Archive for August, 2009
Prosecutorial Abuse At the Highest Level
With sinking numbers in the polls and his $2 Trillion Obamacare treading a slippery slope, our young president was getting flack from his socialist left; this, for his waffling on the “public option.” So he needed to throw them a bone. William Murchison’s August 25th post in Real Clear Politics relates the political use of the DOJ, a sorry tale indeed.
The power of the prosecutor is absolute in Anglo-American jurisprudence. It is a power to decide whether or not to prosecute. It holds the values of life, liberty, wealth, and reputation in its hands. It should be sacrosanct.
Here we have a case of much scrutinized actions by CIA professionals defending us against our enemies that was held at several levels to be within the bounds of legitimate interrogation. AG Holder initially declined to prosecute these people. He now has reversed himself for no apparent reason.
Attorney General Eric Holders decision to go after the CIA has all the earmarks of policy designed to make left-wing hearts palpitate.What other purpose could it possibly serve? Not that of national security or common sense……
You find on that peculiar quarter of the political spectrum a lust to punish former Vice President Cheney himself if not the president he served. Why rule out a battalion of CIA agents who imagined themselves to be preserving American lives?
Indeed, the Inspector Generals Report, which Holder cites as evidence of doing, says various interrogations gleaned “intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists and warned of terrorist plots planned for the United States and around the world.” How dare they warn us? Clap em in irons.
Really, is there a brain cell functioning properly in the Obama White House? What are these people thinking? Are they thinking? Yes, maybe. Heres what they might be thinking: The left of the left of the left got us here. Theyre mad enough at us now. Well throw them a little investigation, trying to explain it to moderates and conservatives — and well pray it works. Nothing else seems to these days, with the health care semi-debacle as Exhibit A.
This is just nuts. These White Housers, possibly including the president whose consent to this operation was required, dont have a clue. The game isnt worth the candle.
This is a sad day for the United States; we now know that the top prosecutor will abuse justice for political ends.
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com
Rick Perry for President–He Knows How to Rein in the Bloodsuckers
Here’s a conservative governor who knows how to govern, Rick Perry of Texas. Instead of taxing and spending, he cuts and limits government. Under his leadership Texas went from a budget deficit of $10B in 2003 to a budget surplus of $8B in 2005. He got tort reform passed limiting one of the largest drags on any economy, the blood-sucking plaintiffs attorneys. The Texas economy has outgrown the California economy since 1997. And while folks are leaving California for greener pastures, they are migrating to Texas to add to those beautiful green fields!
Now, Rick is not some fly-by-night community organizer from Chicago, he’s the real McCoy. Farm raised, Air Force pilot, rural district representative and the longest serving governor in the state. And, you gotta love this, when asked if Obama’s policies will put the US on the same road as CA, he said “read the book,” while gesturing toward a copy of Friedrick Hayek’s Road to Serfdom!
He’s a big tent fiscal conservative and doesn’t buy into any litmus testing. He’d be a great contrast to the current occupant of the White House.
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com
Costs of “Rent Seeking” Behavior?
Posted by Tom in Foreign Trade, Government Regulation on August 22, 2009
We are in the midst of an economic recession, people have lost jobs, can’t make mortgage payments, and some can’t afford groceries. Yet, in the USA the rent-seekers profit by destroying food AT THE CONSUMERS EXPENSE! This is nothing short of a hidden tax benefiting the rent-seekers.
Two articles in this weekend’s WSJ stand out in this regard. The first pictures 72,000 pounds of tart cherries, one farmers allocation, rotting because he was forced to dump them under a price-stabilization program. The second suggests that Obama’s Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilasck will maintain the current import quotas to support the price of sugar despite warnings that there is an impending sugar shortage, even though sugar is used in many of the foodstuffs we consume.
Now, I’m not suggesting that this is an Obama originated problem, it’s an age-old problem indeed. But, it is a horrible economic drag, not only in the USA but worldwide.
I wonder if our economic think tanks can publish a listing of the rent-seeking drags on our economy and attempt to quantify the economic effects on our society, both here and worldwide. This should be a worthwhile education process for the voters and the taxpayers.
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com
Germany’s Tried It And Knows It Doesn’t Work
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy on August 22, 2009
The managing partner of one of our affiliated accounting firms in Germany in a recent conversation with me observed that ironically Germany had moved away from a socialist philosophy over the past twenty years after having demonstrated that socialism doesn’t work, and simultaneously the former bastion of capitalism, the US, was embracing and adopting that failed economic model.
