In today’s New York Times there is a story about Rick Lazio latching on to the Ground Zero mosque issue as his new campaign theme.  The first television ads I have seen regarding his run for governor are about this issue.  He is strongly opposed.  Okay, but he wants us to  elect him governor to do what, exactly?  New York has a lot of problems, from a state government that is completely dysfunctional to being broke and since everyone seems to agree that the mosque at Ground Zero is not about the right to build there but about the propriety of building there, what does it have to do with the office of governor?

When he pinch hit for Rudy Giuliani running for the senate against Hillary Clinton, after Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the race with prostate cancer, Mr. Lazio took a similar tack.  You probably remember their first debate when Mr. Lazio famously walked across the stage to a startled Mrs. Clinton and asked her to sign his pledge on campaign finance reform.  She refused and that was his theme.  The problem is that although many people feel our political process is corrupt, when it comes to campaign finance reform, most people don’t care about it.  Those who care about it are incumbents, who want to cripple those who run against them.  Some of the so called “reforms” have politicians spending so much time chasing $50 donations that they can’t do what they were elected to do.  Either that or we can only run multi-millionaire candidates who can spend their own money without limits.  (Simple solution: let anyone contribute any amount to any campaign at any time and just post the information on the Internet within 72 hours in a database that is fully searchable. Done.)  It only took a little time for the novelty of the debate video to fade and Mr. Lazio had no campaign.

Another challenger in this year’s governor’s race, Carl Paladino, one of the aforementioned millionaires, has been hitting the airwaves more frequently and more effectively than Mr. Lazio.  He is not a one trick pony.  His first ads hit Andrew Cuomo on being a career politician and that he, Paladino, was a business man who knows how to create jobs.  What do we desperately need now?  Jobs.  What are we sick of? Career politicians, like Mr. Cuomo, who played a role as HUD Secretary in the Clinton administration of feeding the real estate frenzy and the subsequent housing collapse that created the financial crisis.

On the mosque situation, agree or disagree with him but Mr. Paladino says exactly what he will do about it.  He will take the property away under Eminent Domain (thanks to the activist judges on the Supreme Court who gave us Kelo v. City of New London) and use the property to create a war memorial.  He doesn’t just say he will oppose it he tells us what he will do about it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I contributed to Rick Lazio’s senate run in 2000 and I have no connection with the Paladino campaign.  But if Mr. Lazio is serious about defeating Andrew Cuomo for governor, he has to find some issues that not only resonate with the people of New York but that are the responsibility of the governor to address.  If not, rather than split the conservative vote, he should step aside and help ride the anti-incumbent wave that Carl Paladino is surfing.

Two disparate news items this weekend got me thinking.  The main stream media is all abuzz with Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, even to the point of throwing the term royalty around.  It is estimated that the wedding will cost $3-$5 million, although Sally Quinn of the Washington post puts the bill at closer to $1 million.  The comparison was then made to the cost of Jenna Bush’s wedding, a mere $100,000.  This became fodder for The Joy Behar Show.  Comedian Judy Gold leaped at the opportunity to take a shot at Bush, “Yeah, well, if he could have found a way for us to pay for Jenna`s wedding, he would have done that, okay, he likes to spend other people`s money.”  An interesting perspective on other people’s money that I will return to later.

The other news items was an article in The New York Times, by Bob Herbert titled “A Sin and a Shame,” lamenting that corporations are hording cash and not hiring people and it is all so unfair, in fact, sinful.  This is while this government is spending huge amounts of money that someone will have to pay back, massive new programs like ObamaCare that we are still uncovering what that will cost, and enormous tax increases about to kick in on January 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire.  Perhaps they are hording cash for a reason?  Perhaps they are not hiring because they don’t know what any new employees will cost under these new programs, or for that matter what their existing employees are going to cost?  Perhaps it is because the latest economic reports show GDP shrinking and if that continues why would you start hiring if your business is going to slow down with the rest of the economy?

