Earlier this month, I posted a piece documenting Barack Obama’s incapacity as an executive. I followed up with a brief examination of Bobby Jindal’s record as Governor of Louisiana and, then, with a short discussion of a display of vigor and dispatch on the part of Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey – both of whom nicely illustrate what Alexander Hamilton had in mind when he wrote in The Federalist that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Today, I will take a brief look at Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana.

Daniels is an accomplished man with considerable and varied experience in both the public and the private sectors.

On his father’s side, Daniel’s grandparents were Syrian Christians, and he has been honored by the Arab-American Institute for the work that he has done on behalf of Arab community in this country. He was himself born in Monangahela, Pennsylvania, where his paternal grandfather ran a pool hall and, on the sly, reportedly made book. As a child, he lived not only in Pennsylvania, but in Georgia, Tennessee, and Indiana, where his parents settled when he was ten. After graduating from a public high school in Indianapolis, he attended Princeton University. There, for a time, this straight arrow appears to have succumbed to the Zeitgeist In 1970, he spent two nights in a New Jersey jail after being arrested for marijuana possession. Nine years later, however, he was awarded a law degree by the Georgetown University Law Center in DC.

Daniels got his start in politics working for Richard Lugar – initially when Lugar was mayor in Indianapolis and later when that worthy was elected to the U.S. Senate. For a long time, Daniels was Lugar’s right-hand man. He ran the latter’s first three senatorial campaigns; and, from 1977 to 1982, he served as his chief of staff. In 1983, when Lugar was elected chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Daniels became its executive director.

In 1985, Daniels left Lugar to join the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan, where in time he succeeded Haley Barbour as chief political advisor and liaison. When he returned to Indiana in 1987, Daniels did so as chief operating officer of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank then in financial trouble; and three years later, after having put Hudson on a sound footing, he went to work for Eli Lilly, where he soon became President of North American Operations and eventually Senior Vice-President for Corporate Strategy and Policy.

In January, 2001, Daniels went back to Washington, DC to become George W. Bush’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, which made him an ex officio member of the National Security Council and, when it was set up, of the Homeland Security Council. At the time, he was known as an advocate of fiscal restraint, and Bush, who was not as profligate at first as he later became, described Daniels in public as “The Blade” and referred to him in private as “My Man Mitch.”

Daniels’ resume up to this point is impressive, but it would not be of paramount interest had he not returned to Indiana in the summer of 2003 to launch a gubernatorial campaign aimed at ousting the Democratic incumbent. Indiana’s budget at the time was deep in the red, and Daniels, who was elected in November 2004 with 53% of the vote, vowed to bring it into balance.

This “The Blade” accomplished in short order. Upon election, he created an Office of Management and Budget for the state, and then, under his direction, the men with the green eyeshades went to work. Within a year, they had turned a $600 million deficit into a $300 million surplus, and Daniels had begun paying down Indiana’s enormous debt. Four years later, the state was running surplus of $1.3 billion; and, in 2008, Indiana’s Governor ushered through the legislature a bill cutting property taxes on the average house by more than 30%.

Along the way, Daniels decertified the public service unions, reduced the number of those employed by the state by 14% to a level last seen in 1982, shifted most state employees to health savings accounts, introduced a pay-for-performance plan within the bureaucracy, reorganized the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, brought an end to social promotion within Indiana schools, and sold the interstate turnpike stretching across the northern reaches of the state between Ohio and Illinois to outside investors for a cool $3.9 billion, which was immediately sequestered in an escrow account, where it is used for road construction elsewhere in the state (and nothing else).

In November 2008 – when Barack Obama defeated John McCain and the Democrats took the state house and senate in Indiana – Daniels bucked the trend and was re-elected Governor by an 18% margin. In the process, he picked up 20% of the African American vote, and he won a majority among younger voters.

These days, Daniels’ approval rating oscillates between 60 and 70% – which is remarkable given that he is a balding, mild-mannered, unassuming man inclined to travel through the state on a Harley, stop at a diner, and sit down to chat with the patrons. His political success may have something to do with Daniels’ mastery of the technology of communications. His personal version of Reality TV – which is called MitchTV – is a local hit. But his popularity has even more to do with his achievements.

Mitch Daniels may have the demeanor of a staffer, and he has, indeed, done a great deal of work in that capacity. But – like Bobby Jindal, who is 39, and Chris Christie, who is 47 – “The Blade,” who is 61, is a man of executive temperament ready, willing, and able to take charge. Thanks to his stewardship, Indiana is solvent, and it is one of the nine American states with a triple-A bond rating. Moreover, it has begun attracting venture capital; for the first time in decades, people are moving into state; and, though it has only 2% of the national population, Indiana can boast that it garnered 7% of the new jobs created in the United States in the last year.

I cannot say whether any of the governors I have looked at in the last two weeks would make a suitable presidential candidate. But this much is clear. In the great crisis we now face, we are saddled with a President more inclined to dither, play golf, party with celebrities, and punt than to take charge and display energy, vigor, and dispatch when confronted with emergencies requiring decisions on his part. Whatever defects they may possess – and each is no doubt defective in some way – Jindal, Christie, and Daniels would not dither or punt. Each in his way exemplifies responsibility – the virtue singled out in The Federalist as distinctively American — which is no small thing.

Aside from breaking her word to the AMA and physicians across the country, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has effectively demolished doctor reimbursements for most of the healthcare industry.  The 21.2% Medicare fee schedule cut has taken effect, but what most do not realize is that the Medicare fee schedule is the gold standard for provider reimbursement fee schedules across the nation.

Essentially, where Medicare goes, insurers follow for the guidelines in covered services and baseline physician fee schedules for private payers as well as worker’s compensation and automobile insurance companies in most states, as well as Medicaid and Medicare itself.

What Pelosi has effectively done is saved the insurance companies who use the Medicare fee schedule millions of dollars of payouts to physicians on their claims–regardless if the patient is a Medicare patient.  I’m not seeing the insurance lobby out there right now, are you?  However, on the provider side, the doctor’s lobby groups are outraged at Pelosi’s failure and the damage this inaction will cause physicians–especially private–and force them to layoff employees to make up for the loss in reimbursements to cover their enormous monthly overhead costs.

Pelosi is completely ignorant of the doctor’s fee schedules and how their reimbursements are calculated.  In a multilayered approach and working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the AMA Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS) is used and the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) makes annual recommendations regarding new and revised physician services to CMS and performs broad reviews of the RBRVS every five years.  These values have not been adjusted since the 21% fee schedule reduction took effect and for Pelosi to ignore the fact that the doc fix will actually cost doctors to see their patients because their fees will be reduced, but the cost of providing the services and the supplies needed have not gone down and in some cases, continue to rise.  Additionally, student loan payments have not been decreased by 21% for doctors, have they?

The only business segment to ultimately win is the insurance industry.

Real-world exit questions:  If you own a company and your revenue just got nicked by 21%, but your supplies and cost of services has remained the same, how long before you will have to layoff employees to cover your monthly costs?

Do people understand that private practice physicians take most, if not all, of their salaries on assignment?  Physicians must do this because of provider contracts and other variables, but their fees are not a guarantee of payment; claims can be denied in part or in full.  (Some lawyers take their fees on assignment, but it is their choice.)  And now, doctors are being used as political pawns by the Democrats.

Is it possible that the Democrats are attempting to push doctors into the union, say the SEIU?  Only those doctors who are in private practices, not employed by hospitals cannot unionize, so what’s next for them?

Nothing like having a bunch of bureaucrats who have no idea about healthcare, costs of providing services,  running a business, covering overhead, etc. in charge of your salary, covered services, and future.

Finally, this is clearly a Democrat problem, after all, “You won.”  And by that, Americans now understand that to mean that the Democrats are clearly the party of cry-babies, finger-pointers, and blame-shifters.  And job killers, because if your more than $800 billion stimulus and jobs bills actually provided jobs, we wouldn’t need unemployment extenders in current legislation.  Americans would actually be back to work, wouldn’t they, Nan?

No, not because this is the day that the 30th President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, was sworn into office; although the words of “Silent Cal” lend credence to the modern movement in opposition to progressive-statism.  Take a gander:

Civilization and profit go hand in hand.

Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.

There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.

To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.

President Coolidge may be the most under-rated president in American history, but his words do little to roll back the progressive machine now.  The beginning of that roll-back does not occur on November 2, but much earlier.  On August 3, 2010, Missouri voters will be tasked with the responsibility of taking the first stand against Obamacare, the progressive panacea, by voting for the Missouri Health Care Freedom Act (MHCFA) in a public referendum.

An Issue Worthy of National Attention

MHCFA comes from a state that has elected the president in every election since 1904, excepting Eisenhower’s second term and the 2008 election of Obama.  Bellwhether or weathervane, the “fly-over” state that mirrors national demographics represents the first chance for American voters to display their disapproval with Obamacare.  Other states filed lawsuits or passed legislation, but those actions only indirectly represent the American electorate.  MHCFA will be voted on by the public at large (and incidentally, allows conservatives to vote “Yes,” for once.)

This public referendum could make or break the ground swell of opposition to the progressive agenda.  Failure of MHCFA would provide a field-day for progressive media, and dishearten many voters for the midterms.  On the other hand, success of MHCFA by large margins would have the opposite affect.

We can be sure that the dirty politics practiced by progressive organizations will flood the state.  ACORN reorganized as MORE in Missouri, OFA will certainly provide leadership, and groups like Project Vote will definitely mess with polling.  Political lawsuits have already begun.  Attorney “Chip” Gentry filed a lawsuit to block the August 3 vote.  Whether he has connections to any of the progressive organizations targeting the Missouri referendum is another question (though I am sure we will learn soon enough).

The bottom line is that MHCFA represents the first battle in the war against Obamacare.  Organizations that support future referendums on Obamacare in Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma and other states would do well to support Missouri in its endeavors.  Support from freedom loving Americans in the rest of the Union would also be greatly appreciated.

