Freedom Line Blog

Despite expressing “concerns” about the Baucus “health care reform” bill, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) announced she will vote “yes” today in the Senate Finance Committee.

Psssst…  Want to see Al Gore undressed?

Then watch this video.  After foolishly agreeing to participate in a Q&A during a gathering of “environmental journalists,” Gore didn’t expect to find himself exposed by questions pointing out the myth that is man-made global warming alarmism.  But exposed he was, by Irish film producer and director Phelim McAleer.  Predictably, Mr. McAleer’s microphone was quickly silenced, but not before he made Al Gore sweat and puff.  Coming at the end of a week in which even the BBC openly wondered “What Happened to Global Warming?,” it just wasn’t a very good week for poor Al Gore.

There has been a great deal of debate over the relationship between tort reform (capping non-economic damages in lawsuits) and health care.

Well, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has provided some research to support the notion that tort reform would actually cut health care costs and reduce the budget deficit.

According to the CBO:

[I]mplementing a typical package of tort reform proposals nationwide would reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009). That figure is the sum of a direct reduction in spending of 0.2 percent from lower medical liability premiums and an additional indirect reduction of 0.3 percent from slightly less utilization of health care services….  Enacting a typical set of proposals would reduce federal budget deficits by roughly $54 billion over the next 10 years, according to estimates by CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee of Taxation.”

It is straightforward logic that taxes discourage production and investment.  But judging by their latest bright idea to tax financial transactions, Democrats such as Barney Frank and their Big Labor overlords either don’t understand this or simply don’t care.

Fresh off a worldwide crisis from which it hasn’t even yet recovered, the financial industry is hardly the sector that tax-hungry liberals should attempt to further cripple.  This is particularly true in an era when market participants can relocate operations almost anywhere in the world, as the past decade’s out-migration from the United States has shown.  Ignoring this, liberals are now proposing a tax of 0.1% to 0.25% on almost every form of financial transaction.  So how exactly is this supposed to help America’s financial industry recover?

Worse, the proceeds would be directed toward (you guessed it) ObamaCare or more futile “stimulus” spending, despite warnings from economists about the negative consequences for markets.  “I was one of the ones who suggested the idea,” says Congressman Frank.

Which, come to think of it, is almost argument enough for any sane person to oppose this bizarre new proposed tax-grab.

Courtesy of the Washington Post, this illustrates that in spite of massive spending, in spite of new mandates and in spite of new insurance regulations, an average family of four could still end up paying over one-fifth of their income on health care costs under the Baucus Bill.

The Senate Finance Committee will vote today on the latest version of health care “reform,” the Baucus Bill.  Senator Baucus is expected to strike the gavel around 10:00 am (EST), with a vote expected later in the afternoon.

Make sure to call your Senator and tell them to vote “No” on the Baucus Bill.  The Congressional Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

Here are the members of the Finance Committee, Senators that could decide the fate of health care in the U.S.

• Max Baucus (D-MT)
• John D. Rockefeller (D-WV)
• Kent Conrad (D-ND)
• Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
• John Kerry (D-MA)
• Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
• Ron Wyden (D-OR)
• Charles Schumer (D-NY)
• Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
• Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
• Bill Nelson (D-FL)
• Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
• Tom Carper (D-DE)

• Charles Grassley (R-IA)
• Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
• Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
• Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
• Jim Bunning (R-KY)
• Mike Crapo (R-ID)
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)
• John Ensign (R-NV)
• Mike Enzi (R-WY)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)

Associated Press – Dems Scramble after Warning from Health Insurers
WSJ – Senate Finance Committee to Vote on Health Care Bill
Washington Post – Can Deeds Come Back in VA?
Political Wire – Sen. Reid’s Re-election Now a Toss Up
WSJ Editorial – Health Care Industry Learns the Price of Appeasing Congress
National Review Online – ObamaCare Dissected
NY Times – Congress Split on Effort to Tax Health Plans

Federal Debt: $11.915 trillion

Well, it only took the Obama administration a half-day to find folks to trash an insurance industry study that calculates much higher health care insurance premiums under the Baucus version of ObamaCare.

“I really don’t think it’s worth the paper it’s written on,” AARP Executive Vice President John Rother  said, according to the Associated Press. 

That couldn’t be the same AARP that sees nothing distressing in Medicare cuts of $500 billion or of significant cuts to Medicare Advantage under the Baucus plan, could it?  The AARP that sells insurance  that will competitively benefit from cuts in Medicare Advantage?  The AARP that sells tons of stuff to seniors by making those seniors believe that AARP is their lobbyist while laughing all the way to the bank?