We have two very divergent views of the economy today.  One view is held by those who actually work in the private economy and the other view is held by those in the ivory towers of government, which brings me back to the weddings.  I really don’t care what the Clintons or the Bushes spend on their daughter’s weddings.  It’s their money.  But perhaps it is instructive to look at where that money came from.

George Herbert Walker Bush, Jenna’s grandfather, was born into a successful family.  His father was a banker and a Senator.  But after getting out of the Army after WWII he went to Yale and upon graduation, moved away from that family and settled in Texas to start an oil company.  He went into private business and put his own money at risk.  What that means, to those who never took that chance, is you may be successful and make a lot of money, you may be successful and make a little money, you may fail and lose your money.  Chances are greater that you will lose than win, but that is the American Dream.  If you lose, you have to start over by trying to earn and save up what you lost to try again, if you have the guts and drive.  Bush succeeded in forming Bush-Overby and later with Zapata Petroleum.  He became President of Zapata for ten years and then Chairman for another two, before going into politics.  By then he was a millionaire in his own right.

George Walker Bush, Jenna’s dad, attended public school in Midland, Texas, where his parents had settled.  He went to private school after the family moved to Houston.  He later attended Yale University and became the only president to get an MBA which he did, from Harvard.  Like his father, he went into the oil business starting several independent oil exploration companies.  He later bought a stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team for $800,000 and was instrumental in building the team’s attendance.  He later sold his stake for $15 million.  Then he went into politics.

The two Bushes know risk, know about taking chances and became millionaires on their own before going into politics.  They also learned lessons about spending money and doing so prudently. 

Bill Clinton went into politics almost immediately after getting his law degree.  He was Attorney General and then Governor of Arkansas.  As governor he had a governor’s mansion.  He ran for president and upon winning traded in his governor’s mansion for the Executive Mansion, aka the White House.  He had been on the government payroll and living in government provided housing almost his entire working life.  The sweat of the people in who paid their taxes paid him.  After leaving office, Mr. Clinton was able to write books about his experience and make speeches commanding six figures a pop.  His wife did pretty much the same.  They lived off the people and ended up very rich.  They didn’t create a product or service, they didn’t create jobs, and they didn’t meet a payroll. 

I can hear the screams from the left right now, “What do you mean he didn’t create a job or meet a payroll?”  Try this test.  If Bill Clinton’s opponent was elected rather than Bill Clinton, would there still be a government payroll and government jobs?  If yes, Bill Clinton didn’t create them.  If either of the Bushes didn’t create their companies would there be jobs at those companies or payrolls?  No.

What about some other famous politicians who tell us what to do?  Let’s look at Al Gore.  Here is another individual that spent the bulk of his career in government.  He was a member of Congress, a United States Senator, Vice President and presidential candidate.  Today he is very rich.  It is said he may become the first “green billionaire”.  If he went into his current endeavors before a life in government, would the story be the same?  Or is it because of his name, reputation, and connections that he made at the public trough, that he is wallowing in riches, and telling the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprint while his mansions consume ten times the energy of his neighbors?

Charlie Rangel spent most of his life in government.  He rose through the ranks and now has a waterfront condominium in the Dominican Republic, writes the tax laws but does not observe them, and is a wealthy man.  Conservatives don’t believe in rent control or rent stabilized apartments, but Charlie does.  After all, how can poor and middle income people afford to live in places like Manhattan if greedy landlords have their way.  So Charlie Rangel who makes $174,000 per year, plus his chairmanship pay, has not one, not two, not three, but four rent controlled apartments.  Is he poor or middle class?  No, he is the political class.  He took three adjoining rent controlled apartments and had them joined together, while the fourth apartment served, illegally, as his campaign headquarters.  What about the poor and blue collar workers who could live in Manhattan if three of your four rent controlled apartments weren’t being horded by you?  Let them eat cake.

