Last month, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 26 "Apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans." The resolution ends with: "Disclaimer. -- Nothing in this resolution (a) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or (b) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States." That means Congress apologizes but is not going to pay reparations, as least for now.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed concerns about the disclaimer, thinking that it's an attempt to stave off reparations claims from the descendants of slaves. Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said her organization is studying the language of the resolution and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, said "putting in a disclaimer takes away from the meaning of an apology. A number of us are prepared to vote against it in its present form. There are several members of the Progressive Caucus who feel the same way."
It goes without saying that slavery was a gross violation of human rights. Justice would demand that all the perpetrators -- that includes slave owners, and African and Arab slave sellers -- make compensatory reparation payments to victims. Since slaves, slave owners and slave sellers are no longer with us, such compensation is beyond our reach and a matter to be settled in the world beyond.
Absent from the reparations debate is: Who pays? Don't say the government because the government doesn't have any money that it doesn't first take from some American. So which Americans owe black people what?
Reparations advocates don't want that question asked but let's you and I.
Are the millions of Europeans, Asians, and Latin Americans who immigrated to the U.S. in the 20th century responsible for slavery and should they be forced to cough up reparations money? What about descendants of Northern whites who fought and died in the name of freeing slaves? Should they cough up reparations money for black Americans? What about non-slave-owning Southern whites, a majority of whites; should they be made to pay reparations? And, by the way, would President Obama, whose father is Kenyan and mother white, be eligible for a reparations payment?
On black people's side of the ledger, thorny issues also arise.
Some blacks purchased other blacks as a means to free family members. But other blacks owned slaves for the same reason whites owned slaves -- to work farms or plantations. Are descendants of these blacks eligible and deserving of reparations? There is no way that Europeans could have captured millions of Africans. They had African and Arab help. Should Congress haul representatives of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Muslim states before them and demand they compensate American blacks because of their ancestors' involvement in capturing and selling slaves?
Reparations advocates make the foolish unchallenged pronouncement that United States became rich on the backs of free black labor. That's utter nonsense. Slavery has never had a very good record of producing wealth. Think about it. Slavery was all over the South. Buying into the reparations nonsense, you'd have to conclude that the antebellum South was rich and the slave-starved North was poor. The truth of the matter is just the opposite. In fact, the poorest states and regions of our country were places where slavery flourished: Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia while the richest states and regions were those where slavery was absent: Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.
The Senate apology is nothing more than political theater but it could be a slick way to get the camel's nose into the tent for future reparations. If the senators are motivated by white guilt, I have the cure.
About 15 years ago I wrote a "Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon Granted to All Persons of European Descent" that is available at: www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/gift.html
Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Walter E. Williams holds a bachelor's degree in economics from California State University (1965) and a master's degree (1967) and doctorate (1972) in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
California Screaming
The Golden State's political class comes unglued in the face of a citizens' revolt.
Matt Welch | August/September 2009 Print Edition
A very good piece on how California is a smaller version of the U.S. The people are revolting.
On May 19, California voters went to the polls to decide whether to pass a package of six tax-and-gimmick ballot propositions. Its supporters—Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democratic legislative leaders, the California Teachers Association, and the overwhelming majority of the state’s major newspapers—billed it as the last best hope to plug Sacramento’s $24 billion budget deficit. “Either pass it,” warned the Los Angeles Times editorial board, “or risk fiscal disaster.”
Those who believe that either money or the media determine political outcomes should pay close heed to what happened next: Although opponents were outspent by more than 7 to 1, they trounced the state’s political class, rejecting five of the six measures by an average of 30 percentage points. The only proposition to pass was an anger-driven new law that limits elected officials’ salaries.
Faced with such thorough repudiation, California’s best and brightest then did a telling thing. They lashed right back.
The Los Angeles Times headlined its morning-after news analysis, “California Voters Exercise Their Power—and That’s the Problem.” Sacramento columnist George Skelton argued that “voters helped get themselves into this fix” by “passing feel-good ‘ballot box budgeting’ initiatives” and sanctioning “heavy borrowing” for “infrastructure projects.” Business columnist Michael Hiltzik averred that “far more blame for the deficit belongs to California voters” because “year in, year out, they enact spending mandates at the polls, often without endowing a revenue source.” Missing from any of these critiques was the fact that the Times’ own editorial board endorsed more than 90 percent of the very same ballot-box bond measures during the last decade. No matter: A perpetrator had been located.
“Good morning, California voters,” The Sacramento Bee’s post-election editorial began. “Do you feel better, now that you’ve gotten that out of your system?” The Bee, which (like the Times) had endorsed four of the five losing measures, came under immediate attack for its heavy-handed, citizen-blaming sarcasm. (A sample: “So, now that you’ve put those irksome politicians in their place, maybe it’s time to think about this: Since you’re in charge, exactly what do you intend to do about that pesky $25 billion hole in the budget?”) Rush Limbaugh gleefully read passages on his show, San Diego Union-Tribune editorial writer Chris Reed called it “staggeringly juvenile, arrogant and revealing,” and commenters on the Bee’s website were full of reactions like, “What an obnoxious editorial. Nevertheless, it illustrates that the Bee is completely in favor of bigger government and higher taxes.”
Then another funny thing happened: The Bee scrubbed the editorial off its website, replacing it with a much more conciliatory piece, addressed this time to legislators. The original editorial had been posted in “error,” the paper explained, and the new piece was the one that appeared in the print edition. “That [first] article was a draft prepared for internal discussion among members of The Bee’s editorial board,” a brief note said. “Such discussions are a routine part of our work, and frequently lead to editorials that are considerably different from writers’ first drafts.”
This instant airbrushing, normally fodder for such journalism-tracking websites as Jim Romenesko’s Media News, went virtually ignored by all but a few mostly right-leaning websites. So did another colossal gaffe, by the aforementioned Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, who thundered that the very notion California had a “spending problem” was an “infectious myth.”
Hiltzik claimed that the state government’s budget growth had kept pace “almost to the penny” with growth in population and inflation during the last decade. There were three problems with this analysis: Hiltzik miscalculated population growth (claiming 30 percent instead of 14 percent), he chose a federal inflation rate of 50 percent during that period instead of the California Consumer Price Index figure of 35 percent, and, most important, he excluded from state spending more than $100 billion in bond measures. This whopper was roasted and dissected on local talk radio, but it was unmentioned by more august repositories of public policy and journalism debate, such as the Times-tracking LA Observed.
Rarely has the chasm between elite political discourse and grubby popular opinion been displayed in such sharp relief. The implications of this citizen revolt—and the hostile reactions to it—stretch far beyond Nevada’s western border. California is the Ghost of Federal Government Future.
