best to steal the election from Brown and the people of Massachusetts? Absentee ballots.

But Enough of MLK, Vote for Me . . .

This is the Democrat's candidate for U.S. Senate from Massachussets speaking at the MLK Day event in Boston.



The Republican candidate was invited by a private attendee and was seated at Table 84 in the back. He was not allowed to speak; only the Democrat's candidate was.

Sad that this day is treated as a holiday for the left and for the Democrats instead as a national holiday. I'm sure this is why so many people in America don't honor it. The promoters of this holiday send the same message year after year: this isn't for MLK and certainly not for you or your values but only for us and ours.

I wish they would allow the rest of us in the tent. Step 1: allow the Republicans to speak. End the political predjudice against them and be more tolerant of non-left-wing ideas.

Mass. Senate Race

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the race for the Senate in Massachussets. Barrack Obama is dropping everything - Haiti, Healthcare, everything - to campaign here today. For most of the last half-century, when we think liberal, we think Massachussets. When we think Democrat, we think Massachussets. This is the state that the Democrats must hold.

It is just fascinating to see a party monopoly getting challenged; it is also fascinating to see the underdog getting a chance.

Late-night observation. Tried to find Obama's speech on the internet. No coverate at CNN, or Fox. Minimal coverage at Boston Globe, New York Times, and Washington Post. What does this mean? Obama's rally fell flat?

Just saw - Fox News reported that Obama spoke in an auditorium that seated 3,000. The audience was only 2,500. Republican Brown held a competing rally on his own and drew a similar size crowd.

Questionable Tea Party Convention

Here is an interesting essay from one of the leading Conservative Bloggers on one of the leading Conservative blogs. (Okay, I admit it. I post there, too.)

Here's the important facts I gleaned from the piece.
1) The Convention is organized by folks no one has heard of before.
2) They are charging $500 a pop entrance fee.
3) They are a for-profit organization.

This is starting to sound like some hucksters are wanting to cash in on the tea party protesters. It started out as a grass-roots movement for ordinary folks to have their voices heard. Now, it is starting to have over-tones of a Ross Perot style third party.

Sarah Palin is going to be the keynote speaker at this convention. Why did she pass up other, more important speaking opportunities - such as the Guest of Honor at the House Republican's annual dinner last winter? - Or the Ronald Reagan Library event?

Her presence at this event may just wind up legitimizing a rip-off of a legitimate movement.

Steyn 1/9/10

Anti-Terror System Still Not Working

My take on Mark Steyn's latest. His column was published in the Orange County Register.

Summary:Airport measures taken since the Christmas terror attack have made things worse for passengers while not hindering more terror attacks.

Quote:

First, the bureaucrats at the TSA swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions.

Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on U.S. flights. In Toronto, no large purses.

Um, the Pantybomber didn't have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren't part of his carry-on. . . .

My Views: Valid point - National Security thinking needs to get away from all this politically correct, no profiling stuff. Clearly, the Fort Hood shooter should never have been promoted to Major in the US Army. It wasn't that his problems were unknown; it was the fear of official retribution if he was denied promotion - or (ahem!) kicked out of the army, entirely. Kicking him out of the country would have been too sensible.

Not valid point - the criticisms of Obama. Yes, he ought not have allowed the Christmas Terrorist a civilian trial but once he did, his remarks couldn't prejudice the prosecution. So the reliance on the word "allegedly" and so on. More significant are the President's latest statements on how the system failed and how things need to be improved.

Steyn's column is correct in critizing the President's actions; not so correct in criticizing the President's words. Sadly, actions still speak louder than words.

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Mark Steyn is a syndicated columnist from Canada. Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is on the right. This is the book that got several Human Rights Commissions in Canada hot and bothered. With free speech under unprecedented attack, Mark Steyn managed to pull out a badly needed victory. This was the first time a Canadian Human Rights Commission found a defendant innocent.

The Peace Prize

Now for a story I missed in 2009. Almost everything to be said about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize has been said except for the elephant in the room. Why have a Nobel Peace Prize at all?

There's now been a century's worth of annual winners of this prize. How many among them made a real difference in World Peace? Many of them were great humanitarians. Many of them did lots of good deeds. But in settling the wars of the century, in preventing wars, how many of these winners ever did anything major?

The problem is that real peacemaking means doing things that automatically disqualify the person from ever getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Let's take up a couple cases of people who were not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - as a direct consequence of their peacemaking.