John Kerry is in the news for trying to avoid $500,000 in taxes on his new yacht.  Here is another individual who spent his entire working life in government.  He can tell the rest of us to pay more taxes while he garners favors spending our money. He is the richest man in the Senate but with prenuptial agreements with his wife he only lists personal assets of between $400,000 and $1.8 million and joint assets with his wife of $300,000 – $600,000.  So how does he buy a $7 million yacht?  I am not suggesting anything nefarious, it’s obvious his wife paid for it, but do you think he is in touch with someone trying to make a payroll in the private sector?  You pay taxes; John Kerry has advisors to figure out how to avoid them.

So those evil corporations started by those evil men like George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush, know the value of a dollar.  They know we are not out of the woods yet and so to protect the jobs that their companies still have they are not hiring but are building their rainy day funds.  Perhaps Bob Herbert should ask why his employer is shedding jobs left and right.  Perhaps this is his safe way of doing so, but on the other hand the New York Times is hardly hording cash.  Its circulation is crashing because people like Bob Herbert are so out of touch with the rest of America; no one wants to read his rants any longer.

So perhaps Bill Clinton spends millions on Chelsea’s wedding because he didn’t learn the value of a dollar.  He lived of the government for many years and then just held out a basket and it was miraculously filled with more money than he can count.  George Bush spent $100,000 on a wedding because he knows how hard it is to earn a dollar.  What we need is less of the political class telling us what to do, and then handing us the bill and more entrepreneurial Americans who risk their own money, watch it like hawks, create jobs and generate wealth that they then reinvest in America.

Best wishes to Chelsea and Marc.

We have come to expect a fight whenever a seat opens up on the Supreme Court as there are distinct battle lines between conservatives who believe the Constitution should be interpreted how it was written and liberal/progressives view it in light of what they feel it should be today.  In other words, conservatives approach the Constitution with a magnifying glass while liberal/progressives approach it with an eraser and pencil.

I happen to believe that elections have consequences and that for the most part the president should be allowed to nominate who he chooses to fill a Supreme Court vacancy and have them approved.  However, as Democrats like to point out when a Republican sits in the White House, the Senate has a Constitutional role to give advice and consent on such nominees, not just rubber stamp them, which is true enough.  Unfortunately, today the advice and consent process is almost a sham, because the nominees have learned how to keep their mouths shut and defer from answering all but the blandest questions under the cover that it may come up before them in a case on the court.  We can thank Ted Kennedy for this as he turned the advice and consent role into an opportunity to smear a nominee, Judge Robert Bork, in the most vile and mendacious way to pander to the base of the Democratic Party.  Since then, it’s been lights out on any serious probing of the thought process of nominees to our highest court.

But what about Elena Kagan?  After the Senate Judiciary panel approved her nomination along nearly party lines (Lindsey Graham – R voted in favor) most Americans (87%) believe she will be confirmed, according to Rasmussen.  However, in the same poll Americans oppose her nomination 42% to 36%.  Is she qualified to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court?

One of the arguments against her is that she has never been a judge before.  That is true, but it is also true for about one-third of past Supreme Court justices.  However, among those past Supreme Court justices who were not judges, they had on average 20 years experience in the private practice of law.  Ms. Kagan has two years experience in private practice, two years.  The rest of her experience in academia or government service. 

Before her current position of Solicitor General, she had never argued a case at a trial.  She has no judicial experience, next to no private practice experience, and thanks to Ted Kennedy, she revealed as little as possible about her judicial philosophy to get confirmed.  Her key strength, according to Barack Obama, is her ability to build consensus.  I’ll give you a translation of what that really means.  Her job will be to vote with the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court and use her persuasive powers on Anthony Kennedy to peel him off and generate as many 5-4 wins as possible.  President Obama does little without a purpose and his purpose is to pull the Supreme Court in the same direction as the laws he has jammed through against the will of the American people.

