Forbes and the Washington Post both describe the disastrous Massachusetts health care system — with which the Obama care models share similarities — and the post begins with a warning from the Commonwealth’s treasurer.
Some have asked, as national healthcare reform works its way through Congress, is there anything we can learn from the Massachusetts experiment? Yes, according to the state’s treasurer, interviewed today on CNBC: Whatever you do, don’t do what we did. In a blisteringly frank interview, treasurer Tim Cahill laid out some jaw-dropping stats, which eviscerated the plan and excited every conservative’s worst fears about government getting further into the health insurance business:
– The program has so far cost 30 percent more than anticipated.
– It already has a $9 billion shortfall projected over the next two years.
– Costs have risen 41 percent since the program’s inception, well outpacing the rise in healthcare costs nationwide, which stands at 18 percent.
– We thought this program would mean fewer people would go to hospitals, which is the highest cost any insurance plan has to pay. In fact, fewer people are not going to hospitals.
– A Harvard study shows 60 percent of state residents are unhappy with the plan. The most unhappy? Those whom it should be helping the most — those making $25,000 to $50,000 per year.
– To cut costs, the program is now having to kick out legal immigrants.
The bottom line, to misquote Lincoln Steffens, is that we have seen the future and it sucks. It was probably easier to acknowledge the mistakes because it was a bipartisan disaster and there’s enough blame to go around. Democrat Deval Patrick was the health program’s champion, but Republican Mitt Romney signed it into law. So, with both their hands tainted with the failure, the way lay open to performing a public post-mortem on the cadaver of the program without the pathologists stabbing at themselves. How did they get it so wrong? Because they put on a set of blinkers from the outset. The basic problem was that Massachusetts health care advocates wanted their outcome so badly they sold what they simply could not deliver. The Forbes article explains.
The big lie in Massachusetts was that costs and taxes would not increase. … It could be the bait-and-switches that have Massachusetts residents cranky. They were promised affordable coverage. The plans were so expensive that 20% of the uninsured were exempted from having to purchase them. … Bay Staters were told they wouldn’t have their current arrangements disrupted. Yet thousands of residents have had to purchase more expensive coverage after the new bureaucracy deemed their existing plans inadequate. … three years in, the successor uncompensated care pool is still spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Emergency rooms are more crowded than ever. …
Whether Romney believes his hype is unknown. There can be little doubt that his Democratic partners, including Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., viewed the Massachusetts experiment as a “no-lose” proposition. If it somehow worked, great. But if the scheme failed, Democrats understood that they would have moved the state one step closer to government-run health care, with thousands more hooked on subsidized coverage.
Indeed, Jon Kingsdale, the person in charge of the Health Insurance Connector, recently wrote that it is a better strategy to expand access first, let costs run and only then worry about containing spending.
Tim Cahill warned the national public not to do what Massachusetts did. A cynic might observer that for precisely that reason it is all the more likely to be emulated. In government, nothing succeeds like failure. Costs are costs, after all, only to people that pay them; from another point of view they’re revenues. Looked at the right way, it’s always a “no-lose” proposition.
Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and a trunk
And the only time hes satisfied
Is when he’s on a drunk.He fills his glasses up to the brim
And hell pass the cards around
And the only pleasure he gets out of life
Is ramblin from town to townOh tell my baby sister
Not to do what I have done
But shun that house in new orleans
They call the risin sun
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Sounds to me like this Cahill guy has the means and the desire to take out the current governor on this issue. Interesting implications for the national scene.
As a resident if Massachusetts and an admirer of Romney, I could never understand why he would endorse such a program.
Although I respect his intelligence, I can’t credit that he could be so Machiavellian as to have predicted an outcome that would discredit the program which seems to be so inconsistent with his conservative principles.
My suspicion is that he merely was trying to get to the head of the parade.
In all honesty, what do we make of Romney’s support of this program? To me, he is the next President, yet he signed on to this program- do we hold it against him, or do we file it under ‘learned his mistake’?
The MA insurance situation again shows the wisdom of subsidiarity. Let the states experiment and compete (and let the federal government provide legislation to enable competition, e.g., state and state health insurance entities able to offer policies in other states.
All of us Bay Staters know the value of public programs and the impressive efforts of our public workers, especially those leaning on their shovels on the road crews.
But…but…but…we gotta fix health care! (place hands on side of head, look concerned)
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“what do we make of Romney’s support of this program”
Here’s what I made of it: a vow not to vote for him. I was glad he was defeated in the primaries.
For a while, I saved some of those state postcards telling me about my new obligations. I meant to post a photograph of ‘em to illustrate why a different candidate would be better.
An a resident of Massachusetts I find it interesting that I have to read about this in the Washington Post (or here of course). I wonder why our hometown paper isn’t interested in this story…
Teacher- “do we hold it against him, or do we file it under ‘learned his mistake’?”
Has anyone heard him admit it was a mistake yet? Throughout his time campaigning he talked this program up as the way to have your cake (improved access) and eat it too (lowered costs). He’s a talented politician simply for the fact that people actually believed him.
I remember when he came and spoke at Dartmouth’s hospital about how great his program was working and because of this experience, he would be a great president. Most of the people who attended noted how even though they would never vote for him in a million years, he was still a great public speaker and could hit all the right notes. Almost Obamaesque to be able to promise a free lunch for all.
I am sure that this appeared earlier in this blog but it is so very apropos;
I have seen Public Housing,
I will pass on Public Healthcare.
In the last century was there one Federal program that brought results that could not have been done quicker and at a fraction of the cost by private agencies? Why on God’s green Earth would we assume that the goverment will suddenly act out of character regarding healthcare?
Obamacare will now offer us the opportunity to participate in the fiscal train wreck on a national scale.
Everybody repeat after me; “Too big to fail, Too big to fail……………”
This is not an isolated incident. Over a decade ago the State of South Carolina announced that state employees and their families would receive unlimited, totally free, health care. A man that worked with my Mom shook his head sadly one day and said, “My wife has gone crazy with the new health care. She goes to the doctor herself and takes the kids there for anything and everything. She goes every week.”
Six months after it started the new program was broke. And that was only for state workers.
In the military we have free health care. It was so free that I used it very, very little. 75% of the time or better I just went and paid for what I needed from a civilian source, over the counter drugs, contact lenses and glasses, physical exams, even dermatology. But to get that free care we had to run a prescribed distance in a minimum time every year, be weighed periodically (and if you were too heavy they could put you in the hospital until you lost weight), be subject to drug testing, etc. And of course they could send you anywhere in the world to meet fascinating people and kill them. If we impose all those requirements on the general population then I am all for Single Payer Health Care.
A pride of Young Lions recently graduated from the Kennedy School, strikingly absent of fellows with ancestors from Northern Europe but otherwise perfectly proportioned by race, gender and sexual perversion, settled into their new West Wing offices.
During lunch at Mr. K’s they determined that the carbon footprint of individual travelers on jet liners was too high and harmful to the environment. They quickly arrived at a consensus that the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of individual travelers was to increase the passenger size of the airplane to a more efficient level.
Upon receipt of a $500 billion grant from the Presidential slush find our Young Lions secured the blueprints of the largest airliner ever designed and ordered two just like it but to be built 10 times bigger.
The runway at Logan Airport was extended to 10 miles with the former residents who had been in the way of progress placed comfortably into newly constructed public housing where their diets could be more efficiently monitored.
Since it was too expensive to build a wind tunnel that could accommodate such a large air frame, and too harmful to the environment to fly without passengers, on inaugural flight day they simply drafted the first 5,000 people who wandered into Logan Airport, placed them on airport shuttle buses, and deposited them into the plane. Actual destinations were considered inconsequential and irrelevant because this was only runway that could accommodate the plane anyway.
About 1,000 feet down the runway the wings fell off. The passengers were incinerated in the resulting conflagration.
Later that afternoon, over dinner at Mr. K’s, the Young Lions went over the day’s events and quickly reached a consensus on lessons learned. The airport shuttle buses needed to be bigger.
#5: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
More like “If it ain’t broke, you’re not tryin’.” — Red Green
anton: I live in NYC. I am with you on public housing…what a mess.
The solution to all of the urban fannie/freddie/CRA nonsense was to let those people buy their apartments and take the whole business away from government. Fat chance of that.
