John McCormack of The Weekly Standardreported yesterday:
Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.”
First it was the “Louisiana Purchase.” Then, the “Cornhusker Kickback.” Is the president now trading federal judgeship’s for health care votes? Read McCormack’s entire piece, then you decide.
Sign #535 that health care reform efforts have dragged on for too long: the mainstream media, having exhausted its other options, is starting to make sense … and in the journalistic wasteland of weekly newsmagazines, no less.
Newsweek’s Howard Fineman turns this week to the hallmark of a liberal journalist afraid that he’s going to miss his deadline — making grand conclusions about policy based on a personal anecdote. After falling ill on a trip in Argentina, Fineman became convinced that the American healthcare reform debate hasn’t focused nearly enough on the cost to the consumer. To wit:
President Obama proclaims his plan (whatever it finally is) to be “reform.” But from what I can see, it would merely feed, at taxpayer expense, 30 million currently “uncovered” people into a wasteful system that doesn’t have either the price-signaling power of a marketplace or the sweeping overview and control of a state-run bureacracy.
Apart from his ambivalence between free-market health care and an authoritarian system, this is the sound of Howard Fineman making sense (this probably has something to do with the earth reversing its polarity).
But if Newsweek deserves accolades for groping towards insight, Time deserves a standing ovation for one of the most insightful pieces they’re published in years (of course, it was relegated to their “The Curious Capitalist” blog), courtesy of one Barbara Kiviat. In a piece titled “Could Price Tags Save American Health Care?”, Kiviat has a vivid dream of a more-market friendly healthcare sector:
I wish everyone in America could instantaneously have insurance set up this way [based on transparent price and quality]. I wish that every time any person went to the doctor, he asked: How much does this cost? How much does that cost? Is there a less-expensive way to do this? Naturally, people with high deductibles are already incentivized to do this. So are people without insurance.
But I want to go even further. I want everyone to have easy access to price information, even those people who don’t think—or want—to ask. When I go to a hotel, there is sign on the back of the door that tells me the most the room can cost. When I go to a car dealership, there are sticker prices on every windshield. When I go to Wal-Mart, there are price tags on the shelves.
Conservatives looking to shed the “Party of No” mantle should take note of these and other insights into the virtues of consumer-driven health care. The case is an easy one to make: if it works in every other sector of the economy, why not in the doctor’s office?
For anyone looking for an excellent summary of the history, purpose, and use of the Senate’s budget reconciliation process, Newt Gingrich provides the best single source description I’ve read so far. This analysis – supplemented with charts showing when the process has been used, by whom, and for what – will be very helpful when debating your liberal friends or trying to decipher the media’s confused coverage of the procedure. It even discusses “the Byrd Rule” (named after its author, West Virginia Democratic Senator, Robert Byrd), and its role in stopping the Clinton White House from using reconciliation to pass HillaryCare. With President Obama calling on congressional Democrats to use reconciliation to pass the Senate’s health care “reform” bill so they can bypass a Republican filibuster, now is the time to get your arguments down and call your members of Congress.
Today’s Washington Times has a morosely humorous article discussing the current fetish for “jobs creation” bills in Congress. From confiscating beachfront property to establishing a non-profit government entity to promote travel, nearly every bill in Congress is being fitted into a jobs frame that makes it difficult to oppose on its claims. But not, of course, on the substance.
For that, we need look no farther than the end of the liberty-loving economics student’s book shelf for a copy of Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson.” After explaining why full employment is only and always the means to achieving the proper goal of full production, Hazlitt takes aim at the predecessors of our latter day misguided politicos:
Yet our legislators do not present Full Production bills in Congress but Full Employment bills. Even committees of businessmen recommend ‘a President’s Commission on Full Employment,’ not on Full Production, or even on Full Employment and Full Production. Everywhere the means is erected into the end, and the end itself is forgotten.”
So too, is the credibility of any member of Congress who thinks that the answer to spurring economic growth comes from anything other than lower, simpler taxes.
Ordinarily, the term “bunker mentality” refers to an individual or group so cut off from outside opinion that they view any dissent as a threat to power. The Obama White House is acting the part in its call for congressional Democrats to exercise the so-called “nuclear option” and pass health care “reform” through the Reconciliation process, public opinion polls be damned. But if the president launches legislative nukes at his opponents and the American people (but I repeat myself), and then retreats back into his publicly financed bunker, how long will it be until he realizes he has to live with the fallout? Better yet, will his agenda be so radioactive that only the most suicidal Democrats will follow him back out into the public square?
As discussed previously by CFIF, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) is getting some much deserved attention for his path breaking proposal, “A Roadmap for America’s Future.” The Roadmap lays out a comprehensive vision for matching spending on federal entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security with tax receipts. In other words, it offers specifics on the GOP’s long-stated aim to make government live within its means.
