How Obama Miscalculated on the Federal Healthcare Takeover

President Barack Obama continues to give lip service to his planned federal takeover of U.S. healthcare.  (Any pretext that this political football was about healing people vanished long ago. It's always been about the economy, stupid.)

But the president remains aloof and disconnected from the American people on this issue. According to the latest Rasmussen Reports Daily Tracking Poll, Pres. Obama now has a Presidential Approval Index rating of -17. Minus 17. That means that 25% of Americans (roughly the same number of people who identify themselves as hard-core liberals) strongly approve of the president's policies, while 42% (closing in on half of all Americans) strongly disapprove.

Although the president continues to make it clear that he would rather be a one-term president with accomplishments than a two-term ineffective president, that stubbornness does nothing to solve the healthcare problem, or anything else, for that matter. In point of fact, the only compromise to come out of this stance is that Mr. Obama is tracking to be a one-term ineffective president.

Did the president and the hard left in Congress miscalculate on healthcare? The answer is yes. Democrats are notoriously bad with numbers and healthcare is no exception. The president's healthcare death march had less to do with the drastically inflated number of uninsured people bandied about and more to do with the fact that healthcare amounts to 16% of the largest economy in the world. In healthcare he saw a chance to remake a big chunk of the economy in one shot.

Here are the real numbers that mattered in the healthcare debate. These are the numbers that the president and the left-leaning Congress forgot to take into account:

• The healthcare industry itself consists of nearly 350,000 locations.
• That industry employs 5.5 million people, all of whom would be affected by the president's plan and most of whom vote.
• There are a half million doctors and surgeons alone, not to mention over two million registered nurses.
• There are nearly 9,000 companies alone that make medical devices-nearly all of which would have been taxed to pay for the president's scheme.
• These 9,000 companies employ 360,000 people-again, all of whom would have been negatively affected and most of whom are voters.
• The president's plan as it stands finally ran off the rails in Massachusetts, with the special Senatorial election of Republican Scott Brown last week. The Bay State alone is home to more than 200 medical device companies. The president errs when he says the election didn't turn on healthcare. For these 200 companies and their employees, their friends and relatives, that's exactly what it turned on.

 According Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal, who assembled these numbers, The ObamaCare dreamers were driven by the chance to finally fulfill FDR's New Deal hope for universal healthcare. But what they ignored was the fact that  the world in general, and healthcare in particular, is immensely more complicated today than it was 70 years ago. Recasting one-sixth of a $14 trillion economy made up of 300 million people residing in 50 different states spread out over an area 16 times that of France was never going to happen.

The president continues his strategy of creating a bogey for each of his pet policies--someone or some group that must be defeated and whatever legislation the president proposes is the only way to do it. In the case of healthcare the bogey is the ephemeral "special interests" who want to preserve the status quo. Again, the president misrepresents the debate. Anyone with any understanding of our healthcare system knows that change is necessary and change must come.  But in clinging to an outmoded dream that is impossible to fulfill, the president has lost valuable time-much in the same way that Democrats cost the nation 17 years and counting  when they were rebuffed with HillaryCare.

It's not the Republicans or conservatives who are holding up healthcare. It's the leftists who cling to a dream that died with FDR in 1945, when we entered a post-war world and economy more complex than anyone could have dreamed.

It's time we looked at the numbers and came up with a healthcare system that's an actual improvement, rather than one that might be theoretically better if only this were 1939.

Just thought you might like to know.

North Korea and the Cleanest Race

I just added a new book to my reading list: The Cleanest Race by B.R. Myers. Mr. Myers is a professor at Dongseo University and an occasional journalist. His book is an attempt to provide an explanation to Westerners of the seemingly irrational behavior of North Korean leaders.

We make a mistake, according to Prof. Myers, when we try and interpret the actions of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Il Jong through a Western looking glass. It is a mistake to call the North Korean leader and his cadre, Communists, Stalinists, or any other "ist," he says. Neither, says the author is North Korea's leaders motivated by the concept of self-reliance that Western intelligence has told us for so long has been the driving motivator for keeping an entire population subjugated to the whims of the Dear Leader.

