According to CNN, capitalism, the original inventor of fantasy sports, steel, smiles, ice cream, and prosperity has reinvented itself in the shadowy realm of fantasy football.
For those who follow the pigskin, you’ll remember that the quarterback for the New England Patriots (Tom … something) tore several ligaments in his knee last year. Fantasy owners who drafted him were left with a huge loss in point production, and had to settle with an inferior quarterback, likely one from New York or Philly.
In response to this suffering, some intrepid entrepreneurs decided to essentially offer insurance for the fantasy sports market. Fantasy “players” can now buy insurance for players, in the event they are lost to injury. As a result of such genius innovations in the market, fantasy sports are now an $800 million industry. Regrettably, the number of relationships and marriages that fantasy sports has destroyed is incalculable at this moment, but I wouldn’t put it past the market to give everyone an estimate.
Of course, fantasy football was already a nice product of capitalism before people started making money off of it. For millions of over-enthusiastic beer-drinking football junkies across the nation, fantasy sports provide plenty of psychic income. Thankfully, the IRS has not yet begun to tax this potential revenue stream.
The first surprising quote came from the opening line of his remarks. “I’m not the first President to take up this cause but I am determined to be the last.” Really?!? Mr. President, do you really think that passing a 1017-page bill will end all of our health care problems? Have you seen the Prime Minister’s Question Hour on C-SPAN? Do you realize they still have debates over health care in other single-payer countries? Only their debates focus on people dying in hospitals because the government won’t pay for procedures, and they die waiting. Passing your bill will assuredly not make you the last President to take up the cause of health care, especially with trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities.
Also, the President claimed, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dollar to our deficits either now or in the future.” We hope you live up to that promise because the current version of the House bill will add to our deficits. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it will add at least $239 billion over the next ten years, and this is a conservative deficit projection according to some experts.
Of course, the deficit is only one piece of the health care puzzle. Cutting costs and confronting over $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities should also be addressed, but the President only promised that he would not touch Medicare. There is simply no way the President can promise health care for all without drastically raising taxes or adding trillions more to our national debt.
What was left unsaid last night was how the President plans to give consumers more control over their health care. The bill that the President is likely to sign instead gives 53 new government agencies control over health care, not patients and doctors.
During his speech to a joint session of Congress this evening, President Obama will again endorse the idea of a government-run public health insurance option. This, according to some staffers in Congress and despite the public outrage against it.
In doing so, many insiders have hinted that while Obama will make a soft endorsement of the controversial provision, he is also likely the hedge his bets to leave open the possibility for further negotiations with Congressional moderates.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the other hand continues to insist that a public health insurance option must be part of any final bill in order for it to pass in the House of Representatives. Pelosi continues to get a lot of heat from progressives in her caucus (as many as 100 of them), who claim they will vote “No” on any bill that doesn’t include the government-run public option.
After a heated August recess on the health care issue, the Kabuki Dance that the President performs tonight should be interesting. As Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, stated this morning, “The American people have spoken. Tonight we’ll see if Washington is listening.”
During the August recess, at least 23 House Democrats pledged opposition to the health care reform bill being pushed by House Leadership, including Nancy Pelosi. If 16 more Dems join the 23 already opposed to the legislation — assuming all Republican remain united against the plan — Pelosi won’t have enough votes to pass it.
The bill’s price tag and opposition to the government-run public option are among the reasons moderate Democrats have indicated they will vote “No.” But as many as 100 members of Pelosi’s caucus have suggested they will not for for a bill that doesn’t include the so-called “public option.”
Below is the list of 23 House Dems opposed to the legislation as compiled by The Hill:
John Adler (N.J.)
Jason Altmire (Pa.)
John Barrow (Ga.)
Dan Boren (Okla.)
Rick Boucher (Va.)
Allen Boyd (Fla.)
Bobby Bright (Ala.)
Travis Childers (Miss.)
Jim Costa (Calif.)
Henry Cuellar (Texas)
Parker Griffith (Ala.)
Frank Kratovil (Md.)
Betsy Markey (Colo.) Eric Massa (N.Y.) — Doesn’t believe the public option in the current legislation is strong enough Jim Matheson (Utah)
Charlie Melancon (La.)
Walt Minnick (Idaho)
Tom Perriello (Va.)
Earl Pomeroy (N.D.)
Heath Shuler (N.C.)
Bart Stupak (Mich.)
John Tanner (Tenn.)
Gene Taylor (Miss.)
Families who fail to get health insurance could be fined up to $3,800 under a health care reform plan proposed by a top Senate negotiator.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is leading talks among the “Gang of Six” senators to hammer out a bipartisan compromise, offered what he described on Tuesday as a “framework” and not a “final product.”
But the detailed proposal comes just days ahead of a self-imposed Sept. 15 deadline for such a deal. Baucus is pushing his committee members hard to hammer out a bill, and those details come as strong suggestions.
The framework, a copy of which was obtained by FOX News, includes what amounts to a no-choice option. It would make health insurance mandatory, like auto insurance.
Despite the uproar, President Obama today is delivering his much-anticipated speech to the nation’s school children from Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But as pointed out by Byron York today in the Washington Examiner:
[W]hen President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush’s speech — they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.