Of course, proposing an elegant, tough-minded legislative solution in an election year doesn’t win many co-sponsors. In Ryan’s case, he’s got 9. The folks at Newsweek noticed and are calling out Republicans for their lack of agreement on a substantive way forward. Being a man of substance and conviction isn’t easy in Washington, D.C., especially for a member of Congress. That Paul Ryan is willing to put his policies where his rhetoric is deserves not only a nod, but broad based conservative support as well.
Today is an important day in United States Supreme Court history, and in the ongoing battle to protect the individual freedoms enshrined in the Second Amendment.
Two years ago, the Court finally and explicitly confirmed that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms in District of Columbia v. Heller. Today, it hears oral argument in McDonald v. Chicago to determine whether that right protects citizens against state infringement as well as in federal jurisdictions such as Washington, D.C.
Everyday citizens unfamiliar with Court precedent and the legal contortions distinguishing which provisions of the Bill of Rights will or will not be protected will scratch their heads and wonder, “if the First Amendment applies to protect citizens against state infringement, why not the Second Amendment?” The Court has also recognized Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendment protections against state violation. The legal niceties, however, are less important than the overarching illogic that even attempts to render Second Amendment rights less important or worthy of protection.
The simple fact is that this case illustrates once again the way in which politicized judges decide which rights they consider important based upon their own personal political preferences. Our Founding Fathers did not draft the Constitution as a byzantine code to be understood and applied only by conceited judges. Rather, they intentionally began the Constitution with the words, “We the People” and created it to be understood, treasured and applied by everyday citizens.
Accordingly, the legal nuances are less important than the overall theme: big government once again seeks to infringe upon citizens’ individual freedoms and Constitutional rights via court decree. Fortunately, the Court appears likely to side with the Second Amendment over the city of Chicago. But even if it abandons logic and principle by upholding Chicago’s prohibition, the battle will continue with citizens exercising their rights at the federal, state and local legislative and executive levels. In which case gun “control” advocates may ultimately come to regret a fleeting Pyrrhic judicial triumph.
Hats off to the media for casting their glance to a deserving corner of Middle America. While we’re still about 10 months from the 2012 presidential sweepstakes starting in earnest, an amazing amount of journalistic attention has been directed towards Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels in recent days — this despite the fact that Daniels has probably been the most reticent of all potential GOP contenders.
Before Republicans begin their usual coronation of the next candidate in line, Mitch Daniels deserves consideration commensurate with his tremendous record as a public servant.
If there are any camels’ backs at the breaking point, here’s a public employee union-sponsored straw. As if daring the mainstream media to challenge his meritless assertions of bipartisanship, President Obama named SEIU leader and fellow Saul Alinsky disciple, Andy Stern, to his “Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.”
That’s right; the panel of experts tasked with finding ways to reduce the federal deficit will count among its ranks a man who agitates for expanding both the membership and compensation of government employees. He also has tight connections with ACORN and organized intimidation campaigns against Tea Party activists. Asking Stern to find ways to save taxpayer money is like putting a fox in charge of the bed check in a hen house: it makes sense if you don’t think about it.
Well, this isn’t too surprising. When asked by a reporter to grade herself on the past year’s performance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded that she’d give herself “an ‘A’ for effort.” No doubt the mother of five is the kind of helicopter parent demanding trophies for participation, and praise for people who deign to show up. But if you can get an ‘A’ just for trying, what grade will the Speaker bestow on herself when and if the Democrats in Congress actually pass the health care “reform” bill?
Be on the lookout for another interesting congressional race, this time in Georgia. Today’s announcement by Rep. John Linder that he won’t seek reelection is fueling speculation that former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz might be tossing his baseball cap in the political ring. Besides throwing a wicked fastball, Smoltz is an Evangelical Christian who is a legendary competitor in everything he does. If he does decide to run, he’ll run to win – hard.
In case you missed it, Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad) has been accused of carrying out an elaborate assassination of Hamas’ military leader in a Dubai hotel. Though the hit was a success because the target was killed, ordinarily it is considered a failure if the perpetrators’ identities are discovered. According to a former CIA agent writing in The Wall Street Journal, the operation was executed flawlessly save for one new wrinkle that the agents apparently didn’t anticipate: closed-circuit television (CCTV).
I can only speculate about where exactly the hit went wrong. But I would guess the assassins failed to account for the marked advance in technology. Not only were there closed-circuit TV cameras in the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated and at the airport, but Dubai has at its fingertips the best security consultants in the world. The consultants merely had to run advanced software through all of Dubai’s digital data before, during and after the assassination to connect the assassins in time and place.