During the last two decades, the Golden State has been transformed from what was once known as the nation’s most anti-labor outpost to a state essentially run by public-sector unions. Nearly three in five publicsector workers are unionized, compared to less than two in five public employees in other states. The Democratic Party, which is fully in hock to unions, has controlled the legislature and most statewide posts, with the notable exception of the governor’s mansion, for more than a decade. That means more government workers, higher salaries, and drastically higher pension costs.
According to Adam Summers—a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this magazine—the state’s annual pension fund contribution vaulted from $321 million in 2000–01 to $7.3 billion last year. According to public databases, more than 5,000 people are drawing pensions in excess of $100,000 from the state of California each year.
So pervasive is the union influence that big labor doesn’t even try to defend its deleterious effects on California’s finances. Just before the special election, a member of the Los Angeles Times editorial board asked Service Employees International Union chief Andy Stern to respond to charges that unions are the 21st-century equivalent of the railroads that were once all-powerful in California. Stern verbally shrugged: “I think democracy is an ugly thing at times.”
That ugliness has made the California budget, like those in most of the other 49 states, less efficient and more bloated. Government spending, unlike spending in the private economy, is a zero-sum game—especially on the state level, since governors can’t print money. Every dollar spent gilding a pension is a dollar not spent funding an orphanage. Naturally, the same elite outlets that were busy blaming voters after the election spent even more time detailing the horrors of the “annihilating cuts,” as the Los Angeles Times called them in a news article, that were coming down the pike. (In early June, the paper invited readers to be shocked that a high school with 3,200 students would have to make do with just three guidance counselors.) Bloated pension costs and the increasingly inefficient provision of state services received a fraction of the coverage.
The federal government is now run by a president and Congress more responsive to union concerns than any in at least two decades. The same bloat currently bogging down statehouses and city halls is being duplicated in boomtown Washington, D.C. President Barack Obama even brought Andy Stern in to help warn Schwarzenegger that federal stimulus money would not be disbursed to California unless the governor rescinded some proposed state job cuts. Though that threat was later withdrawn, Schwarzenegger at press time was pushing for a measly work force reduction of 2 percent.
But there’s another interpretation of California’s rebellion, one with far sunnier implications for those of us who prefer our governments constrained. Faced with a political class that ignored bureaucratic inefficiency, that demanded higher taxes, that filled the newspapers with scare stories about people who will literally die as a result of budget cuts, the citizens of one of the bluest states in the nation collectively said we just don’t believe you anymore. If even California’s famous fruits and nuts can call the statists’ bluff, there may be hope for the rest of the country.
Matt Welch | August/September 2009 Print Edition
A very good piece on how California is a smaller version of the U.S. The people are revolting.
On May 19, California voters went to the polls to decide whether to pass a package of six tax-and-gimmick ballot propositions. Its supporters—Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democratic legislative leaders, the California Teachers Association, and the overwhelming majority of the state’s major newspapers—billed it as the last best hope to plug Sacramento’s $24 billion budget deficit. “Either pass it,” warned the Los Angeles Times editorial board, “or risk fiscal disaster.”
Those who believe that either money or the media determine political outcomes should pay close heed to what happened next: Although opponents were outspent by more than 7 to 1, they trounced the state’s political class, rejecting five of the six measures by an average of 30 percentage points. The only proposition to pass was an anger-driven new law that limits elected officials’ salaries.
Faced with such thorough repudiation, California’s best and brightest then did a telling thing. They lashed right back.
The Los Angeles Times headlined its morning-after news analysis, “California Voters Exercise Their Power—and That’s the Problem.” Sacramento columnist George Skelton argued that “voters helped get themselves into this fix” by “passing feel-good ‘ballot box budgeting’ initiatives” and sanctioning “heavy borrowing” for “infrastructure projects.” Business columnist Michael Hiltzik averred that “far more blame for the deficit belongs to California voters” because “year in, year out, they enact spending mandates at the polls, often without endowing a revenue source.” Missing from any of these critiques was the fact that the Times’ own editorial board endorsed more than 90 percent of the very same ballot-box bond measures during the last decade. No matter: A perpetrator had been located.
“Good morning, California voters,” The Sacramento Bee’s post-election editorial began. “Do you feel better, now that you’ve gotten that out of your system?” The Bee, which (like the Times) had endorsed four of the five losing measures, came under immediate attack for its heavy-handed, citizen-blaming sarcasm. (A sample: “So, now that you’ve put those irksome politicians in their place, maybe it’s time to think about this: Since you’re in charge, exactly what do you intend to do about that pesky $25 billion hole in the budget?”) Rush Limbaugh gleefully read passages on his show, San Diego Union-Tribune editorial writer Chris Reed called it “staggeringly juvenile, arrogant and revealing,” and commenters on the Bee’s website were full of reactions like, “What an obnoxious editorial. Nevertheless, it illustrates that the Bee is completely in favor of bigger government and higher taxes.”
Then another funny thing happened: The Bee scrubbed the editorial off its website, replacing it with a much more conciliatory piece, addressed this time to legislators. The original editorial had been posted in “error,” the paper explained, and the new piece was the one that appeared in the print edition. “That [first] article was a draft prepared for internal discussion among members of The Bee’s editorial board,” a brief note said. “Such discussions are a routine part of our work, and frequently lead to editorials that are considerably different from writers’ first drafts.”
This instant airbrushing, normally fodder for such journalism-tracking websites as Jim Romenesko’s Media News, went virtually ignored by all but a few mostly right-leaning websites. So did another colossal gaffe, by the aforementioned Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, who thundered that the very notion California had a “spending problem” was an “infectious myth.”
Hiltzik claimed that the state government’s budget growth had kept pace “almost to the penny” with growth in population and inflation during the last decade. There were three problems with this analysis: Hiltzik miscalculated population growth (claiming 30 percent instead of 14 percent), he chose a federal inflation rate of 50 percent during that period instead of the California Consumer Price Index figure of 35 percent, and, most important, he excluded from state spending more than $100 billion in bond measures. This whopper was roasted and dissected on local talk radio, but it was unmentioned by more august repositories of public policy and journalism debate, such as the Times-tracking LA Observed.
Rarely has the chasm between elite political discourse and grubby popular opinion been displayed in such sharp relief. The implications of this citizen revolt—and the hostile reactions to it—stretch far beyond Nevada’s western border. California is the Ghost of Federal Government Future.
During the last two decades, the Golden State has been transformed from what was once known as the nation’s most anti-labor outpost to a state essentially run by public-sector unions. Nearly three in five publicsector workers are unionized, compared to less than two in five public employees in other states. The Democratic Party, which is fully in hock to unions, has controlled the legislature and most statewide posts, with the notable exception of the governor’s mansion, for more than a decade. That means more government workers, higher salaries, and drastically higher pension costs.