A Challenge to Blunt and Purgason

August 3 represents the primary date for Missouri, as well.  A Senate seat is up for grabs, and crucial to regaining control of Congress from the progressives.  Two Republican candidates are fighting it out against progressive-trust-fund baby, Robin Carnahan.  Both should be championing MHCFA as the most important issue prior to the primary.

If the Republican candidates do not heed my words, they will earn the apathy of Missouri’s electorate to the detriment of our nation.

Roy Blunt has served in the US House of Representatives since 1997.  As such, he represents, unfairly or not, the establishment.  None of that need matter if he champions the most important referendum in the country.  If Blunt campaigns for this issue in Missouri, he could prove to Missouri voters that he would be a worthy representative of their state.  He must find some connection to the grassroots conservatives in Missouri should he win the nomination.

Chuck Purgason has served in the Missouri legislature since 1997.  While Purgason is a favorite of the grassroots, his electability against Carnahan is an issue.  None of that need matter if he champions the most important referendum in the country.  If MHCFA passes by a large margin, Purgason would prove the numbers exist to defeat Carnahan.  He must prove his grassroots credentials by getting out the vote.

Both candidates benefit from supporting MHCFA because the voters that support the referendum will most likely be voting in the Republican primary.  It will be the most important issue to take a stance on prior to the primary, and lip-service will not suffice.  Failure of MHCFA to succeed would prove a major stumbling block against the progressive agenda.  Blunt must prove he is not owned by the establishment and Purgason must prove he can generate votes.  And when all is said and done, Missourians must unite against the aristocratic-pretender Carnahans.

You knew this was coming. From the Associated Press:

The White House announcement comes as administration officials meet privately with state insurance commissioners, and CEOs of major insurance companies, amid concerns over continued premium hikes. Obama was expected to attend at least part of the session, and is scheduled to make a speech later.

Consumers who buy their policies directly faced increases averaging 20 percent this year, according to a survey released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Although most Americans are covered on the job, about 14 million purchase insurance on the individual market and have the least bargaining power when it comes to costs.

It’s still unclear how insurance companies will price the new guaranteed coverage for children. If premiums are too high, families may still be unable to get health insurance.

Entire article here.

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While the “March Madness” that resulted in the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act of 2010 would lead you to believe that STAT change was needed in our health care system, the on-going delay in the “fix” to the SGR (sustainable growth rate) formula for Medicare invokes images of a long waiting list for a rationed medical procedure.

Medicare, the federal government’s health care insurance plan for the elderly and disabled established in 1965, is largely funded from payroll taxes and FICA, and supplemented with premiums paid by its beneficiaries. It is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services via the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and is the place to look to see how our government will administer a health care system.

Since 1998, the SGR has been a component of the formula used to calculate physician payments for providing services to Medicare patients. It is based on the GDP and not on actual health care practice costs (which have been rising faster than the GDP.) The SGR produced steep cuts in physician compensation for services to Medicare patients, in hopes that by paying individual physicians less, overall health care cost would decrease.

Unfortunately, this approach has failed.

Pay to physicians caring for Medicare patients has been stagnant, while health care costs have gone up. Many physicians report receiving little net income or are barely breaking even for their care of Medicare patients. Congress has stepped in nine times since 2002 to prevent or reverse increasingly larger Medicare physician payment cuts mandated by the SGR formula. As a contingent of its support for the health care reform passed in March, the American Medical Association demanded that the flawed SGR formula be abolished.

The doctors are still waiting.

Congress had chosen to delay the cuts three times this year, but voted Thursday to allow the 21% cut in physician reimbursement to take effect now. The impact of this will be dramatic. Medicare patients & those working in the medical field are already paying the price for Congress’ inaction. An AMA poll of over 9000 doctors last month revealed that delayed Medicare payments had already caused them to postpone or cancel scheduled services to Medicare patients, while 17% of these doctors report holding up paychecks or laying off their staff – with over 1500 workers affected by this. Physicians also report limiting the numbers of Medicare patients they will see, and some have opted out of Medicare altogether.

One might consider Congress’ inability to resolve the SGR predicament as the “anti-health, anti-stimulus bill.” The cost of using the flawed SGR formula was not factored into the cost of health care reform, and it is not going away. What will go away are doctors willing to care for Medicare patients, despite the promise “if you like your doctor, you can keep him.”

The SGR problem should have been solved before comprehensive health care reform was signed into law.

Repealing Obamacare via Article V is a means of last resort, or rather a threat to the national bureaucratic government should those in Washington not jump on board.  In the meantime, states, those individual laboratories of liberty, are attempting a number of remedies.

States have filed lawsuits, but my legal background makes me wary of relying on the judicial branch to make the ultimate decisions on policy.  Marbury v. Madison established the Supreme Court’s role as the ultimate arbiter in conflicts involving the Constitution, but that does not guarantee that correct decisions will result.  So first we will examine the legislative solutions.

Many states across the country are either introducing laws or revising constitutions to protect Americans from the tyranny of Obamacare.  The progress of these Health Care Freedom Acts or Amendments are being tracked by various groups.  Most of this legislation is fairly simple to read and understand.  Basically, states are refusing to enforce or enact Obamacare, which is perfectly reasonable under the present legal understanding of federalism.  The national government cannot force states to enforce unfunded federal law.  A perfect example of this is the increasing decriminalization of marijuana in communities across America.  Local police are handing out tickets (much better for revenue than throwing people in jail).

Health Care Freedom passed in a few states, including the Commonwealth of Virginia (in addition to its lawsuit), and is working its way through the legislatures of many others.  The first state to allow its citizens to vote in a referendum is Missouri.  The Missouri Health Care Freedom Act (MHCFA) appears on the ballot on August 3.  This vote may prove crucial in the repeal of Obamacare.  If it succeeds by large margins it will signify the beginning of the end of the progressive agenda.  Anyone who is serious about defeating the progressives should support Missouri in its endeavor.  You can be assured that OFA, MORE (the new Missouri ACORN), and other progressive organizations will be pulling all sorts of shenanigans.

Now let us discuss some of the legal reasoning in the quest to repeal Obamacare:

1) The 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

First off, there is no such thing as “states’ rights.”  The Tenth addresses “powers,” and we dilute the meaning of “rights” by suggesting that states have them.  While no formal definition of “reserved powers” exists for the states, some are readily identifiable.  National legislative powers are limited to the enumerated powers “herein granted,” according to Article I § 1 of the Constitution.  That is, if a legislative power is not mentioned within the confines of Article I, it is reserved to the states.  And while the national powers of both the executive and judicial branches include implied powers, the implied powers do not exist in a vacuum, or rather those powers relate to the aforementioned legislative powers.  Traditionally, “reserved powers” includes public health, safety and welfare.  Many more exist, though.  State common law drives contract, family, property and tort jurisprudence.

The legal argument pertains to the enumerated powers.  Essentially, neither health care nor insurance can be found within Congress’ enumerated powers.  Progressives love to misconstrue Article I § 8 cl 1:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

Apparently, “general” means “everything under the sun,” rather than “non-specific,” and one cannot get any more specific than an unprecedented 2400 page bill that addresses 1/5 of our economy.  Presumably, the states are tasked with providing for the “specific welfare.”  James Madison went further in delineating the powers of the national and state governments in Federalist 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

2) The Commerce Clause:

Article I § 8 cl. 3 reads:

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.

Progressives argue that even if the Constitution did not specifically grant the power to control health care, the Commerce Clause does, in conjunction with the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I § 8 cl. 18):

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Commerce clause jurisprudence cannot be discussed within the confines of this article.  Suffice it to say that a government mandate to buy health insurance or suffer a penalty stretches the legislative power “to regulate commerce.”  One could argue that if the government could force citizens to buy health insurance then the government could also force citizens to buy firearms.  See how that sits with progressives!

3) Roe v. Wade

Let me preface this by saying that Mississippi is one of my favorite states in the Union.  The people there are some of the most hospitable in the country.  And now they are fighting progressive policy with progressive logic.

Most legal minds, whether they support or oppose the result of Roe, agree that the legal reasoning was flawed.  Roe established the “right to privacy” in American jurisprudence out of thin air.

The Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.

The problem is that the court did not go into great detail on the history of that right.  Another problem is that the court also recognized that this right was not absolute.  How a “fundamental right” cannot be absolute is perplexing, to say the least.  A later case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, reaffirmed the rule in Roe, and furthermore, addresses government power in the realm of health care:

Roe, however, may be seen not only as an exemplar of Griswold liberty but as a rule (whether or not mistaken) of personal autonomy and bodily integrity, with doctrinal affinity to cases recognizing limits on governmental power to mandate medical treatment or to bar its rejection.

Further discussion of the lawsuit in Mississippi can be found here.

4) The 9th Amendment

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Put simply, the government cannot ever be the guarantor of rights because those rights belong to the people, in opposition to government power.

The 9th Amendment would be more appropriately asserted by individuals, but this would not preclude state support.  I am not aware of any state asserting this argument directly, but it may not be applicable until the national government actually tries to enforce the individual mandate.  I have asserted the importance of this amendment in a discussion of “fundamental rights,” and in opposition to the progressive agenda. More importantly, this line of argument could prove persuasive to Justice Anthony Kennedy, a crucial vote on the Supreme Court.  Justice Kennedy likes to blaze a trail, and is acutely aware of his role in decision-making and precedence on the court.

In conclusion to this entire discussion, I leave you with these prophetic words of James Madison in Federalist 46:

But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter.

On Wednesday, I posted a piece, drawing attention to what is now obvious even to Maureen Dowd: that, as an executive, Barack Obama is woefully incompetent. In that piece, I noted the propensity of the American people for electing to the Presidency men with ample executive experience – as generals, governors, cabinet secretaries, and the like. I remarked as well on the poor performance of the four Presidents they elected who did not have prior executive experience; and I suggested that it is time for the Republicans to ask who, in their number, has demonstrated a willingness and an ability to take charge and assume what the authors of The Federalist called responsibility.