Nearly every public space in the developed world features “eyes in the sky” connected to CCTV feeds monitored by either private security personnel or government agents. Though unpopular with citizens, governments love cameras because they increase Big Brother’s presence while reducing manpower. Maybe that’s why Britain has more CCTV installations than China. Usually, the primary justification for using CCTV is that it protects society from dangerous individuals. How ironic it is that the best all this surveillance can do is identify a group after it kills an individual. Now, with Dubai police releasing headshots of the hit squad, it looks like as many as 26 Israeli agents will need to find a new line of work.
However, Mossad shouldn’t have any problem finding replacements. Media coverage of the assassination has touched off “Mossad mania” in Israel with the agency receiving record agent applications and stores selling out of its memorabilia. Even when technology makes caps success at a one hit wonder, there will always be plenty of people offering themselves as the next James Bond.
In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the facade that is the administration’s debt-reduction commission and, specifically, how appointing a panel of has-been politicians to give Washington cover for tax hikes is not exactly a profile in courage.
Thanks to a report by Colorado’s Independence Institute based on FOIA requests, we now know that the Department of Homeland Security loses about 1,000 computers a year. You read that right. And DHS has absolutely no idea where they are. Fear not, though, because a department spokesman assures an incredulous public that no one is at risk because there wasn’t any sensitive information on the lost computers.
Assuming that’s true, then why did DHS need the computers in the first place? If there is nothing particularly important stored on the computers such that losing 1,000 of them in one year doesn’t impede DHS’s ability to secure the homeland, why spend taxpayer money on them? Maybe that money could be better spent on other programs that help prevent another undie-bomber. You know, something that helps the system “work.”
That’s the rumor coming out of Florida Republican circles and RedState’s Erick Erickson. Not that such a move would be too much of a surprise since Crist is still the sitting governor of Florida and is losing by 18% to former state house speaker, Marco Rubio. He needs something to spice up his campaign, and going rogue would certainly do it. The question is, though, what kind of voter would Crist try to attract once he became un-tethered from a political party?
This isn’t the same scenario that faced Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) when he ran as an independent after losing the Connecticut Democratic primary to Ned Lamont in 2006. There, netroots activists took over the election and alienated much of Lieberman’s comparatively moderate base. Lieberman was also aided by some not so subtle help from the Bush Administration seeing the Iraq War supporter as an ally on foreign affairs. Neither factor is present in this year’s Florida U.S. Senate race. Not only is Rubio building the kind of following that could deliver a decisive victory among Republicans and Independents, there is no indication that the Obama Administration will coordinate with Crist to the detriment of the likely Democratic nominee, Kendrick Meek.
If Crist truly is considering leaving the GOP, he should instead “suspend” his campaign and concentrate on ending his one term as governor on as good a note as possible. Otherwise, he’ll do further damage to his reputation while simultaneously wasting Floridians time and money on an ill-conceived vanity tour.
This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. For those readers who don’t receive it in their e-mail inboxes or if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, below is a summary of its contents:
Many political pundits immediately labeled yesterday’s healthcare summit a failure simply because it failed to result in some misplaced compromise. But that is too narrow a perspective. For conservatives and libertarians, the conference actually served a positive purpose.
Pardon our cynicism, but Barack Obama’s purpose in convening the conference was not to consider opponents’ legitimate points or data. Despite Democrats’ baseless “party of ‘no'” broadsides, multiple Republican alternatives to ObamaCare have been readily available for months for all to see. Rather, Obama’s goal was to once again ascend the stage and provide yet another “last and final” lecture to Americans on the wisdom of ObamaCare. After all, he revealed his opinion on why his efforts had failed so far when he absurdly stated in his State of the Union address that, “I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.”
Thus, as liberals almost invariably do, Obama mischaracterized his failure as one of tactics or communication to the plodding American electorate, rather than one of defective policy.
Obama remains under the strange impression that all he needs to do is take the stage once again to cast his magical spell, and the fawning media reflexively praises him every time. His September healthcare speech to a joint session of Congress, his State of the Union address and his recent appearance before a Republican Congressional gathering are the latest examples. But if he is such an effective persuader and communicator, why does he keep having to repeat the same tired points?
That brings us to the reason why yesterday’s summit was a success for opponents of the ObamaCare takeover. Namely, that Obama not only failed to dazzle the assembled opposition, but actually got schooled. As just one example, Obama attempted to scold Senator Lamar Alexander (R – Tennessee) by saying, “this is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight.” A short time later, Obama was forced to admit that ~he~ was the one whose “facts weren’t straight.” Moreover, Obama clearly appeared petulant and flustered, and avoided even attempting to battle rising Republican Congressional superstar Paul Ryan (R – Wisconsin) on Ryan’s substantive data and argument.
Meanwhile, the American people were able to witness the avalanche of reasons why ObamaCare is a toxic proposal. For that reason, yesterday was a victory for conservatives and libertarians who oppose Obama’s healthcare boondoggle, and a loss for those seeking to impose it.
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