According to Adam Summers—a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this magazine—the state’s annual pension fund contribution vaulted from $321 million in 2000–01 to $7.3 billion last year. According to public databases, more than 5,000 people are drawing pensions in excess of $100,000 from the state of California each year.
So pervasive is the union influence that big labor doesn’t even try to defend its deleterious effects on California’s finances. Just before the special election, a member of the Los Angeles Times editorial board asked Service Employees International Union chief Andy Stern to respond to charges that unions are the 21st-century equivalent of the railroads that were once all-powerful in California. Stern verbally shrugged: “I think democracy is an ugly thing at times.”
That ugliness has made the California budget, like those in most of the other 49 states, less efficient and more bloated. Government spending, unlike spending in the private economy, is a zero-sum game—especially on the state level, since governors can’t print money. Every dollar spent gilding a pension is a dollar not spent funding an orphanage. Naturally, the same elite outlets that were busy blaming voters after the election spent even more time detailing the horrors of the “annihilating cuts,” as the Los Angeles Times called them in a news article, that were coming down the pike. (In early June, the paper invited readers to be shocked that a high school with 3,200 students would have to make do with just three guidance counselors.) Bloated pension costs and the increasingly inefficient provision of state services received a fraction of the coverage.
The federal government is now run by a president and Congress more responsive to union concerns than any in at least two decades. The same bloat currently bogging down statehouses and city halls is being duplicated in boomtown Washington, D.C. President Barack Obama even brought Andy Stern in to help warn Schwarzenegger that federal stimulus money would not be disbursed to California unless the governor rescinded some proposed state job cuts. Though that threat was later withdrawn, Schwarzenegger at press time was pushing for a measly work force reduction of 2 percent.
But there’s another interpretation of California’s rebellion, one with far sunnier implications for those of us who prefer our governments constrained. Faced with a political class that ignored bureaucratic inefficiency, that demanded higher taxes, that filled the newspapers with scare stories about people who will literally die as a result of budget cuts, the citizens of one of the bluest states in the nation collectively said we just don’t believe you anymore. If even California’s famous fruits and nuts can call the statists’ bluff, there may be hope for the rest of the country.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Scientist: Global Warming Claims a Lot of Hype
Scientist: Global Warming Claims a Lot of Hype
Friday, July 3, 2009 10:17 PM
By: Phil Brennan Article Font Size
Lawmakers who described the alleged effects of global warming are spreading a lot of "eye wash," a top climate scientist says.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax, S. Fred Singer, a renowned climatologist and professor of environmental sciences emeritus at the University of Virginia, discussed the background behind the recent open letter to Congress he and six other scientists sent to members of the House and Senate.
In the letter, the scientists cited a letter sent by the Woods Hole Research Center, which exhorted Congress to act quickly to avoid a global disaster due to alleged global warming.
Singer said the Woods Hole group “put on a sort of scary exaggerated kind of letter to Congress ahead of the vote in the House in an obvious attempt to stampede them into voting for the Waxman-Markey [cap and trade environmental] bill.
Singer explained: “We thought it would be useful to write a letter that would provide a balance. The instigator of the letter was Harold Lewis, a retired professor of physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara.” Lewis, he said, “provided the initial draft, several of us made comments and seven of us signed our names to it.”
Lewis sent the letter "to every member of Congress ... and it was also sent to a number of bloggers and others who are generally sympathetic" to the group’s point of view.
“The letter itself is self-explanatory,” Singer said, noting that it did not “give much detail.”
“Two of us, Richard Lindzen and myself, are actively working on climate issues. The others are renowned physicists – people of some stature, members of the National Academy and others who have a good amount of scientific judgment but who have not directly published or been pre-eminent in climate research.”
Asked if it is not established that the earth is cooling, Singer explained that “The earth is either always warming or cooling; one cannot tell which it is unless one specifies the time interval.
“It's like the stock market: it is rising or falling. Both depend on whether it's a week or a month or a year. It's the same with the temperature – if we start during the last Ice Age 15,000 years ago, then the temperatures have warmed. If you start from the Little Ice Age, which ended 200 years ago, it certainly has warmed.
“If you start from 1998, however, then it has not warmed – it has cooled. So it depends on the time interval. People argue about this, and much of the difference between groups comes about when you don't specify the time interval. There's no question that the climate has not been warming in the last 10 years."
Reminded that there were members of Congress standing up in the debate and talking about the terrible things that are happening now as a result of global warming, Singer said: “That's all eye wash. That's not true. That's simply hype.”
He went on to explain that “Nothing untoward is happening. The ice is not melting any faster, the sea level is not rising any faster. Hurricanes are not increasing in intensity or frequency; there's been no impact. Those things are always hard to measure. It depends on statistics. The easiest thing is to specify temperature, because it's easily measured and there is relatively little disagreement on what temperature stands for.”
He then went on to challenge what he called former Vice President Al Gore’s “mantra” that he says Gore’s "been handing out for years now – that the science is settled. That is simply not true.
“When you have 31,000 scientists signing the Oregon petition saying they disagree with the current wisdom that humans are producing increased warming, it speaks for itself. It's true that the 31,000 are not all climate scientists. There are not that many in the world.
“However, it does show you that the science is not settled. Among climate scientists there is a split. There are those who believe in models, and those who believe in observations. And there are some who don't believe in both, and some who don't believe in any.
“The modelers believe that the models correctly describe what's going on in the atmosphere, and they trust their models to predict the future. And the models all predict increased global warming. Some more, some less. There are plenty models in the world, and they all get different results. We don't know which one of them is correct, if any, or even if any of them is correct.
Then there are those – sometimes called the skeptics, but we prefer to call them the realists – who believe in the observations, who believe that the atmosphere tells us what's going on. The models try to describe what's going on in the atmosphere, but they don't succeed. It's extremely difficult – the atmosphere is very complicated. For example, the models can't really describe clouds. Yet clouds are very, very important. So that's the basic split.
“When the observations show that the climate has not been warming in the last 10 years, which contradicts the models, who are you going to believe? The models or the observations. Obviously, we believe in the observations.
“When you ask the other side to debate on this issue they either won't debate; or if they do debate, they say, Well there must be something wrong with the observations.'”
Singer agreed that it is a case of "do you believe what the models tell you, or do you believe in your lying eyes?"
Friday, July 3, 2009 10:17 PM
By: Phil Brennan Article Font Size
Lawmakers who described the alleged effects of global warming are spreading a lot of "eye wash," a top climate scientist says.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax, S. Fred Singer, a renowned climatologist and professor of environmental sciences emeritus at the University of Virginia, discussed the background behind the recent open letter to Congress he and six other scientists sent to members of the House and Senate.