Despite the approval of the Judiciary committee, an effort must be mounted to reject or filibuster her approval.  How can we accept someone with so little in the way of qualifications to a lifetime appointment?  We know next to nothing about her judicial philosophy.  There are no cases on which she has written opinions that can be examined.  With regard to what she has written in the government service she simply says I was acting as an advocate for my client, and those are not necessarily my views.  Who could argue with that?  So what are her views?  We don’t know and like Nancy Pelosi claimed with the health care monstrosity, “we’ll just have to pass it to find out what’s in it.”  With a lifetime appointment, you can’t take it back later if you disagree with her eventual positions.  The track record of the “Trust me” presidency is downright frightening.

With all due respect to Elena Kagan, I don’t see how we can idly sit by and silently accept another Obama abomination of ramming through his agenda without regard for the people who elected him.  He is essentially asking us to grant a lifetime appointment that could profoundly affect our liberties, to someone who is a blank slate that we know little about. He should withdraw the nominee and submit another candidate.

The Democrats like to point to the Clinton presidency as proof of their fiscal responsibility.  It was a period of strong growth, balanced budgets, and prosperity.  They then point to the Bush presidency, all eight years of it, and deride it for deficits, and ultimately a very severe financial crisis.  But it is worth taking a moment to recall that the federal government is made up of three co-equal branches of government with built in checks and balances.  The Congress is not subordinate to the president and it does not work for him.  It is an equal branch of government that checks and balances the power of the presidency.  For the purpose of this discussion, I will leave out the third branch, the judiciary.

Despite the famous 1992 Clinton campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” the recession had already ended in March 1991.  When Clinton took office he had a Democratic Congress and he pushed through a massive tax increase in 1993 without a single Republican vote.  We know what happened to Congress in 1994, the Republicans took over for the first time in 40 years.  Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tried to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which was included in the Republicans’ Contract with America.  It passed in the House but failed by one vote in the Senate.  After losing this round, Gingrich met with the Republican leadership and put forth  the idea of acting as if the amendment had passed and just start submitting balanced budgets.  They succeeded in the last three years of the Clinton presidency to produce budget surpluses and decrease the national debt.  This included a tax cut by the Republican Congress in 1997, and the economy grew much stronger after the Republican takeover of Congress than under an all Democratic government.

In the 1996 election, the Democrats regained control of the Congress under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Up until that point the economy had grown steadily under President Bush despite two wars.  With Bush in the White House and the Republicans in control of Congress we had tax cuts and seven years of economic growth.  In December of 2007  the economy went into recession, almost one year after the Democrats regained control.  Now with a Democrat in the White House, and the Democrats in control of Congress we are looking at massive growth in government, a whopping tax increase bearing down on us that will hit on January 1, 2011, and a growing debt that may eventually bankrupt us.

So what is all this talk about eight years of failed Republican policy?  Under Clinton and a Democrat Congress it was two years of a tax increase and modest growth.  Under Clinton and a Republican Congress it was six years of tax cuts, budget surpluses and strong economic growth.  Hmmm….same president, different parties controlling Congress.  Under Bush we had seven years of growth and tax cuts with a Republican Congress.  Under Bush and a Democratic Congress, recession, fiscal crisis.  Hmmm…same president, different parties controlling Congress.

But don’t expect honesty on the campaign trail from the Democrats.  It’s just not the Chicago way.

I do not like to throw around a charge of mendacity without good reason particularly after listening to the mainstream media and liberal blogosphere accuse Bush of this all day long.  But the more I listen to what comes out of this administration and the actions they take it is getting harder to hold my fire.

Take for example the brouhaha over the immigration law that hasn’t even gone into effect yet in Arizona.  From the start the administration has falsely portrayed the law as racial profiling, but when asked if they had actually read the ten page law, both Attorney General Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano said they had not.  How do people in such senior positions in any administration make such a bold claim without reading what they are opposing?  It begs the question, do they know they are talking about?

