Freedom Line Blog

Isn’t comprehensive legislation wonderful?  With the stroke of several pens this week, 30 million Americans now have health care!  Right now.  Check out liberals’ columnist of record, Thomas Friedman, who exhilaratingly proclaims that “covering so many uninsured Americans is a historic achievement.”  All that’s missing is a “Mission Accomplished” banner draped across the Mayo Clinic.

Except that none of the 30 million under-insured Americans has Obamacare health insurance today.  Those on the left love to distort the 2003 “Mission Accomplished” banner on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which celebrated its crew’s successful deployment, as some sort of premature statement by President Bush that the Iraq campaign was concluded.  In this instance, however, Friedman may truly be celebrating a “mission accomplished” before his professed objective was, well, accomplished.  So-called “progressives” may be celebrating, but not for anything more than making a law.  That’s a result, not an achievement.

“We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of [Obama],” wrote Castro.

Full story here.

Where are you, Hugo Chavez?

Probably not even the Speaker herself.  But that doesn’t change the fact that her managing of Obamacare mirrors the characteristics of effective leaders Drucker identifies in his classic, The Effective Executive.  There are eight points Drucker sees in every effective executive.

(1)    They asked, “What needs to be done?”

(2)    They asked, “What is right for the enterprise?”

(3)    They developed action plans.

(4)    They took responsibility for decisions.

(5)    They took responsibility for communicating.

(6)    They were focused on opportunities rather than problems.

(7)    They ran productive meetings.

(8)    They thought and said “we” rather than “I.”

I think most observers would agree that Pelosi nailed numbers 3-8, and number 1; especially with her members in Congress.  Was anyone certain she wouldn’t pass the bill?  If I had to pick a flaw it would be failure to comply with number 2, the only normative criteria on the list.  It isn’t right for the American enterprise and its constitutional structure to ram a bill through Congress by using tricks and gimmicks because doing so destroys people’s confidence that we are a nation of rules, not (wo)men.  But as we see with Democrats like Pelosi, the only thing that matters is “winning” – even if it means corrupting government in the process.

For that, Dr. Drucker would no doubt be appalled.

After a wasted year in office during which he could have concentrated on revitalizing American employment, Barack Obama presides over a smoldering rubble that was once his electoral mandate.

Yet he and his administration label this radioactive ObamaCare ordeal a “victory?”

Obama began his self-destructive crusade last year possessing the strongest Democrat majorities in decades, but finished it with a string of jarring defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and then Massachusetts.  He entered office riding a crest of popularity and goodwill, but then saw his approval drop worse than any elected President in the history of scientific polling.  His wasted year ignited the Tea Party movement, and propelled Republicans to enormous leads on the generic ballot as November elections approach.

For such a supposedly effective leader, he could only manage to win a razor-thin victory despite enormous Democrat Congressional majorities.

And for what?  Over 90% of Americans already possessed insurance when Obama went on his hyper-partisan warpath, 90% of whom were satisfied or very satisfied with their care.  Even under the rosiest projections, ObamaCare will add only 5% to that number of insured.  Meanwhile, another $1 trillion will be piled atop the rotting federal budgetary heap, Americans will literally be compelled by law to purchase insurance that bureaucrats deem appropriate, unemployment festers at a 10% rate fully one year after Obama’s “stimulus” and Democrats may lose one or both houses of Congress.

Any more divisive, costly “victories” like this, and the term “Pyrrhic victory” will soon be renamed “Obama victory.”

Proponents of ObamaCare make the intellectually sloppy claim that health insurance is a “right.”

Simultaneously, however, they insert an individual mandate requiring American citizens to purchase that “right” as a necessary component of the bill.  A mandate enforced by none other than the IRS, and which is potentially unconstitutional, oh by the way.

But wait a moment.  How is it that one can label something a “right,” and then turn around and mandate its purchase under penalty of imprisonment and IRS persecution?  Does the Second Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms require that the federal government mandate firearms purchase by citizens who don’t possess them?  Does the First Amendment right to free speech require that the federal government mandate the purchase printing presses?

It’s dishonest, and it’s cognitively vapid.