In the letter, the scientists cited a letter sent by the Woods Hole Research Center, which exhorted Congress to act quickly to avoid a global disaster due to alleged global warming.
Singer said the Woods Hole group “put on a sort of scary exaggerated kind of letter to Congress ahead of the vote in the House in an obvious attempt to stampede them into voting for the Waxman-Markey [cap and trade environmental] bill.
Singer explained: “We thought it would be useful to write a letter that would provide a balance. The instigator of the letter was Harold Lewis, a retired professor of physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara.” Lewis, he said, “provided the initial draft, several of us made comments and seven of us signed our names to it.”
Lewis sent the letter "to every member of Congress ... and it was also sent to a number of bloggers and others who are generally sympathetic" to the group’s point of view.
“The letter itself is self-explanatory,” Singer said, noting that it did not “give much detail.”
“Two of us, Richard Lindzen and myself, are actively working on climate issues. The others are renowned physicists – people of some stature, members of the National Academy and others who have a good amount of scientific judgment but who have not directly published or been pre-eminent in climate research.”
Asked if it is not established that the earth is cooling, Singer explained that “The earth is either always warming or cooling; one cannot tell which it is unless one specifies the time interval.
“It's like the stock market: it is rising or falling. Both depend on whether it's a week or a month or a year. It's the same with the temperature – if we start during the last Ice Age 15,000 years ago, then the temperatures have warmed. If you start from the Little Ice Age, which ended 200 years ago, it certainly has warmed.
“If you start from 1998, however, then it has not warmed – it has cooled. So it depends on the time interval. People argue about this, and much of the difference between groups comes about when you don't specify the time interval. There's no question that the climate has not been warming in the last 10 years."
Reminded that there were members of Congress standing up in the debate and talking about the terrible things that are happening now as a result of global warming, Singer said: “That's all eye wash. That's not true. That's simply hype.”
He went on to explain that “Nothing untoward is happening. The ice is not melting any faster, the sea level is not rising any faster. Hurricanes are not increasing in intensity or frequency; there's been no impact. Those things are always hard to measure. It depends on statistics. The easiest thing is to specify temperature, because it's easily measured and there is relatively little disagreement on what temperature stands for.”
He then went on to challenge what he called former Vice President Al Gore’s “mantra” that he says Gore’s "been handing out for years now – that the science is settled. That is simply not true.
“When you have 31,000 scientists signing the Oregon petition saying they disagree with the current wisdom that humans are producing increased warming, it speaks for itself. It's true that the 31,000 are not all climate scientists. There are not that many in the world.
“However, it does show you that the science is not settled. Among climate scientists there is a split. There are those who believe in models, and those who believe in observations. And there are some who don't believe in both, and some who don't believe in any.
“The modelers believe that the models correctly describe what's going on in the atmosphere, and they trust their models to predict the future. And the models all predict increased global warming. Some more, some less. There are plenty models in the world, and they all get different results. We don't know which one of them is correct, if any, or even if any of them is correct.
Then there are those – sometimes called the skeptics, but we prefer to call them the realists – who believe in the observations, who believe that the atmosphere tells us what's going on. The models try to describe what's going on in the atmosphere, but they don't succeed. It's extremely difficult – the atmosphere is very complicated. For example, the models can't really describe clouds. Yet clouds are very, very important. So that's the basic split.
“When the observations show that the climate has not been warming in the last 10 years, which contradicts the models, who are you going to believe? The models or the observations. Obviously, we believe in the observations.
“When you ask the other side to debate on this issue they either won't debate; or if they do debate, they say, Well there must be something wrong with the observations.'”
Singer agreed that it is a case of "do you believe what the models tell you, or do you believe in your lying eyes?"
Friday, July 3, 2009
Story about Al Franken from WSJ
The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year's disputed Senate race, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman's gracious concession at least spares the state any further legal combat. The unfortunate lesson is that you don't need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.
Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat's strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.
But the team's real goldmine were absentee ballots, thousands of which the Franken team claimed had been mistakenly rejected. While Mr. Coleman's lawyers demanded a uniform standard for how counties should re-evaluate these rejected ballots, the Franken team ginned up an additional 1,350 absentees from Franken-leaning counties. By the time this treasure hunt ended, Mr. Franken was 312 votes up, and Mr. Coleman was left to file legal briefs.
What Mr. Franken understood was that courts would later be loathe to overrule decisions made by the canvassing board, however arbitrary those decisions were. He was right. The three-judge panel overseeing the Coleman legal challenge, and the Supreme Court that reviewed the panel's findings, in essence found that Mr. Coleman hadn't demonstrated a willful or malicious attempt on behalf of officials to deny him the election. And so they refused to reopen what had become a forbidding tangle of irregularities. Mr. Coleman didn't lose the election. He lost the fight to stop the state canvassing board from changing the vote-counting rules after the fact.
This is now the second time Republicans have been beaten in this kind of legal street fight. In 2004, Dino Rossi was ahead in the election-night count for Washington Governor against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Ms. Gregoire's team demanded the right to rifle through a list of provisional votes that hadn't been counted, setting off a hunt for "new" Gregoire votes. By the third recount, she'd discovered enough to win. This was the model for the Franken team.
Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.
Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat's strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.
But the team's real goldmine were absentee ballots, thousands of which the Franken team claimed had been mistakenly rejected. While Mr. Coleman's lawyers demanded a uniform standard for how counties should re-evaluate these rejected ballots, the Franken team ginned up an additional 1,350 absentees from Franken-leaning counties. By the time this treasure hunt ended, Mr. Franken was 312 votes up, and Mr. Coleman was left to file legal briefs.
What Mr. Franken understood was that courts would later be loathe to overrule decisions made by the canvassing board, however arbitrary those decisions were. He was right. The three-judge panel overseeing the Coleman legal challenge, and the Supreme Court that reviewed the panel's findings, in essence found that Mr. Coleman hadn't demonstrated a willful or malicious attempt on behalf of officials to deny him the election. And so they refused to reopen what had become a forbidding tangle of irregularities. Mr. Coleman didn't lose the election. He lost the fight to stop the state canvassing board from changing the vote-counting rules after the fact.
This is now the second time Republicans have been beaten in this kind of legal street fight. In 2004, Dino Rossi was ahead in the election-night count for Washington Governor against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Ms. Gregoire's team demanded the right to rifle through a list of provisional votes that hadn't been counted, setting off a hunt for "new" Gregoire votes. By the third recount, she'd discovered enough to win. This was the model for the Franken team.
Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.
None Dare Call It Marxism
By David Limbaugh
July 3, 2009
All right already. I won't call Obama a Marxist in this column. Instead, I'll point to some signs that indicate that Barack and Karl might well be soul mates. At least, they have similar attitudes about capital, labor and profits, er, surplus value.