In the course of the next few days, I propose to say a word or two about three of these Republicans. I will not discuss Sarah Palin, who displayed the requisite vigor and dispatch in her brief stint as Governor of Alaska, and I will not discuss Tim Pawlenty, who, over the last seven years, has shown genuine capacity as Governor of Minnesota. That worthy task I will leave to others – who know more than I do. Today, I will look at Bobby Jindal, Governor of  Louisiana.

Jindal is a remarkable young man. Born in 1971 to parents who migrated to Baton Rouge from India, he entered the freshman class at Brown University when he was twenty, was admitted to Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School when he was twenty-three, and that same year was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at New College, Oxford – where he took an M. Litt. in political science and wrote a dissertation entitled “A Needs-Based Approach to Health Policy.”

Instead of studying medicine or law, Jindal returned from Oxford to Louisiana, became Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals when he was 25 and President of the University of Louisiana system when he was 28, then shifted to Washington, DC where he became Assistant Secretary of  Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation at the age of thirty.

Two years later, he was back in Louisiana – where, in 2003, he ran for Governor in the state’s open primary, led in the first round, and lost in the runoff; where, in 2004, he was elected to Congress with 78% of the vote; where in 2006, was re-elected with 88% of the vote; and where, in 2007, he was chosen Governor, the first non-white man to have been elected to the governorship in that state and the first non-incumbent ever to have made it to the top without a runoff.

Jindal took over in Louisiana two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and put on display the incompetence and corruption besetting the state government and the city government in New Orleans. With dispatch and vigor, he then set out to clean up Louisiana politics, streamline state government, and put the state’s budget in order, all of which, insofar as these things are possible in that state, he did.

In August, 2008, when Hurricane Gustav threatened New Orleans and the Louisiana coast, Jindal’s Louisiana was ready for the crisis, and he and his administration did what his predecessor had notably failed to do at the time of Katrina: arrange for an orderly evacuation of the city and the coastal areas.

In the wake of the oil spill occasioned by BP’s mismanagement of the Deepwater Horizon, he has moved heaven and earth in an heroic effort to protect the Louisiana coastlands. As I pointed out on Wednesday, a poll recently taken by Public Policy Polling shows that, in Louisiana, “63% of voters approve of the job he’s doing,” which is the highest approval rating that this left-liberal polling operation “has found for any Senator or Governor so far in 2010. There’s an even higher level of support, at 65%, for how he’s handled the aftermath of the spill.”

Alexander Hamilton once argued that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Bobby Jindal is nothing if not energetic. He is, in fact, everything that a republican executive ought to be. Put bluntly, he is the sort of man that one would want to have next to one in a foxhole. He is smart as a whip, and he is inclined to take the initiative. If his response to President Obama’s first State of the Union Address left television viewers disappointed, we should keep in mind that, when 2012 comes around, Americans will be apt to pay more attention to demonstrated executive capacity than to eloquence in mouthing pious platitudes.

In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again.

Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

Other women and men – think of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Ronald Reagan – were born to take charge. When Harry Truman put a sign on his desk, reading, “The buck stops here,” he knew what he was talking about. As Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, it is vital that we have in our Constitution a unitary executive because, in human affairs, emergencies are commonplace; secrecy, vigor, and dispatch are often requisite; and, in such circumstances, there has to be someone in high office able, willing, and even eager to take responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Americans have an instinctive understanding of what is at stake. Ordinarily, they choose as Presidents men with executive experience – men with a track record in directing affairs that can be judged. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had been prominent generals before they were elected Presidents, and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt had also demonstrated an aptitude for leadership in war.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had held the vice-presidency. Jefferson and Van Buren had also been Secretary of State, and the same can be said for James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and James Buchanan. Monroe had also been Secretary of War, and this was true was well for William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover had managed relief efforts in Europe early in and after World War I; he had served as Food Administrator within the United States after we entered that war; and, from 1921 to 1928, he served as Secretary of Commerce.

Many of the others elected to the presidency had previously held gubernatorial office.

This was true for Jefferson, Monroe, Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, and, if one counts his service as governor of the Philippines, for Taft as well. It applies also to James K. Polk, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, William Jefferson Clinton, and George H. Bush.

The only men ever elected to the presidency who had no executive experience of any sort were Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and the hapless incumbent we have today.

No one – not even, in retrospect, his own political party – thought that Pierce did a decent job. It was during his administration (1853-1857) that the Union began to come apart. Harding is best remembered for the scandals that beset his short-lived administration (1921-1923). And although, thanks to the slavish devotion of his acolytes in the media and in the academy, JFK is in some circles revered, his actual performance in office prior to October, 1962 was deplorable. As Donald Kagan pointed out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall Kennedy was so weak, so irresolute and indecisive, so feckless in his dealings with the Soviet Union that his conduct encouraged Nikita Khrushchev to think that he could get away with introducing missiles tipped with nuclear warheads into Castro’s Cuba and brought us thereby to the brink of nuclear war.

Executive experience does not guarantee wisdom and competence in office. Pierce, Harding, and Kennedy were by no means the only elected Presidents to fall short. But, as the American people generally appreciate, the lack of executive experience is a good indicator of fecklessness to come.

Witness Barack Obama. Leave aside his first year in office. As I pointed out in posts entitled “Barack Obama and the Exhausted Presidency” and “Obama’s First Year,” from the outset, he conducted himself in an irresponsible fashion that is highly unpresidential.

He forgot that, in the larger world, the President represents his country. Out of personal pique, he persistently insulted our friends abroad, displaying disdain for Gordon Brown, stiffing Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, treating Benyamin Netanyahu with open contempt, and turning his back on the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Iran. At the same time, he embraced Hugo Chavez, sucked up to Vladimir Putin, and kowtowed to the rulers of Saudi Arabia and China – all to no avail.

With regard to domestic affairs, he seems not to have recognized that, under our Constitution, it is the President of the United States who represents the national interest; that Congressmen more often than not cater to particular interests; that, if legislation is left to the latter, principle tends to give way to patronage; and that the result can be a profound embarrassment. And so he stood idly by while Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the like drafted legislation – a so-called “stimulus bill” and healthcare reform, each more than a thousand pages in length, each embodying a multitude of corrupt bargains, each threatening to bankrupt the country. And, like a political hack, faithful to his party to the bitter end, he promoted and signed their handiwork.

All of this was obvious long ago, and it was evident as well that, if there were a real crisis, he would check out. This is what he did when Major Nidal Malik Hassan gunned down thirteen Americans at Fort Hood. This is what he did when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down a jetliner at Christmas time. And this is what he did when Faisal Shahzad was found to have planted a bomb in Times Square. All three cases revealed an egregious failure of our intelligence apparatus. In all three cases, the danger had its source in developments within Islam And, in the face of all of this, the President of the United States signaled that he could hardly bear to take a few minutes off from his vacation at the beach in Hawaii, cancel a party or two, or give up his golf game to acknowledge and address the failures of his administration, and at no time has he been willing to level with us about the source of our peril.

Maureen Dowd and those who think that politics is about play-acting – here is her latest column on this theme – lament that, like Spock in Star Trek, No-Drama Obama is simply incapable of displaying any sense of urgency. The real problem is much more serious, for our well-being is to a considerable degree in this man’s hands, and, when things go wrong, he seems not to feel any sense of urgency at all.

The oil spill that began in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April is the latest example. Some say that President Obama is no more responsible for the spill than President Bush was for Hurricane Katrina. This claim is, in fact, untrue. Bush had nothing to do with Katrina. Barack Obama, as President, was responsible for insuring that the regulatory agencies overseeing the drilling operations did their job properly. While campaigning for the presidency, he charged that the Bush administration had, in effect, allowed the oil industry to regulate itself, and he promised that, if he were elected, he would set things right. During that campaign, he took a wad of cash from folks at BP (more than they had ever given any other candidate); and, when the time came to reform the Minerals Management Service, as Tim Dickinson has shown in fine detail in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the new administration’s appointees did nothing of the sort.

Nor was the Obama administration quick off the mark in doing what could be done to contain the spill. Instead, while the govenors in the Gulf states clamored for action, the President played golf and partied and the bureaucracy dithered, delaying by weeks efforts to prevent the oil from coming ashore, from fouling beaches, and killing wildlife. Nearly two months have passed since the accident on the Deepwater Horizon, and to date President Obama has issued no waiver to the Jones Act, which stands in the way of foreign ships with foreign crews helping to contain and suck up the spill.

The environmentalists are reportedly giving the Obama adminstration a pass. By now, they are reliable partisans, and they have their eye on cap-and-trade. The people of Louisiana are much less happy. They recognize the deepwater drilling moratorium imposed by the Obama administration for what it is – a ploy designed to persuade those not in the know that something decisive is being done – and, according to the left-liberal outfit Public Policy Polling, more than three-quarters of the voters in that state still favor offshore drilling. Moreover, half of the voters polled “think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill,” 31% of self-described Democrats agree, and only 35% of those polled give Obama higher marks.

Only one politician has gained ground in the course of this crisis, and that is Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana. The poll recently taken shows that “63% of voters approve of the job he’s doing,” which is the highest approval rating that Public Policy Polling “has found for any Senator or Governor so far in 2010. There’s an even higher level of support, at 65%, for how he’s handled the aftermath of the spill.” Jindal is evidently a man of executive temperament. He is not better placed to deal with the spill than is Barack Obama, but he has done as much to keep it off the beaches and out of the swamplands of southern Louisiana as lay within his power.

As the reports make abundantly clear, Barack Obama did not help himself at all with the speech he gave on Monday night from the Oval Office. As our President plays golf, parties, and pauses from time to time to bloviate and pose for photo-ops, his popularity steadily sinks under the weight of his evident indifference to our security and well-being.