“do we hold it against him, or do we file it under ‘learned his mistake’?”
So called liberals work hard to please and appease the Left. So-called conservatives work hard to please and appease the so-called Liberals. It will be a cold day in hell when so-called conservatives support so-called moderates unless of course they are the blue dog kind.
The political class either have never heard/learned that every action has side effects, expected and unexpected ones. You can’t do just one thing. That is their “We’re just stupid” defense for their actions.
Or they know full well that there are side effects. The side effects are desired, planned for. This would make them evil and so is never offered as an explanation even though it is more likely than the “We’re just stupid” always thrown out when things go sideways.
“Indeed, Jon Kingsdale, the person in charge of the Health Insurance Connector, recently wrote that it is a better strategy to expand access first, let costs run and only then worry about containing spending.”
Free care first, taxes later was exactly how Canadian PM Trudeau enacted nationalize health care in the early ’70s. It wasn’t until the despised 7% Goods & Services Tax (GST) was levied that the tax base caught up. He had the advantage of a relatively balance budget and low government debt when he initiated the big Canadian social programs.
I agree with most above on Romney; Bottom line is what did he learn, how would he change it and will he speak out LOUDLY (and in a timely manner)? The answers to those questions will make or break his chances.
11. Peter Boston:
No. NO! NoOOOOOOO!
Obviously, they need to build a bigger plane!
[love the irony]
tom
Slightly OT, but here’s the text of an email I received from a friend:
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:47:10 -0400
Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India as of September 1, 2009.
The move is being made in order to save the President’s $500,000 yearly salary, and also a record $750 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead that his office has incurred during the last 3 months.
It is anticipated that $7 trillion can be saved to the end of the President’s term. “We believe this is a wise financial move. The cost savings are huge,” stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-WA). “We cannot remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay,” Reynolds noted.
——————————————————————————–
Congress Votes to Outsource Presidency
Washington, DC — July 27,2009
Obama was informed by email this morning of his termination (it is hoped it did not end up in his junk folder). Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time.
Gurvinder Singh, a tele-technician for Indus Teleservices, Mumbai India, will assume the office of President as of September 1, 2009. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls, NY, thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a month, but no health coverage or other benefits.
It is believed that Mr. Singh will be able to handle his job responsibilities without a support staff. Due to the time difference between the US and India, he will be working primarily at night. “Working nights will allow me to keep my day job at the Dell Computer call center,” stated Mr. Singh in an exclusive interview.
“I am excited about this position. I always hoped I would be President.”
A Congressional spokesperson noted that while Mr. Singh may not be fully aware of all the issues involved in the office of President, this should not be a problem as Obama had never been familiar with the issues either.
Mr. Singh will rely upon a script tree that will enable him to respond effectively to most topics of concern. Using these canned responses, he can address common concerns without having to understand the underlying issue at all. “We know these scripting tools work,” stated the spokesperson.
“Obama has used them successfully for years, with the result that some people actually thought he knew what he was talking about.”
Obama will receive health coverage, expenses, and salary until his final day of employment. Following a two-week waiting period, he will be eligible for $340 a week unemployment for 26 weeks. This, of course, will be taxable as income and if he can’t pay his rent or mortgage after taxes, that’s too bad. Unfortunately he will not be eligible for Medicaid, as his unemployment benefits will exceed the allowed limit. He is being notified of his COBRA options, whereby he will have to pay what his employer paid. This will be $870 a month, but it is unlikely he’ll be able to afford it on his unemployment pay, much like most others offered this option.
Obama has been provided with the outplacement services of Manpower, Inc. to help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition. According to Manpower, Obama may have difficulties in securing a new position due to a lack of any successful work experience during his lifetime that is actually marketable in this economy. There are few openings for Harvard lawyers who are fired – um, laid off – from the most important job on the planet.
A greeter position at WalMart was suggested due to Obama’s extensive experience at shaking hands, as well as his special smile.
Massachusetts also spends tons of money on Medicaid. The current cost is $10 billion out of a budget of $32 billion for 1 million people out of a total of 6.3 million. From what I have been told but can’t document(someone out there correct me if I’m way off base), 90% of Medicaid money goes to about 200 thousand people, ie, 3% of the population.
RWE,
“In the military we have free health care. It was so free that I used it very, very little.”
LOL! Doctors got a $50,000 bonus anytime they grounded a pilot, so we tended to avoid them if at all possible.
Watching the US health care schlomozzle from the relative safety of Australia which supports both an everybody covered public health system and a private system at 8.8% of GDP while the US spends 16.5% of GDP on healthcare I just don’t believe those who are getting that 16.5% of GDP are going to be giving any significant portion of it up in the proposed structure. I’m a US citizen too and old enough to have experienced serious health problems and I just don’t think the US is anywhere near getting the value for money we have in Australia. I have both the public Australian Medicare and private health insurance. I also have US Medicare A and B because it will at least give me some protection when I visit the US. I simply doubt that any reform could change the structure of the US system enough to provide universal coverage and hold costs even much less reduce them. What I am also trying to say is that even setting aside ideological differences the US has a genuinely difficult problem whether it stays private or goes public.
Peter Boston,
A friend of a friend has a Slinky factory that is underutilized. We can get a Rider attached to the next Interior Department dam authorization bill that will ensure that all airplanes have 10,000 Slinkys attached under the wings to be deployed in the event of emergency. It might save lives, for the children.
I believe Mitt Romney to be just another opportunistic politician, willing to do whatever it takes to get himself elected. He changed his position on abortion to appeal to voters in Mass, and heartily agreed to sign on for the Massachusetts health plan.
One thing that has stayed with me since the Olympics in Salt Lake City: during the games, en route to attend an event in Park City, a security guard, performing his duties, was directing traffic when Romney’s motorcade came to the intersection. The poor guard, unfortunately for him, didn’t recognize who was in the car, and directed the motorcade where he was told to send the regular proles. Romney would have none of this, and personally exited the vehicle, berating the guard, using foul language, and used the “don’t you know who I am?” card repeatedly. When it was reported in the news, and there was a resultant firestorm of criticism, Romney “apologized” to the guard’s supervisor, not to the guard he publicly berated.
Conclusion: Romney is another elitist blue-blood, he has no underlying convictions or ethics, and he would do anything to get elected and stay elected.
The US health care problem has several sources.
One, the Federal government is already the gorilla in the room since 1965 and is a large, unacknowledged, unconscious part of the problem.
Two, third party payer, which started with WWII wage control policies and became endemic through union contracts.
Three, the government controlled health care plans worldwide through their own price controls shift the medical R&D costs onto the economies that are not so controlled, mainly the US. Once we go down that same road the innovation will cease. Then everyone will pay, not your money but your life.
Team 44 held a Town Hall Meeting yesterday at Broughton High School in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Claimed he has been keeping all of his promises and got applause….
Oh Yeah….
The appetite for health care is nearly unlimited, why not have a doctor make house calls to every family once a day, and do pedicures, manicures, massages, hair and makeup, ironing and windows?
In the interest of fewer hospital visits, of course.
Here’s what’s wrong and here’s the only way to fix it!
IOW, short of another Great Awakening that this time awakes *everybody*, the economics will rule, and the rule here is, as a commodity price falls, its demand rises.
One more time, DC: as price falls, demand rises.
During the Republican debates last year I paid attention to the candidates body language and how they interacted. It was very obvious that Mitt Romney was the least popular man in the room. While they all disagreed with Ron Paul on the issues and had an interest in seeing John McCain slowed or had little social rapport with Mike Huckabee it was clear that on a personal level they could all get along. Well maybe not Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul but on that issue I agree with Rudy. This means exactly as much as it means. The Presidency is not a High School popularity contest and none of those men were running for “Miss Congeniality.” On a policy level I had few disagreements with Romney and felt he had a good resume. On the religion issue I thought he got a raw deal and the MSM went into full blown bigotry feeding in an effort to pump up division among the Republicans. Still there is something to be said for the judgement of one’s peers. I am on record as noting that the Electoral College is designed, as is a parliamentary system, to use the vetting skills of experienced leaders to select one of their own.