Liberals, even those of the Marxist variety, take umbrage when you point out their ideological kinship with Marxism.
I suppose this dates back to the days when being a communist was tantamount to being an enemy of the United States, in that there was a global communist movement intent on -- and coming darn close to -- world domination. Though global communism has been defeated, there remains a strong contingent among us, whose nerve center is the Democratic Party leadership under President Obama, committed to obliterating America's free market.
Without getting into the intricacies of Marxist theory, suffice it to say that at the core of this political and economic philosophy is a belief in the historical class struggle. The capitalist (bourgeois) exploits the industrial worker (proletarian) by underpaying him and adding on unnecessary charges to the prices of goods and services, driving up costs to the consumer, and pocketing the profits.
In "Basic Economics," Thomas Sowell puts it this way: "Profits may be the most misconceived subject in economics. Socialists have long regarded profits as simply 'overcharge,' as Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw called it, or a 'surplus value' as Karl Marx called it." The theory is that under socialism or Marxism, these surplus charges would be eliminated and goods and services would become more affordable.
But in reality, socialism doesn't make goods and services more affordable, but less so. As Dr. Sowell explains: "The hope for profits and the threat of losses is what forces a business owner in a capitalist economy to produce at the lowest cost and sell what the customers are most willing to pay for. ... Under socialism (there is) far less incentive to be as efficient ... much less to keep up with changing conditions and respond to them quickly." With less incentive for efficiencies and cost control, the prices of goods might well be higher.
Profits are not arbitrary charges added on to the costs of producing goods and services; nor are they attributable to artificially high prices charged by those motivated by greed. Indeed, writes Sowell, most of the great fortunes in American history were amassed when entrepreneurs were able to reduce costs and charge lower prices and to increase their volume sales to mass markets.
You get the point. Capitalists don't view profits as evil or the product of greed. Their opponents -- call them Marxists, fascists, socialists, radical liberals or whatever -- do. Which brings us back to Barack Obama.
Both his father, Barack Obama Sr., and his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, were communists. His church of choice was one of black liberation theology, whose Marxist roots are inarguable. He associated with far leftists on the "organizing" streets of Chicago, including Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Mentorship and associations are one thing, but what have Obama's words and actions revealed about his attitudes toward labor, capital, profits and government control of business and industry?
Well, he said that he would raise capital gains tax rates, even if it reduced revenues, as a matter of fairness. It's only fair to make everyone poorer if you believe profits are inherently evil.
He told Joe the Plumber he wants to spread the wealth around. He talked about confiscating Exxon Mobil's profits and giving them to consumers, saying "they are not going to give up those profits easily." He called Chrysler creditors "speculators" and castigated them for refusing to accept his extortionist reorganization plan. He berated Wall Street for making profits, saying "now is not (the) time" for them to "rake in profits." He and his wife even railed against the pursuit of profit in their respective commencement addresses.
He abused the power of his office to steal money from GM and Chrysler shareholders and transfer it to the proletariat, I mean, the United Auto Workers. He redistributed taxpayer money from those who have paid their mortgages to those who have not.
He is desperately trying to spread the misery and impoverish businesses and individuals through his cap and tax plan, which no proponent of economic growth and prosperity would consider supporting. And in addition to gobbling up other businesses and industries, he is trying to nationalize medicine -- to siphon off the evil surplus value charged by doctors and insurance companies -- on the flawed Marxist theory that he can reduce costs overall, when the reason health care costs have already skyrocketed is that market forces have been suppressed in the industry.
You don't have to call him a Marxist, but at least understand where his heart is.
---
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.DavidLimbaugh.com.
July 3, 2009
All right already. I won't call Obama a Marxist in this column. Instead, I'll point to some signs that indicate that Barack and Karl might well be soul mates. At least, they have similar attitudes about capital, labor and profits, er, surplus value.
Liberals, even those of the Marxist variety, take umbrage when you point out their ideological kinship with Marxism.
I suppose this dates back to the days when being a communist was tantamount to being an enemy of the United States, in that there was a global communist movement intent on -- and coming darn close to -- world domination. Though global communism has been defeated, there remains a strong contingent among us, whose nerve center is the Democratic Party leadership under President Obama, committed to obliterating America's free market.
Without getting into the intricacies of Marxist theory, suffice it to say that at the core of this political and economic philosophy is a belief in the historical class struggle. The capitalist (bourgeois) exploits the industrial worker (proletarian) by underpaying him and adding on unnecessary charges to the prices of goods and services, driving up costs to the consumer, and pocketing the profits.
In "Basic Economics," Thomas Sowell puts it this way: "Profits may be the most misconceived subject in economics. Socialists have long regarded profits as simply 'overcharge,' as Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw called it, or a 'surplus value' as Karl Marx called it." The theory is that under socialism or Marxism, these surplus charges would be eliminated and goods and services would become more affordable.
But in reality, socialism doesn't make goods and services more affordable, but less so. As Dr. Sowell explains: "The hope for profits and the threat of losses is what forces a business owner in a capitalist economy to produce at the lowest cost and sell what the customers are most willing to pay for. ... Under socialism (there is) far less incentive to be as efficient ... much less to keep up with changing conditions and respond to them quickly." With less incentive for efficiencies and cost control, the prices of goods might well be higher.
Profits are not arbitrary charges added on to the costs of producing goods and services; nor are they attributable to artificially high prices charged by those motivated by greed. Indeed, writes Sowell, most of the great fortunes in American history were amassed when entrepreneurs were able to reduce costs and charge lower prices and to increase their volume sales to mass markets.
You get the point. Capitalists don't view profits as evil or the product of greed. Their opponents -- call them Marxists, fascists, socialists, radical liberals or whatever -- do. Which brings us back to Barack Obama.
Both his father, Barack Obama Sr., and his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, were communists. His church of choice was one of black liberation theology, whose Marxist roots are inarguable. He associated with far leftists on the "organizing" streets of Chicago, including Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Mentorship and associations are one thing, but what have Obama's words and actions revealed about his attitudes toward labor, capital, profits and government control of business and industry?
Well, he said that he would raise capital gains tax rates, even if it reduced revenues, as a matter of fairness. It's only fair to make everyone poorer if you believe profits are inherently evil.
He told Joe the Plumber he wants to spread the wealth around. He talked about confiscating Exxon Mobil's profits and giving them to consumers, saying "they are not going to give up those profits easily." He called Chrysler creditors "speculators" and castigated them for refusing to accept his extortionist reorganization plan. He berated Wall Street for making profits, saying "now is not (the) time" for them to "rake in profits." He and his wife even railed against the pursuit of profit in their respective commencement addresses.