It’s incredibly distressful that so much long-term damage can be inflicted on our economy in such a short period. Even presuming that the Left will again make the same mistake that the prevailing party seems to make after each election-viewing their win as an unfettered mandate for their previously rejected policies-and be swept from office, the damage that likely will be exacted in tht next two years will take decades to reverse, if it ever can be.
Talking and writing about it increases awareness but does nothing to staunch the blood flow. We can’t wait fro the interim election. What can we do now?
Mark Bailey, CPA
Yes America, You Are Stupid
Posted by Tom in Nationalized Health Care on August 20, 2009
Rich Lowry’s August 20th post at NRO posits the problem with the republic elected by a gullible nation. Despite the National Eduction Association and the American Federation of Teachers damming performance, let’s prove them wrong!
The Obama team is saddled with a foundering health-care strategy. But it has a fallback plan — relying on the sheer dimwitted gullibility of the American public. How stupid do they think we are?
Stupid enough to think that a new $1 trillion health-care entitlement is just the thing to restore the country to fiscal health.
Stupid enough not to know that almost every entitlement known to man has cost more than originally estimated, with a congressional committee in 1967 underestimating by a factor of ten Medicare’s cost by 1990.
Stupid enough not to realize that it is through budget trickery — the taxes begin immediately, the spending is put off for a few years — that the program in the House shows “only” a $239 billion deficit over the first ten years.
Stupid enough not to focus on how the gap between the House plan’s revenue and spending steadily grows after the first ten years, making it a long-term budget buster.
Stupid enough to think increased preventive care will save the government money, just because Pres. Barack Obama constantly repeats it, despite all the independent studies to the contrary.
Stupid enough to believe that a program with no cost controls that can be discerned by the Congressional Budget Office will control costs.
Stupid enough not to worry that Obama’s proposed superteam of technocrats operating outside normal political controls — the so-called Independent Medicare Advisory Council — will resort to rationing when costs continue to spiral upward.
Stupid enough to consider it wise to use several billion dollars in cuts from Medicare to create a new entitlement rather than to forestall Medicare’s own looming insolvency, currently projected for 2017.
Stupid enough not to notice that the “public option” was explicitly designed by the Left as a stealthy path to single-payer, even as liberals continue to talk and write about its ultimate purpose openly.
Stupid enough to believe that we’ll be able to keep our current health-care arrangements if we like them, even though the public option could throw tens of millions of people out of private insurance.
Stupid enough to trust the same people who came up with the public option as stealth single-payer to craft a co-op provision that isn’t a stealth public option.
Stupid enough to credit Obama’s assurances that the Democrats’ reform isn’t about government intervention in the health-care system when — even without the public option — it all-but-nationalizes health insurance.
Stupid enough not to see through Obama’s sudden insistence on calling his plan “health-insurance reform” as empty poll-tested phrase-making.
Stupid enough to consider Obama’s reform a good deal when its insurance regulations would increase premiums for most healthy people.
Stupid enough to think that the very real problem of people with pre-existing conditions locked out of the insurance market can’t be alleviated short of a 1,000-page bill reordering the entire health-care system.
Stupid enough to buy Obama’s cockamamie stories about unnecessary tonsillectomies and amputations — undertaken by greedy doctors to pad their profits — driving health-care costs.
Stupid enough to get gulled by rhetoric attacking special interests when almost all the special interests are backing Obama’s plan for cowardly and self-interested reasons.
Stupid enough to consider new taxes on employment — imposed by the so-called employer mandate — a good idea during a weak economy with a 9.4 percent unemployment rate.
Stupid enough to condemn ordinary people angry and frightened enough to show up at town-hall meetings in every corner of the country as the product of an “astroturfing” conspiracy.
Stupid enough to blame nefarious Republicans for the faltering public support for an expensive, ungainly and contradictory health-care program passed out of four congressional committees on strict party-line votes.
Stupid enough to trust the good faith and public-spiritedness of an administration operating on Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s ram-it-through-now credo that a crisis should never go to waste.
And stupid enough not to be offended at how contemptibly stupid they think we are.
— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. © 2009 by King Features Syndicate
Obamn’s One Trillion Dollar Plan if evaluated by the CBO beyond the ten year phony limit would be closer to Two Trillion. Can your grandchildren afford this debt? Are you moral enough to object?
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com
Mayo’s Quality Healthcare
Posted by Tom in Nationalized Health Care on August 19, 2009
Many thanks to Bob Brigham for last evening’s presentation on the Mayo Clinic’s perspective on healthcare. The tripartite conundrum of getting any more than two of the three goals, high quality, prompt access, and low cost, in any healthcare delivery system is indeed difficult.