It never ceases to amaze me to what levels of incompetence Government can rise to. I suspect that throughout history more damage to civilization has been done by pompous idiots who thought they were geniuses that was ever done by the likes of Atilla the Hun or Hitler.
I think the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against voter fraud during the last election sends a chilling message about civil liberties. This shows very clearly that the Obama administration doesn’t care about civil rights and probably never did. This is a deep and horrible betrayal of all of those who ever thought that Barack Obama was on the same side as those who truly believe in civil rights.
Obama supporters need to ask themselves how their president could support voter intimidation. Obama supporters need to ask themselves how their president could support voter fraud. Obama supporters need to ask themselves how the Obama administration’s leniency toward black thugs who intimidate voters is any different from the leniency of Jim Crow states toward white thugs who did exactly the same thing in the name of the Ku Klux Klan.
Yes, there are those who will claim there is some vast conspiracy by white women in cahoots with dark skinned people to destroy western civilization, and such conspiracy theorists will always see the Obama administration as illegitimate. Still, one should hope there are leftists and liberals who can see the horrible precedent that the Justice Department’s decision sets. Today it may be the New Black Panthers. Tomorrow it may be Acorn. The next day it may be the Ku Klux Klan or some modern day equivalent.
Justice must be colorblind. And yet, the Justice Department’s political decision to drop a civil rights complaint concerning voter intimidation in Philadelphia sends a message to opportunists in the future that Klan-style voter intimidation will be condoned.
As opposed to many other people, I take Barack Hussein Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate at face value; I regard him as an American citizen and he is legitimately the President of the United States. That said, Congress must investigate this action by the Justice Department and see how far this scandal goes. If President Obama is found to be directly responsible for pressuring the Justice Department to drop civil rights charges in this case, a legitimate case can be made on these grounds for impeachment of our President and his removal from office.
To me the primary issues with medical care are systemic, and three-fold, some don’t only apply to medical care:
1. An expectation that all mistakes within medicine are intentional damage to the patient by an all-knowing professional
2. A disconnection between services received and fees paid. (The 3rd party problem mentioned frequently)
3. Incorrect conceptions about the distinctions between rights of citizens and obligations of the state to it’s citizens (positive rights, as Obama will refer to them).
I don’t have a solution for how to educate a vast populace to think at the level of our Founding Fathers, since they seem to me to be an anomaly, even in their own time.
With the MSM and PC history teaching that everything has changed since the Constitution was written, few people seem to realize that Human Nature hasn’t changed a bit.
For me, without the mitigating influence of a socially expected level of morality, we will devolve into one of the “Me-too” forms of tyranny, the rate is the only variable in question.
Those who can see some or all of these disconnects as issues can dig in our heels, but a re-education on what human nature is capable of is required to open the eyes to a healthy distrust of all politicians.
I don’t claim it is a conspiracy. Rather, an overt political alliance based on a confluence of interests.
White Women wish to extract the maximum amount of preferences against White Men in hiring, firing, promotion, raises, contracting, and admissions to college and graduate school.
This is not a conspiracy hidden in shadows, this is a fact. It is undeniable.
And no, tomorrow it will NOT be the Klu Klux Klan. Get real. For one thing, the Klan is thankfully, dead. For another thing, the double standard and letting the NBP off scott free is based on politics.
Liberals (i.e. White Women and feminized, female-pandering leaders) WANT the NBP out there intimidating. Precisely because the effect is to suppress the White Male vote. And send a message.
Affirmative Action means discriminating against White Males to further White Women, Blacks, and Hispanics. It’s basic spoils politics. There is no conspiracy, that’s an open and naked bit of spoils politics at it’s most Chicago Basic.
Obama doubtless has embarrassing things on his actual, real birth certificate: he’s listed as Muslim, a Kenyan Citizen, Father Unknown, any number of things. Which he’s desperate to conceal. He’s lied about everything else in his background, from his time at a financial newsletter company as junior copy editor (which he puffed up into international banking, meeting with Japanese and German bigshots), to his time at Columbia and Trinity United. He lies out of habit, since his real persona is radical. He’s hiding something, that’s for sure.
But the idea of “Colorblind” justice is laughable and naive past stupidity. There is no turning back the clock of more than forty years of AA, nor the decisions BY RACE to have different standards, one for Whites and one for Blacks and Hispanics, let alone White women, nor the mountain of precedent and judicial rulings that put “protected classes” BY LAW above White Men.
That was all fine and dandy, as long as good times rolled. But now that hard times are here, and White Men get the shaft, with White women soon to follow (i.e. incompetent AA-mandated Black Doctors* doing Breast Cancer screening after the years long waits), the racial preferences BAKED INTO THE CAKE so to speak, are politically unsustainable.
Fracturing under the demand for patronage by Whites who suddenly need it. And find they are last in line.
*Obamacare has in it a demand for vastly increased Black and Hispanic doctors, which can only be done by applying the EEOC “four fifths rule” which demands as a matter of law, four fifths of Blacks and Hispanics pass any test for employment or promotion. Which means, basically, watered down, idiot-versions of MCATs and Board Certifications and passing grades for Blacks and Hispanics in Med School. The aim being obviously to increase patronage for Blacks and Hispanics. At the expense of basic competence of doctors.
Democrats have been held together by the congruent aims of White Women, Blacks, and Hispanics to grab up all the government patronage, however infighting about who goes first threatens to peel off White women, and White Men are no longer in a position not to care about government patronage since it’s now the only game in town [Government contracting rules now pretty much exclude any bidder with a White Male ownership or executive staff make-up.]
Eventually, people will form spoils coalitions according to racial identity, there is simply no other way around it and the stakes are just too high. We will no more go back to “colorblind” justice arguments than OJ be convicted of murder or Martin Luther King win the argument against Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. Too much history, too much inertia, and too much distrust. Black-Hispanic-Liberal-Dem-Media coalition will simply shaft Whites, including now (in the ObamaCare package) White women. Obama’s “Race Man” moment on Gates (reflexively backing his black pal) brings that home.
This is human nature: when the stakes are sky-high (government patronage = economic survival or disaster) people go with folks who look, act, talk like them and look like very extended relatives. It’s part of hard-wired DNA behavior.
This was just one piece of the MSM’s work to “pre-select” the Republican candidate so as to maximize the chances of the Democrats in the election. It worked. They got the candidate they wanted.
His selection for VP almost upset the carefully arranged play that the election was to be. Fortunately his advisers were right in sync with the play and undermined the selection enough for the MSM to launch an all out attack and pull the Democratic nuts out of the fire and over the finish line.
The “name” is dead. The ideas and purpose remain and are still attached to the same Party that used them as their “muscle” in the past. Meet the new mob same as the old mob.
There was a time when liberalism was in favor of colorblindness. That may have been before 1968, but that time existed. In terms of patronage, it would have made more sense of liberals to maintain their New Deal alliance with white racists. One could ask why they didn’t. I think the main reason is that many if not most liberals actually believed in creating a color bind society. They actually believed in the ideals set forth by Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have A Dream” speech. And many, despite all the history since that era, still do. The dream has not died.
Something went wrong in 1968, horribly wrong. Not only did Martin Luther King Jr. die, but a dream seemed to die with him. Black inner cities became war zones. Richard Nixon instituted racial quotas. Defeatism became fashionable in America.
Does that mean the ideals of colorblindness are gone? No. Does that mean there is no future for those who want an America where people from many different backgrounds can be proud to be American? No. I think there is still a future for those who truly do believe in the ideals of E Pluribus Unum. I see Barack Obama for the demagogue he is; I know very well that he is a black nationalist who seeks to impose an apartheid regime in blackface. His history of attending the church of Jeremiah Wright is an unequivocal message to anybody who understands nonverbal communication, just as attending a white racist church would have been an unequivocal message by a white politician eighty years ago. It is precisely my old-fashioned liberal sensibility that leads me to oppose him.
Is Barack Obama an anti-white racist? His actions speak for themselves.
America must be something more than a negative sum competition for spoils where one side wins at the cost of all others. Balkanization is a real danger. If Balkanization is what America has become all about, it is only a matter of time until the United States of America dissolves much as the former Yugoslavia did, only it wouldn’t be nearly so amicable.