He abused the power of his office to steal money from GM and Chrysler shareholders and transfer it to the proletariat, I mean, the United Auto Workers. He redistributed taxpayer money from those who have paid their mortgages to those who have not.
He is desperately trying to spread the misery and impoverish businesses and individuals through his cap and tax plan, which no proponent of economic growth and prosperity would consider supporting. And in addition to gobbling up other businesses and industries, he is trying to nationalize medicine -- to siphon off the evil surplus value charged by doctors and insurance companies -- on the flawed Marxist theory that he can reduce costs overall, when the reason health care costs have already skyrocketed is that market forces have been suppressed in the industry.
You don't have to call him a Marxist, but at least understand where his heart is.
---
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.DavidLimbaugh.com.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Obama Administration Calls for Universal Access to Abortion at U.N. Meeting
Thursday, July 2, 2009 4:05 PM
By: Samantha Singson, C-Fam Article Font Size
At United Nations headquarters this week, the Obama administration continued its push for ever increasing access to legal abortion around the world. The Obama team has introduced language that has thrown a high level negotiation into a roil. The US proposal calls for “universal access” to “sexual and reproductive health services including universal access to family planning.” The document under consideration will culminate in the 2009 Annual Ministerial Review, which convenes next week in Geneva.
The sticking point for many delegations and what has driven apart the usual solid European bloc is the use of the word “services” in the context of “reproductive health.” Way back in 2001 during negotiations related to the ten year review of the Child Convention, a Canadian delegate blurted out “of course everyone knows ‘services’ means abortion.” Ever since, the word “services” has been a topic of hot debate.
So controversial is the topic of “services” in the context of “reproductive health” that the usually impenetrable negotiating bloc of the 27 member European Union has imploded with Malta, Poland and Ireland splitting from their allies and joining the Holy See in opposing the measure.
In addition to the word "services," delegates are also concerned with attempts to link “sexual and reproductive health” to “universal access,” something the UN has never agreed to and what would amount to a major gain for pro-abortion forces. There have been numerous attempts at the UN to insert language on "universal access to sexual and reproductive health services." In 2005 at the Commission on Population and Development, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) joined with pro-abortion lobby groups to call for "universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and programmes." They were defeated in large part by the Bush-appointed US delegates who insisted that none of the terms related to reproductive health be interpreted to include abortion.
In recent weeks the new US administration has interpreted "reproductive health" to include abortion. In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a US House subcommittee, “We [the Obama administration] happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.” In this statement, Clinton also contradicted the agreement reached at the Cairo Confernence which said that abortion can never be used as a part of family planning. This was a document that Clinton helped to negotiate.
Apart from the US, other delegations including Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Estonia and the United Kingdom are pushing for the language.
The G-77 developing nations' bloc is still holding its own negotiations to determine whether or not they will have a common position on the paragraph.
Negotiations are scheduled to continue this week and the draft declaration will be adopted by high level government ministers at the end of next week's meeting in Geneva.
By: Samantha Singson, C-Fam Article Font Size
At United Nations headquarters this week, the Obama administration continued its push for ever increasing access to legal abortion around the world. The Obama team has introduced language that has thrown a high level negotiation into a roil. The US proposal calls for “universal access” to “sexual and reproductive health services including universal access to family planning.” The document under consideration will culminate in the 2009 Annual Ministerial Review, which convenes next week in Geneva.
The sticking point for many delegations and what has driven apart the usual solid European bloc is the use of the word “services” in the context of “reproductive health.” Way back in 2001 during negotiations related to the ten year review of the Child Convention, a Canadian delegate blurted out “of course everyone knows ‘services’ means abortion.” Ever since, the word “services” has been a topic of hot debate.
So controversial is the topic of “services” in the context of “reproductive health” that the usually impenetrable negotiating bloc of the 27 member European Union has imploded with Malta, Poland and Ireland splitting from their allies and joining the Holy See in opposing the measure.
In addition to the word "services," delegates are also concerned with attempts to link “sexual and reproductive health” to “universal access,” something the UN has never agreed to and what would amount to a major gain for pro-abortion forces. There have been numerous attempts at the UN to insert language on "universal access to sexual and reproductive health services." In 2005 at the Commission on Population and Development, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) joined with pro-abortion lobby groups to call for "universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and programmes." They were defeated in large part by the Bush-appointed US delegates who insisted that none of the terms related to reproductive health be interpreted to include abortion.
In recent weeks the new US administration has interpreted "reproductive health" to include abortion. In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a US House subcommittee, “We [the Obama administration] happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.” In this statement, Clinton also contradicted the agreement reached at the Cairo Confernence which said that abortion can never be used as a part of family planning. This was a document that Clinton helped to negotiate.
Apart from the US, other delegations including Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Estonia and the United Kingdom are pushing for the language.
The G-77 developing nations' bloc is still holding its own negotiations to determine whether or not they will have a common position on the paragraph.
Negotiations are scheduled to continue this week and the draft declaration will be adopted by high level government ministers at the end of next week's meeting in Geneva.
Obama releasing terrorists
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Senators Sessions and Kyl Demand Answers on Obama's Negotiations with Iran-Backed Terrorist and Release of a Terrorist Responsible for Murdering U.S. Troops [Andy McCarthy]
The Washington Times has the story this morning, here. My column on this disgrace is here.
I realize the media is in the tank for this president, but this is the most shocking story we have had in a steady stream of shock since the start of the Obama presidency. Will no one ask about why we have released an Iran-backed terrorist who is responsible for the 2007 abduction/murder of our troops (five murdered, four of them after being kidnapped) in Karbala?
The administration, if anyone bothers to ask, will undoubtedly spout nonsense about promoting "Iraqi reconciliation." But this is a terrorist who murdered Americans — an unlawful combatant who committed war crimes. Even if that were not true, it's absurd to suggest that releasing the leaders of a terrorist network is going to promote peace in Iraq — does Obama think we should release the Blind Sheikh, the embassy bombers, or KSM to promote a peaceful settlement with al-Qaeda? But even if it were not absurd on its face, the Iraqi interest here is not the paramount interest for us; terrorists who methodically target and kill Americans, and whom we capture, are supposed to be tried and executed or imprisoned by us. We don't release them for the benefit of other countries, and we certainly don't barter them for hostages — in violation of American policy and common sense — because that endangers our troops, our civilians, and our allies.
Why are we still in negotiations with an Iran-backed terror network to release the network's leaders? Even if that were not a stupid idea on its face, have we learned nothing from the last go-round? In exchange for the terrorist described above, we got back two dead bodies of British hostages — i.e., not even the five live British hostages whose freedom we were foolishly hoping to secure.