The federal government has gone forward and is suing Arizona over the law claiming that it preempts federal law.  But here are some interesting questions:

• If the Arizona law preempts federal law and that is a bad thing, why does the federal government not sue San Francisco and other cities who have openly professed that they are Sanctuary Cities and immigration law will not be enforced therein?
• A recent news report is that there is a law on the books in Rhode Island that is virtually identical to the law in Arizona and it has withstood judicial challenge?  Why isn’t the federal government suing Rhode Island?
• The thrust of the federal government’s pique with the Arizona law is their claim that it is discriminatory.  But this same administration has just ordered that a case be dropped against a radical hate group, the Black Panthers, for putting armed thugs outside a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008.  According to six career Civil Rights attorneys in the Justice Department, the case was a slam dunk and they had already gotten a default judgment from the court, but this administration chose to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  The Justice Department’s claim is that the facts did not fit the law.  Anyone who has seen the video of the incident knows that is a bald faced lie.  Is this administration for discrimination or against it?

The latest move by this administration against the rest of us is the recess appointment of Donald Berwick as the head of Medicare.  The lie in this case, is that the Republicans were stalling the appointment for “political purposes.”  Now other presidents have used recess appointments.  Both Clinton and Bush used them many times, however it was typically when they could not get the Senate to act on their nominee.  In this case, Max Baucus (D – MT), had not even scheduled hearings and eleven weeks after the nomination, the administration had not yet completed the nominating paperwork.  So was this action taken because of inaction on the part of the Senate or was the administration lying because they really didn’t want a public debate on Dr. Berwick?

Dr. Berwick has said he is, “Romantic about the National Health Service,” of Britain.  For all the false claims by the Obama Administration that if you are happy with your current health insurance you will be able to keep it, they stealthily appoint a socialized medicine disciple.  Dr. Berwick has also famously said:

 “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Let’s see, the Obama Administration appoints Dr. Berwick head of Medicare.  Medicare is the health care program for the elderly.  Dr. Berwick is plain about health care rationing and suggests the way to do it is with our eyes open.  While the term “death panel” may have been used by Sarah Palin partially for its shock value to drive home her point, changing the name to a “rationing” panel would make it different in what way?

Here is the key distinction.  In the hands of the individual and their family, they can decide what kind of care they want to provide their loved ones.  They can decide when enough is enough or whether to press on.  In a free market, insurance policies would be true insurance not medical payment plans.  But regardless you would have the liberty to decide.  In this administration’s world, some bureaucrat makes the decision and after they have driven all the alternatives out of business, other than those available to the wealthy, you will have no choice but to succumb to the will of Big Brother.

We are currently surrounded by news of massive government failures in regulation in the areas of finance and the oil industry and we are to believe that they will be superb in running one-sixth of the economy.  Do you believe the lies?

I was having a conversation about the current election season with someone and the comment was made about the newcomers to the process.  The comment was about a particular candidate “wanting to start at the top” instead of working their way up.  Why in the world would I want to support a candidate who has spent 20 years being molded into the kind of political hacks that got us into this mess?  Why would I want someone who has been well trained to “go along, to get along?”  I want someone who doesn’t know what “go along to get along,” means.  Someone who believes in citizen legislators, who believe in term limits, who comes from the real world, believes public service is just that, and wants to get involved for a limited amount of time and then go back to their careers.  Why do we need another Robert Byrd, who has been in the Senate for fifty years, or a Strom Thurmond, who served until he was 100 years old?  The first thing on the minds of career politicians is, “how do I get myself re-elected?”  They don’t want to rock the boat, they don’t want to lead, and they want to be as inoffensive as possible so they will be the “safe” choice.

We need to shake things up.  We need fresh ideas.  We need people who are fresh out of the real world where jobs are created, payrolls are met, profits are made, budgets are adhered to and when you take risks, there are consequences.  We have huge problems to solve and most of them mean taking apart the government, and putting it back together as an efficient organization that allows individuals to run their own lives, have as much liberty as possible, and frees them to pursue their own personal happiness.  We need to dump the nanny state and foster personal responsibility.  That means providing for ourselves and our families, and supporting our communities through volunteering, personal giving to charities, and not having the government forcefully take the fruit of our labors and giving it to their special interest friends who work to get them reelected to repeat the process.