Apparently, if it’s good for Obamacare, “deem and pass” might become the magic maneuver that saves every controversial bill bereft of a majority.  I mean, if voters will give members of Congress a pass on a monstrously unpopular health care bill, why not on immigration?  But if Democrats in Congress never vote on any major “reform” bill, then why, pray tell, do any of them need to be reelected?

Here’s yet another reason to flay Andy Stern’s leadership of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  One of the biggest motivators behind the union’s support for Obamacare is the belief that requiring an individual mandate to buy insurance will create more health care jobs ripe for unionization.  Just in time, too, because SEIU is apparently incapable of adequately funding its own pension plans.

What’s the connection? The SEIU needs more new dues-paying members to pay for the retirement of current members if it is to rescue its pension plans from subpar performance. It’s a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. With many of its members employed in health care, the union believes – not illogically – that if more Americans have health insurance, the demand for health care will expand and so will employment in the health sector.

Who says the Democrats aren’t focusing on job creation?

The ongoing, excruciating, resource-draining attempt by Democrats to foist ObamaCare upon an unwilling American public (what ever happened to their promise to “focus on jobs” in 2010, anyway?) by any means necessary, legal or illegal, will obviously cause deafening reverberations in November’s Congressional elections.  With each passing day, scientific polling suggests that a Republican takeover is more and more likely.

In a brilliant commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal, however, Michael Solon points out that ObamaCare’s impact may be even more dramatic than Congressional midterms, or even the 1994 Congressional elections that vaulted Republicans to majorities in both houses for the first time since the 1950s.  This is because not only are Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s majorities in jeopardy, but so are Democrat seats in governors’ mansions and state legislatures, which control Congressional district realignment following the 2010 census.  As stated by Solon:

Of all the political consequences that could flow from the national healthcare effort in 2010, the potential of the fall elections to shift 2011 redistricting to the Republicans’ advantage may be the most important.  That puts the long-term viability of the president’s healthcare reform in serious jeopardy, no matter the outcome of the 2012 elections.  While the election of 1994 did signal a political realignment, none of that alignment translated into the much more permanent benefit that redistricting could provide in 2010 if the GOP takes over state legislatures across the country…  As Democratic legislators consider their choices, many are missing the impact of an electoral wipeout in 2010 on the redistricting of Congressional seats as well as those in the state legislatures.  The electoral advantage gained from 2011 redistricting would extend the short-term pain of 2010 at least through the redistricting of 2021.”

The late Thomas “Tip” O’Neil once said that “all politics is local.” But the Democrats’ suicide mission in trying to pass ObamaCare may turn O’Neil’s observation on its head and prove that not only are local politics sometimes national, but also enduring.

Here’s proof that Jeff’s earlier post about 1/3 of current doctors leaving the profession if Obamacare passes may be just what Democratic leaders’ ordered.  According to an op-ed by two medical students, Progressives are skewing the curriculum towards promoting government-run health care.

Medical school curricula should include material on delivery of health care and provide honest viewpoints from both sides using the best data available. I can count numerous examples of the school providing a liberal perspective, but cannot cite one single example where a more conservative position was offered. This steady drumbeat of the progressive worldview is reshaping the minds of America’s future physicians. Ironically, as medical students, we are taught to hold the patient’s best interest in the highest regard. Yet, at the same time, we are taught that more government intervention between the physician and the patient is desirable. Unfortunately, history teaches us the two are often incompatible.

The assault on the time honored patient-physician relationship is happening on many fronts. But the unseen battle within the medical school classroom might be the most important of them all. Will the physicians of tomorrow even recognize the Hippocratic Oath and continue to serve the well-being of the individual patient? Or will our healers become pawns of a government-run health care system and ultimately become servants of the State?

Nationalized health care has long been the Holy Grail for the secular progressive. To reach this end, the left is now doing a textbook end-around of the American voter to achieve this prize. What is happening in the medical school classroom might render what happens in Washington meaningless, no matter how We the People vote.

H/T: Fox News Forum

Didn’t Barack Obama promise to magically bring an era of post-partisanship and moral relativism after eight years of supposed moral chauvinism under President Bush?