1) Franklin D. Roosevelt. He could have got it. In those darkest days of World War II, he could have announced that he was making peace with Hitler. H would have demanded a lot, but as long as FDR wanted to give him whatever he wanted, he could have got a peace treaty. Instead, he declared that the only peace he would accept with the Nazis was Unconditional Surrender. Warlike, true. But consider how much less peaceful the world would now be if the Nazis remained a major power in it.

2) Dwight Eisenhower. He ended the Korean War but that act precluded him from winning the Nobel Peace Prize. First, he got tough with the Communists. Told the Chinese that if they did not get serious about peace, he would start bombing them. Then, he accepted a truce (instead of a formal peace agreement). The U.S. army is there to this very day. But he stopped the fighting.

Now, let's look at the last few people who did win the Nobel Peace Prize (skipping Obama):

1) Mahtti Ahtisaari of Finland. What did he accomplish? His Wiki bio lists offices and awards, but what did he ever actually accomplish with any of them? He was the U.N. negotiaton on the Kosovo peace talks which failed. That's the noteworthy achievement.

2) Al Gore for his climate change work. Let's assume Gore is correct on every particular. Give him a Nobel Ecomomics Prize or even a Nobel Other Prize, but this work's relation to settling or preventing any war is tangental at best.

3) Grameen Bank is a banker who pioneered new banking methods for poor people. Give him an Economics Prize.

I could go on. Great humanitarians, great dedicated people but very few really made a direct contribution to World Peace.

And this is my problem with the World Peace Prize. Only those who act on the edges of the issue can get it. They're like the customer service reps at the Auto Service Centers who sit at their desks or wander the floor but who never crawl under the car and get their hands dirty. The mechanics who actually step into the gunk and are willing (and able!) to get dirty with the real decisions of War and Peace do not get awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I propose a Nobel Humanitarian Prize. That would be far more descriptive of what those dedicated individuals really did.

9 News Items Missed in 2009

These are 9 news stories that the establishment missed in 2009. Either they reported belatedly, partially, or not at all.

What strikes me about this list is how very important these stories were and how derided they were by the established elites. On the extremists-in-government stories, I recall how much attention was paid to these when the Republicans were in power. If they were important then, they were important this year, too.

More Terror Attacks on US

News today that another terror attack occured on NW Flite 253 to Detroit.

That's two attacks in just a few months. This compares to the record of the Bush years.

The Fort Hood attack was definetly related to left-wing attitudes on profiling and political correctness. This one is too new for us to know about yet. The suspect appeared to be a Nigerian who transited in via London and Amsterdam. Nigeria has a substantial Muslim population.

One of the Bush Administration anti-terror policies had been the cooperation of European Banks to track terrorism's financing. The New York Times decided to override Bush's objections and publicized this part of the anti-terrorism policy. As a result, the European banks invovlved, discontinued their cooperation. Since then, the threat of exposure and retaliation has inhibited private European institutions from cooperating with the US government.

For all the harranging on Bush for his anti-terror policies being too strict, the proof was in the scorecard. No major terror attack on US soil for the duration of his watch. Obama takes over and now what?

It is time to re-examine the Bush anti-terror policies. Those that worked and have been removed ought to be reinstated. Safety ought to trump ideology on this issue.

Middle East Necessity

This essay by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times says that we can't do the Arab's fighting and dying for them. They have got to take ownership themselves of the fight against terrorism themselves.

True, kind of. The problem of indeginous support vexed Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. Southerners who said they supported the Union but weren't willing to sacrifice to do it. Still, the job got done. The army had to conquer and then occupy the land for many years, though.

Pundits and Demagogues

Just finished the Coulter Health Care Series today (organized links and did some light editing) and this caused me to think about the ever-present labels that are throw at these people. She made a lot of good points. By "these people", I mean people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Glen Beck.

What gets me is how many good points these people make and how these points are ignored by the more established pundits.

I watch Glen Beck occasionally and listen to Rush, also occasionally. Sometimes they seem to be wrong and sometimes they seem to be right. This is the same as when I listen and read commentary by more establishment types, New York Times and Washington Post editorials, for example. I must conclude that Coulter, Beck, Rush, et al are pilloried not for the things they get wrong but because they are so very effective at getting things right.

I wish their major points received more establishment attention. But then I learned early on that one "gotcha" erases many "attaboys".