Bob discussed each element: Quality is a function of affluence with basic mortality at the low end and quality of life at the high. Prompt access can mean access to insurance, a doctor, the latest technology, or a specific treatment; turns out that in each case the US leads other developed countries. Low costs on a per capita basis in the US are in line with other developed countries.
Costs do not equal spending. Spending is indeed increasing in the aggregate but costs of specific services are decreasing. The spending increases that the politicians are crowing about are driven by general inflation, increased utilization, and healthcare prices in excess of inflation. Of the three increased utilization is the largest driver and healthcare price increases account for only 30% of spending. There are many drivers of increased utilization ranging from new treatments to aging population and unhealthy lifestyles.
Mayo’s objective is to bring value to healthcare. Value is quality in terms of outcomes, safety and service divided by costs over a span of care. We should pay for value not specific services or compliance with regulations. Healthcare doesn’t function in a market economy. Said another way it functions with severe cost shifting and misaligned goals and incentives. So change is needed and Bob posits a role for providers, patients, third party payers and the government in the needed changes.
Again thanks to Bob for a great presentation.
Tom Motherway, tom!@renohayek.com
Man is Mortal, and Hopefully Moral
Posted by Tom in Nationalized Health Care on August 17, 2009
Rationing health care, especially critical care and end of life care, has become a cause celebre in the Obamacare discussions. Let’s face the fact, we are not immortal, we will die and odds-on we will suffer before we die. Sorry, but there’s no way around that fact.
Healthcare is a limited resource. It has become more limited because it has been billed as a “right,” or it has been billed as “free,” or it has been billed as a “taxpayer obligation.” Well, none of the billings approach reality. What each and every one of us has a “right” to do is suffer and die, what we are “free” to do is suffer and die, and that is what the taxpayers should expect each of us to do.
Each of us has, in my opinion, a moral obligation to use his own resources and the resources of our body politic, for the best human outcome, weighing all aspects of the use and the possible outcomes. This is and should be an individual obligation and a free choice.
So, while I may think it is more valuable to keep myself alive for an additional six months rather than donate that same exorbitant cost to cancer research, another may think, and justifiably so, that it is more important that he pay the cost and stay alive for that short time, perhaps because he is the prime researcher conducting the research that will save others. Or perhaps he and others make different choices, selfish or altruistic, which on balance reflect Adam Smith’s invisible hand at work.
What to do? Let Obama make the universal decision? How many researchers, how many Einsteins would he kill? No, the choice should be individual, either at the personal level or at the individual choice of the insurance company level. So, it is not true that only the government can ration. The individual can ration, the family can ration, the individual’s freely chosen insurance company can ration.
At the end of the day, the price mechanism in a free market, if left to function, will do the job effectively. What we must all urge is that the market be left to function freely without Obama interference. We must urge that the insurance companies be free to compete across state lines, we must demand that we become the consumers, responsible for our own freely made decisions.
Simple solutions: Tax employer provided insurance as the income it is. Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. Cap “pain and suffering” damages promoted by the plaintiff attorneys to fatten their own pockets; these hidden costs limit our lives in a free economy as they are passed onto us.
What do you think?
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.net
Yes Alice, There Is a Free Lunch
Posted by Tom in Defense, Nationalized Health Care, Politics on August 14, 2009
Throughout our modern history America has led the world in commercially and specifically in defense and in medical technology, two very costly elements of our well being. American genius has driven each. American intellect, energy, life and limb have been expended on each.
Who are the beneficiaries? Certainly we Americans benefit both in the results and in the security and economic returns derived from the efforts. Also, other nations in the free world benefited. Europe has been rescued in two world wars and in the communist threat and its aftermath. Europe and the rest of the world has benefited from the dramatic pharmaceutical and medical technological improvements.
Who are the contributors? Not the Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans, Africans. No the contributions come from the good old USA. The blood and the money have, in the main, come from these shores.
So with the strong and ultimately victorious superpower paying the way in blood and money, the European citizenry has had a very valuable fee ride. The free ride has enabled them to forego the cost of defense, forego expensive research and technological development, and still reap the benefits.
What have they done with this savings, this “found money?” They have created socialist welfare states: universal medical care, month long vacations, legally limited work hours, generous dole, etc. So with superpower protection and superpower innovation, Europe has been free to live the good life. These bon vivants criticize us for our nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic, for being the dummies that fail to appreciate the finer things in life.
I think they have a point. Why should we live in a country that pays 100% of the costs of these free world necessities, while others pay nothing? Why not live in a country that enjoys the protection and innovation yet pays nothing? The Europeans and others have proven that there is a free lunch, which is living under the American umbrella.