What keeps the country together and under the boot of a cruel dictator is a moral superiority based on race. Simply put, it is a nationalist ideal not dissimilar from that of the Japanese prior to 1945 or the Nazi Aryan race theory.

Viewed through this prism, the actions of the North seem to make a little more, but not a lot more, sense. At least it explains the official government view of Americans as animals, no better than wolves or hyenas. It is the reason that the government explains that humanitarian aid from the U.S. and other Western powers is played off as "tribute" from weaker nations to a stronger one. Even Bill Clinton's mission last year to Pyongyang to rescue to imprisoned journalists is tossed off as the pilgrimage of a vassal to a more powerful leader to atone and beg forgiveness for his sins.

All of which is quaintly bizarre in the 21st century. Except when you mix in the threat of nukes. Then bizarre turns to scary. Under their worldview, the North Koreans have no reason or motivation to give up their nuclear program, nor any desire to make peace with the U.S. The last 15 years have been a kabuki dance with three U.S. presidents to manage passions, not to overcome them. Thus, says Prof. Myers, the answer to the question of whether a dirt poor, third-world country would go to war with their neighbors to the south and their Western ally, the U.S., is a resounding yes. And the worse that domestic politics become in the North, and the more that deprivation feeds political unrest, the more likely it would seem to be.

This is scary stuff. In his 2002 State of the Union address George Bush outlined an "axis of evil" consisting of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iraq has been pretty much pacified and Iran is still a big question mark in the Middle East. But Prof. Myers' book takes some of the mystery out of North Korea. The picture of the North is a little clearer, but no less scary.

Not exactly bedtime reading.

Just thought you might like to know.

Stand Him Down

Saturday marks the 7th anniversary of the sentencing of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber convicted of trying to blow up an airliner with explosives concealed in his shoe. There is an email making the rounds on the Internet these days--about Mr. Reid's sentencing hearing, and the words of 
the Hon. Willam Young, the U.S. District  Court judge who sentenced Mr. Reid. I've checked the email out on Snopes and Urban Legends to see if it's true and it appears to be. It holds double significance this week: the 7th anniversary and the continuing soap opera of what to do with the "underpants bomber,"  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. 


Judge's Young's comments are so inspiring, compelling, that they seem almost unreal (thus the need to check their veracity) in this day and age. I would challenge the president or anyone else in his administration, or his wife, who professed to never have been proud of her country, to read this and believe that America is still not an exceptional country. 

The transcript of Judge Young's comments:

Mr. Richard C. Reid, hearken now to the sentence the Court imposes upon you.

On counts 1, 5 and 6 the Court sentences you to life in prison in the custody of the United States Attorney General.

On counts 2, 3, 4 and 7, the Court sentences you to 20 years in prison on each count, the sentence on each count to run consecutive with the other. That's 80 years.

On count 8 the Court sentences you to the mandatory 30 years consecutive to the 80 years just imposed. The Court imposes upon you each of the eight counts a fine of $250,000 for the aggregate fine of $2 million.

The Court accepts the government's recommendation with respect to restitution and orders restitution in the amount of $298.17 to Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines.

The Court imposes upon you the $800 special assessment.

The Court imposes upon you five years supervised release simply because the law requires it. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no further.

This is the sentence that is provided for by our statues. It is a fair and just sentence. It is a righteous sentence. Let me explain this to you.

We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect.

Here in this court , where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice, you are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.

And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are a big fellow. But you are not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders.

In a very real sense Trooper Santigo had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were and he said you're no big deal. You're no big deal.

What your counsel, what your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today? I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing. And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you. But as I search this entire record it comes as close to understanding as I know.

It seems to me you hate the one thing that is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose.

Here, in this society, the very winds carry freedom. They carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely.

It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their, their representation of you before other judges. We are about it. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden, pay any price, to preserve our freedoms.

Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. Day after tomorrow it will be forgotten. But this, however, will long endure. Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done.

The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged, and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.

See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. You know it always will.

Custody Mr. Officer. Stand him down.

Just thought you might like to know.

Rep. Paul Ryan Has a Better Idea on How to Fix What Ails the U.S.

Tonight, January 27, Pres. Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to a Joint Session of Congress. While the Constitution mandates that the Executive report to Congress on an annual basis, the tradition of doing so in person is a relatively new one. However, in this case, Pres. Obama might just want to mail it in, like many of his predecessors did.