Finally, why is this being done at a time when the Iranian regime is not only murdering and repressing its own population but, as Michael (Ledeen) pointed out yesterday, is continuing to support and train terrorists to kill American military personnel in Iraq?
07/02 06:39 AMShare
Senators Sessions and Kyl Demand Answers on Obama's Negotiations with Iran-Backed Terrorist and Release of a Terrorist Responsible for Murdering U.S. Troops [Andy McCarthy]
The Washington Times has the story this morning, here. My column on this disgrace is here.
I realize the media is in the tank for this president, but this is the most shocking story we have had in a steady stream of shock since the start of the Obama presidency. Will no one ask about why we have released an Iran-backed terrorist who is responsible for the 2007 abduction/murder of our troops (five murdered, four of them after being kidnapped) in Karbala?
The administration, if anyone bothers to ask, will undoubtedly spout nonsense about promoting "Iraqi reconciliation." But this is a terrorist who murdered Americans — an unlawful combatant who committed war crimes. Even if that were not true, it's absurd to suggest that releasing the leaders of a terrorist network is going to promote peace in Iraq — does Obama think we should release the Blind Sheikh, the embassy bombers, or KSM to promote a peaceful settlement with al-Qaeda? But even if it were not absurd on its face, the Iraqi interest here is not the paramount interest for us; terrorists who methodically target and kill Americans, and whom we capture, are supposed to be tried and executed or imprisoned by us. We don't release them for the benefit of other countries, and we certainly don't barter them for hostages — in violation of American policy and common sense — because that endangers our troops, our civilians, and our allies.
Why are we still in negotiations with an Iran-backed terror network to release the network's leaders? Even if that were not a stupid idea on its face, have we learned nothing from the last go-round? In exchange for the terrorist described above, we got back two dead bodies of British hostages — i.e., not even the five live British hostages whose freedom we were foolishly hoping to secure.
Finally, why is this being done at a time when the Iranian regime is not only murdering and repressing its own population but, as Michael (Ledeen) pointed out yesterday, is continuing to support and train terrorists to kill American military personnel in Iraq?
07/02 06:39 AMShare
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Here is a great piece written by John Stossel from ABC.
July 1, 2009
"Better" Health Care?
By John Stossel
President Obama says government will make health care cheaper and better. But there's no free lunch.
In England, health care is "free" -- as long as you don't mind waiting. People wait so long for dentist appointments that some pull their own teeth. At any one time, half a million people are waiting to get into a British hospital. A British paper reports that one hospital tried to save money by not changing bedsheets. Instead of washing sheets, the staff was encouraged to just turn them over.
Obama insists he is not "trying to bring about government-run healthcare".
"But government management does the same thing," says Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute. "To reduce costs they'll have to ration -- deny -- care."
"People line up for care, some of them die. That's what happens," says Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of "The Cure". He liked Canada's government health care until he started treating patients.
"The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting for radiation therapy, waiting for the knee replacement so they could finally walk up to the second floor of their house." "You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! Just wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! Just wait six months."
Polls show most Canadians like their free health care, but most people aren't sick when the poll-taker calls. Canadian doctors told us the system is cracking. One complained that he can't get heart-attack victims into the ICU.
In America, people wait in emergency rooms, too, but it's much worse in Canada. If you're sick enough to be admitted, the average wait is 23 hours.
"We can't send these patients to other hospitals. Dr. Eric Letovsky told us. "Every other emergency department in the country is just as packed as we are."
More than a million and a half Canadians say they can't find a family doctor. Some towns hold lotteries to determine who gets a doctor. In Norwood, Ontario, "20/20" videotaped a town clerk pulling the names of the lucky winners out of a lottery box. The losers must wait to see a doctor.
Shirley Healy, like many sick Canadians, came to America for surgery. Her doctor in British Columbia told her she had only a few weeks to live because a blocked artery kept her from digesting food. Yet Canadian officials called her surgery "elective."
"The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live," she said.
It's true that America's partly profit-driven, partly bureaucratic system is expensive, and sometimes wasteful, but the pursuit of profit reduces waste and costs and gives the world the improvements in medicine that ease pain and save lives.
"[America] is the country of medical innovation. This is where people come when they need treatment," Dr. Gratzer says.
"Literally we're surrounded by medical miracles. Death by cardiovascular disease has dropped by two-thirds in the last 50 years. You've got to pay a price for that type of advancement."
Canada and England don't pay the price because they freeload off American innovation. If America adopted their systems, we could worry less about paying for health care, but we'd get 2009-level care -- forever. Government monopolies don't innovate. Profit seekers do.
We saw this in Canada, where we did find one area of medicine that offers easy access to cutting-edge technology -- CT scan, endoscopy, thoracoscopy, laparoscopy, etc. It was open 24/7. Patients didn't have to wait.
But you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Animal care is the one area of medicine that hasn't been taken over by the government. Dogs can get a CT scan in one day. For people, the waiting list is a month.
"Better" Health Care?
By John Stossel
President Obama says government will make health care cheaper and better. But there's no free lunch.
In England, health care is "free" -- as long as you don't mind waiting. People wait so long for dentist appointments that some pull their own teeth. At any one time, half a million people are waiting to get into a British hospital. A British paper reports that one hospital tried to save money by not changing bedsheets. Instead of washing sheets, the staff was encouraged to just turn them over.
Obama insists he is not "trying to bring about government-run healthcare".
"But government management does the same thing," says Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute. "To reduce costs they'll have to ration -- deny -- care."
"People line up for care, some of them die. That's what happens," says Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of "The Cure". He liked Canada's government health care until he started treating patients.
"The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting for radiation therapy, waiting for the knee replacement so they could finally walk up to the second floor of their house." "You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! Just wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! Just wait six months."
Polls show most Canadians like their free health care, but most people aren't sick when the poll-taker calls. Canadian doctors told us the system is cracking. One complained that he can't get heart-attack victims into the ICU.
In America, people wait in emergency rooms, too, but it's much worse in Canada. If you're sick enough to be admitted, the average wait is 23 hours.
"We can't send these patients to other hospitals. Dr. Eric Letovsky told us. "Every other emergency department in the country is just as packed as we are."
More than a million and a half Canadians say they can't find a family doctor. Some towns hold lotteries to determine who gets a doctor. In Norwood, Ontario, "20/20" videotaped a town clerk pulling the names of the lucky winners out of a lottery box. The losers must wait to see a doctor.
Shirley Healy, like many sick Canadians, came to America for surgery. Her doctor in British Columbia told her she had only a few weeks to live because a blocked artery kept her from digesting food. Yet Canadian officials called her surgery "elective."
"The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live," she said.
It's true that America's partly profit-driven, partly bureaucratic system is expensive, and sometimes wasteful, but the pursuit of profit reduces waste and costs and gives the world the improvements in medicine that ease pain and save lives.