We have real enemies who seek to destroy the United States of America. We must defeat them. Yet, there are those who want Americans to focus upon supposed domestic enemies, as if civil war were their primary concern instead of Islamists. I oppose the Obama administration precisely because it seeks to change the subject from what we all have in common to what divides Americans from one another. I seek to put an end to the abuses of the Obama administration while avoiding giving the Obama administration any pretext to institute a reign of terror. I certainly want to refrain from playing straight into any strategy of racial division from the Obama administration’s “divide and rule” playbook. There must be a place within the Opposition for freedom loving people from any ethnicity. Likewise, a strategy of nonviolent action against the Obama administration would be wiser than any course of action counseled by desperation and hopelessness.
1968 was the year the New Left decided to take control of a major US political party as one of their avenues to power. It was a quiet internal coup.
The media was more interested in the magicians moving hand, visible in the streets of Chicago and the Haight-Ashbury district of Frisco, to notice what went on in those boring committee meeting nobody wanted to be at anyway. Some love them Soviets and do show up.
Anyone who has had contact with street level pharmaceutical purveyors or elite people procurement specialists will recognize this “strategy”. All the people that I had ever met used it to grow the business as it were. Give away the bait, let them run with it. Then set the hook and hold on for the ride. I read somewhere that the average addict was worth about 20 grand before they either died or were incarcerated.
Lorenz,
Dr. Bala Ambati, who I cited earlier in another post, thinks the Australian system might work. And while it has its faults it does seem to be a interesting blend of a public floor that you can build up with private health insurance to whatever level you want. But I think the key difference between Australia and the US is that there are different players in each country. And they will affect the actual form any proposed structure will take. The real problem is how the US players would make an Australians system look like. My guess is that with a different cast of characters sitting down at the table, the way the cards will be dealt will look nothing like the way things are done in Oz.
In fact, I’d approach health care from standpoint not of the formal system, but as a game theoretic between the insurance companies, pharamceuticals, the medical practitioners and the politicians — and the patients. The mistake would be to think that everybody wants “health care”. Oh no. The politicians have another objective function to maximize. So every proposed system has to be evaluated, at least in part, by imagining how it will be played by this cast of characters. In fact the best outcome may be one which has nothing to do with theoretical efficiencies, simply one that solves the principal-agent problem the best. Health care is to some extent a political (division of interests) problem, not a medical one.
Alexis @ 36: Well said!
Tcobb #30:
True. My 25 years in the USAF, including over 4.5 years at the Pentagon and another 9 years working for a defense contractor have led me to realize that the Federal Government may, may, be able to attain a limited degree of competence at something it does for itself. But the government never, ever, is the least bit successful in doing things for someone else.
Michael Moore likes to say that the government can do a fine job with health care because it did a fine job with WWII. Completely aside from the fact that WWII was fought in a far less than perfect manner, even by the winners, it was fought by the Federal Government on its own behalf. Rather than fighting the war for the American people, the government used the American people to fight the war. Now, winning that w war was about as important as anything we have ever done, but it nonetheless was fought by the government for the government, both in terms of its logical and legal responsibilities but also for its own purposes.
“Not only did Martin Luther King Jr. die, but a dream seemed to die with him.”
Martin Luther King,Jr. was a radical, non-violent leftist by the time of his death. He adamantly supported wealth redistribution, affirmative action, and was against our allegedly racist war in Vietnam. Barack Obama is sadly following in the footsteps of MLK! Do you need to take my word on this? Nope, you merely need to read his own words! I strongly urge you to obtain a copy of The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson. It is a fairly easy book to find.
The early Rev. King did an enormous amount of good during the civil rights marches in the Old South. He was, however, a very destructive human being at the end. King was also under the influence of Stanley Levison—a convinced Communist. Once again, please don’t listen to me. Do your own research. The evidence is readily available.
Not to beat the drum for Romney, but a quick history lesson for you- Reagan was a liberal before he became a conservative. I’m reading Justice Thomas’s autobiography- he was a liberal before becoming a conservative.
This health care issue is a great example on how conservatives can teach liberals the error of their ways. That’s why they are liberals, after all- they are idiots who don’t know history, economic theory, or the nature of man. We need to educate them on this, and then they’ll learn the error of their ways. Romney has, and I think that makes him a stronger candidate now.
If the system actually let the uninsured die, then that would be fairer than forcing everyone to buy insurance they don’t want.
As long as that’s not happening, Romney’s program is far better than subsidizing the uninsured through Medicaid and higher premiums.
David Thomson:
Martin Luther King Jr. has been mythologized, and his mythology is all the more inevitable because there is a national holiday named after him. His expressed views often shifted like a ball of mercury. At one time, he was against race mixing!
Given his support for affirmative action programs (such as Operation Breadbasket), Martin Luther King Jr.’s remarks claiming that people should be judged due to the content of their character rather than the color of their skin should probably be seen as hypocritical. From the point of view of many members of the Civil Rights Movement, they weren’t and aren’t seen as hypocrisy (although they should be). He did call for federal preferences analogous to those given to military veterans. (Although the GI Bill is a good idea, federally mandated veterans preference for employment ought to be reconsidered.)
Affirmative action has actually led to two symbiotic preferential systems that lean upon one another for support – an old-fashioned old boy’s network that still exists and a parallel minority track system. Not only do poor white people get the shaft from this system, but so do poor blacks because they suffer from the effects of educational condescension. Black people would have been better off with some modern equivalent of forty acres and a mule from the confiscated estates of Confederate rebels than with the modern system of federally mandated discrimination.
So, was Martin Luther King Jr. a hypocrite? Undoubtedly, yes. But then, so was Thomas Jefferson. And Jefferson’s politics shifted over time also.
I will do the research you recommend, although I don’t disagree with your take on him. Perhaps the dream died within Martin Luther King Jr. before he died physically. Perhaps the dream really never was. Perhaps he should have called for a massive increase in estate taxes to ensure greater social mobility instead of pushing for the ruinous path of affirmative action. Still, I think we must not let the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement suffocate the old liberal dream of a colorblind society that would recognize the contributions of people from many different walks of life to the common good.
Romney has learned his mistake? He recently made a comment on the current health care proposals, touting the “success” of his reform in Massachusetts.
Sad to say, but I believe we’re more likely to get health reform with Romney than with an Obama second term, especially if Obama’s second term must contend with a Republican Congress.
The Republicans are not very conservative when they are actually in power. No, I don’t think Romney is a Reagan.
The Animals House Of The Rising Sun
VDH in fine form
Reflections on What Went Wrong
Chiral @44.
Mass care is medicare.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Mass+health+insurance+program+history&hl=en&sa=G&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=tWdySvbPIY3usQPC-8nHCA&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11
This history of the system via time line shows where the program began to grow beyond the ability of the citizens of Massachusetts to pay for it. I don’t think it is all Romney’s fault. He put together a good plan that was modified after the fact. Just my take on it, they are using the LIFO rule to try to contain the costs. That will be fueling the “other racist debate”, securing the borders. .
Sigh, that the dialogue is posed in those terms by the people who pose them makes me sad, really really sad that a real conversation cannot take place without such nonsense.
Alexis @ 31:
WOW! That is NEWS! You are the only person that I have heard of outside of the Hawaiian gov’t and BHO himself that have actually seen it.
[snark off]
What you think you have seen that is a Birth Certificate is a Certificate of Live Birth, which is NOT THE SAME! Sorry, I rate that one FAIL, Alexis.
Alexis @ 36:
True, but the issue is that they have gained a foothold and a piece of the internal power game. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the communists did not go away. It is more along the these lines – the wall kept them in, now they were free to roam the world and do their dirty work. Where else could have been an easier target than the inclusive US? Think about it. They are here and they have won. The coup was over at midnight Nov. 4th, 2008. Now all that is left is dividing the spoils. That seems to be the game that is afoot now. But first division must be sown, systems must be taken apart and the polity must be controlled. If you think of it in these terms and I do admit they did seem rather paranoid, then everything that has transpired since 1/20/09 makes sense. Ask ourself if any of what The 0bamanation has done makes sense if it is just a progrom of remaking the national structure. It does not. Only if you posit that there are nefarious other motives THEN it makes sharp sense. I struggled with it for months but I am now convinced.