From today’s Washington Post distinguishing the Iraq troop surge from General McChrystal’s request for more ground forces in Afghanistan:

It’s important to remember that the crucial, lasting element of the surge in Iraq was not the influx of troops but getting Sunni tribes to switch sides, by offering them security, money and a place at the table. U.S. troops are now drawing down and yet – despite some violence – the Sunnis have not resumed fighting because Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is courting their support.”

So, according to Zakaria, courting Afghanistan’s Pashtuns will take the same kind of subsidies and sympathy extended to Iraq’s Sunnis. Fair enough. But how about that security thing? Does Zakaria really believe that – all other things being equal – applying only two of the three prongs of the Sunni pacification strategy to the Pashtuns will yeld exactly the same results? Especially when the prong he omits is the one that guarantees the persuasive effect of the other two? If there has been any lesson learned from America’s foreign policy dealings it is that nations – like individuals – need both carrots and sticks to inspire lasting changes.

We’ve seen this sort of reliance on “soft power” yield results before. Former President George W. Bush rode tractors with Vladimir Putin, looked into his soul, and then listened attentively as his buddy invaded and annexed a democratic country in neighboring Georgia. For over a decade State Departments under both Democrats and Republicans shipped consumer goods to North Korea while that country exploded nuclear bombs and fired rockets toward Hawaii. In both cases, the only defense for such subsidies is the active presence of American troops in Eastern Europe and South Korea. Take away the threat of an immediate response from the world’s premier fighting force and suddenly our subsidies become tribute; our sympathy, kowtowing.

Russia and North Korea understand this. So too do Iraq’s Sunni leaders. Are the Pashtuns any different?

CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses McDonald v. City of Chicago, a case currently before the Supreme Court that could determine once and for all whether the right to keep and bear arms is a “fundamental” right.

With the Senate Finance Committee set to vote tomorrow on Senator Max Buacus’ $839 billion “health care reform” bill, the health insurance industry is out with a new study warning that the legislation will dramatically increase health insurance premiums for U.S. families.  

The study, commissioned by America’s Health Insurance Plans (“AHIP”) and prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, “makes clear that several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system,”  said AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni. “Between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system.”

Those provisions in the Baucus bill analyzed by the study include:

• Insurance market reforms coupled with a weak coverage requirement,
• A new tax on high-cost health care plans,
• Cost-shifting as a result of cuts to Medicare, and
• New taxes on several health care sectors.

The White House and Congressional proponents of “reform” immediately responded with a typical “shoot-the-messenger” reaction.   They have yet to substantively dispute the study’s actual findings.

President Obama loves the Mayo Clinic.  President Obama loves Medicare.  But the Mayo Clinic doesn’t love Medicare.

The Arizona Republic reported on Friday that,

One of the Mayo Clinic’s two family-medicine practices in Arizona soon will stop accepting Medicare, leaving thousands of patients to pay out of pocket for routine doctor’s visits or find a new physician. … Hospital officials called the new policy a ‘two year pilot program’ and said Thursday that the changes are necessary because of low Medicare reimbursement rates.”

Does anyone recall that one of the provisions of “health care reform” is to reduce Medicare reimbursements to doctors even further?  Medical insurance that doctors won’t take just doesn’t seem like a healthy reform.

It’s name is Honduras.  It’s tiny and impoverished.  It hasn’t had an easy time becoming a democracy.  It’s president was recently thrown out in a “coup.”

Well, that’s what President Obama and a bunch of his South American thug-buddies say.  And Obama’s sticking to his story, come hell or the Honduran Constitution or responsible legal interpretations of it by people who, you know, have actually read it and have determined that the ouster was legal.  Those interpretations have been published.

Well, never mind, the President has his own legal opinion, written at the State Department.  It hasn’t been published.   It’s secret, as if written in the invisible ink that has become a hallmark of this administration’s “transparency.”

U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, went to Honduras on a fact-finding mission.  He published his impressions over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. Ambassador to Honduras urged Demint to read the State Department legal analysis.  He tried, before and after his trip.  His request has been refused.  Did we mention that he’s on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?  Did we mention that President Obama and his South  American thug-buddies have not exactly contributed to the internal peace of Honduras, following the ouster?

Honduras is a tiny country, from which a major U.S. foreign policy blunder is emerging.  Its impact on the world?  Not so much.  It’s impact on the history of U.S. foreign policy regarding South America?  Add it to a long list of sad and sordid tales.  This one is President Obama’s.

“But those political promises were only good for as long as it took to get the mandate enacted into law.”