Apparently, that promise was every bit as ephemeral as his promises to scour the federal budget “line-by-line,” to televise healthcare negotiations on C-Span, to close Gitmo and to abide by public campaign finance rules.  Welcome to the era of Obama as moral arbiter.  Speaking in Strongsville, Ohio to promote ObamaCare for the 6,294th time yesterday, Obama made a statement that would have triggered hysterical shrieks from leftists had President Bush said the same thing:

As long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership.  I don’t know about the politics.  But I know what’s right.”

Never mind that the American public is so broadly and steadfastly opposed to ObamaCare that he managed to get a Republican elected to the Senate…  from Massachusetts.  Never mind that despite possessing overwhelming – albeit temporary, in all likelihood – Democrat majorities in both the House and Senate, he’s had to resort to unconstitutional non-vote “vote” proposals to pass his takeover scheme.

No, Obama “knows what’s right,” so just shut up and bend over, America.

Fresh off his famous catastrophes on the healthcare and deficit reduction fronts, Barack Obama momentarily shifted his bumbling gaze yesterday to Net Neutrality.

What exactly is Net Neutrality, you ask?

Well, think of it as ObamaCare for the Internet, and you get the essential idea.  Net Neutrality would federally bureaucratize Internet service by dictating rigid price controls and traffic surge management to providers, among other toxic provisions.  The Internet seemed to be doing just fine so far, what with the ongoing explosion of content delivery and devices like the iPhone.  But why should that stop Obama from “fixing” something that isn’t broken?

In an unintentionally amusing commentary entitled “President Obama Hearts Net Neutrality,” Stacey Higginbotham praises Obama, who appears to be shifting his Midas-in-reverse focus to this dangerous campaign.  When asked about Net Neutrality, Obama responded:

I’m a big believer in Net Neutrality.  I campaigned on this.  I continue to be a strong supporter of it.  My FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated that he shares the view that we’ve got to keep the Internet open, that we don’t want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn’t have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet.  So this is something we’re committed to.

Consider the absurdity of Obama’s comment.  He curiously demands that we “keep the Internet open,” even though it has somehow managed to remain open all this time without the need for crippling Net Neutrality regulations.  And he suggests that Net Neutrality is necessary to allow innovators to “start their next YouTube or their next Google,” leaving one to wonder how anyone ever managed to start YouTube or Google in the first place without Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality advocates dishonestly concoct the bogeyman of sinister Internet service providers blocking web content, but the reality is that America faces a continuing exponential increase in Internet traffic.  This rapid growth will require innovations and investment by Internet service providers to carry it, just as they have done to date.  Obama wrongly alleges that Net Neutrality is somehow necessary to allow the next YouTube or Google, but the truth is that the next YouTube or Google will be impossible if network providers are prohibited by bureaucratic Net Neutrality regulations from managing the surge in data traffic.

The need for freedom and flexibility of network providers to innovate will become even more critical as Americans increasingly shift to smart phones.

As noted by a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, “carriers are already running at over 80% capacity,” and “are scrambling to build out next-generation networks that promise higher bandwidth and faster speeds.”  If Obama and his FCC succeed in imposing suffocating Net Neutrality regulations that they recently proposed, however, service providers’ difficulties will only increase as Obama bureaucratizes the Internet in the same way that he attempted to bureaucratize healthcare.

Americans concerned about the future of Internet growth and innovation must therefore act quickly to stop Obama’s reverse-Midas Net Neutrality scheme.  Please contact your Senators and Representative immediately and demand a stop to this destructive scheme before it’s too late.

Virginia is now one of many states pushing through a legislative response to complete federal control of health care.  Today, 23 Virginia Senators voted to exempt the Commonwealth from ObamaCare’s individual health insurance mandate.  Five Democrats joined all 18 Republicans to enact the measure in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

If President Obama’s health care bill does come back to life in the U.S. Congress, it appears that more states will follow Virginia’s lead to fight ObamaCare locally.

According to The Hill newspaper, Democrats reached a tentative compromise on health care just days before Massachusetts elected Scott Brown.  Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) stated that an agreement was reached on January 15. 

Of course, it is an indictment of this Administration’s transparency pledge that you’re reading about this news in February and didn’t watch the discussions live on C-SPAN.  Senator Harkin’s revelation underscores just how deceptive the White House was in negotiating the future of health care behind closed doors and how important Scott Brown’s victory was in defeating ObamaCare.