It is high time that Republicans start asking the obvious question: who, in their number, is best prepared to do what this presidential incumbent has no desire to bother with: to take what the authors of The Federalist called responsibility. Governor Jindal may not be at the very top of the list of possible presidential contenders, but he is certainly high on it.

“Health overhaul to force changes in employer plans.” “Draft health rules set hurdles.” “Employer health care costs to jump 9% in 2011.” With headlines like these splashed across the nation’s newspapers, it’s no wonder the American public remains steadfastly opposed to the government takeover of health care signed into law by President Obama in March. Just this week, the Obama administration released bureaucratic new health care regulations that could change or eliminate more than half of all employer-provided health care plans, affecting tens of millions of Americans. Apparently, “If you like it, you can keep it” was an Obama promise too good to be true – one of many, as it is turning out.

Indeed, ObamaCare’s broken promises are piling up for America’s families, seniors, and job-creators and stifling the economic recovery we all hope to achieve. Bureaucratic mandates, higher taxes, and record deficit spending are proven job killers – yet these very principles lay at the heart of the Democrats’ government takeover of health care.

During the Blair House summit, Speaker Pelosi decreed the Democrats’ health care plan would “create four million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately.” With a national unemployment rate stuck near 10 percent, and with 15 million Americans searching for work, Republicans and the American people continue to ask: Where are the jobs?

One of the lasting lessons of the health care debate is this: The American people will no longer accept a federal government that is tone-deaf to their concerns. Men and women who never before have spoken out about politics are now standing up and demanding to be heard. And Republicans are using every resource and seizing every opportunity to bring their voices to Washington D.C.

A central part of our effort is America Speaking Out, a bold new initiative designed to give the American people a voice in shaping a new governing agenda for Congress and the nation. Through AmericaSpeakingOut.com, Americans can post policy suggestions and vote or offer comments on the ideas shared by lawmakers and fellow citizens. It is truly an unprecedented dialogue between the people and their elected leaders.

In the weeks since it launched, ASO has been a powerful force on the internet and in town hall meetings in congressional districts from coast to coast. Tomorrow, the ingenuity of ASO comes to the halls of Congress thanks to the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group. For more than a year, House Republicans have studied the nation’s health care challenges and offered commonsense solutions to lower health care costs and protect jobs without growing the size of government.

Tomorrow’s forum will be the second in a series of meetings intended to shine a brighter light on the consequences of ObamaCare for America’s families and job creators. We have invited experts and individuals with real-world experience to discuss the chilling effect a government takeover of health care is having on job creators across the country. Already we know ObamaCare will penalize small businesses for raising wages or creating new jobs, and we know it will hit businesses – both large and small – with an estimated $87 billion in new penalties for failing to provide government-approved health care. The American people deserve to have these facts examined and they deserve an opportunity to chart a different course, one they support.

At America Speaking Out, citizens have a national platform to offer their ideas for reigning in government spending and advancing American prosperity. Chief to achieving those goals is the desire to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with reform the country can afford. Tomorrow’s health care forum will allow members of Congress and outside experts to discuss ideas posted to America Speaking Out, as well as suggest new ideas for the public to consider.

In his farewell from the Oval Office, President Reagan noted that while as a great nation our challenges seem complex, “as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours.” Limited government, personal responsibility, and economic freedom will once again lead this nation to opportunity and prosperity. Democrats disregarded these basic principles in their pursuit of government-run health care. The consequences have proven devastating.

The American people realize the path to renewing our economic prosperity comes through courage and sacrifice, and they are demanding a renewed commitment to our oldest and most basic principles. The American people are speaking out, and Republicans are listening.

Even most native speakers of English don’t realize how many of our commonest clichés—phrases you hear verbatim in venues as diverse as a gabfest on The View, an Elvis Presley song, or a political debate in Wolf Blitzer’s urgently-named “The Situation Room”—were actually invented by 18^th and 19^th-century British poets.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Marv Albert on ESPN describing a triple play? Not exactly. It’s the justly famous first line of John Keats’ pastoral poem Endymion (1818) about a shepherd lad loved by the moon goddess Selene. “Fools rush in.” Elvis, right? The first three words, maybe. But the entire pearl—”Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”—actually hails from Alexander Pope’s brilliant 1711 poetic treatise An Essay on Criticism. And who first warned us “A little learning is a dangerous thing?” Einstein? George Washington? Sorry. Pope, once again. From the very same poem—and to think he was only 23 when he scribbled these sterling epigrams that stubbornly cling to our lips nearly 300 years later.

But what about that ubiquitous ornithological metaphor we all bandy about so freely? You know—the albatross, inextricably wrapped around some poor wretch’s hapless neck? Surely dead bird imagery is too macabre, too contemporary to have crawled out of some centuries-old British poem—right?

Not if the poet is the opium-addicted mystic Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the poem is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). With his surreal tale, Coleridge unwittingly gave us the perfect proxy for President Obama, entangled in his own personal albatross—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

When Obama signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010, with the stroke of a pen he became the doomed sailor in Coleridge’s supernatural, foreboding poem. Little did the President know at the time that his pen was the equivalent of the cross-bow with which Coleridge’s mariner killed the fated albatross. (Word to the wise: be careful what you lobby for. Word to the foolish: ignore the word to the wise.)

Since its first publication, scholars have debated endlessly the symbolism and significance of Coleridge’s strange metaphysical bird poem.  Let’s leave those lofty academic indulgences to those who enjoy lofty academic indulgences. For our humbler terrestrial purposes, we’ll concentrate on the storyline of this saga of a man on a most unusual extended speaking tour.

The poem narrates how an old sailor—the eponymous mariner—newly returned from a long voyage, stops one of three guests just as they are about to enter a wedding reception for their next of kin. The “grey-beard loon” (as the apprehensive apprehended guest addresses the sailor) detains the guest, stopping him with his “skinny hand” and “glittering eye.” He then proceeds to recount a long twisted tale of a sea junket gone terribly wrong—in which the mariner kills an albatross with his cross-bow, sees all 200 of his shipmates mysteriously drop dead (“With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one.”), before his ship is ultimately ferried back to land by a phantom crew of spirits. Not your typical Carnival Cruise Line experience by a long shot.

Even though the guest is now late for the wedding ceremony and the ensuing festivities, he is either too transfixed or too terrified of upsetting his interlocutor not to heed the sailor’s expansive tale. What the wedding guest learns is that the mariner is compelled to repeat his somber story, passing “from land to land” to teach it “at an uncertain hour.” The mariner knows “the man who must hear me” as soon as he sees his face. The unfortunate recipient of the mariner’s loquacity this time just happened to be the poor wedding guest. One can only imagine how the bride and groom received his excuse for his tardiness. (“The sailor told you what?”)

In 2010 America, “the grey-beard loon” is President Obama. His doomed shipmates are the myriad Democrats who voted for Obamacare, many of whom are destined to go down with the ship this November “with heavy thump.” The albatross which Obama slew with his cross-bow was the will of the American people, who still by a great preponderance oppose this gargantuan, immorally-imposed orgy of entitlement spending.

Obama now wears the heavy bird of Obamacare around his neck, struggling mightily with cheap diaphanous $250 bribes to extricate himself—as he did in his latest June 8^th town hall in Wheaton Maryland.

It remains to be seen at what town hall and on whom our Mariner President next lays his “skinny hand.” But just like Coleridge’s mad sailor, Obama is now doomed to keep traversing the country in a valiant but vain delirium of words, repeating his ever-luster-losing fairy tale of the benefits of his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—i.e., the large. white, rank and festering lifeless bird draped around his neck.

Coleridge said it much more eloquently:

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.

Keep teaching us your tale, Mariner Obama. But be aware—just like Coleridge’s wedding guest—average Americans recognize the crazed eye of a grey-beard loon who’s been out at sea far, far too long. And they think your health care bill is–well–for the birds.

Avik Roy, a savvy health care analyst in New York City who writes an excellent blog on health policy, took the time to talk with me for The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News podcast about what we learned last week when it comes to the White House’s fraudulent case for Obamacare. It’s well worth a listen.

In case you missed it — because for some reason, the Washington media types didn’t find time to cover this story — Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf offered an astounding rejection of the notion that the new health care regime, which President Obama frequently cited as a profound and necessary deficit-lowering measure, does anything to improve America’s deficit picture.

This is less news to you, of course. But it’s newsworthy because of who’s saying it. As Keith Hennessey put it, “Never before have I seen a CBO Director so bluntly refute the policy claims of a President and his Budget Director.”

Despite the best efforts of OMB chief Peter Orszag and others, the spin that Obamacare was a budgetary cure has already been revealed as a complete falsehood, even before the implementation costs of the vast majority of its policies are fully known. As Roy writes:

At this point, there are only two camps of honest people: those who believe Obamacare will blow up the budget, and that this is a problem; and those who believe that Obamacare will blow up the budget, and that this is not a problem (because wealth redistribution is more important, and because the wealthy can be taxed more if needed).

The more we learn about what is in this bill, the more we see how disastrous it will be for this country, and how wrongheaded its approach is to solving our health care problems.

Read more at Health Care News.

It was an article of faith among Obamacare supporters that worry over so-called death panels was simply a cynical ploy by conservative leaders to scare the peasants. Blatant fearmongering, they claimed. Now it’s looking more and more like a valid concern.  Writing at the Daily Caller, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute highlights quotes from Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama’s nominee to be director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which suggest that death panels might be on his wish-list.

“I am romantic about the National Health Service. I love it,” he has said about the British health care system.  His favorite part of British health care seems to be its rationing arm, the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE).  NICE is responsible for determining whether or not the life-extending benefits a patient receives are worth the cost to the government.  Dr. Berwick calls this institution a “global treasure.”