Then House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt complained at the time that “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president.”
And, according to Mr. York:
Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush’s appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech.
From Ronald Bailey atReason and the Cato Institute:
So how does health-status insurance work? As Cochrane [Cato Institute Scholar] explains, ‘Market-based lifetime health insurance has two components: medical insurance and health-status insurance. Medical insurance covers your medical expenses in the current year, minus deductibles and copayments. Health-status insurance covers the risk that your medical premiums will rise.’ Cochrane offers the example of a 25-year-old who will likely incur $2,000 in medical expenses in a year. His medical policy component would thus cost about $2,000 per year, plus administrative fees and profit. For purposes of illustration, Cochrane then assumes the 25-year-old has a 1 percent risk of developing a chronic medical condition that would increase his average medical expenses to $10,000 per year. In that case, he would be able to buy medical insurance for $10,000 per year—which is a big financial hit. That’s where health-status insurance comes in: It insures that you can be insured in the future.”
When Glenn Beck began to expose Van Jones, the “Green Jobs” Czar forced to resign from the Obama administration in the middle of a holiday weekend night, Color of Change, an organization founded by Van Jones, called for advertisers to boycott Beck’s Fox News Channel program. Some have.
Now, Keith Olbermann is asking (at Daily Kos) for people to provide deleterious information about Beck, his producer and Roger Ailes, President of Fox. Olbermann says that he will extend the request to his MSNBC audience tonight, making some kind of what’s good for the goose is good for the gander argument.
Given that “goose” is not a euphemism that we would apply to Jones, nor “gander” to Beck, Mr. Olbermann seems to have forgotten that the really, really big “gander” a bit above his pay grade is General Electric, which owns MSNBC and makes more consumer products subject to boycott than just about any other corporation.
When you begin to see reruns of “Little House on the Prairie” mysteriously appear at 8 pm on MSNBC’s schedule, you may assume that adults at GE have decided that goose liver should not be among the company’s product mix.
As Jeff noted yesterday, the filter between Van Jones’ brain and mouth is leaky at times. However, as the Washington Times reports, Jones once (or possibly still) believed that 9/11 was an inside job.
In 2004, Jones signed a statement on 911truth.org demanding an investigation into the administration’s activities leading up to 9/11, “as a pretext for war.”
“[T]here is no need to suppress the demand for healthcare. Expenditures on healthcare are driven by demand, which is spurred by income and by advances in biotechnology that make health interventions increasingly effective. Just as electricity and manufacturing were the industries that stimulated the growth of the rest of the economy at the beginning of the 20th century, healthcare is the growth industry of the 21st century. It is a leading sector, which means that expenditures on healthcare will pull forward a wide array of other industries including manufacturing, education, financial services, communications, and construction.”
Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will rehear arguments in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, a case that could reverse certain limitations on core political speech imposed by the the 2002 McCain-Feingold law and other chilling precedents.
In an op-ed published today on Human Events Online, CFIF director of public policy Sam Batkins writes:
Citizens United is the first of three cases in which interested court-watchers will have their first opportunity to observe [newly confirmed] Justice Sotomayor and get a better idea of her impact on the jurisprudential leaning of the Court.
In addition to Citizens United, the Court, including Justice Sotomayor, is scheduled to hear other high-profile cases after its term formally begins in October on issues dealing with the Establishment Clause and property rights, among others.
As Batkins notes:
Many court-watchers and scholars have reviewed Justice Sotomayor’s lengthy record as a lower court judge without really being able to predict her judicial philosophy on many of the hot-button issues before the Supreme Court. Soon, however, we’ll all be provided more clarity, at least on issues dealing with property rights, the establishment clause and political speech.
Much is expected of elected officials. Much more is expected and demanded of those entrusted with chairmanships and the power that comes with them, especially when it involves the nation’s purse strings. From all that we’ve seen thus far, Mr. Rangel has violated that trust continually and seemingly without care.
Much has been written about President Obama’s new Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones. Indeed, it is no secret that he is an unapologetic liberal. But did you know that, according to Jones, the reason Obama’s progressive agenda is faultering is because Republicans are… “A**holes?”
That’s right. But have no fear progressives; Jones claims that he can be an “a**hole” too. In fact, Jones states that he and other progressives advising the President “are gonna have to start getting a little bit ugly” in order to advance their agenda.
Here’s Jones during a lecture he gave at Berkley back in February:
President Barack Obama will address a joint session of Congress on health care reform in prime time on Wednesday, Sept. 9, a senior official tells POLITICO.
Obama will receive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at the White House the day before for a previously scheduled sit-down.
The last time a president addressed a joint session of Congress that wasn’t a State of the Union, or the traditional first address by a new president, was Sept. 20, 2001, when President George W. Bush spoke on the war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks. …
It appears that Representative Norm Dicks (D-WA) had his hands full with his latest town hall. About 800 people attended the event, which focused mainly on health care and immigration. Here is a brief snippet:
A Sequim woman seemed to speak for many opposed to government-run healthcare for everyone. ‘A government big enough to give everything you want is big enough to take everything you have,’ she said to loud applause.
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