Word on the street is that the president, following his battlefield conversion in Massachusetts last week, will make small business the tall pole in his economic recovery tent. He'll propose a combination of small business tax credits in an attempt to spur the economy. But this is just nibbling around the edges of a very large cracker-the collapse of the U.S. economy as we've known it for the last 60 years. See our January 26 post.

Paul Ryan is a member of Congress from Wisconsin. He is the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. He's taken the opportunity of tonight's State of the Union address to propose what he calls a "road map for America's future." While Pres. Obama may nibble around the edges of the problem, Rep. Ryan is a lot bolder. His plan is built on good old Midwestern common sense and American values. Writing in today's Wall Street Journal he lists the elements of his roadmap:

• Healthcare. We've spent 8 months in a bruising, partisan battle over the shape of healthcare reform. The result: A conservative-liberal stalemate. How about we try this: Provide universal access to health insurance by making the tax code fairer  to allow all Americans, either through their employer or on their own, to purchase insurance, even if those policies are written in another state. Provide supplemental payments to the poor so that they can find top-notch healthcare, rather than being consigned to the nether world of Medicaid coverage. Make insurance truly portable so it stays with the insured, not the company, and create high risk pools to make sure people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance without knocking out the concept of risk management, which keeps insurers solvent. The goal: Put Americans back in charge of their health, not insurance companies or government bureaucrats.
• Medicare. Preserve the system as is for older patients (55+), but create a Medicare payment for the younger ones to let them purchase their own Medicare-eligible plan. Also, fully fund Medical Savings Accounts for lower income patients. 
• Social Security. As with Medicare, keep the system intact for those workers who have paid into the system their whole lives and have an expectation of benefits in retirement. But allow workers younger than 55 to invest a third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plans that federal workers currently enjoy. These plans are guaranteed to not lose money. Most important, make these savings plans personal property so that when the beneficiary passes on, his heirs can inherit the asset. 
• Tax Reform. Reduce today's thousand-page tax code to two income brackets: 10% for joint returns up to $100,000 in income ($50,000 for individual filers), and 25% on taxable income above that amount. Period. The plan would preserve the standard deduction and personal exemption but would eliminate tax loopholes, deductions, credits, exclusions (except the healthcare tax credit), and nearly the entire tax preparation industry (which the current administration is attempting to tax with its harebrained tax prep licensing program)

There is a lot more to the Ryan Roadmap but you can see it for yourself online. Pres. Obama tonight will nibble at the problem in an attempt to re-engage the independent voters who elected him, while at the same time trying not to alienate the leftist/socialist cabal who created him. Delicate balance, and too little, too late. America's economy needs real, significant reforming, and Paul Ryan just might be the guy to do it.

Just thought you might like to know.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) addresses the House of Representatives on the looming pitfalls of the Obama 
healthcare plan.

The State of the Union is Bleak

Wednesday evening, January 27, Pres. Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. He'll have to report to Congress, his cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the justices of the Supreme Court exactly what he's done as president over the last 12 months. And the answer to that is not much.

For the record, here is the president's score card, January 2009-January 2010:

• Nearly a trillion dollars in "stimulus" spending that has generated little to no growth and has only transfered wealth out of the economy to government institutions
• A $1.3 trillion budget deficit
• A continuing budget deficit projected to aggregate to $6 trillion over the next decade, based on current spending rates
• A national debt of about $7.5 trillion, which is more than half the amount of our Gross Domestic Production, or GDP
• A projection that our national debt will grow to $15 trillion by the end of the next decade and will balloon to 67% of our GDP, which starts to put us in the class of third world countries who owe two-thirds to three-quarters of everything they produce (Like the old Tennessee Ernie Ford song, we'll soon owe our soul to the company store. But for us the company store is in Beijing.)
• A 10% unemployment rate that won't budge significantly for several more years

Congressional Budget Office chief James Elmendorf says we won't see a 5% unemployment again until 2014. That means we're not even half way through this thing. Pres. Obama, who continually mislabels the current recession as the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression, is about to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Look for the president Wednesday night, in his typical graceless manner, to blame Pres. Bush in part for the country's troubles. But, as they say down in Pres. Bush's West Texas homeland, that dog won't hunt. Pres. Obama has had a year to turn around the recession he inherited,  and frankly we're going in the wrong direction. We have nothing to show for for the last year but higher unemployment, a bigger deficit, and a national debit, the payment for which will suck every spare dollar out of the consumer economy.