How much is a human life worth? About £30,000 per year, according to NICE.  Anything more than $44,000 per year of extended life, and NICE is likely to deny treatment.  Important drugs that prolong the life of cancer patients, such as Lapatinib and Sutent, are not allowed.  Alzheimer’s drugs are also heavily restricted for those in the early stages of the disease despite the fact that the early stages are when treatment can provide the most benefit.  Originally pitched as nothing more than a board to promote “best practices,” NICE has become a rationing, death panel machine.

Dr. Berwick thinks this system is so wonderful, we should implement it right here in America. “It’s not a question of whether we will ration care,” he explained in a magazine interview, “It is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”  His idea of rationing with eyes open is when “collective action overrid[es] individual self-interest.”  The individual he is referring to here, whose interests should not matter, is the patient.  The collective action is the death panel.

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.” - Thomas Jefferson

Having dramatically expanded the role of the government in your doctor’s office and your bank this year, the Obama administration is turning its attention to your kitchen. Sara Burrows, a reporter for the Carolina Journal, reported on the ramifications of the Obama administration’s war on salt, announced recently as a nationwide decade long program by the FDA. I followed up with her on a podcast for Health Care News:

Hold your breath for the potential casualties — that’s right, we’re talking about ham and bacon.

It’s all about the war on salt, which has been previously discussed at BigGovernment. Essentially, the Food and Drug Administration, acting at the behest of the Institute of Medicine, is cracking down nanny state fashion on the amount of salt you get from pre-packaged foods and in restaurants.

As Burrows writes:

In April, the Institute of Medicine advised the FDA to lower the recommended daily intake of sodium for individuals from 2,300 mg to 1,500 mg. It also recommended setting maximum legal limits on salt in all packaged and restaurant foods.

The plan is “to slowly ratchet down the sodium level, so people won’t notice the change,” said Christina DeWitt, a food scientist on the IOM advisory panel.

A very sly approach, treating the American people as a frog in boiling water. But something tells me they’ll notice if this happens:

It’s also unclear how the FDA would treat bacon, another pork product heavily reliant on salt. A story on salt regulation in The Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that the “FDA might mandate maximum amounts of sodium per serving in food categories — say, bacon — in 2015, then slightly less in 2018, and finally reaching the goal in 2024.”

That would pose problems for bacon producers. “Bacon’s not bacon unless you use salt to cure it,” Cansler said.

Consider it the one kind of pork the Obama administration doesn’t approve of: the kind you eat. Have you tried pre-packaged reduced-sodium bacon? I did this week just to test it out. The stuff tastes like warm cardboard. The FDA and the food police want to force us to eat this crap?

Setting aside the anti-good food crackdown of the government in the kitchen, there’s an important question here: will this massive new decade-long regulatory uptick in mandated salt reductions even help normal people? As Jacob Sullum at Reason has noted, mandating lower daily intakes for sodium is hardly a proven benefit for the average healthy person. Sullum quotes a 1998 piece from Science magazine which pointed out:

For the agencies involved to induce the public to avoid salt, they must convince individuals that it’s bad for their individual health, which, for those with normal blood pressure, it almost assuredly isn’t… The argument that salt reduction is a painless route to lower blood pressure also assumes that there is no downside to this kind of social engineering.

The FDA is set to apply an across the board standard which had previously just been for “individuals who are 40 years of age or older, African-American, or have a history of high blood pressure.” According to longtime salt expert Michael Alderman, chair of department of epidemiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York: “What we’re involved in here is an experiment to see what’s going to happen…We do not have evidence that reducing sodium is going to increase the quality or the duration of our lives.”

On the flip side, in many of these prepackaged foods, you need high levels of sodium to ward off contamination and food poisoning. Burrows reports:

Candace Cansler, director of the National Country Ham Association, said U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations require country hams to have at least 4 percent salt content. Any less and the meat is subject to microbial contamination.

DeWitt said the FDA probably wouldn’t write a rule contradicting the USDA’s 4 percent minimum rule, but it might set a salt content maximum at 6 or 7 percent.

As blogger Moe Lane writes, “when somebody informs you that there needs to be a minimum level of a particular food additive present to prevent people from becoming infected, saying that the rule ‘probably’ won’t be changed is not very… smart, really.”

Personally, if I were you, I’d find a good local butcher now, before they become far too popular. While the FDA can crack down on prepackaged food and restaurants, they won’t be able to stop the local meat provider (blessed be his name) from making things that taste great the old-fashioned way. For normal, healthy people who eat in moderation, these new regulations just serve to ruin good food and raise the risk of food poisoning and contamination. The nanny state faction has no part of choice — I remember listening to a Republican-appointed Surgeon General rant about the dangers of soda pop — but is unanimous in its belief that citizens are too stupid to take care of themselves.

This is what happens when the bureaucracy gets out of control, angry at being ignored for decades by normal citizens with better things to do. We now have a government that isn’t content to just issue recommendations for how you should live. It’s going to make you live that way, whether you want to or not.

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Now that ObamaCare is the law of the land, it’s time to redouble our efforts to make sure that what the Wall Street Journal aptly called, the “worst bill ever” remains front and center from now through the historic Democratic massacre that must take place on November 2, 2010. Even in supposedly safe Democratic districts, we must be outspoken about our revulsion for the multi-trillion dollar scam called ObamaCare, perpetrated—Hugo Chavez style—against the overwhelming will of the American people. Since the Deautocrats in Congress are making decisions that have a colossal impact on my life, I thought it a good idea to get to know our new masters better, and to start holding them accountable for their destructive policies.

Congressman Steve Rothman, Deautocrat from New Jersey’s 9^th district, is serving his 7^th term. Rothman was an early and active supporter of Barack Obama. Here is Rothman’s endorsement of the inexperienced and radical Obama in Dec of 2007:

“I think he is an authentic agent for change, but not only that – he brings to that his extraordinary life experience, his brilliance, his vast knowledge of American and world history and his years as a community organizer as a legislator on both the state and federal level.”

Congressman Rothman is a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which allocates all of the funds in the federal budget. Rothman has used this position to bring home his share of pork. But bringing home the bacon—arguably a virtue during normal times—is certainly a vice at a time when America is following in the economic footsteps of Greece. Rothman’s verbal virtuosity, combined with his even keeled demeanor, gives many of his constituents the impression he is politically moderate. Nothing could be further from the truth.  Congressman Rothman has recklessly voted with the ruinous, budget busting agenda of Nancy Pelosi 99% of the time (you can see for yourself on http://www.opencongress.org/).

As a direct result of a federal spending orgy and ensuing prohibitive tax increases–all fully endorsed by Rothman with his “each according to his needs” mentality—beginning in 2011, the most productive New Jersey residents will have well over 50% of their income confiscated. Put another way, America’s producers—those who create the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth and philanthropy, and nearly all of the jobs—work half the year to pay for lavish goodies handed out by Congressman Rothman. But Rothman feels good about the economic and social destruction he is inflicting on his district and on America. In an open email on PolitickerNJ.com explaining his decision to run in 2010, Rothman writes;

“But above all else, I am having some of the most satisfying time as a public official (including my labors of love as Englewood’s Mayor and Bergen County’s Surrogate Court Judge) ever. It’s something about making my contribution to my neighbors’ well-being and fighting for social justice at every turn, and working every day to ‘repair the world’ that still drives me and fulfills me.”

For those not yet schooled in Democrat-speak, social justice means reaching into someone else’s wallet to give to a favored group or cause—ostensibly to “help” a “victim”.  In actuality, social justice creates real victims by stealing from some, creating dependents (i.e. loyal Democrats) of others, and in the process growing the bureaucracy to unsustainable levels. Social justice provides the moral rationalization that allows people like Steve Rothman to hand out evermore goodies and accumulate evermore power while claiming the moral high ground.

Rothman’s reference to “repairing the world” reveals his progressive politics, but also belies his deep narcissism. Politicians have always been narcissistic, but it takes a special kind of narcissism to see one’s own self as a world-saver. Rothman sees America in the same light as does his kindred spirit, Barack Obama—broken, and desperately in need of repair. And who but the anointed like Rothman to do the repairing?  America’s uniqueness and greatness has always rested on individual liberties, free markets, and limited government, whose primary function is to protect these liberties. But that leaves little room people like Obama and Rothman to “help” us. If we are responsible for ourselves, how can they repair control us?

Although Congressman Rothman claims the high moral ground in his quest for social justice or when he is repairing the world, he is more-low key about the other goodies he likes to give out. The radical left hasn’t quite figured out how to use the morality argument to justify their corporate giveaways, but I give them credit for trying. At Rothman’s town hall meeting last August, he was adamant that tort reform should not be part of Obamacare. Here again, Rothman is in perfect synch with Obama who insists that victims need “just” compensation when evil, capitalist doctors purposely amputate a foot rather than provide preventative care.  I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but I noticed that attorneys & law firms are Rothman’s top donors by a wide margin.  [Note to Docs: I understand why the ambulance chasers support their benefactor, but perhaps you should rethink your contributions to someone who is both destroying your profession while confiscating your earnings.]

Rothman giveth and Rothman taketh. So much for shredding of the “Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” part of our founding document. Now to the “Life” part—ObamaCare. Congressman Rothman held several town hall meetings last summer and I attended two of them. Opposition to the entire Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda was palpable. The crowd was passionate and well spoken. The clear and overwhelming message to Congressman Rothman was WE DON’T WANT OBAMACARE! On a video of one of the meetings, you can see Congressman Rothman’s “do no harm” pledge:

“We wanted to come back to our districts and get input. What disturbs you? What keeps you up at night about what you’ve heard, because we don’t want that in any Bill. In any law, the first rule is do no harm.”

But at the Rothman’s town hall meetings, people were frantic about the very real harm that the multi-trillion dollar ObamaCare was perpetrating. There could not have been a more clear message to Congressman Rothman.

“We don’t want ObamaCare!”

“We are worried sick about Government Spending!”