And rememeber, just because Whiskey sounds slightly paranoid does not mean he does not have real enemies or that he may have a very cogent point or points. The AA construct is killing the US white male population as we ‘speak’. Over 80% of the jobs lost in this downturn are white males. THAT is certainly a telling demographic.
You also reference external enemies and I assume you mean the jihadis. They know that they cannot fight the US face on. Even if they try to come inside and fight they know they will be badly defeated and trigger reprisals the nature of which they DO NOT want to see.
The real issue is the internal enemies. They are here and working to fundamentally change the nature of the Republic. They may succeed at the end of the day, as it were. As long as they can keep us talking about minor distractions like Gates-Crowley-0bama then we are toast.
The House of the Rising Sun is ostensibly about a house of ill repute in NO. That says it all in this thread. The health care proposal just is haggling over the terms and price, there is not doubt about who is going to get screwed.
Permit me to riff on my Electoral College, leaders selecting leaders theme. Perhaps for 2012 the Republican Party could pump up voter interest by selecting their candidate through an American Idol/ Survivor hybrid. All the Elected Republicans in each state/territory/overseas unit get to caucus and select three “favorite sons/ daughters.” At the first cut we would have a pool of about 160 names. These then get to meet in twelve regional rounds, ten for groups of five states each plus two more for non-state units and the Internet Wild Card entries. This second round would cut the field to 36 names. For the third round there would be a series of responses to public questions in electronic Town Hall format followed by registered party member voting in a system the requires winning applicants to meet a minimum threshold across several regions. The top 12 candidates would be advanced to the fourth level. At levels four, five and six the candidates would meet for public debates and then vote among themselves/ This would winnow the field to 8 and then 6 and finally 4 candidates. The 150 plus candidates from the original field would then reassemble, in what could be called the Convention, and pick the 2 leading candidates. The members of the Party would then have a national primary that would select the final standard bearer. This process would last for exactly eight weeks and would rivit the public’s attention during an otherwise low ratings period leading into the Fall campaign season.
Change you can believe in.
——-
BTW, I figured out the Windows XP comment jumping problem with IE 8. You have to go into “Compatability Mode” by clicking the button next to the Reload button to the right of the URL bar. I usually use my Macbook with Safari but this old machine is next to an air conditioner.
The timeline shows the devil showing up on July 2nd 2007, the day after the program actually went into effect. That was the day the program began to be expanded to cover more folks, without attempting to control costs or outcomes. While I still have reservations about the role of competition and the nature of business v. Government in the Mass. plan, it is still an effective measure as it was originally passed. There needs to be a no fiddling clause, like a sunset provision, for these sorts of experiments, so the results can be fairly judged and real improvements designed. As it stands today the mass medicaid program is not the Romney plan.
Romney wouldn’t have supported it if the voters in Massachusetts thought it was a bad idea. In this, I agree with whiskey that demographics are at play, though I disagree somewhat with his targets of derision.
The problem with democracies and classic liberalism plus universal franchise, I’m beginning to think, is that fundamentally, people, and by implication voters, ARE stupid. Stupid voters , by definition, vote for stupid things, stupid perks, stupid representatives.
Is it possible to create a Constitution and political structure where the stupidity of the masses can’t subvert it? You guys tried, but see where you are after less than 300 years. Assault after hidden assault, and it’s a steady retreat all the way to where you are now, facing Obama and his goons.
Public healthcare wouldn’t be on the table if enough people realized just what its hidden costs are. But it is on the table, which implies that most voters didn’t know what it entailed, and worst yet, they probably didn’t WANT to know.
So now you’re at this juncture, and it’s ever so slowly dawning on the idiotic mass that is the American people (not you guys who pegged the crazies long ago) that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea after all, but they might discover they no longer have the power to affect the decision.
Alexis/31; has a deep point. For in the end its the bullet or the ballot, and as such billy clubs (or even the threat of them, or the threat even of their moral acceptance) around the ballot box are deadly in a way nothing else can be. To make a public show of decriminalizing attacks on the ballot is raw aggression against the bedrock system –and a naked invitation to the bullet.
This is thin ice, folks. Remember, a banana republic ain’t bad at all, all ya gotta do is be one of the bananas. Then hell it’s great!
buddy larsen,
Everyone thinks they are the Top Banana going into the monkey. Everybody is the same coming out.
RWE
“My wife has gone crazy with the new health care. She goes to the doctor herself and takes the kids there for anything and everything. She goes every week.”
Your friends comment hits the nail on the head. The health care “crisis” does not arise because of an imbalance on the supply side but rather because the demand is out of kilter. Costsare rising because the users of the health care system neither know the costs nor care and by users I don’t just mean the patients but te doctors and nurses and other professionals as well. Order up those expensive tests, insurance will cover them. Colonoscopies? let’s open a clinic and get ‘em every year the insurance will pay.
The answer isn’t socializing medicine though because that will just lead to rationing and bureaucratic rules that make the actual health care worse. To damp the excessive demand you need higher co-pays and a lot less secondary price discrimination.
50:
I think we are dealing with the “full faith and credit” clause of our Constitution. Does the State of Hawaii claim that Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii or not?
On a more important level, we must look at The Philadephia Precedent. Congress needs to find out whether President Obama tampered with a Justice Department prosecution of voter intimidation in Philadelphia. If this precedent stands, America faces a proliferation of thugs patrolling voting booths in the future. Please note how the Nazis would station their troops outside of voting booths in the last years of the Weimar Republic.
The Obama administration, through its leniency toward the New Black Panthers, has not only given a green light to voter intimidation in the future but it has also set a precedent for future administrations to follow. This is dangerous. The Washington Times story about political tampering with the Justice Department is big. It couldn’t be any bigger. It goes to the core of how elected officials get elected. It isn’t Republican vs. Democrat or liberal vs. conservative now; it is about the very integrity of our democracy. The Obama administration’s de facto encouragement of voter intimidation threatens to sink the legitimacy of our Republic Zimbabwe-style.
Let’s focus on what needs to be done and raise the alarm about The Philadelphia Precedent. As it is, the “beer summit” is serving as a distraction for the media when the media ought to be focusing upon this clear abuse of the American people’s trust.
Romney appears to be a highly intelligent and, for a pol, decent man. The problem is that he panders. The failings of his insurance scheme were obvious before the fact (see Arnold Kling’s harshly critical analysis). And now that the plan’s deficiencies are becoming undeniable he refuses to acknowledge his error. Does Romney have the judgment and strength of character to be an effective President? Or to put it differently, would Romney have fired the air traffic controllers? I’m doubt it. I certainly don’t think that someone with Romney’s questionable judgment on such an important issue as health-care reform should get anywhere near being a presidential nominee.
Alexis @ 57:
If I interpret what they have said correctly, they say that the Certificate of Live Birth is correct and corresponds to what was displayed for the world to see. They also say that they cannot release the actual Birth Certificate nor comment upon it without a release from the person named on it. Well, that person has not released the document nor allowed the state to comment. So, nothing is decided.
Q: Why has 0bama spent nearly a megabuck fighting releasing any records?
The voter intimidation that went on and the refusal of the DoJ to prosecute is telling, I agree. Do you think that there will be elections in 2012? 2010, even? In the 2010 US Census, it was reported early on that ACORN (now COI) would conduct the census. Why them? That 0bama would pull the conduct of the 2010 US Census into the control of the WH. Why?
As I said, the coup was complete at midnight on 11/4/08. The rest will be just mop-up. Look for Cloward-Piven to be operative and there be some sort of martial law declared before the 2012 national elections.
Alexis – Have you paid firther attention to the reactions and actions of The 0bamanation in reference to Honduras? They are holding that Zelaya was wrongly removed from office. Scary stuff that. Look for something similar to happen here.
For anyone wondering what Romney thinks of the Massachusetts program now, the answer is that he’s still very proud of it.
Neo,
From your link…
… Wrote Romney,”And if subsidies and coverages are reined in, as I’ve suggested, the Massachusetts program could actually break even. One thing is certain: The president must insist on a program that doesn’t add to our spending burden. We simply cannot afford another trillion-dollar mistake.
“The Massachusetts reform aimed at getting virtually all our citizens insured. In that, it worked: 98% of our citizens are insured, 440,000 previously uninsured are covered and almost half of those purchased insurance on their own, with no subsidy. But overall, health care inflation has continued its relentless rise. Here is where the federal government can do something we could not: Take steps to stop or slow medical inflation.