The president Wednesday night will resort to what boxing impresario Don King called "trickeration," saying that he's ordered an immediate three year spending freeze (Funny, how that brings us right to his reelection year.). But most of the programs lined up for "cuts" have already received healthy increases over the last year. These "cuts" won't even restore those programs to where they were before Jan. 20, 2009.

Maybe it's because so much was expected of Barack Obama that his failures look monumental. Maybe it's the election of Republican Scott Brown in heavily Democrat Massachusetts that's gotten the president a good old dose of foxhole religion-making him a deficit hawk, at least for one night. But I think the issue is that this presidency, by any calculus, is shaping up to be among the worst in history. Massive deficits. Monumental debt. Chronically high unemployment on the order of the European countries the president so admires. Lack of security. No cogent homeland security strategy.  And more concern for the alleged rights of self-admitted terrorists than the rights of the American people to travel safely.

Regardless of how the president spins it, that's the state of our union right now.

Just thought you might like to know.

Pres. Obama Errs by Scapegoating the Banks

Pres. Barack Obama has once again set his sights on the financial services industry using banks and their suppliers as a punching bag to get in shape for the mid-term elections coming up in November.

As if the Card Accountability and Responsibility Disclosure (CARD) Act weren't enough, the president continues his attack on banks, continually blaming the industry for the financial mess we're in. The president, keenly interested in his "legacy," continues to harken back to the good old days. For Democrats these were the Great Depression. The president continually calls the current recession the worst economic times since the Depression, conveniently skipping over the 1970s--disco, Harvey Wallbangers, Quiana shirts, leisure suits, stagflation, double-digit interest rates and high unemployment. While anyone sane middle-age person might like to skip over the 1970s, the president believes we can cure our current ills by re-regulating the financial industry.

His answer is the second coming of the Glass-Steagall Act, that Depression era regulatory act that separated depository institutions from investment banking. But solumnist Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal says that might be a mistake. He points out that only 3% of the banks at the time had securities operations. In the 3 years following the act's implementation more than 2,000 banks folded-but only about 7% of those had securities businesses.

Mr. Zweib says rather than trying to be the new FDR, Pres. Obama should look at some positive moves that can really improve the banking system, rather than employing tactics that failed to work 80 years ago, and have little chance of working now.

Citing economist Edward Kane of Boston College, he offers the following suggestions to the president:

• Forget the populist riff about big Wall Street bonuses. If you're going to compensate execs, do it with a special class of stock and require the honchos to kick in their own dough if the bank looks like it's going belly up. Incentives are more effective than penalties.
• Make banks file "living wills" like you or I do, stating ahead of time what should happen to the assets of the bank if it fails.
• Rather than relying on grey-suited bureaucrats to save the financial system, create what Edward Kane calls a "West Point" for training regulators. If we're going to put the future of our economy in the hands of bureaucrats, why not make sure they know what they're going? 
• Last, why not provide incentives for regulators like we provide incentives for bankers? Bankers get incentives (e.i. bonuses) for producing revenue. Regulators should receive bonuses based on how many financial catastrophes they stop.

Mr. President, if you just want to demagogue and use bankers as scapegoats, that's fine. But you, of the supposedly towering intellect, should at least be intellectually honest. Admit that while your populist beat-up-bankers chant may help you troll for votes in November, it won't do anything to strengthen our financial system or restore our formerly best-in-class financial innovation.

But if you want to really solve what you see is a problem, then try the incentive approach. Something about catching more flies with sugar than vinegar.

Just thought you might like to know.

Israel Steals Scene Out of It's a Wonderful Life; Turkey Calls It a Bush Play

Remember that scene in It's a Wonderful Life? Mr. Potter (Did he ever have a first name?) calls George Bailey in for a sit-down, trying to bribe him with a job, and seats him in a side chair that would be more appropriate in a kindergarten. The move was designed to set Mr. Potter up in a superior position over Bailey, who had to sit on the other side of the desk, his knees pinned behind his ears and listen to Potter drone on.