"[America] is the country of medical innovation. This is where people come when they need treatment," Dr. Gratzer says.
"Literally we're surrounded by medical miracles. Death by cardiovascular disease has dropped by two-thirds in the last 50 years. You've got to pay a price for that type of advancement."
Canada and England don't pay the price because they freeload off American innovation. If America adopted their systems, we could worry less about paying for health care, but we'd get 2009-level care -- forever. Government monopolies don't innovate. Profit seekers do.
We saw this in Canada, where we did find one area of medicine that offers easy access to cutting-edge technology -- CT scan, endoscopy, thoracoscopy, laparoscopy, etc. It was open 24/7. Patients didn't have to wait.
But you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Animal care is the one area of medicine that hasn't been taken over by the government. Dogs can get a CT scan in one day. For people, the waiting list is a month.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Freedom Can't Be Rationed
By Rep. Mike Pence from the June 2009 issue
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free!"
As Congress prepares to consider health reform, P. J. O’Rourke’s famous quip provides an important context to the debate. President Obama and Democrats in Congress have proposed a government-run health care plan that would “compete” against private health coverage. Estimates have suggested that such “competition” would encourage employers to reduce costs by eliminating their health benefits for employees. As a result, as many as 119 million Americans will lose their coverage, forcing most of them into the government-run plan. In his budget, the president proposed nearly $1 trillion in new spending as a mere “down payment” to fund this “free” health care gimmick.
The truth is, government-run health insurance takes away citizens’ freedom, forcing them to accept a government decree about intensely personal health decisions. At a time when Medicare faces unfunded obligations of nearly $86 trillion, dumping more than half of all Americans with private coverage into a government program will dramatically jeopardize our fiscal future. To make matters worse, it will take away citizens’ freedom to choose their doctors—and the freedom to choose, with their doctors, the treatment option that best meets their health needs.
Democrats have admitted both their desire for government to control health carew and the effect of such control on ordinary Americans. A provision in the recent “stimulus” bill will spend $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research. While few would dispute the wisdom of scientific research comparing the medical benefits of various treatment options for a given ailment, Democrats have shown a strong desire to use such research to examine the cost-effectiveness of medical treatments—as a precursor to government rationing of care. In fact, a draft committee report produced by the Democratic majority noted that “more expensive [treatments] will no longer be prescribed” as a result of rationing sparked by effectiveness research.
Peter Orszag, President Obama’s new budget director, was candid about the impact of government control on health care when he cited studies in a 2007 report noting that “patients who might benefit from more expensive treatments might be made worse off” if the government rations access to costly—but potentially life saving—care. In other words, the true cost of “free” government-run health insurance will be a loss of freedom for millions of Americans who will be forced to give up their freedom to choose medical treatments that will actually work for them.
Here’s how one Michigan mother expressed her exasperation with the government-run Medicaid program: “You feel so helpless thinking, something’s wrong with this child and I can’t even get her into a doctor….When we had real insurance, we would call and come in at the drop of a hat.” This mother’s helplessness in a vast government bureaucracy is the antithesis of freedom—lack of freedom to choose one’s doctor resulting in a lack of access to care.
Our nation needs health reforms that expand Americans’ freedom. Removing the current inequities in the tax code that force individuals whose employers don’t offer health coverage to use after-tax dollars to buy insurance—and pay 30 to 50 percent more as a result—would put coverage within reach for millions of Americans. Allowing individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines would increase consumer choice while expanding insurance coverage for as many as 12 million individuals. Just as important, these options would ensure that doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats, make important health care decisions.
While Democrats argue that a government-run plan is more “efficient,” I strongly believe that the nationalized plan would look a lot like Medicaid does today—cheap, broken, and government-rationed coverage that most Americans do not want. The American people want to keep their health care freedom—and Republicans need to respond to their call.
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free!"
As Congress prepares to consider health reform, P. J. O’Rourke’s famous quip provides an important context to the debate. President Obama and Democrats in Congress have proposed a government-run health care plan that would “compete” against private health coverage. Estimates have suggested that such “competition” would encourage employers to reduce costs by eliminating their health benefits for employees. As a result, as many as 119 million Americans will lose their coverage, forcing most of them into the government-run plan. In his budget, the president proposed nearly $1 trillion in new spending as a mere “down payment” to fund this “free” health care gimmick.
The truth is, government-run health insurance takes away citizens’ freedom, forcing them to accept a government decree about intensely personal health decisions. At a time when Medicare faces unfunded obligations of nearly $86 trillion, dumping more than half of all Americans with private coverage into a government program will dramatically jeopardize our fiscal future. To make matters worse, it will take away citizens’ freedom to choose their doctors—and the freedom to choose, with their doctors, the treatment option that best meets their health needs.
Democrats have admitted both their desire for government to control health carew and the effect of such control on ordinary Americans. A provision in the recent “stimulus” bill will spend $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research. While few would dispute the wisdom of scientific research comparing the medical benefits of various treatment options for a given ailment, Democrats have shown a strong desire to use such research to examine the cost-effectiveness of medical treatments—as a precursor to government rationing of care. In fact, a draft committee report produced by the Democratic majority noted that “more expensive [treatments] will no longer be prescribed” as a result of rationing sparked by effectiveness research.
Peter Orszag, President Obama’s new budget director, was candid about the impact of government control on health care when he cited studies in a 2007 report noting that “patients who might benefit from more expensive treatments might be made worse off” if the government rations access to costly—but potentially life saving—care. In other words, the true cost of “free” government-run health insurance will be a loss of freedom for millions of Americans who will be forced to give up their freedom to choose medical treatments that will actually work for them.
Here’s how one Michigan mother expressed her exasperation with the government-run Medicaid program: “You feel so helpless thinking, something’s wrong with this child and I can’t even get her into a doctor….When we had real insurance, we would call and come in at the drop of a hat.” This mother’s helplessness in a vast government bureaucracy is the antithesis of freedom—lack of freedom to choose one’s doctor resulting in a lack of access to care.
Our nation needs health reforms that expand Americans’ freedom. Removing the current inequities in the tax code that force individuals whose employers don’t offer health coverage to use after-tax dollars to buy insurance—and pay 30 to 50 percent more as a result—would put coverage within reach for millions of Americans. Allowing individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines would increase consumer choice while expanding insurance coverage for as many as 12 million individuals. Just as important, these options would ensure that doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats, make important health care decisions.
While Democrats argue that a government-run plan is more “efficient,” I strongly believe that the nationalized plan would look a lot like Medicaid does today—cheap, broken, and government-rationed coverage that most Americans do not want. The American people want to keep their health care freedom—and Republicans need to respond to their call.
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