A few million Americans in Massachusetts made their voices heard loud and clear, but judging from last week’s State of the Union Address, the White House is still not listening.

The obvious answer is no, but economist Arnold Kling would like to run an experiment between a completely decentralized market system and a government-run single payer system.  To the victor go the spoils.

Kling writes:

Instead of having a big national contest over what health care system, why not try single-payer in one part of the country and radical deregulation in another? Switzerland, which is about the size of Maryland, has different health care systems in each of its 20-odd cantons, which are about the size of Maryland counties. Surely it must be possible to try different health care approaches in Texas and Massachusetts.

Since states are supposed to be the “laboratories of democracy,” this proposal might make sense.  Of course, Massachusetts and Mitt Romney have already tried aspects of ObamaCare (state-run exchanges and individual mandates) and the results should be a sobering reminder to politicians.

Massachusetts has the highest health care premiums in the nation and state expenditures are far above projected levels.  Massachusetts’ failed experiment finally merited some political capital for supporters of a free market system when Bay State voters essentially derailed ObamaCare with their vote for Scott Brown.

Voters appear to be taking notice.  Politicians?  We’ll find out tonight.

HT: Peter Suderman

The current political environment for Democrats appears gloomy.  The President’s approval rating continues to hover around 50%, Democrats can claim few political victories and now there is a strong chance that a Republican will be the next Senator from Massachusetts. The GOP has not captured a Senate seat in the Commonwealth since 1972.

A victory for Republican Scott Brown would make the passage of ObamaCare exceedingly difficult and perhaps kill its legislative prospects altogether, though Democrats will not completely cede the issue to the GOP.

As voters head to the polls in the Bay State, recent predictions are confirming that Brown has a legitimate shot at the seat.  Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight projects a Brown victory based on aggregate polling data since the first week in January.  Silver writes, “Coakley’s odds are substantially worse than they appeared to be 24 hours ago, when there were fewer credible polls to evaluate and there appeared to be some chance that her numbers were bottoming out and perhaps reversing.  However, the ARG and Research 2000 polls both show clear and recent trends against her.”

Charles Franklin at Pollster agrees with Silver.  Franklin noted, “Across all models, Brown leads by between 1.0 and 8.9 points.  Three quarters of the estimates have Brown ahead by 4 points or more.”

And now, Politico reports that some Democrats are working up contingency plans if Scott Brown proves to be the 41st vote against a government takeover of health care.  Their plan: Blame Republicans.  One Democratic staffer noted, “Sure you could say it’s worse because we didn’t pass anything.  But it might be better to get past this as soon as possible, and bring it up for a vote in the Senate, let Republicans kill it – and then blame them for everything.”

Nice strategy.  Voters will surely reward you for delivering on your message of transparency, lower taxes for the middle class and affordable health care.

Much has been made of the special election in Massachusetts to replace the late Ted Kennedy.  The Senate race has major implications for the health care debate in Congress because if Republican candidate Scott Brown were to win next Tuesday, he could provide the 41st vote to stop ObamaCare in the Senate.

Obviously, any vote to limit the size and power of the federal government is welcome in Congress but the initial reward for taxpayers would be great.

As of tonight, however, the markets predict that Mr. Brown only has a slim 25.9 percent chance of victory against Democrat Martha Coakley, but his numbers are up sharply from earlier this month.

Regular polling has also seen a sharp tilt in his favor, as Brown has closed a 30 point gap and made the race essentially a tossup.  History is very much against Mr. Brown’s effort; Massachusetts has not elected a Republican Senator since Edward Brooke in 1972.

When asked to identify a leftist counterpart to the wit and wisdom of conservative commentator George Will, liberals commonly cite The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Frankly, that’s a bit like a D.C.-area baseball fan offering the Washington Nationals as a counterpart to the New York Yankees, as confirmed again by today’s commentary from Dionne.