I thought of that this morning when I read about the international crisis du jour. According to Stratfor, the global intelligence report, the Israeli foreign ministry called the Turkish ambassador in for a chat because of a Turkish soap opera that depicted Israelis kidnapping Palestinian children. When the ambassador arrived at the ministry he was seated in a shorter sofa than the minister, making it look like he was assuming an inferior position to the Israeli diplomat. It seemed relatively childish, until the Turks claimed that the Israeli deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon told a cameraman, in Hebrew, to make sure his shot showed the Turkish ambassador down low, "while (the Israelis are) up high."

Wars have been fought for less, I suppose, but in the volatile and insane world of Mideast politics, this could have implications, says Stratfor. Turkey is Israel's major ally in the Muslim world, although in the Mideast "ally" is a relative term. With a growing economy it teams with Israel to create vibrant, non-petroleum-based commerce. The "sofagate" episode must be seen in its context, says the global intelligence report, since Israel just announced a new policy of expelling ambassadors from Jerusalem that it feels have unjustly criticized it.

The act of expelling ambassadors isn't the same glove-slap-across-the-face challenge it was in the 1800s, but it does show the determination of Israel to set boundaries on how much abuse it will take from Muslim countries. Egypt and Jordan get a pass on playing to their anti-Israeli domestic audiences, provided they take no overt steps to challenge Israel. But Turkey is an important partner for Israel right now, and a row could upset the delicate balance of Mideast politics.

And when Mideast politics roil, the U.S. usually ends up getting involved. With our hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti right now, might make sense to buy the Israeli foreign ministry a new sofa.

Just thought you might like to know.

Taliban Strikes Boldly at Heart of Afghanistan in Coordinated Tet-Like Offensive

Stratfor reported this morning at 0827 GMT that the Taliban had launched a major offensive on Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. As the country's new cabinet was being sworn in, the militant group claimed that 20 homicide bombers were attacking the presidential palace, the central bank and the ministry of finance, along with a number of other government ministries. Terrorists were seen attacking the capital's largest shopping mall, the Grand Afghan Shopping Center, gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers seen running back and forth on the second and third floors.



These bold attacks are designed to make a big impression in three ways: first, to show how vulnerable and weak  the democratically elected government is; second, to sow terror in the hearts and minds of the Afghan people; and third and most important, to weaken support among Western countries for continuing the mission to stabilize Afghanistan.

To anyone old enough, hearing the news of the Taliban's daylight attack this morning was like waking up 42 years ago to news of the Tet offensive in South Vietnam.

And just as with the Vietnam War, you're certain in the next week to hear liberal politicians and pundits moan that the war in Afghanistan is lost. In many cases, it will be the same people after Tet who led the exodus out of Vietnam. Remember Harry Reid's brilliant conclusion in 2006, "The war (in Iraq) is lost," just before the Surge turned the tide?

I don't want to minimize the level of effort that will be required if that hell hole known as Afghanistan is ever to be pacified. But thousands of U.S. troops promised this fall by Pres. Obama should be in country beginning this month. And if U.S. commanders could be unshackled and allowed to take it to the house, instead of fighting defensively, this might be the last coordinated daytime attack on a civilian population that we'll see out of this place.

But I can't help wondering something.  For six months Pres. Obama dithered on sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, troops requested by the U.S. commander Stanley McCrystal. Instead of acting quickly on the request, the president consulted his lawyers and held counsel with political advisors who had no experience in these matters, all the while checking the polls to see how granting Gen. McCrystal's request would play with his far left political base. In the meantime, the Taliban was re-arming, planning, and moving out. Ultimately, after 6 months of Hamlet-like deliberation, the President assented to part of McCrystal's request, playing to both left and right and pleasing neither. If the President has just agreed to the troop surge without the drama those troops would be in place now. So I wonder: Would the Taliban have been bold enough or strong enough to try and pull off this morning's terror attack? I doubt it.

Just thought you might like to know.

Once Again, Obama Administration Shows Its Ignorance of How Business Operates

A story  out of Washington this morning says the Obama administration is considering levying another tax on banks to help recoup some of the massive outlays made through the TARP program. This is another in a list of "Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" plans that have come out of this administration over the last 12 months.