It was like the movie Rocky the Democrats (Rocky) were getting pounded left and right over their heavy handed tactics.  They crammed through a health care bill that an overwhelming majority of the country opposed.  They moved on to financial reform and they still couldn’t get any traction.  Their poll numbers continued to drop and it was looking like a dismal election coming up in the fall. 

 And then, just like in the movie Rocky swings from his heels and connects knocking the champ to the canvas.  In this case it was the SEC charging Goldman Sachs with fraud.  Now they could fire a full fusillade of class warfare at the Republicans and either get Republicans to help pass the financial reform bill or be tarred as the party of the evil bankers and greedy Wall Street robber barons.  But unlike the movie, right after knocking the opponent down, when the referee sends Rocky back to a neutral corner he slips in his own sweat, flips on his back and knocks himself out.  By that I mean the news came out that employees of the SEC spent an inordinate amount of their time watching porn instead of the financial markets.  How do you expand the role of government on the heels of that disclosure?

 Trying to Make Up for Bernie Madoff?

When Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme was in full swing, Harry Markopolos brought the scam to the SEC practically tied in a bow.  The SEC did not respond.  Perhaps they were too busy…, well never mind.

With the Democrats trusty weapon, class warfare, holstered it’s time to delve more deeply into this financial reform legislation.

In a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid and minority leader Mitch McConnell, luminaries including former SEC Chief Accountant Lynn Turner, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, hedge fund owner Jim Chanos, former Lehman Brothers Vice Chair Peter Solomon, former S&L investigator Bill Black, former Senate Banking Committee Chief Economist Rob Johnson, economists Dean Baker, Barry Eichengreen and others pointed out that Dodd’s proposed financial reform legislation wouldn’t have prevented the current crisis … and won’t prevent the next crisis.

So tell me again why we are doing this?  It’s all about more government control and more power in Washington, not about fixing any real problem.  Where are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in this bill?  They were at the very core of the financial meltdown.  In other words it’s all politics and it’s all straight out of the Saul Alinsky tome Rules for Radicals:

 Rule No. 13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.  In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…

     “…any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When your ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…’

     “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.” (pps.127-134)

The target in this case, is Wall Street and the Banks.  Demonize them.  When the “others”, meaning the Republicans, come out to challenge the ineffectiveness of the bill, then they can be attacked as being for the fat cats and against the little guys; class warfare at its ugliest.

 Follow the Money

But who is really in bed with the fat cats?  The Political Action Committees (PACs), employees, families of employees and other associates of Goldman Sachs gave almost $1 million in campaign contributions to Obama.  In this legislation, the concept of too big to fail remains untouched.  There will be a $50 billion fund created with money from the top banks to standby if needed for a bailout, but this also gives the impression that the largest banks are now safer because of this fund and therefore can get a lower interest rate on their borrowings compared to smaller banks.

 Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman said:

 “The Dodd bill has unlimited executive bailout authority. That’s something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn’t dare ask for. The bill contains permanent, unlimited bailout authority.”

 Why ask for it when the Obama administration will give it to you.  All you have to do is let them smack you around a bit to prime the class warfare pump, and you’re all set.

If you are backstopped by unlimited executive bailout, go ahead, take bigger and bigger risks.  The government will step in if you fail.  So here we have yet another fat cat (Wall Street/Big Banks) wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing (the little guy; Main Street). 

 If you want real financial reform, then in the name of capitalism, the big banks and Wall Street have to learn to play with their own money. If they hit a home run, good for them.  If they strikeout, they should lose their own money and if they don’t have enough to cover their losses, goodbye.   They should not be allowed to take huge risks and if they pay off, everybody there gets a new mansion in the Hamptons, but if they go bust, hand the bill to us.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we were told were private entities, not part of the government, but wink, wink, nudge, nudge, everyone knew the federal government was standing behind them and would not let them go bust.  So they too, got the kind of interest rates, half a point lower than their competitors, based on this implied backing not based on the strength of their balance sheet.

