Editorial of the day

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/rolling_in_dough_IEQqExWnRonswRVQZcl3WM

Rich Lowry opines on the contrast between the employment situation in the public and private sectors during this recession.

What passes for policy debate in America today

The following sentence from an article about a study released by health insurers is hardly encouraging:

Democrats and their allies scrambled on Monday to knock down a new
industry-funded study forecasting that Senate legislation, over time, will
add thousands of dollars to the cost of a typical policy.

And sure enough, what follows in the article is not an argument on the merits, but rather:

"Distorted and flawed," said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass.
"Fundamentally dishonest," said AARP's senior policy strategist, John Rother. "A
hatchet job," said a spokesman for Senate Finance Committee chairman Max
Baucus, D-Mont.

But what exactly is so "Fundamentally dishonest?"

At the heart of the industry's complaint is a decision by lawmakers to weaken the requirement that millions more Americans get coverage. Since the legislation would ban insurance companies from denying coverage on account of poor health, many people will wait to sign up until they get sick, the industry says. And that will drive up costs for everybody else.

Isn't that kind of a no-brainer? Why pay for health insurance when you're not sick if you can just wait and get it when you are? If the government forces insurers to provide insurance on the spot without limitation for covering illness or injury that they already had, they will be creating an incentive for people to go without insurance. People will only sign up when they are getting ready to submit claims.

If you are an insurer, what rate should you charge if many of your policyholders are only ever signing up for coverage when they are ready to submit a claim? Hint: the answer is it will cost more than today. If you are an insurer, and you used to deny some claims because they were submitted for pre-existing conditions, and you now have to pay additional money for those claims, how much should you then charge? Hint: the answer is it will cost more than today.

There can certainly be a debate as to how much premiums will go up, but ceteris paribus, they will go up.

The real "distortion" in this case is the White House calling a report that points out an important aspect of health care policy that they are trying to gloss over a distortion. The real fundamental dishonesty is for the AARP to call such a common sense application of the incentives people will face "Fundamental dishonesty." The real hatchet job is for Sen. Baucus to not to come out and acknowledge the (unintended?) consequences of his legislation, but to instead call a report that does a "hatchet job."

How discouraging that the White House, the AARP, and the Chairman of the Senate Finance committee are avoiding an honest, rationale, discussion of the impacts of health care reform.

Ellsworth Monkton Krugman

I think anyone with half a brain and enough time spent following American politics would agree that there is "over-the-top" opposition on both the left and the right towards the other side. If that premise is correct (and I think it is), then to suggest otherwise means that someone either:

1. is stupid
2. is uninformed
3. is twisting the truth to present the portion of it that they want you to see.

If I had to bet, I'd go with option #3 for Paul Krugman. In his recent NY times piece, he not only isolates Republicans as being "so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?" he also generalizes any opposition into the "essential truth about the state of American politics" that "the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple."

Being a Republican, which Krugman is not, I prefer to speak for myself. I am not guided by pure spite, or even impure spite. I chose the Republican party in my early twenties because I thought they were the closest philosophically to my view of the role of government: a limited one. I thought the Republicans were at their best in the mid 90's when they fought for limited government, and at their worst a decade later when they spent like big-government fools during W's two terms.

Back to Krugman, he conveniently leaves out any Democrats that have been over the top. Would it be fair for someone on the right to pluck a few choice quotes from ACORN, for example, and generalize all Democrats accordingly?

He writes "Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years." Or the Bush years, maybe? Was there no over-the-top opposition then?

To call someone out when they go over the top is certainly fair game. To imply that it's only one party that does so, however, is the work of a spin doctor. It's a piece that I think Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" would have been proud of.

First Amendment justice

I haven't taken a single law class, so am posting in a state of ignorance. If I understand the current jurisprudence on freedom of speech (huge if), then whatever moron launched the "Should Obama be killed" Facebook poll may not ultimately face legal penalties.

After doing a little surfing, I found the following on Wikipedia:

The doctrine states that speech that will cause, or has as its purpose, "imminent lawless action" (such as a riot) does not have constitutional protection. As of 2009[update], "imminent lawless action" continues to be the test applied in free speech cases.

It seems like there would be sufficient distance between taking a Facebook poll and "lawless action" so as to protect the poll under the First Amendment. Let's hope there is some other legal route by which the creator of this poll is punished.