Regular readers of this blog know that numerous posts have called the banking industry to task, deservedly so. But this is different.

Here's the Obama complaint: Banks are set to pay another round of huge end-of-year bonuses to their best employees, and the leftists who control Washington now are again upset that these high-producing bankers would actually earn more-a lot more-that other working stiffs.

You see, leftists like Barack Obama, Eric Holder and their Chicago mob think that everything is a zero-sum game. That means that if you win it necessarily means that it's at my expense. But these highly paid bankers have brought millions of dollars into the banks as they were supposed to. They'll take their bonus money and upgrade their homes, either building or buying, purchase yachts and take ski vacations. In the process they will provide money that eventually will hire and pay real estate workers, contractors, carpenters, boat builders, ski lift operators, hotel staff and restaurant workers. That's how a growing economy grows. And how a 10% unemployment rate shrinks.

But Pres. Obama had demonstrated a shocking lack of knowledge-in fact, an ignorance and hostility to-how business works. He and his mob would prefer an employment model that is devoid of merit. Think of a teachers contract or a union pay scale. The left won't rest till every ounce of incentive, creativity, and ambition is bred out of Americans in the workplace and in business. So the administration is predisposed to being against anyone working hard and joining that top tax bracket. (Although they should be thrilled, given how they are punishing the most successful Americans with the burden of supporting more than 50% of the population.)

There is a second reason why their thinking is just plain stupid. Workers who received these large bonuses generally have employment contracts. Those legal documents specify what the workers are to receive. Employers have no legal right to change the terms of those contracts unilaterally. What's more, the liability to the banks for these bonuses has already been calculated into the budget. Now comes the Chicago mob threatening to tax the banks even further. Those taxes have not been accounted for in the budgeting process. Which means the banks will do what companies always do when costs go up: They'll pass them on to consumers like you and me. They will pass that tax on in the form of lower interest payments, higher credit card fees or new fees that didn't exist before the tax.

What this means is that you and I are the ones who will really be paying the tax. At the end of the day the overpaid bankers will have their bonuses. The banks will retain their most productive employees. The Obama administration will have more money to waste, which is what it seems to do best. And you and I will be poorer for it.

If you want to know why the unemployment rate stubbornly refuses to budge from 10%, look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Just thought you might like to know.

Enough of this Almighty-Condemned Political Correctness

Just when you've had enough of "man-made disasters, " "persons of interest" and other politically correct terms comes word out of the Netherlands that some PC publishers are sanitizing ("censoring" might be a better word) the great works of literature.

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English author and adventurer whose works like Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim have been staples of school and university Literature classes in Europe, Africa, North America and elsewhere for a hundred years.

One of Conrad's lesser known works is The Nigger of the Narcissus. One scholar has called the short novel the best work of Conrad's early period.

Now comes word that a Dutch publisher has renamed the classic "The N-word of the Narcissus." No joke.

The publisher says it made the change as a public service. But the Congress of Racial Equality, an American civil rights group that has a long history of defending the rights of African Americans, calls the publisher's changes "outrageous."

So this is now what now passes for intellectual thought in Western society. Authors of any generation and time have the right to know that their works, if they contribute greatly to humanity, may one day be judged great, and may live on for years, decades, centuries or millennia. King Lear has stood the test of five centuries. The Book of Genesis has been with us for thousands of years. Are we at the point that a hack publisher would substitute his judgment for that of Shakespeare, Moses or Mark Twain?

What of Nigger Jim, the most noble character in Huckleberry Finn? A character who defines humanity in the book. Would he be more noble as "N-word Jim?"

Would renaming the "shack jobs" of James Jones' sweeping World War II epic From Here to Eternity "sex workers oppressed by a white-male dominated society" make a great work better?

How about fashioning a loin cloth out of Quickrete  and affixing it with Mighty Putty to Michelangelo's Statue of David? In avoiding prudish sensibilities would the work be improved?

Or, should we reset Wagner's Ride of the Valkryies to a polka melody because 60 years ago its marshall rhythms had an errective effect on a bunch of Nazi misogynists?