We have to fight this one too.  This is just more smoke and mirrors from the Obama administration.  Another power grab without any substantive benefit to the American people.

This is from today’s New York Times:

“Fearing that health insurance premiums may shoot up in the next few years, Senate Democrats laid a foundation on Tuesday for federal regulation of rates, four weeks after President Obama signed a law intended to rein in soaring health costs.”

With the ink barely dry on ObamaCare, Democrats in Congress are scrambling to keep their masterpiece from unraveling.  As I have pointed out repeatedly, there is nothing in the ObamaCare plan that helps reduce the cost of delivering health care.  It is all about controlling what doctors, medical service providers, and insurance companies are paid.  All the underlying pressures on health costs (tort reform, 3rd party payer, etc.) are still in place.

“We Have to Pass the Bill to Know What’s In It”

Nancy Pelosi’s stunning but famous words are coming into play.  Let’s see what has the senators panicked.

• To hoodwink the American people that this abomination is cost effective, ObamaCare warms up by hitting us with four years of taxes before the expensive benefits come into play.
• Every American will be required to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.  That penalty will initially be $95 per adult in 2014, rising to $695 per adult in 2016 and $2,085 for a family.  This money will be collected by the IRS, not by insurance companies
• Americans cannot be denied coverage for an existing condition

So here’s the scenario.  If you compare the cost of the penalty of $2,085 for a family vs. the cost of insurance for a family of $10,000, coupled with the inability of insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, healthy people will start dropping insurance coverage left and right.  Why not?  On the way to the hospital, you can call an insurance company and say you want to be covered for the pains in your chest and you cannot be denied.  So insurance companies will only have sick people as clients.  With only sick people that they constantly have to pay claims on, their only course of action if they want to stay in business is to raise premiums on all those sick people.  If they start doing it now, they may be able to raise them less than if they wait until 2016.

So the insurance companies are acting rationally to this mess the Democrats dragged across the finish line and now they are shocked, SHOCKED, that they should do this. 

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a research center that advocates free-market health policies, said the Democrats’ proposal was unlikely to succeed in lowering insurance costs.

“Capping premiums without recognizing the forces that are driving up costs would be like tightening the lid on a pressure cooker while the heat is being turned up,” Mrs. Turner said.

The Democratic fix is to have a new bureaucracy that will provide a check on unjustified premiums.  I think you can look at this in one of two ways, both plausible.  The Democrats were stupid enough to believe, as they typically do, that Americans don’t act rationally to their government policies.  It’s also why they don’t understand that when they raise taxes they never collect as much money as they thought, and when taxes are cut they can’t believe how much money flows into the Treasury due to economic growth.  The second scenario is this new commission will cap premiums to the point of driving private insurance companies out of business and then the Democrats will say, “Geez, we didn’t want to do this, but I guess we have to put in place a public option that, by the way, will be the only option.”

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said: “Health insurance companies’ profits for one year equal about two days of health care spending in the United States. So even if we were to take away all the profits of the so-called greedy insurance companies, that would still leave 363 days a year when health care costs are expanding at a rate our country cannot afford.”

Now that I think about it, it is probably the second scenario that is more likely, that is, force the public option.  Your government is about to swallow up another big chunk of the economy if  we don’t turn them out in November.

That was the famous “Pottery Barn” analogy that Colin Powell used regarding the war in Iraq.  Now that ObamaCare + Reconciliation is done, all the ugly details that come crawling out of the health care bill like cockroaches when you turn the lights on, will all come to you courtesy of the Democrats. 