That was the observation of “neither politically or socially conservative” author and Massachusetts resident Wendy Williams, commenting this weekend upon her first-hand experience under that state’s mandatory healthcare “reform.” Readers should be forewarned – Mrs. Williams’s commentary generates visceral anger at the sanctimonious bureaucrats who would wrench control over our own health and family budget decisions.  She describes how she and her husband rationally chose to purchase insurance through IBM, his former employer, only to be informed three years later that they’d be fined by the state because Massachusetts changed the rules to make their bare-bones catastrophic policy unpalatable.  Accordingly, they were told to either purchase a pricier policy that they didn’t want, or pay another $1,000 each year to Massachusetts. 

This directly contradicted the explicit promises of then-Governor Mitt Romney and then-Senator Ted Kennedy that middle-class residents would not find themselves taxed or otherwise penalized if state government healthcare reform was imposed.

Now, advocates of a federal healthcare mandate make the same promises to us.  As they say about those who fail to learn from history…

In response to questions being raised about the justification for President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, a Democratic National Committee official is accusing the GOP of siding with terrorists.

DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse earlier today told Politico:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”

Among those praising the surprise decision by the Nobel Committee?  CNN reports:

Praise came from … a senior official from Hamas — the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza.”

This week, the fictional character Don Draper from AMC’s critically-acclaimed series Mad Men was somehow named the Most-Influential Man of 2009 by askmen.com.  That’s right – a nonexistent man is somehow the year’s most influential.

So what does this have to do with Barack Obama and his coronation as Global Prom Queen this week by the Nobel committee?  Lots.

Just as a fictional character has somehow attained the title of most-influential man, a President who has done absolutely nothing to achieve actual peace in the world has just won the Nobel Peace Prize after just nine months in office.  Indeed, last February’s Nobel nomination deadline meant that Obama was nominated no more than 11 days into office. 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy captured the essence of this absurdity last month when he mockingly referenced Obama’s “virtual world.” But as Sarkozy also pointed out, we don’t live in that virtual world – we live in the real world.  And by repeating mindless platitudes about ridding the world of nuclear weapons, Obama ignores the very real danger of nations like Iran rapidly acquiring them.  It’s possible that Obama’s Nobel will prove to be nothing but a bizarre, humorous footnote when we look back, but Sarkozy’s observation reminds us that living as if we’re in a virtual world can have dangerous implicaitons for the real world.

There’s already been plenty of criticism leveled at this morning’s announcement that the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is going to President Obama — despite the fact that the nominating window closed 11 days into his presidency and he did not then (or for that matter now) have a single major foreign policy achievement under his belt.

What hasn’t received enough attention yet is the false humility of Obama’s Rose Garden remarks this morning on the prize.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

“But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build — a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action — a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.”

Good grief. So here we have the President essentially admitting that the award is a preemptive endorsement of the transformative nature of his time in office. This would be less bothersome if it were untrue. Unfortunately, the Nobel Committee (which has doled out prizes to the likes of Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Paul Krugman in recent years) has lost all trace of being a non-partisan organization.

This week’s installment of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out.  For those readers who haven’t had a chance to read it, below is a summary of its contents:

Senik:  ObamaCare – Fiction, by Acclamation
Lee:  Political Opposition to Destructive “Net Neutrality” Gains Momentum
CFIF Staff Commentary:  Jubilation over the “Health Care Reform” Bill that Isn’t a Bill and Isn’t Going To Be the Bill
Batkins:  Big Business, Big Liberals

Freedom Minute Video:  Gunning for the Second Amendment
Podcast:  One Nation, Without God – Interview with GOPUSA.com’s Bobby Eberle
Jester’s Courtroom:  Tired of the Legal System 

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

“This is the first time the award is given for wishful thinking.”

Those were the words of Israeli Knesset member Danny Danon upon receiving word that Barack Obama won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Who knew that Saturday Night Live’s parody of Obama admitting that he had done absolutely nothing so far in office would prove so prescient?

This bizarre and absurd decision by the Nobel committee, of course, follows earlier awards to such towering architects of peace as PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1994…  Six years before he commenced the bloody intifada against Israel in 2000.  In contrast, Ronald Reagan led the free world to victory in the Cold War without firing a shot against the Soviet Union, freeing hundreds of millions of human beings and ending the looming threat of a global nuclear holocaust, but never seemed to gain sufficient esteem within the minds of the Nobel committee.  One can only speculate about the true basis on which this now-discredited award is given, but it certainly isn’t for tangible results in achieving peace.  If that was the basis, they could just as easily rename it the Reagan-Thatcher-Pope John Paul II Peace Prize.