A Great Solution To Health Coverage for Indivuals That Won't Bankrupt Uncle Sam!

Insurance Companies Should Be Allowed to Sell Policies Across State Lines - WSJ.com: "A 2008 publication 'Consumer Response to a National Marketplace in Individual Insurance,' (Parente et al., University of Minnesota) estimated that if individuals in New Jersey could buy health insurance in a national market, 49% more New Jerseyans in the individual and small-group market would have coverage. Competition among states would produce a more rational regulatory environment in all states."

Oh, but wait, it won't concentrate power in Washington and necessitate a huge expansion of the federal bureaucracy. This idea stinks. Never mind.

Flash Forward to US Healthcare's Future

The NHS is bleeding to death, and the time to operate is now - Telegraph: "Many people would have been rather confused yesterday when they switched on the Today programme and heard that the health service is basically bankrupt. Apparently, the NHS needs another £10 billion from the taxpayer to survive in three years' time (put another way, just less than the cost of paying for the entire police service).

Listeners would have been forgiven for thinking: hang on, hasn't the NHS had a lot of extra money already? And they would be right. After a decade of historic spending increases, the NHS budget has more than doubled, from around £45 billion to £105 billion. The service has 41,800 more doctors and 84,700 more nurses. To say the NHS has never had more resources is an understatement: it is in a wonderland of extra money, on a scale that its leaders never expected. Quite amazing, then, that it is coming back to the taxpayer cap in hand."

The only explanation for moving in the direction of Britain on health care is a lust for government power.

Sad, Nowadays You Find More Truth in Pravda than in the NYT

American capitalism gone with a whimper - Pravda.Ru: "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people."

A Russian perspective on the Obama administration. Read the whole column.

National Health Care With 51 Votes - WSJ.com

National Health Care With 51 Votes - WSJ.com:

"Late last week President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders agreed to use 'budget reconciliation' if necessary to jam a massive health-care bill through Congress... this decision is a deeply troublesome attempt to circumvent the normal and customary workings of American democracy...It's a radical departure from congressional precedent, in which budget rules have been designed and used to reduce deficits, not expand the size of government. And it promises bitter divisiveness under an administration that has made repeated promises to reach across the partisan divide."

Make sure your congressional delegation knows how much you oppose this unprecedented expansion of government, being shoved down our throats without even regard for the budgetary rules of Congress. Ask your liberal friends how they plan to pay for it.

The Old "Public Option" Switcheroo

Judd Gregg: 'Elections Have Consequences' - WSJ.com:

"The Democrats, he [Judd Gregg] says, pulled the same public-private switcheroo before with student loans for college. Back in the late 1990s, 'there was a huge debate in the committee . . . between myself and [Senator Ted] Kennedy over a private plan versus a public plan.' In the end, they compromised -- the government would offer loans directly to students, but that program would have to compete with private-sector lenders. 'And the agreement was very formal, and the record shows this very clearly. We agreed to level the playing field, put both plans on the playing field at an equal status and see who won. Well, private plans won. Big time.'

Given the choice, most borrowers went to the private sector for their loans. But the Democrats who wanted to nationalize the student-loan market did not take defeat in the marketplace gracefully. 'They didn't like that,' Mr. Gregg says. 'So ever since then they've tilted the playing field back and now they're going to wipe out the private plans in their budget.'

When it comes to health insurance, Mr. Gregg expects more of the same. 'That's the scenario that you're going to see if you have a public plan for insurance that competes with the private plans. That's the game plan' -- call it competition at first, but tighten the screws until the private insurers leave the market or get forced out.

A great past illustration of how these apparently "modest" efforts to give taxpayers a "choice" are really just step one in the inevitable march to government control of yet another sector of the free market economy.

Dereliction of Duty Pervades the Political Class

I fully expect the wrath of the Statists to descend upon Governor Rick Perry for his defense of Texas' sovereignty under the 10th Amendment. As I thought about how I would defend him from this onslaught, my first thought was, "he's upholding his oath of office." As the Governor of Texas, it falls more squarely upon Gov. Perry's shoulders than anywhere else to defend the constitutional perogatives and rights of the state of Texas. It is not within the constitutionally circumscribed powers of the federal government to dictate to the state of Texas how to spend its money.