“At the core of our health cost problem is an incentive problem. Patients don’t care what treatments cost once they pass the deductible. And providers are paid more when they do more; they are paid for quantity, not quality. We will tame runaway costs only when we change incentives. “We might do what some countries have done: Require patients to pay a portion of their bill, except for certain conditions. And providers could be paid an annual fixed fee for the primary care of an individual and a separate fixed fee for the treatment of a specific condition. These approaches have far more promise than the usual bromides of electronic medical records, transparency and pay-for-performance, helpful though they will be.”
Romney makes some of the same arguments as Kling, although Kling’s thoughts go further in changing expectations of what insurance is supposed to do.
The democrat leadership is working overtime trying to say the Republicans are not serious about reform, from speaker Pelosi, to Majority Leader senator Reed, to the Chairman of the DNC all are a chorus accusing the Republicans of not being serious, singing the stuff the insurance companies have told them, and even accusing the republicans of not reading the bill.
I am amazed truly that such charges can be made, especially if the Dems leadership has any understanding of the bill at all. Ms. Nancy of the wide unblinking eyes, did you read the bill? Do you know what is in the bill, really? If you have any understanding of your own legislation then you would know the Republicans are not lying.
Instead of a debate, instead of getting it right, instead of making history by actually doing something that works, the democrat leadership including the president would rather to spread falsehoods about the opposition and ram a bad bill down America’s throats.
Something went wrong in 1968. Horribly wrong.
I’ve been trying mightily to understand how a person as narrowly ideological, inexperienced, untested, and demonstrably incompetent at anything other than self promotion as Barack Obama gets idolized in the popular culture and elected as POTUS.
The 1968 reference shows how badly we’ve been smacked by irony. Despite all that was seemly about the great counterculture movement of the 60s it was, in essence, about the primacy of the individual over the state. Do Your Own Thing was instinctually appealing even if nobody knew what it meant or where it would lead.
The counterculture movement was Chaos in action. If individuals took responsibility for changing their own initial conditions then society and the culture would necessarily be transformed from the bottom up regardless of the opposition of the statists who wanted to maintain top down control.
Something did go horribly wrong. All the little pieces ended up transforming our society into a Sim City gulag of statists trying to jam their authority down our throats.
I think we need another shot at 1968. A little anarchy. A little chaos. A little self organization at the most intimate levels. Life is a market of one.
PB/62; –good thoughts —
also, a counter thought on that is, what we have now is what the ’68 street really wanted all along –a distant parental unit asking nothing more than you give obedience, stay out of the way, and go blow pot & play frisbee in the public park. “small” freedom, IOW.
who will feed us and who will protect us from the strange alphabet users, well, let ‘em get “cash for clunkers” straightened out first, and they’ll get around to that other stuff sooner or later.
Joe Hill #56:
Yes, but I think one of the main problems is that so many people are obsessed with getting health care for free – because some people are and they think they should, too.
That is really what the “health care” debate has become, an argument over why some get it for free and others have to pay – this has led many to think they should not have to pay.
Back in 1999 I talked to my Mom one morning and found that she was not feeling well, at all. I told her to go to the doctor. She replied that she would have to get an appointment and no longer much liked our long-term family doctor anyway. There was an urgent care clinic nearby, a Doc-in-the-Box as they are called, but her Medicare and insurance would not cover a visit there, which would cost $80. I told her don’t worry about that, while she could afford the $80, I would pay it if she would just go. I had my brother drive over there and tell her the same thing. So she finally agreed to go and got the lady next door to take her to the urgent care clinic. They found that she felt bad because she had a heart attack. She is doing fine now, but her delay in getting to the doctor was about trying to jump through the hoops to get her health care paid for rather than a lack of availability or a lack of money.
I see people say that their HMO or insurance company killed their wife or husband because they would not provide treatment. In reality, they were more worried about getting the care for free than they were worried about getting the care. And this is entirely due to the Federal Government’s entry into the industry.
The “’68 street” is seen through the lens of our media as a single entity. It was not. There were two main groupings that had some very basic differences but allied for one common reason.
The larger of the two was what the media called the “hippies”, a media made up name. They were more along the lines of Libertarian/anarchist of the present day. Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll was their driving force. Teen rebellion and selfishness taken to a national stage by the ready availability of national media so that they felt that all teens all over the world were together in a spirit of rebellion. Stupid but useful to the other smaller and much more organized group. They put the “mass” in the mass movement.
This smaller group was the hard core Left. SDS was one section. They had a more focused goal in opposing the actions of the US Government. That goal was not getting the US out of Vietnam, that was a means to use. The goal was what we are getting now. The Left in complete control of the major institutions, the culture, and the Government.
Originally the New Left was directed in it’s actions by Moscow using the CPUSA as their cutout. With the fall of the USSR the CPUSA was cut loose and became the shadow influence on all of the Left. The cold war was not actually won by the US. It just became even colder but more deadly.
Romney was against tax cuts until his presidential run a man. Here was a man supposedly highly learned in finance who was against the proven successful record of tax cuts until late in life, not as a young man flirting with liberalism.
The guy is a trust fund baby born and bred RINO. He not only panders; he is compromiser. He is not the man to lead us out of our economic mess. We need a man who resolutely believes in the free market and who is willing and strong enough to make drastic changes in our Nanny State; that man is not Romney, by any means. He’d be as bad as McShame.
geof/65; This smaller group was the hard core Left. SDS was one section
Rathke, founder of ACORN, was an SDS member. He’s currently in Sicily, “training community organizers”.
I suspect it more likely that they are trading their training ideas. Sicily has had “community organizers” for a long, long time. Effective ones.
down the Bing search (my link just above) an entry concerning an Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) conference (themed: “Cities –Forging an Urban Future”) at Tufts sez he’s a “Former Senior Adviser to Leoluca Orlando, Former Mayor of Palermo, Sicily”. According to wiki, Orlando is involved as a plaintiff in a “massive electoral fraud” scheme. curiouser and curiouser. where’s the Bill Casey CIA when ya need it?
better question, do we understand the Gorelick Wall between CIA and FBI now better than we did a year ago?
and that the purported reason for it (‘to protect civil rights’) sounds like “shut up, she explained”?
The title, “Fighting the Mafia and Renewing Sicilian Culture” by Leoluca Orlando looked promising. The excerpt from clicking the word “more” shows that he is about the making Sicily into a victim class. The “Southside” of Italy. Perfect for ACORN.
my first thought was, if I was a mafia boss, i would want an employee/politician out there ‘crusading against the mafia’. you know, absorbing the energy, collecting the donations, remembering the names, of the anti-mafia movement and directing it somewhere that looked right but was far from the honeypot. i’d have him use a good slogan, something like “Hope & Change”.
what’s curious is a series of articles a month or three back –i thing Financial Times got ‘em started –it’d be searchable –about the mafia in sicily getting heavy into the green movement. I think they were setting up windmill or solar panel financing or something. Jeez, hope Fiat stock isn’t those deals –that’d be *way* too much a circle wouldn’t it.
***
Oh well hell –thanks to the editing delay, i just HAD to go look, didn’t i.
Unsk,
Haven’t you figured it out yet? It was the ridiculous insulting and tantrums by paleoconservatives calling a decent honorable, and on most issues worthy and electable, man called John Sidney McCain names like “McShame” that got Obama elected. We did not get into this mess simply because of the brilliant tactics of David Axelrod or the cupidity of the owners of NBC or the intimidation and vote fraud perpetrated by Acorn and the New Black Panthers. We lost the election because to many people who should have known better stayed home or cast some silly minor party protest vote while claiming that the Republican wasn’t good enough and that America deserved to experience real pain to purge it of left wing illusions. Well now you have us all experiencing the lesson that rejecting McCain guaranteed would happen. Trillions in wealth are being destroyed, the Constitution and laws are being shredded, millions around the world are being consigned to tyranny and possible murder. I hope you are happy with what you have bought us. If only you were a Moby that said those things intending to help elect Obama and get these results but I suspect that you are not. You will simply protest your sincerity and blame McCain for not being pure enough to meet your ideals.