To discuss the impeachment of a president (as some on the left did for much of Bush 43's presidency) seems to be well within acceptable speech. If someone doesn't like Obama and wants to put "Impeach Obama" bumper stickers on their car, let them. I don't agree with them, but recognize their right to that kind of speech. But "Should Obama be killed?" crosses the line.

Let's hope that the perpetrator of this poll is caught, and justice is served.

ObamACORN pt. 2

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a video worth? The video below seems to contradict Page's claim that "The organization and the former community organizer have not had much contact since, other than connections that have been alleged or exaggerated by conservative media."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJcVgJhNaU

ObamACORN

Clarence Page writes that the "right's recent obsession with ACORN... grows largely out of a faint hope that bringing down ACORN will help them to bring down Obama"

Being on the right, which Page clearly isn't, I can say that I hope ACORN gets "brought down" for a different reason: they are for things that I am against. Their reform consists of an even greater government intervention into the daily lives of all Americans, and removes even more of the voluntary exchange between free people. They want wages to be set, not by the market, but the government. They want the number of sick days to be set, not by an agreement between employer and employee, but by the government. They want to rewrite contracts that were voluntary entered into by both sides after the fact, so that lenders are forced to take it on the chin when homeowners stop paying their mortgages.

I'll leave their views on immigration out, because it's a different issue, but the above three are all instances of government restricting the freedom of both (yes both) parties in a voluntary exchange. This is America, and they are free to have their opinions on the proper role of government, along with everyone else. Why is it, however, that money is taken from me and given to them by the government?

By the way, you'd think that ACORN might be grateful to the hand that feeds them. Instead, they are now in the news for offering advice on how to set up a brothel with 13 underage El Salvadoran girls (Page's column conveniently leaves that part of it out) so as to avoid paying taxes.

For Page, the concern seems to be what impact this may have on President Obama, and his piece seems intent on short-circuiting any connection. After noting that "back in 1995, young Harvard law grad" Obama helped ACORN, he goes on to state:

"The organization and the former community organizer have not had much contact since, other than connections that have been alleged or exaggerated by conservative media."

Really?

Factcheck.org notes that

When Obama was on the board of directors of the Woods Fund, the foundation gave grants of $75,000 in 2001 and $70,000 in 2002 to ACORN's Chicago office.

They also note that ACORN's Political Action Committee endorsed Obama.

In addition, during the campaign, the Pittsburgh Tribune review reported:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an
offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

I certainly hope that the connection between Obama and ACORN, both financially and philosophically, doesn't "bring down" the president's efforts to avert a nuclear Iran, for example. I do hope, however, that this latest ACORN scandal will slow any momentum in imposing their leftist agenda on America.

Can you feel the "Change" in Washington?

I can't say that I'm shocked that federal government employees acted "innappropriately" in an 8/10/09 conference call where National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) employees joined with White House staff to discuss ways of using taxpayer dollars to fund art projects that would promote President Obama's agenda.

While it's wrong in multiple ways, it's not Obama's problem as much as it's a problem with government at every level.

More on the systemic problem in a moment, but first off, exactly what do we need the NEA for?? Why is money forcibly taken from me and every other taxpayer to pay for "art" that we have no say in? It isn't like without government support, there wouldn't be any art. In fact, many of our richest and most famous citizens are artists, and their money comes from the voluntary patronage of their fans.

Put another way, if whatever art is being funded wouldn't survive from the willing patronage of American citizens, then why should we fund it with the involuntary taxation of American taxpayers? Isn't forcing someone to pay for something they don't want contrary to freedom and liberty?

While I'm sure the White House at least wishes this call hadn't been made public, and maybe even that it hadn't happened, this is in no stretch of the imagination a problem unique to President Obama. At the local level, public employee unions (police, firefighters, teachers, office workers, garbagemen, you name it) take money from the wages that taxpayers fund, give it to the politicians who negotiate their contracts, and the politicians sweeten the deal. The politicians get campaign money, the unions get power, the public employees get paid and the taxpayers get screwed. The same thing happens at the state level. In California, the union for the correctional officers (the CCPOA) wields enormous influence in state elections. At the federal level, politicians get contributions from entities that benefit from the local projects that they fund from their earmarks.

So this cycle of taxpayer dollars being spent in a political fashion, while disgusting, is certainly not a problem unique to Obama, it happens every day at every level in our society.