Upholding one's oath of office has become a quaint idea of the past. I'm not sure whether that's because our politicians willfully reject their responsibilities or because they fail to comprehend them. This week's release of the "torture memos" is a great example. President Obama, in the name of mollifying his MoveOn base weakened the executive branch, weakened the concept of attorney/client privilege, and weakened our intelligence gathering capabilities all in one fell swoop. I suspect that one of the reasons that he can see his way clear to doing this is that he doesn't understand or respect the concept of checks and balances. The Left finds checks and balances inconvenient, and unnecessary as long as the right (I mean Left) people are in power.

Similarly, Congress abdicated is responsibility and perogative to control the purse strings when it handed the executive branch a $700B TARP slush fund to dole out as it sees fit (see post and link to George Will column).

State and local officials fail to do their duty when they allow the federal government coerce them into signing on to programs that will bankrupt their states and municipalities in the future.

Regardless of how much he or she may want to support a particular political agenda or outcome, every politician that takes an oath of office is obligated first and foremost to uphold that oath.

Stop ObamaCare Now!

Congress Balks at Barack Obama's Cap and Trade Proposal - WSJ.com:

"The most important remaining fight this year is over health care. Democrats seem intent on trying to plow that monumental change through with only 50 votes, even as they negotiate to bring along some Republicans. We hope these Republicans understand that a new health-care 'public option' -- a form of Medicare for all Americans -- guarantees that the 17% of GDP represented by the health-care industry will be entirely government-run within a few years. This is precisely Mr. Obama's long-term goal, though he doesn't want to say it publicly.

If Republicans acquiesce, they will spend the rest of their days in public life raising taxes to pay for liabilities that will grow into the trillions of dollars. GOP leaders need to get out of the backrooms and start the same kind of public-education campaign on state-run health care that has helped to stall cap and tax and coercive unionization."

Obama and his team are clever - they make their healthcare plans sound so benign. But the taxpayer-supported "public option" is designed and destined to crowd out all the other "options." If your legislators are at all likely to consider this plan, you must barrage them with emails, faxes, and phone calls.

"I DON'T Feel Your Pain" or "It's the Economy, Stupid"

"And, you know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. You know, it bobs up and down day to day. And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong."

- Pres. Barack Obama

I am of the firm opinion that Pres. Obama's response to the financial crisis can fairly be called an abject failure, a mere six weeks after his inauguration. I don't deny that he inherited a nearly unprecedented mess, one which seems to befuddle many of the world's foremost economic experts. Then how, you may ask, can you rush to judgment on his program?

If President Obama were focused on implementing policies aimed at resolving the liquidity crisis and stimulating our domestic economy, and those policies were enjoying limited or mixed success, I'd say hang in with him. But, in fact, what's happening is that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are more focused on using the crisis to consolidate their power than in addressing our economic crisis.

It's as if the day after 9/11 President Bush began stumping for repealing Roe v Wade, school vouchers, and a defense of marriage amendment, all of which he claimed were critical problems that had to be solved if we were to win the war on terrorism. Everyone would have justly and roundly criticized him for not focusing on the true crisis at hand - the terrorist threat to the nation.

Well, here we are teetering on the precipice of global depression and what is our President spending his time doing? Stumping around the country for massive tax and spend programs that will only add to our economic woes, both now and in the future:

• Cap and trade (a tax of at least $650B over ten years)
• Health care reform (a cost of at least $1 trillion over ten years)
• Reducing tax breaks for charitable giving
• Reducing tax breaks for mortgage interest (!)
• Closing Gitmo
• Green energy subsidies
• Thousands of wasteful earmark projects
• Cutting back domestic oil exploration
• Shutting down Yucca Mountain
• Taking away school vouchers from deserving families in Washington DC
• Reinstating federal funding for embryonic stem cell research
• Reinstating federal funding for abortions

This administration is providing no leadership on the economy. The markets have voted with their dollars - each day the markets hit new lows - especially after a speech by Obama or Geithner. But worse, the Obama administration is demonstrating how little it cares about fixing the economy. You don't go around warning of impending catastrophe and threatening huge tax hikes if you want to restore confidence in the economy. Why then is Pres. Obama doing this? Because, apparently, his priority is exploiting this crisis to expand the power of government to a degree never seen before in our nation's history.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." - Rahm Emanuel, Obama Chief of Staff

Fortunately, it appears that more than a few Democrats are worried about following Pres. Obama down this path. They realize that the markets and the American people are beginning to lose faith in the President, and they fear a backlash that could send them packing in 2010 in a way that makes 1994 look pale. The job of Republicans in Congress is to make sure those Democrats are forced to stand and be counted.