You may be correct about Romney but let us not make the same mistake twice.
At Theo Spark’s spud farm a nice post with charts from Rico,
http://tinyurl.com/nvv3xt
My Comments:
The story in these graphs is simple. We got hit hard on 9-11. President Bush held things together and when the Republicans took over the Congress the economy began to get back on track. There was much foot dragging and when the Democrats got Congress back in ’06 they proceeded to break up the ship and cut holes in it while Bush was helpless to stop them. The Democrats used the economic disaster that they created to take power. Once in power they have insulted our allies and coddled our enemies. Now everything is melting down completely and the US is being left with no financial, military or moral power while the world runs either away from us or over us.
Unsk is a good voice which i have grown to respect, but i must confess i had a thought similar to LotM’s. Not directed at against unsk personally (as i know LotM’s weren’t) but at that familiar and very very bad habit we got into over the last few years of making a mess of our politics. It started before the 2006 elections and surely helped put Pelosi and Reid in position to really knife old Uncle sam. And i’m as guilty as anybody of it.
buddy larsen,
Thank you. As I said I know that Unsk knows better and I just wish that he would step forward and say so. There is a real BC thread worthy topic for our genial host to consider on Orthodoxy versus Electability.
These things, like most things, go in cycles. In the 1960′s the Left Wing true believers broke up the Democratic Party over Vietnam, which like most wars started under the Democrats. That resulted in a string of Republican victories. The Gramscian project of marching back into power has been a result of them learning to be patient and methodical and build alliances. The Conservatives should not abandon their principles, for one thing that is a proven vote loser, but they do need to stay focused on practical politics. To much is at stake to retreat into a cloister.
Electoral politics are certainly important but electing a few Republicans is a rearguard action and not the answer. Until the culture again values the individual and eagerly anticipates the risk/reward of entrepreneurship instead of the security of collectivism Obama or somebody just like will keep putting holes in the side of the ship.
Maybe we’re already there and all it will take is a kick start from a new technology or the promulgation of a big idea that catches hold in the heartland. I don’t even care if the MSM doesn’t come around right away. Culture trumps everything.
I don’t want to open up a festering wound but, though I voted for him, I was a skeptical McCain backer because I think that he would have done exactly what he has always done, put himself between the Republican Party and its opposition, what ever that might be. 8 years of GWB left us with staggering growth of government and deficits, a pandering of foreign criminals, and a broken fiscal policy as well as a fragile energy policy. Most of this malaise occurred because GWB rather appease those who he had no back to offend. His dear nanny Lupita will always be his most important memory.
I for one am more fearful of RINO’s than I am of democrats. The liberals promise to screw us and do, but the Rino’s promise to abide by our principles then shed them like extra baggage at the first sight of Katie Couric. Fug them if they cannot stand for something.
Nobody can run roughshod over the constitution forever without a fight on their hands.
10. RWE:
Your experience surprises me, RWE. I used free military health care (Navy) for 25 years and never had problem one. I was an aviator and had to get a flight physical every year, but even when I had to go in for unexpected issues – colds, flu, etc. – I always had good experiences. Of course, I was in pretty good health all those years and will remain so…I hope(God willing).
There were occasional hiccups, of course, but never anything life-threatening.
A friend of mine was a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in the Air Force and when she got out in 2003, she refused to see patients anymore because of the reality that, even in the base hospitals, she was limited to 15 minutes per patient. “Not enough time for diagnosing children’s problems” was her reason to leave the profession. So instead of making $150K as a nurse practitioner on the outside, she is satisfied making $90K a year as a drug sales rep.
I’ve been out for a while, so things might just be getting worse (even without the gov’t healthcare octopus) Especially when we put $$ in front of Hippocratics.
There is no security in the collective only herding. Moo.
LOTM, Buddy L, et.al.
What is it the GOP stands for again?
Sounds like the same old to me, i.e. “vote for us because we’re not Democrats”. That’s how we got to where we are today.
Exactly what would be so much better if McCain were president today?
dtmack: Foreign policy.
RCM #80
It’s really important for you all to understand, and to tell everyone you know:
ALL THE SYSTEMS WORK GREAT WHEN YOU AREN’T SICK.
The sicker you are, the greater the risk of death or disability – that’s where the rubber meets the road. And that’s where the private US system shines like a diamond.
When I was a young doctor, a lot of my older colleagues pooh-poohed HMOs – “My patients would never put up with that”. And they were right.
But what they missed is that HMO policies were sold by the millions to people who weren’t patients at all, and who didn’t plan on becoming patients.
Of course, when the DID become patients, in the fullness of time, the HMO Health Club membership wasn’t so important anymore, and the restrictions on getting to see real doctors became VERY important.
dtmack,
Smaller government, or at least less government intervention into individual, private affairs. This would include Health Care where the decisions should be made based on outcomes between a doctor and patient, not based on process, as in the Medicare office agreeing to pay for x procedure and not for y procedure based on efficiencies, and determining that one drug will suffice in inventory despite lower absorption rates into patients system and greater likelihood of side effects based on similar notions of efficiencies.
That costs are driven down as needless procedures are eliminated and effective treatments are implemented. Costs are also driven down when appropriate risk is taken into account in designing an insurance plan to actually deal with risk to population groups opposed to dealing with industrial groups or other groups that do not share common risk factors.
Driving down the cost of everyday wellness care increases the moneys available to treat unforeseen and higher costs of dealing with catastrophic or debilitating illness.
There are at least five alternatives to the Obama health care plan that make sense. All offered by the republican party. Each of these plans has merits that the Obama/democrat plan lacks, nearly any of these plans would be a a far sight better than the Obama/democrat plan and everyone of them is more economically prudent than the Obama/democrat economic suicide plan. One of those plans is even sponsored by John McCain and another is a bipartisan achievement.
Go figure.
Very odd, just tried to comment on the new thread and it swallowed my comment and deleted my name from the slot. Is someone annoyed with me? Must have used the wrong fork again.
I’m coming to think the country’s ultimately better off having its own “Anbar Awakening”. Conservative cassandras have been warning for decades about the dangers of the left and socialism, but nothing teaches like being in the sh*t oneself. I voted for McCain, but as the campaign wore on and he wouldn’t make an issue of Rev. Wright, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge or other handy brickbats, I realized he was more concerned with collegiality than winning.
Alexis and Buddy:
If the New Black Panthers are not going to be kept from intimidating voters, then maybe we’ll have to adopt the tactics of the plug-uglies and dead rabbits.
LOTM:
The same thing happened to me on this thread about 30 minutes ago.
Despite all that was seemly about the great counterculture movement of the 60s it was, in essence, about the primacy of the individual over the state.
I think you’re only half (third, quarter …) right, pb. It was about the primacy of the individual over everything. In another thread some time ago I termed it “radical personal autonomy.” The idea that the individual is answerable to no one.
In some expressions it was anti-authoritarian. In others, it was anti-restraint (open marriages, promiscuity, etc.). In other expressions it was just “I’m gonna do what I wanna do.” But always, it was the individual uber alles.
And like the other notorious “uber alles” episode of the 20th century, it has brought us, ultimately, tyranny. Funny how those cheap & easy siren songs of freedom never deliver what they promise.
LotM: I think it just went through a reboot. My info was cleared as well.
Remember that Mr. McCain brought up the BS about taxing health benefits. Secondly, It is arguable that he would be no better in the “foreign relations” dept. As it would be projected through that wonderfully leftist conglomerate (foggy bottom).
No, Mr. McCain, (I do not call him Senator because he does not and has not conducted himself in accordance with the constitutional limits placed on Congress and the Fed govt. And as such he doesn’t deserve the title.) would be no better and possible just as bad. His banking connections are considerably stronger than 0′s. This is all conjecture of course because he lost a winnable campaign. All he had to do was show some cajones and backbone. He chose to do neither.
I was in the distant past a health care worker. I made 3.25 per hour as a Respiratory Therapist with the additional duties of running the ventilator during operations and I also did most of the charging tickets. This was during the 1970s. And at that time a simple ECG would be billed out at over 300 dollars. This was because the insurance company would pay it and the patient did not care what was billed because his share was small compared to the overall bill. In the small Michigan town that the hospital was located it was the best job to have unless you wanted to drive to Flint or Saginaw and work in the factories and you could only get a job there if you had a relative that had pull within the union. No nothing less than a free market solution will work in the long term. Unfortunately humans don’t live long enough for this to be seen as beneficial.