In it, Dionne counsels a veritable suicide strategy for Democrats hoping to avoid a landslide defeat in November’s 2010 Congressional elections.  In the face of poll after poll demonstrating widespread public opposition to ObamaCare, Dionne advises Democrats to trumpet its virtues.  He apparently remains blissfully oblivious to the fact that the more people learn about ObamaCare, the less they like it.  Since Obama demanded legislation before the August Congressional recess, the public has swung from narrow approval to wide disapproval, yet he advises that Democrats tell them more?  Dionne subsequently argues, presumably with a straight face, that Democrats should utilize proposed carbon cap-and-tax legislation in their effort to gain electoral momentum.  As is the case with ObamaCare, however, Dionne’s recommendation flies in the face of public skepticism and opposition toward this costly bill that will raise utility costs for everyday consumers, cripple businesses struggling in a weak economy and surrender additional American sovereignty to United Nations-style climate regulation.

Those in the legal profession often advise against interrupting opposing attorneys who are dooming their own cases.  One suspects that Republicans are similarly in no hurry to interrupt Dionne’s advice to Democrats.

If the Senate’s hyperpartisan Christmas Eve healthcare vote and the Copenhagen climate summit “agreement” constitute “victories” for Barack Obama, one would fear to see anything he’d acknowledge a “failure.” 

At every opportunity, the White House, liberal pundits and media apologists herald both as victories for a foundering presidency.  But just as Obama’s performance has failed to remotely match his lofty campaign rhetoric, neither one comes anywhere close to his professed goals. 

After all, remember the government-run, single-payer system that Obama said was his goal prior to his presidency?  No sign of it in the Senate healthcare bill.  In fact, the bill doesn’t even contain the “robust public option” that Obama sought after he realized single-payer was a bridge too far.  And remember how he demanded them before the August Congressional recess?  Some “victory.” 

And the same goes for the silly Copenhagen climate summit.  Obama arrogantly trumpeted a historic “agreement,” but the only agreement was an agreement-to-agree-to-something-to-be-agreed-upon-at-some-future-climate-summit.  There were none of the economically-crippling carbon limits demanded by environmental extremists, and none of the billions (trillions?) of largess demanded by developing nations. 

The reality is that Obama needes something – anything – to create the mirage of accomplishment for a White House that has failed so miserably that his approval is lower than any President in history at this stage.   His minions and media chorus may label these things “victories,” but that doesn’t make it so.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – Nevada) appeared on the verge of tears on the Senate floor yesterday, lamenting criticisms lodged against him.

His complaint?  That those big, bad, meanie Republicans had the audacity to question his personal judgment in scooting off to a Louisiana fundraiser, even while he threatens to keep the Senate in session into the holidays to address healthcare legislation.  Voice cracking, he feigned heartbreak that criticisms against him could become so “personal.”  He professed an inability to fathom how supposed “friends” from across the aisle could “embarrass or denigrate” him in such a cruel, cruel manner.

This is the same Harry Reid who, just three days earlier, compared opponents of his healthcare legislation to those who defended slavery and opposed the Civil Rights Act.  Never mind that the Republican Party originated from opposition to slavery, or that Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act in higher proportions than Democrats.  Factual realities are apparently no more relevant to Harry Reid than is a sense of personal decorum and judgment.

In this way, he is like the proverbial boy who murdered his parents only to later plead for mercy as an orphan.  He started a fight, but didn’t like it when his targets fought back.  In less than one year, Nevada voters will have their opportunity to render judgment on Reid’s plea.  According to the latest polls, they are apparently unamused.

Taxpayers are doing their part to defeat government-run health care by marching, calling Congress and urging others to get involved.

Senator Judd Gregg, someone with direct power to defeat ObamaCare, now has a legislative blueprint for stopping the Senate’s version of health care “reform.”

Among the highlights:

• “Hard” Quorum Calls – requires at least 51 Senators to be present in the Senate chamber for any substantive debate on health care.

• Reading of Amendments and Conference Reports in Entirety – with 2,000 pages to read, it would take days.

• Senate Points of Order – delays legislative business because the Senate is required to take two roll call votes to dispense with a point of order.

• Filibuster by Amendment – until Harry Reid invokes cloture, Senators may offer an unlimited number of amendments.

• Motion to Instruct Conferees – Senators may offer an unlimited number of motions to instruct the Senate’s conferees.

You can do your part to defeat government-run health care by calling 202-224-3121 and telling your Senators to vote “No” on the Senate bill.