“We want less Government in our lives; not more!”

Congressman Rothman then said,

“You should know that I have not taken a position whether I will support or oppose the (healthcare) plans that are out there.”

Hmmm. I wonder what possible reaction from his constituents would have swayed him to vote against ObamaCare. What doesn’t Congressman Rothman understand about the word “NO”? It is now clear that the only thing Rothman will understand is a resounding NO in November. Political Analyst Michael Barone points out that this month three members of Congress –all members of an Appropriations Committee—have been beaten in their bids for re-election. In these times of spontaneous political activism, even the anointed can be defeated. As Barone says, “suddenly this year, pork is not kosher”.

Ways and Means Ranking Republican Dave Camp (R-MI) and Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Wally Herger (R-CA) today released a new road map that shows America’s small businesses and their employees how to calculate the so-called small business health care tax credit.

Small_business_tax_credit_path_flow

As the navigation tool shows, employers face a dizzying array of questions and formulas before determining if they are eligible for some, all or none of this credit.

“The health care law is going to drive up premiums even further and, as this road map shows, it provides virtually no help to small businesses,” said Camp.  “No wonder the nation’s leading small business organization is suing to overturn the law.  We need to repeal this law and replace it with health care reforms that lower costs for small businesses, families and taxpayers.”

Herger added, “Ronald Reagan once said that the most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’  It’s no surprise that the Democrats’ big-government health care law offers no real help for small businesses struggling with high health care costs.  In fact, at a time when our top priority should be to create jobs and get our economy back on track, this new law instead kills jobs and tells small business owners that it isn’t in their best interest to grow and prosper.  It’s time for Congress to get to work on repealing this destructive health overhaul and providing real tax relief and health care savings for America’s small businesses.”

The Ways and Means Republican document reaffirms concerns expressed by small business owners in an Associated Press article, FACT CHECK: Tax cut math doesn’t add up for some,  out this morning.

Below are just some of the reports excerpts:

• But when he ran the numbers, [Zach] Hoffman discovered that his office furniture company wouldn’t get any assistance with the $79,200 it pays annually in premiums for its 24 employees. “It leaves you with this feeling of a bait-and-switch,” he said.
• Lost in the fine print: The credit drops off sharply once a company gets above 10 workers and $25,000 average annual wages.
• To get the most out of the new federal credit, Hoffman said he’d have to cut his work force to 10 employees and slash their wages.  “That seems like a strange outcome, given we’ve got 10 percent unemployment,” he said.

The lack of assistance to small businesses and their workers should come as no surprise.  During the health care debate, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 88 percent of those who get health insurance from a small employer work for a business that will not receive tax credits under the Democrats’ legislation.

As the National Federation of Independent Businesses said, “the small business tax credit will do little to nothing to make purchasing insurance affordable for more small firms.”

I find the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America outlet extremely entertaining in their capacity as the Obama White House’s fluffy attack chinchilla — not just because they clearly work so hard at such drudgery, but because they are so oblivious to their incredible irrelevance within the ongoing online conversation. In this case, I sadly didn’t even notice their long, drawn out response last week to my BigGovernment piece on CMS nominee Donald Berwick until just today. It’s a classically impotent MMFA attack post, in the sense that it spends an incredible amount of effort to rebut absolutely nothing I wrote.

They admit that Donald Berwick has expressed his support for a health care plan which “redistribute[s] wealth from the richer among us to the poorer”; he does talk about how he’s “romantic” about Britain’s National Heath System; he expresses his strong support for “rationing with our eyes open.” You can see video excerpts of Berwick’s remarks here. In fact, in quoting at length trying to provide some wiggle room, MMFA actually makes Berwick seem worse!

In any case, normally I’d just let MMFA continue on their merry way until the Obama White House calls them up to tell them who needs to be squeaked at tomorrow. But their naivete when it comes to health policy is so evident in their choice of sources, I have to point out one aspect of their response to me: their reliance on a rebuttal, and a support for health care rationing, from one Dr. Peter Singer.

You may recognize the name, and not know why. The MMFA author, who evidently didn’t, quotes at length from Dr. Singer’s piece in support of health care rationing in the New York Times: “The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?”

Dr. Singer is, of course, most well known for his support of non-voluntary euthanasia and infanticide for disabled infants, or just because the parents feel like it. I’m not exaggerating — he makes no bones about his support for infanticide and has written multiple books and essays on the subject, arguing essentially that while animals are self-conscious beings, newborns and people who suffer from diseases such as Alzheimer’s aren’t — so they lack the quality of personhood which prevents us from killing them. In Singer’s 1993 book, he wrote:

To take the lives of [self conscious people], without their consent, is to thwart their desires for the future. Killing a snail or a day-old infant does not thwart any desires of this kind, because snails and newborn infants are incapable of such desires.

In Singer’s 1996 book, he wrote:

Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons. Hence their lives would seem to be no more worthy of protection than the life of a fetus.

And here’s a more recent Q&A:

Would you kill a disabled baby? KAREN MEADE, Dublin

Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole.

Just to be clear: Media Matters for America has no problem quoting, in defense of rationing health care, a person who has bluntly advocated the right to kill newborn babies. From his 1988 book, “Should the Baby Live?”:

It does not seem wise to add to the burden on limited resources by increasing the number of severely disabled children.

I wonder if Donald Berwick agrees with Media Matters that Dr. Singer is a person we ought to listen to when it comes to rationing your health care?

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I find the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America outlet extremely entertaining in their capacity as the Obama White House’s fluffy attack chinchilla — not just because they clearly work so hard at such drudgery, but because they are so oblivious to their incredible irrelevance within the ongoing online conversation. In this case, I sadly didn’t even notice their long, drawn out response last week to my BigGovernment piece on CMS nominee Donald Berwick until just today. It’s a classically impotent MMFA attack post, in the sense that it spends an incredible amount of effort to rebut absolutely nothing I wrote.

They admit that Donald Berwick has expressed his support for a health care plan which “redistribute[s] wealth from the richer among us to the poorer”; he does talk about how he’s “romantic” about Britain’s National Heath System; he expresses his strong support for “rationing with our eyes open.” You can see video excerpts of Berwick’s remarks here. In fact, in quoting at length trying to provide some wiggle room, MMFA actually makes Berwick seem worse!

In any case, normally I’d just let MMFA continue on their merry way until the Obama White House calls them up to tell them who needs to be squeaked at tomorrow. But their naivete when it comes to health policy is so evident in their choice of sources, I have to point out one aspect of their response to me: their reliance on a rebuttal, and a support for health care rationing, from one Dr. Peter Singer.

You may recognize the name, and not know why. The MMFA author, who evidently didn’t, quotes at length from Dr. Singer’s piece in support of health care rationing in the New York Times: “The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?”

Dr. Singer is, of course, most well known for his support of non-voluntary euthanasia and infanticide for disabled infants, or just because the parents feel like it. I’m not exaggerating — he makes no bones about his support for infanticide and has written multiple books and essays on the subject, arguing essentially that while animals are self-conscious beings, newborns and people who suffer from diseases such as Alzheimer’s aren’t — so they lack the quality of personhood which prevents us from killing them. In Singer’s 1993 book, he wrote:

To take the lives of [self conscious people], without their consent, is to thwart their desires for the future. Killing a snail or a day-old infant does not thwart any desires of this kind, because snails and newborn infants are incapable of such desires.

In Singer’s 1996 book, he wrote:

Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons. Hence their lives would seem to be no more worthy of protection than the life of a fetus.

And here’s a more recent Q&A:

Would you kill a disabled baby? KAREN MEADE, Dublin

Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole.

Just to be clear: Media Matters for America has no problem quoting, in defense of rationing health care, a person who has bluntly advocated the right to kill newborn babies. From his 1988 book, “Should the Baby Live?”:

It does not seem wise to add to the burden on limited resources by increasing the number of severely disabled children.

I wonder if Donald Berwick agrees with Media Matters that Dr. Singer is a person we ought to listen to when it comes to rationing your health care?

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There’s nothing wrong with the fact Debra Blessman kept secret from her students the name of the film she would require them to watch and analyze during finals week at Francis Howell High School. Today, however, the teacher might be wishing she had not kept her superiors in the St. Charles, Mo., school district in the dark about it. She planned to base final exams on the Michael Moore film, “Sicko“.

Judging by the unedited plot summary below which Blessman distributed to students in her Senior Literature and Composition class, one might assume Blessman kept school district administrators in the dark about the controversial 2007 documentary on health care because she knew they might find the film objectionable:

In this documentary, the director/writer Michael Moore exposes the dysfunctional North American health care system, oriented to huge profits and not for their mission of saving lives. Further, he shows the corruption in the political system, with members of government and congress “bought” by the corporations and the situation of the average American citizens, including those that volunteered to work in the rescue mission of the September 11th. Then he travels to Canada, Great Britain and France to compare their systems showing their hospital, doctors, staffs and patients. Last but not least, he shows that the prisoners in Guantanamo have better medical treatment than the common people in USA, and he ends getting free treatment to the Americans that participate along the documentary in Cuba.

Apparently, however, Blessman did not expect any of her students to raise objections about the film. But one did.

On the morning of May 11, soon after learning about the film’s selection as the basis for the final exam in Blessman’s class, 18-year-old senior Celeste Finkenbine went straight to one of the school’s principals to raise her objections. Why? Because, based on her experiences with Blessman this semester and during a class three years earlier, Finkenbine didn’t think she would get very far pleading her case with the teacher she describes as a liberal. More on that later.

Unlike the vast majority of her classmates, Finkenbine is a politically-active conservative who spends many Saturday afternoons attending anti-socialism rallies at the intersection of Highways K and N in nearby O’Fallon, Mo. When she’s not in school or holding a sign on a street corner, you’re likely to find her working at a local nursing home in preparation for what she hopes will be a career as a geriatric physician.