Big Brother Wants To Control Philanthropy

Activists Want to Redistribute Philanthropic Wealth Based on Racial Quotas - WSJ.com:

"Nonprofit leaders are reeling from the recent news that President Barack Obama's proposed budget would limit tax deductions on charitable contributions from wealthy Americans. But now the philanthropic world has something else to worry about. Today the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a research and advocacy group, will release a report offering 'benchmarks to assess foundation performance.' Its real aim is to push philanthropic organizations into ignoring donor intent and instead giving grants based on political considerations."

The totalitarians in Washington can't bear the idea that other entities besides Uncle Sam might be doling out charity to the needy. The attack on private charity so far has at least three prongs:

1) Cut off their funding by taking away the tax deduction for charitable giving
2) Insinuate the government in their operations through expansion of George Bush's ill-conceived "faith-based initiatives" program. Like profligate banks that have taken TARP money, charities that take part in this program will soon find Washington calling the shots on what the can and can't do, who they can and can't hire, etc.
3) Regulate foundations, so that they have to give in ways acceptable to Washington, and in ways that pay off the Democrats pet interest groups.

If At Least This Debacle Were Teaching Us a Valuable Lesson...CONT'D

Henry Kaufman Says Hard-to-Measure Economic Behavior Has Caused Wide Swings in Interest Rates - WSJ.com: "Amid the daily news about economic woes, it is useful to ponder the long view. And the long view shows that we now stand at the tail end of the greatest secular swing in interest rates in U.S. history. Interest rates are a barometer of economic conditions. So where have they been, and what can they tell us?"

This opinion piece starts out very promising. Some interesting economic history and a VERY scary graph (QUIZ: where do you think treasury bill rates are headed next?). But right on the heels of laying out some good history, Mr Kaufman's recommendations gravitate to government regulation while ignoring the obvious.

While I am sure there is potential benefit in selective tightening of rules around securitization and balance sheet accounting, we all know that for every regulation there will an innovation that side-steps it.

In the early years of Mr Kaufman's history, were things so much better because things were so much more regulated by the government? I think not. Did our parents and grandparents have to wade through 1/10th the volume of financial disclosures (Past Performance Is Not an Indication of Future Results, Offer Void Where Prohibited, Batteries Not Included) that we do now? How many SEC lawyers per capita were employed in the postwar period vs today? How many trial lawyers were crusading "on behalf of" our parents to protect them from securities fraud perpetrated by "greedy corporate executives?" I'll concede financial markets were simpler back then, but the increasing size and complexity of the markets doesn't argue for more reliance on regulation but less. The bigger and more complex the market is, the more we need to rely upon inherent, self-regulating mechanisms.


Here's what I think the differences were, and it is these differences which should guide our way forward:
1) Moral relativism wasn't nearly so pervasive. Moral and ethical constraints silently "regulated" countless decisions
2) Negative consequences awaited those who screwed up. Lack of consequences is at the root of this current economic downturn. The whole securitized mortgage free-for-all occurred against the backdrop of the implicit guarantee of the US government standing behind Fannie and Freddie securities. Then there was the runaway government spending - the consequences of which were obfuscated in the short-run by massive expansions in the money supply by the Fed.
3) People were less greedy - JUST KIDDING. You hear politicians (like John McCain during the election) implying the problem was greed. Excuse me, was greed just invented in the last decade? Greed was always there, just better held in check by 1) and 2), above.

Unfortunately, it is in the self interest of the big government crowd to chalk our problems up to insufficient regulation. That way they can amass more power in Washington. Unfortunately, they are driving us away from a culture of shared values and responsibility, and toward legalism and statism.