Well, the system must have a virus. Because it just swallowed my comment as well. And inserted a poster’s name and email in my box. Wretchard! We have a problem.
Jack it keeps giving me your info???
LotM, et al,
I apologize for the namecalling inference regarding McCain. He had an honorable military career, and served his country well in the military.
His political career to my mind has not been honorable, particularly since W was elected President.
He chose to be the media’s favorite Republican, reliably undermining nearly every position W took with the exception of the War and Immigration. His positions with some rare exceptions such as on torture, lacked principle and he consistently put his own political interests above those of the nation. I know many of these politicians are egomaniacs, but if one is running for President for over 8 years, shouldn’t one bother to learn just a little economics. After all, the President does have a tremendous impact on the world’s greatest economy.
But the cake for me is how he dealt with Sarah Palin. According to media reports, McCain asked Palin to give up those public funds she could use lawfully as Governor to defend herself against the numerous ethics lawsuits filed against her, with the promise that his campaign or the Republican Party would reimburse her. She gave up the funds and to this day neither the McCain campaign or the Republican Party has reimbursed her. And, during and after the campaign, Mc Cain allowed his staff to spread lies and rumors about her and to generally try to ruin her political career.
An honorable guy just wouldn’t do those things.
I had the an odd thing happen too. My comment boxes had different name and emails in them and the comment appeared for awhile with one of the other names then went away.
me too, LotM –same ting –
bw/90; Funny how siren songs of freedom never deliver what they promise
–from a wiki: (The Sirens)…song takes effect at midday, in a windless calm. The end of that song is death…the sailors’ flesh is rotting away…with their feathers stolen (the Sirens’)…divine nature kept them alive, but unable to provide for their visitors, who starved to death by refusing to leave.
It was popping up with the name and info of the last person to post.
but I think they’ve fixed it now.
A couple of points that I am not sure have been mentioned here:
I believe that the US medical system consumes more as a percentage of GDP than that of any other country in the world. I am personally convinced that there is a strong connection between this and the fact that the US also has more lawyers per capita than any other country. Are there any hard (or even reasonably firm) numbers on the cost of extra procedures dictated by the need to avoid malpractice suits? And if this is a significant impact on medical costs, what can be done about it?
Second point. “Conventional” medicine (read: drugs and surgery) has a very strong hold on the healing profession in the US and elsewhere. This is obviously because the companies involved in supplying drugs and medical equipment make very large profits and want to keep it that way – and do so by intensive lobbying to get the law twisted their way. What can and should be done about this? Bear in mind that, particularly for chronic conditions such as arthritis, “complementary” medicine is often much cheaper, or more effective, or both. Example: Glucosamine for osteoarthritis. Cost per month about $10. No effective conventional treatment (other than palliative). Example: Lutein for age-related macular degeneration (AMD); cost per month approximately $30. Cost of the leading drug for this problem, per month; approximately $2500.
It is about time that control of medicine was returned to real doctors who have a vocation for healing people, and taken away from corporate suits in Big Pharma. And most definitely, away from the lawyers.
Imagine
50 new fed medical depts growing to 100
20 new regal federal office buildings housing hundreds of thousands
fed control from the med school to the urban clinic – how many czars will that take?
and all loyal to alinsky and SEIU
democrat or progressive or whatever it will be called then — forever
change – the bolivian and putin way.
Eugenics, folks –that’s where this is heading. Remember, there is a big Margaret Sanger following even unto today, Search [ hillary sanger ] –and the like. Hill just recently spoke at a Sanger conference, and restated her “proud” Sanger Progressivism. Hill speaks for a mainstream of ‘progressivism’.
Hi ya’ll.
I always preferred to help other than asking for help myself, but sometimes a conspiracy of circumstances intervenes in unexpected ways.
So, if you want to know whether you want to help or just want to help, please click on my nickname and find more information, and email me — the email is listed on the page.
Many thanks!
(login info was for twobyfour; let’s see if this works; I am Nichevo)
Sanders: If you will not call him Sen. McCain, how about Captain McCain? Will that do? Or did he not earn his rank in the United States Navy? Perhaps Lt. Cmdr, which rank he reached before the Forrestal fire and of course the shootdown?
You must be quite a man, to crap on John McCain! I’d love to see your resume.
To be sure, I found both Sen. and Candidate McCain a disappointment and would have no doubt found President McCain lacking too. But to intimate that he could have equaled the Obama horrorshow, it just makes you out an unserious person.
I see the login is still futzed…oh well.
Anyway, Unsk, your comments about McCain/Palin funding oddities require enlargement.
Wretchard (#39): “Health care is to some extent a political (division of interests) problem, not a medical one.”
Bingo. Although I’d argue that it’s to more than “some extent.” Ultimately this is all about politics. The minute that health care is presented as a “right,” you can forget about trying to work the problem as one of wisely managing medical resources, getting “just enough” innovation, etc. The demand for health is infinite; therefore the demand for medical care to secure that right is also infinite. The politicians pandered to these expectations, and now the bill is coming due. Interesting to watch them try to hide it, and to watch the electorate possibly wake up to that.
Here is Gov New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
saying in Spanish that Obama is an “immigrant.” (So he understands
understands “immigrant” issues.)The context suggests that by
“immigrant” bill richardson means “illegal immigrant”
here is a pdf transcript of Kenyan National Assembly on Nov 5, 2008, the day after Obama was elected. Over and over again there are references
to Obama being a “son of the soil” of Kenya and a Kenyan. On page page 3275 there is this passage:
HOUSE SHOULD ADJOURN TO DISCUSS
ELECTION OF MR. BARRACK OBAMA
Ms. Odhiambo: On a point of order,
Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. It is not on this issue.
I stand on a point of order under Standing
Order No.20 to seek leave for adjournment of
the House to discuss the American presidential
election results.
(Applause)
Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the
President-elect, Mr. Obama, is a son of the soil
of this country. Every other country in this
continent is celebrating the Obama win. It is
only proper and fitting that the country which
he originates from should show the same
excitement, pomp and colour.
3. A Conservative Teacher:
In all honesty, what do we make of Romney’s support of this program? To me, he is the next President, yet he signed on to this program- do we hold it against him, or do we file it under ‘learned his mistake’?
Tenncare. There was an example out there and he failed to take heed.
Not Presidential Material. There are too many socialists in the Republican party. The Huckster is another. They seem to cancel each other out candidate wise. However, what it says about the electorate is not so good.
Charles was my new name and this didn’t post:
3. A Conservative Teacher:
In all honesty, what do we make of Romney’s support of this program? To me, he is the next President, yet he signed on to this program- do we hold it against him, or do we file it under ‘learned his mistake’?
Tenncare. There was an example out there and he failed to take heed.
Not Presidential Material. There are too many socialists in the Republican party. The Huckster is another. They seem to cancel each other out candidate wise. However, what it says about the electorate is not so good.
Charles is still my new name and this didn’t post:
3. A Conservative Teacher:
In all honesty, what do we make of Romney’s support of this program? To me, he is the next President, yet he signed on to this program- do we hold it against him, or do we file it under ‘learned his mistake’?
Tenncare. There was an example out there and he failed to take heed.
Not Presidential Material. There are too many socialists in the Republican party. The Huckster is another. They seem to cancel each other out candidate wise. However, what it says about the electorate is not so good.
The 0 is building a towering patronage wall brick by brick.
With 17% of the economy, the medical-pharmalogical complex is to be the keystone of that keep.
The opportunity to forge a racket strong enough to bind us all…
The ultimate ‘protection racket’…
( Pay me or something bad might happen to you…)
( I’m your only hope…)
/////
Dick Morris (CATASTROPHE) has is pretty much right: Baraq the pol is the enemy of 0 the executive.
We live the Greek tragedy.
////
WRT birthers: H has an AB blood type. That was revealed by the British press when he first flew to London.
Can any clubber find out the blood types of Stanley, Obama Sr., Frank Marshall Davis?
blert…
W your site has been befouled…
Comments evaporate…
And attributions are corrupted.