Through a contact at the K and N Patriots, the group that holds the weekly rallies, I learned about Finkenbine’s objections to the film and, specifically, to being required to watch and analyze it as part of an assignment worth 50 percent of her total semester grade for the class. This video is based on two recent interviews, one of which took place in the dining room of their St. Charles home, the other at a rally Saturday.

Finkenbine cited one primary reason behind her unwillingness to bring up points that back up Moore’s contentions.

“My biggest issue with it is my principal said I can argue the conservative viewpoint, but that’s something that I have background with, that I’ve researched myself.

“Every other student in that class was only given the liberal viewpoint of it, and that’s exactly what teachers aren’t supposed to do, is lean toward one side or the other.”

When I contacted Dr. Renee Shuster, superintendent of the Francis Howell School District, she admitted the movie is not part of any district curriculum and that the teacher did not follow the process for having the film approved in advance. She also said that Finkenbine had been offered an alternative assignment that involves reading and analyzing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 7,000-word essay, “A Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Does Finkenbine fear any repercussions for standing up for her conservative ideals?

“I’m hoping that, no matter what assignment I do, I can still get an ‘A’ on it. If I did feel like I was graded unfairly, it wouldn’t stop there.”

It’s somewhat ironic that Finkenbine’s alternative assignment relates to Dr. King, because it was during a recent class discussion that King’s name came up and, according to Finkenbine, her teacher laid her liberal cards out on the table.

Finkenbine said that, after she compared her participation in Tea Party rallies with the civil disobedience in which Dr. King participated, Blessman responded to her by saying, “Well, we all know you’re a ‘teabagger.’”

Afterward, Finkenbine recalled, the teacher started laughing and everyone in the class started laughing about Blessman’s use of the derogatory term, prompting the student to think, “Wow! Did she really just say that?”

Having heard this account of life in Blessman’s classroom, I contacted Dr. Shuster again.

In addition to wanting to find out how district officials would deal with the teacher for using a film that was not approved in advance, I wanted to know how they would address Finkenbine’s allegation that the teacher called her a “teabagger” in front of the class.

Schuster responded by e-mail, saying, “We would address this through the teacher evaluation process which hopefully leads to improvement but can lead to termination.”

Unfortunately, it appears all of the other students in Blessman’s class ended up having to watch and analyze “Sicko”.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Multiple attempts to reach Blessman since Friday afternoon have, thusfar, been unsuccessful, and her home phone number is unlisted. If, after publishing this post, she contacts me and consents to an interview, I will publish an update.

In a recent interview, President Obama told ‘TODAY’ Show host Matt Lauer, ‘when you actually look at the (health care) bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas…” Like it or not, Obama was correct, too many Republicans were pushing for big government health care takeovers.

And I’m not just talking about Mitt Romney’s failed experiment in Massachusetts, though that is the most prominent example. Across the nation, too many “nanny state” Republicans embraced the notion that government could — and should — impose individual mandates on its citizens (for our own good, of course).

Case in point, Kansas state senator Jim Barnett (R) — who currently has a slight lead in the race for the open Congressional seat in Kansas-1 — pushed for an “Obamacare-esque” bill in Kansas less than three years ago. Now, Barnett wants to go to Washington to, presumably, help grow government as a Republican.

SB 309, aka. “The Kansas Health Care Connector Act” or “BarnettCare” would have included an individual health care insurance mandate for all Kansans. It would also have imposed much harsher penalties for non-compliance than Obamacare, giving the state the power to withhold tax refunds and garnish wages up to $10,000 for those who failed to purchase insurance through the government exchange. BarnettCare would have also imposed massive new employer mandates. Barnett’s bill didn’t make it out of committee, a point which is both good and bad (the fact that it never came to a full floor vote has allowed him to pretend as if he never proposed it).

Open seats are rare, and thus, the Kansas-1 primary race includes numerous candidates. But it is essentially a two-person bid, with Barnett holding a slight lead over conservative favorite Tim Huelskamp in the polls (though Huelskamp leads in the money race). Huelskamp is essentially a conservative rock star who has earned the support of disparate groups and individuals such as The Club for Growth, Ron Paul, and Ken Blackwell — just to name a few.

Under normal conditions, Huelskamp would win easily. But while Barnett is the sole liberal in this GOP primary campaign, Huelskamp has to fend off several lesser-known conservative candidates — who entered the race merely because they saw a golden opportunity to win an open Congressional seat in a good Republican year. It is unsettling to think that these candidacies may siphon off just enough votes to cost Huelskamp the election, and to guarantee liberal Jim Barnett wins this safe Republican seat.

With conservatives hoping to make big gains in 2010, it would be truly sad to see more big government Republicans coming to Washington — especially when we have a chance to elect a real small government pro-liberty Republican like Huelskamp. Help me help him.

Health care reform is the latest piece of the puzzle to be put in place. If you add this to what has happened in the financial industry and the banking industry a bigger picture begins to emerge. With the proposed financial regulations, there seems to be a movement towards the consolidation of power in a few institutions, systematically removing free competition, setting up the too big to fail phenomenon, thereby giving people less choice that will ultimately cost everybody more in the long run.

Since the passage of healthcare reform, there has not been a lot of talk about the role that hospitals will play. What no one talks about is the fact that there has been a quiet movement or shift of doctors from private practice to hospital employees. Many smaller community hospitals and doctor owned hospitals have gone out of business because they could not afford to keep their doors open. In addition, there has also been a quiet consolidation of hospitals. For example, in Atlanta, groups of specialists have become hospital employees.  With the movement of various specialists, hospitals have now become specialty centers for specific patient care.

It is not hard to visualize a future where there will only be a certain number of hospitals that are able to provide care for specialized diseases such as cardiac care, or orthopedic surgery.  If that happens, access will be restricted since patients will be limited as to where they will be able to go to receive their care.  If there was only one specialty heart center in the city and only a certain number of doctors on staff, by definition, there will be a limited number of patients that can be treated at any specific time. Unfortunately, these changes will likely lead to the de facto rationing of care.  In addition to the problem of access, costs will likely go up because of the lack of competition.

The demise of Lehman Brothers and the consolidation of other large financial companies have led to very few winners in the financial industry – the biggest of which is Goldman Sachs.  The banking industry has seen a few surviving large institutions such as Chase and Citibank. What the larger banks didn’t acquire in mergers, the FDIC removed by taking over and closing hundreds of smaller and community banks. Makes you wonder if the credit unions will be next on the list.

Like the banking industry and financial industry the biggest and most powerful entity will survive and competition will be crushed. In medicine it is the hospital. The hospitals wield a lot of power.  Recently, the Georgia Hospital Association tried to carve out an exemption for hospitals at the expense of physician owned ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). There is a proposed 1.45% “bed” tax on medical services to create a Medicaid fund. The hospitals had language inserted into a bill (HB307) that would “protect hospitals from bills that are harmful to hospitals for three years” essentially giving hospitals the power to “veto” any language in a bill that they didn’t like. When you take in to account that: 1.) doctors were not at the negotiating table; 2) non-profit institutions get to draw from a fund to treat indigent patients while private physicians don’t; and 3) by law 2-4% of the patients treated in private physician owned surgery center must be indigent. i.e., they must treat them for free to keep their facility open (yet they must pay all of the taxes as a small business). Fortunately physicians were able to contact members of the Georgia legislature and stop the carve out. If the move had been successful, the hospitals would have been in a position to remove competition from the private ACSs which provide a less expensive alternative for patients. You see how uneven the playing field is.

Access to physicians, was one of the main promises of Obamacare.  If this trend persists, it looks like you might have to wait longer and travel farther to receive the care that you need.

President Obama’s nomination of Donald Berwick as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is a gathering far less attention than a certain other nominee — but it will be getting more attention in the weeks to come, given his particularly radical agenda when it comes to health policy — an agenda that includes support for massive government rationing and his support of using health care bureaucracy to redistribute wealth.

Berwick is a leading Ivy League academic and technocrat – he’s graduated from Harvard not once, but three times – and is the founder of a Cambridge-based think-tank, the Institute for Health Care Improvement. Yet the job of running CMS is hardly the same as running a small think tank or talking in broad terms about the nature of health care – CMS is essentially the world’s second largest insurance company after the United Kingdom’s NHS, covering over 98 million people and overseeing roughly $800 billion annually in taxpayer-funded health care expenditures.

Berwick is a great fan of the NHS, and worked as a consultant on the project under Tony Blair. Berwick will have the opportunity to apply the ideas he gained through that experience with the power of the CMS position, which means that his nomination holds massive ramifications for Medicare and Medicaid recipients, hospitals and doctors and, under Obama’s law, all Americans.

Berwick: Health Care Must Redistribute Wealth

Key to understanding Berwick’s views on the NHS is a speech he gave as part of a presentation offered two years ago, in which he shared his thoughts on the NHS and health care generally. You can watch the full speech here. The full video shows several lines from Berwick that are notable. He decries private sector solutions to health care problems, dismissing the “invisible hand of the market” as an “unaccountable system.” He also states:

“I am romantic about the NHS; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.”

And more disturbingly, in this clip:

“Any health care funding plan that is just equitable civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”

Read more »

The health care legislation recently bulldozed through Congress is only the tip of the iceberg. With some 2,400 pages of dense legalese—with thousands of additional pages of regulations implementing the legislation still to be written—this huge statute puts government in effective control of some of life’s most intimate, personal, and important decisions: who will receive medical care, and when, where, and how it will be received.

A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato”—meaning, “Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

I recall this expression frequently as I observe the government’s growing reach in American society. Washington’s medical-care power grab is only the latest example.

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real-estate development, home construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not 1,000 other areas and aspects of economic and social life.

Some believe that the state still keeps its hands off religion, but even that’s not true. It certifies certain religious organizations as legitimate and condemns others, as many young men discovered to their sorrow when they attempted to claim “conscientious objector” status during the Vietnam War. It assigns members of certain religions, but not members of others, as chaplains in the armed services. It even grants clergy certain privileges not available to others.