In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged the producers become so tired of being exploited by the non-producers, that they leave and form their own community. Other countries are only too eager to provide the welcoming place for such communities.
As Margaret Thatcher reportedly said, “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money to spend.” Rand’s novel illustrates as much. Obama has us on the path to socialism. He advocates the European system of socialized medicine. He apologizes for our past successful efforts in defending the free world. Beware of this creeping disease.
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com
Open Letter to President Obama on Intergenerational Immorality
Posted by Tom in Deficit, Nationalized Health Care on August 10, 2009
August 10, 2009
Dear Mr. President,
I participate in a monthly dinner-discussion group covering current economic topics. Those of us who voted for you are highly disappointed; you misled us into thinking that you were a moderate who would lead the nation forward foregoing politics as usual. You have shown yourself to be a big government socialist trying to control every aspect of the economy racking up immoral deficits that will be a millstone around the necks of our children and grandchildren.
Your healthcare ruse is the ultimate attempt to control and perhaps the penultimate nail in the coffin of this great nation. You urge this at a time of great financial turmoil when the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare remain unabated.
I would humbly suggest a simple, almost costless fix for the problems you seem to have with our medical delivery system:
- First, treat employer provided medical insurance as the compensation that it logically is; the income tax should apply to it as with other compensation. This will help reduce these horrible deficits.
- Second, recognize that medical insurance is in interstate commerce and allow private insurance companies to freely compete across state lines provided they qualify under any one state’s laws.
- Third, expand the use of health savings accounts which make the consumer the decision maker and the person responsible for payment. This could be done be increasing the annual deduction for contributions.
- Fourth, place a federal cap on medical malpractice damages for pain and suffering and other such speculative elements of damage. This could be justified under the same interstate commerce clause.
These four simple, costless steps will bring down the amounts spent on healthcare, allow high deductible or catastrophic policies to freely compete, and make the consumers the real parties in interest; at the same time the tax money generated will help reduce your crippling deficits. And, they would eliminate the bureaucratic nonsense and control your plan seeks. They would allow free market choice instead of the one-size-fits-all plan you advocate; I, for instance, don’t need pregnancy insurance! Finally, they would allow the innovation that has led the world; your plan eliminates incentive to innovate.
You have children, as do I. I also have grandchildren. I don’t want to see any of these fine young people suffer from your staggering deficits. It is simply immoral, Mr. President.
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com
The Natives Are Getting Restless!
Posted by Tom in National Character, Politics, Statism on August 8, 2009
Mark Steyn’s column in today’s NRO is too good not to highlight. With verve and humor he points out the very dangerous direction Comrade Obama is taking. Rat on your neighbor, report dissent! Does this sound like the USSR or East Germany, comrade? Orwellian and very scary. Watch out!
Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help,” continued Commissar Phillips. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health-insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”
Reporting dissent is the highest form of patriotism! Is your neighbor suspiciously “well-dressed”? Is he mouthing off about cancer-survival rates under socialized-medical systems while wearing a cravat? Give us his name, and we’ll give you his spats! Just go to flag@whitehouse.gov, not to be confused with flagging@whitehouse.gov, which is the e-mail address for reporting President Obama’s latest approval rating. Go to flay@whitehouse.gov if you’d like Speaker Pelosi to walk across your back as a whip-wielding SS dominatrix barking “Vee haff vays of making you tokk less casually, dummkopf!” Go to flange@whitehouse.gov if you need parts for your new government car, or your new government hip replacement. Go to flaunt@whitehouse.gov if you’d like a special preview of President Obama’s latest bare-chested pictorial for Vanity Fair. Go to flatulent@whitehouse.gov if you’d like to report your neighbor’s cow for excessive CO2 emissions.
Better yet, just send everything on everyone to the White House. Unsure about that old hippie artist across the street? The one who said, “Yeah, I voted for Obama ‘cause I thought it’d be cool to have an African-American president. But, since the economic downturn, the bottom’s really dropped out of my hemp-tapestry market.” He seems to be starting to entertain impure thoughts about the Dear Leader’s plans for us, doesn’t he? And yet, with the best will in the world, one couldn’t really describe him as a snappy dresser, could one? It’s a tough call. So best be on the safe side, and report everyone. The administration can hire people to sift through it all, and that will stimulate the economy even more than the new cashmere-for-clunkers program: Are you an angry right-wing fop? Why not trade in your frankly effete sweater for an evening with Joe Biden?
via The Community Is Restless by Mark Steyn on National Review Online.