The point is that it is timeless acceptance of a work of art that makes it great. And that objective greatness trumps the sensibilities of any future age. Or any politically correct "progressives."

Just thought you might like to know.

The Myth of ObamaCare

Congressional Democrats are meeting with the White House  to begin the final push toward their socialized healthcare bill: a bill that blends the best (or worse, depending on your perspective) of both the House and Senate versions of ObamaCare.

ObamaCare-Not the Democratic Bill, but the Undemocratic Bill

The Chicago mob that promised an open, transparent administration is meeting behind closed doors. No Republicans. And no ordinary citizens by way of television. C-SPAN has been turned down so far in its request to place cameras in the room. Just a group of Democrat pols doing what polls this morning show a majority of Americans (52%) don't want done: having a bogus healthcare bill jammed down their throats.

In 2008 Candidate Obama, in making healthcare the tall pole in his election tent, said on 8 occasions that the negotiations on the healthcare bill would be broadcast on C-SPAN so that he could "enlist the American people in the process" of healthcare reform.

Candidate Obama in August of 2008 told the San Francisco Chronicle again that the negotiations would be on C-SPAN and that "the public would be part of the conversation." Take a look:



If the American people are "part of the conversation" about healthcare, it's a decidedly one-sided conversation. Healthcare bills have been negotiated behind closed doors, with no input from the opposition party which this morning leads the Democrats by 9 points in the latest poll of likely voters in the 2010 Congressional election. Bloated, 2,000 page bills have been put to a vote without adequate time for the opposition to read them and help form the "debate" over healthcare. Votes have been held in the dead of night when anyone who might question the wisdom of the majority party leadership would be dead tired and less likely to object.

The Myth of ObamaCare-What's Really Behind the Bill and What's the Endgame?

But the myth of ObamaCare is that it was never really about healthcare. It was all about transforming the United States into a weaker country, one where its citizens are dependent on its government rather than themselves, one in which it cedes its global leadership in security by outsourcing our foreign policy to the U.N., and one in which America trades in its mantle of exceptionalism for the chance to be just another country, no better or worse than Sweden, Libya or Liechtenstein.

This is the agenda of a radical, fringe element of the Democrat party that is using healthcare as a wedge issue to break down the doors of American exceptionalism while they still have the chance.

If you don't think so, look at H.R. 3962, the ugly, bloated House version of healthcare reform. Although the Democrats continue to paint Republicans as opponents of healthcare reform, the fact is that just about everyone believes that we need systemic reform. Healthcare is expensive, drains certain portions of the economy and when delivered by government through Medicaid or Medicare lacks sufficient oversight and quality.

The so-called reform bills on the table right now only make the situation worse. Take a look at my state, Pennsylvania, expected to be a swing state in the 2012 election, and the likely consequences of H.R. 3962:

• If you don't purchase what H.R. 3962 refers to as "acceptable health care coverage" you'll be taxed 2.5% of your income as a penalty. Make no mistake: it's a tax. If your income is $35,000, your healthcare tax will be $875. If you couldn't afford healthcare on $35,000 a year, you sure won't be able to afford it on an income of $34,125.
• Think that's the only tax Americans will pay? Think again. If you happen to be one of the swells who make more than a half million bucks a year ($1 million if you have a family), you'll get a surtax of 5.4% to punish you for your economic success. The problem is that most of these high rollers aren't high rollers at all. They're small businesses that roll their personal and business taxes into one return. Small businesses employ most workers in the U.S. But probably not after ObamaCare. 42% of small business income will be subject to this confiscatory tax. The Heritage Foundation says in Pennsylvania alone over 30,000 businesses will suffer because of this. 
• Want more tax? The Dems have it for you. How about an 8% smackdown on employers who don't provide what Democrats think is "acceptable" insurance for their workers. 
• It's not just small businesses that will suffer. Life-saving medical devices from MRI equipment to stethoscopes will be subject to a new tax. Again, in Pennsylvania alone there are 600 medical device companies employing some 20,000 workers, according to Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-PA). These are well paying jobs that are now at risk because of the Democrats. (Full disclosure: Jim Gerlach is my congressman.)
• Rep. Gerlach, quoting the American Hospital Association,  says that hospitals in his district, which covers parts of four counties, will lose about $46 million each year under ObamaCare. What happens then? Hospitals will have to reduce services, cut jobs, or increase rates in order to offset the cuts.
• Neither of Pennsylvania's two senators, Democrats Bob Casey or Arlen Specter, had the chops or brains to do what Ben Nelson of Nebraska did--hold out to exempt his state from the unfunded Medicaid mandates that ObamaCare will inflict on the states. The result: Pennsylvanians will have to pony up an additional $2 billion over the next decade to pay for Medicaid, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In ten years Americans could be forking over nearly a billion dollars a year in additional Medicaid costs. Where does that money come from? From U.S. taxpayers.
• In order to keep this sinking ship afloat, Senate Democrats would take nearly $500,00 away from seniors enrolled in Medicare. A half-million bucks! In a program already underfunded. 
• According to Rep. Gerlach, 35,000 seniors in his district will be affected because they are enrolled in the Medicare Advantage plan. The Democrats hate Medicare Advantage like Dracula hated the crucifix. The reason is that the great Satan, George Bush, proposed it and shepherded it through Congress. The fact is that Medicare Advantage works. It is a cost effective plan that pays medical providers for keeping seniors well. But because it's a Republican-inspired concept, Democrats are making it difficult for seniors to keep it. (Except in Florida, where Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) sold his vote on ObamaCare by getting Democrat leadership to exempt Florida seniors from cuts in their Medicare Advantage plans.) In cutting Medicaid Advantage the Democrat leaders want to force seniors into a government-run system where the one ones who win are the tens of thousands of new bureaucrats who will control what care seniors will get. 
• For the same reason Democrats have an irrational hatred of Medicare Advantage they hate Health Savings Accounts. HSAs were created over the last decade as another way to help make family insurance more affordable by combining with high deductible health plans. And they work. But under the Democrats HSAs, a free market response to healthcare, do not qualify as acceptable coverage, according to Rep. Gerlach. In fact, the House's Ways and Means Committee actually rejected a Republican amendment that would hav specified that HSA owners could keep their accounts. The reason: HSAs are an instrument that allows families and individuals to have more control and management over their own healthcare decisions. And that is an anathema to the Chicago mob's plan to wrest control of healthcare from individuals and vest it with a bureaucratic central government. 
• H.R. 3962 would force many lower-middle income (LMI) families out of S-CHIP and into a new government program. These families today are able to insure their children through the bi-partisan S-CHIP program. But when S-CHIP goes away they will have higher out-of-pocket expenses, further eroding their meager earnings. 
• Perhaps the ultimate indignity heaped on the country by the Democrats and their sham health care bills is the fact that if you fail to comply with the bill you could face civil and criminal penalties, including fines up to $250,000, according to the government's own Joint Committee on Taxation. A quarter of a million dollars.

H.R. 3962, it's Senate companion, and the whole secretive process, exposes what ObamaCare is all about: Tightening the grip on the lives of Americans. Remaking American society into one less focused on opportunity and more focused on central control. It has nothing to do with your healthcare.

The Shame and the Tragedy of ObamaCare

Pres. Obama's empty threat as a candidate to "shame" legislators into an open debate on healthcare recalls for me the Army-McCarthy hearings.  In 1954 Joseph Welch was the lead attorney for the U.S. Army in the famous Army-McCarthy hearings, a circus begun by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy to investigate alleged communists in the U.S. government. It was the beginning of the end for Tail Gunner Joe when Mr. Welch faced the Wisconsin demagogue in a televised hearing and calmly asked the reckless senator "have you no sense of decency?"

Today I would ask Pres. Obama, not the "special interests" if he has any sense of shame over this process. Or any decency. Pres. Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have made a mockery of the legislative process: conducting the final negotiations among a handful of pols behind closed doors. Locking out the opposition party. Arbitrarily eliminating the conference committee of Senate and House representatives that would normally fashion a compromise bill. Forbidding the public to see and hear the debate.

I would ask the question but I already know the answer. It's no. Because to have a sense of decency would require them to have some conscience over how they are trampling the Constitution and the institutions of government in a mad rush to remake the Republic.  And they have no such conscience. They have no decency. And they have no shame.

Just thought you might like to know.