Because they chose to go the reconciliation route, the Senate could not dare change a word in the House bill of “fixes” so they could approve what the House sent them with less than 60 votes.  Here’s a sampling of what the genius of government brings you, wrapped in arrogance, with a bow of disdain for the people, as reported by Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

“Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) offered language to bar the government from subsidizing erectile dysfunction drugs for convicted pedophiles and rapists. Democrats voted . . . No! Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) proposed exempting wounded soldiers from the new tax on medical devices. Democrats: No way! Pat Roberts (R., Kan.) wanted to exempt critical access rural hospitals from funding cuts. Senate Democrats: Forget it! This was Republicans’ opportunity to lay out every ugly provision and consequence of ObamaCare, and Democrats—because of the process they’d chosen—had to defend it all.

And so it went, into the wee Thursday hours. All Democrats in favor of taxing pacemakers? Aye! All Democrats in favor of keeping those seedy vote buyoffs? Aye! All Democrats in favor of raising taxes on middle-income families? Aye! All Democrats in favor of exempting themselves from elements of ObamaCare? Aye!”

Now doesn’t that just make you warm and fuzzy inside? 

Bill O’Reilly and Congressman Anthony Weiner had a debate on O’Reilly ‘s show that was jaw-dropping to listen to.  Weiner said that O’Reilly and others were blatantly misstating the facts about the health care bill.  O’Reilly questioned Weiner about the IRS learning details about people such as whether or not they had health insurance.  Weiner said that was untrue and that if you wanted to get a tax credit for health care, you had to say on your tax return that you had health insurance.  He said it is just like if you claimed a tax credit as a first time homebuyer (I won’t get into all the fraud taking place on the homebuyer credit, even by IRS employees). So according to Weiner it’s all voluntary reporting, just as takes place every year when we file our taxes.  How can Weiner stand there and make such a statement?  A key requirement is that everyone has to be covered by health insurance according to the law and the law provides for hiring 16,000 more IRS agents!  Well what are those agents going to be doing if not following up with you if you don’t say you are covered?  Weiner danced and dodged and at one point stood silently pouting when O’Reilly tried to pin him down.

This is ugly and it is going to get uglier as we learn what is in this cancer on our economy.  But Nancy Pelosi warned us.  “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”  Well, they passed it, now we get all the bad news.

Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak stood next to Greta Van Susteren on her program last night with several small stacks of paper.  Each one of those stacks represented an existing federal law that banned using public money for abortion.  He said anyone of them, pick one, is acceptable to him to get him to vote for the Senate version of the health care bill.  He said President Obama signed a law, just ten weeks ago that had similar language.  He was baffled as to why he could not get an answer from the President or his committee chairman, Henry Waxman, why they would not just continue existing federal law.  Let me put forth my hypothesis.

The Real Healthcare Objective

President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the statists have as their goal one, national health care provider, and that is the federal government.  I know that the “public option” has been in and out of the bill, and that the stated plan is for private insurers to continue to provide heath care insurance, but here is what I see as the real game plan:

1. Do whatever it takes to cajole health insurance companies to sign on or at least shut up.
2. Make sure that individuals do not take control over their health care purchasing decisions through high deductable plans and Health Savings Accounts.  Keep the 3rd party payer as the primary choice, which will allow health care costs to continue to rise.
3. Put in a federal oversight panel to make sure health insurance providers do not make “excessive” profits.  In other words, price controls.
4. With steps 2 and 3 in place health insurance providers will eventually leave the business or go bankrupt.  The federal government will have no choice but to step in so that all Americans continue to be covered.
5. Eventually, the federal government is the last man standing and the de facto public option, or should I say, public mandate is in place. Voila.

The Stupak Problem

If the scenario unfolds as I have described, then the only way to pay for an abortion is through your federal health care insurance provider.  If the language Mr. Stupak wants is in the bill, abortions will be near impossible and Roe v. Wade will be dead.  Do you think President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, NOW, or other pro-abortion groups are going to stand for that?  Not a chance.

So the Democrats have to find a way to either hoodwink Stupak into voting for the bill without the language he wants or find a way to peel off the 29 or so other Democrats who agree with Stupak.  Watch closely what happens.