Indeed, statism itself has become a religion for many Americans. Do they not honor the government above all else, even above the commandments of the religions they claim to embrace?

Whenever modern Americans encounter a problem, they look to government for their salvation, just as their ancestors, before the 20th century, looked to divine providence.

When the government makes a mess of things, eliciting complaints and protests, as it has for example in every area related to health care, it responds by making “reforms” that heap new laws, regulations, and government bureaus atop the existing mountain of counterproductive laws, regulations, and government bureaus. Thus, each new “reform” makes the government larger and more destructive than before.

The areas of life that remain outside the government’s participation, regulation, surveillance, or manipulation by means of taxes and subsidies have become so few and so trivial they scarcely merit mention.

We verge ever closer on the condition in which everything that is not prohibited is required. Yet like the average German, most Americans will declare loudly that they are free and that the United States is a free country.

As the state seeks to control virtually everything and crushes all real opposition, Americans now inhabit a country that would be completely unrecognizable to its founders. Indeed, it bears only faint resemblance to the country it was just 50 years ago.

More and more, “Land of the Free” is becoming nothing but an empty, pathetic boast.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, there’s apparently a growing deadly threat to worry about.  It seems that protesters there are getting unruly these days – so unruly that local businesses have brought on extra security detail to help out the local police.

That’s what happened when one such group of protesters descended upon the Bank of America headquarters on Saturday, May 8th.  The group showed up around lunchtime, eager to protest the financial reform bill currently making its way through the Senate.  Upon their arrival, not only were they met by three Charlotte police cars and a couple of local officers, but evidently Bank of America had somehow caught wind of the event and sent out another six or so Bank of America paid security staff. As an extra precaution, the bank had also hired at least two Wackenhut security officers to augment their usual staff.  Apparently, Bank of America felt it necessary to prepare for some sort of pending siege – these are Tea Party protesters we’re talking about here.  According to our own members of Congress and their allies, they’ve deemed Tea Partiers, the very constituents they are supposed to represent, a violent, racist bunch of potentially unstable people.

Well, when I heard about the incident, I couldn’t wait to get a look at these dangerous rabble-rousers.

So this is the riot mob that Bank of America sent out its security force, including extras from Wackenhut, to aggressively resist.

Meanwhile, these protesters showed up simply to draw attention to Bank of America’s role in trying to influence the current financial reform legislation.  In North Carolina, Bank of America has a special place in the heart of Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, who has been pushing an amendment to the bill on behalf of the giant bank.  (Coincidentally, it also benefits another of the Senator’s AND Bank of America’s favorites, the Center for Responsible Lending…but that’s for another post).

Hagan, a former Vice President with Bank of America who oversaw subprime lending programs there, has proposed the amendment under the guise of “protecting consumers”, but when Bank of America is a staunch supporter of the legislation, it’s easy to be suspicious of anyone’s supposed good intent.

Hagan’s amendment would control the types of financial products that you as a consumer would be permitted, under federal law, to purchase.  It will limit consumers to no more than six and as few as one loan per year during a 12-month period for “covered” loans – those include anything from car title loans, installment loans, and payday loans to even some retail company credit plans.  For instance, if you purchased a large appliance from a department store or home improvement center and financed it through store credit with a payment plan of installments, you might be literally barred by law from purchasing another appliance in that same 12-month period if you intend to pay for it through installments on another company credit plan.

To enforce these controls, the government would create a national database to track the loan products that ordinary citizens are purchasing, and would require certain lending institutions – including banks, mortgage lenders (except for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are both exempted from the bill), car dealers, retail companies that offer credit plans, and even some doctors and dentists – to comply by providing information about you, your loans, and your bank account details to a bureaucratic agency managing the database.

So it’s no wonder local Tea Party, 912 Project groups, and other liberty-minded activists in the Charlotte area tried to pull together a spontaneous grassroots protest at the Bank of America headquarters there.  Upon learning of the amendment and the bank’s support of it, they gathered this past Saturday to draw attention to the amendment, and to the bill in general.

While it was a small gathering, the group arrived with signs and attempted to draw attention to their message from passers-by.  Since the bank was actually open for business, many people were going about their business in and out of the building.  Protesters said the local Charlotte police almost even seemed embarrassed and surprised at the show of force from bank of America. They were courteous to the group and even sent some of their officers back to the station after it was obvious the group posed no threat to the property or to any people.

However, Bank of America security, including the Wackenhut officers, saw it differently.

Protesters describe being spoken to by Bank of America guards with contempt.  They were immediately told to leave the premises, even though the bank was open for business and they’d stayed out on the sidewalk area.  Instead, the security detail then stood them down in a single file.  We’re receiving video and photo as of this writing but it’s almost comical to see the initial visuals, because their show of force actually outnumbered the number of protesters.

After some not-so-friendly direction given them by one of the plain clothes security officers and then a Wackenhut officer, the protesters moved to a different area of the property location, where the boundary line between private and public property was demonstrated for them.  They cooperated without issue and proceeded to simply stand in the designated area with their signs.  Meanwhile, they describe the security detail as angrily watching over them and treating them as though they were common criminals, while passersby looked on.  One plain clothes security officer got on his cell phone and spoke most of the time with an unidentified party, seemingly giving a play by play description of the protesters and their activity.  In viewing some of the initial photos we received, the man clearly wasn’t happy.

The incident is especially interesting because it’s in such stark contrast with similar protests by left wing activists and labor unions.  Take, for example, these photos from other Bank of America protests, where security, if present at all, simply stepped aside and went about their business.

There’s no question that Tea Party, 912 Project groups and other activists who stand for the Constitution and against overreaching government are portrayed by this administration unfairly, and certainly not treated with the same respect and fairness that labor unions and progressive activists enjoy.  That’s because while Democrats and left wing groups have made it a central theme of their platform to demonize companies like Bank of America, chanting slogans like “End Corporate Excess” and “Main Street Not Wall Street,” the truth is that behind the scenes the two are bedfellows on the same side.  After all, Bank of America and many of the other big banks actually support the financial reform bill. And Democrats like Kay Hagan are reeling in the big bucks in donations from the very banks from which they claim to be protecting us helpless consumers.  That’s why it’s no surprise that the financial reform bill has moved so quietly through the legislative process.  If Democrats draw too much attention to it, opposing grassroots activists might take notice.  Instead, they’ve relied upon labor unions and Organizing for America to distract us all from that reality, with their dramatic stunts like “Showdown on Wall Street“, and “Bust up Big Banks” rallies.

Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that’s worked, because the Tea Party grassroots have all but been asleep on this issue.  At least, until now they were.

“I can’t believe people haven’t been aware of this bill and some of the things that are in it. It’s a surprise to many of us – we didn’t even realize it was this close to coming up for the Senate vote.  We’ve been so focused on this statewide Health Care Repeal, that we almost missed the financial reform bill entirely.  Hopefully we have enough time to wake some folks up quickly enough to get engaged in this before it’s too late,” explained David DeGerolamo, a Tea Party and 912 Project organizer from North Carolina who built NCfreedom.us, a statewide coalition and website under which many of the local and state patriot groups could organize and coordinate while still maintaining their independence.

“We need to get these people back to the principles of the constitution that made this country great.  It’s about freedom of enterprise, not government intervention into enterprise.  The government is solely the problem in just about anything that has a problem.  Almost anything that’s wrong can be traced right back to the big fingerprint of the government.”

DeGerolamo was also referring to another statewide effort underway in the state of North Carolina, related to the recently passed Health Care legislation.  On May 12^th, State Senator Debbie Clary will introduce legislation that would exempt citizens and businesses of North Carolina from participation in any federally mandated health care.  According to NCfreedom, twenty-two states have so far filed lawsuits against the health care mandate.

The group is hosting a huge statewide rally on May 12^th, where at least twenty grassroots groups from across the state of North Carolina will march on the general assembly building and peacefully demand that the bills be brought to the floor for a vote. And after this weekend’s incident at Bank of America, he’s decided to expand the topic to the financial reform legislation as well so that the grassroots groups are aware of the importance of the legislation and its constitutional impact on the rights and personal liberties of American citizens and our free enterprise system.

Given the discovery that even many doctors and dentists who accommodate payment plans for their patients may be regulated under this financial reform bill as well, the expansion seems that much more appropriate.

And going back to the protest at Bank of America’s building for a moment, one quick video clip will sum up the story well.

As the protesters began to wrap up their exercise and stood alongside the bank looking on from the sidewalk, four or five kids began riding their bikes and doing tricks in front of the bank, right in the exact same spot from which the protesters had just been chased away for being on private property.  I guess they weren’t as threatening as that crazy, violent bunch of Tea Party protesters.

I think after this Bank of America incident, it’s clear that our rights are being eroded faster than most of us can keep up with.  After all, how many of you have been asleep for this financial reform bill?  But this wakeup call’s come just in time for NCFreedom’s statewide rally on May 12^th in Raleigh, NC.   I have the feeling the Raleigh event has probably just become Tea Party and grassroots central – the hot ticket event for this week.

If you’re anywhere near North Carolina, you can learn more about it here.   BigGovernment editor Mike Flynn has also just been invited to speak at the event.

Stay tuned – we should have some video posted on the Bank of America incident shortly.  I’m not sure whether it will tick you off, or make you laugh, but it will probably do both.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, there’s apparently a growing deadly threat to worry about.  It seems that protesters there are getting unruly these days – so unruly that local businesses have brought on extra security detail to help out the local police.

That’s what happened when one such group of protesters descended upon the Bank of America headquarters on Saturday, May 8th.  The group showed up around lunchtime, eager to protest the financial reform bill currently making its way through the Senate.  Upon their arrival, not only were they met by three Charlotte police cars and a couple of local officers, but evidently Bank of America had somehow caught wind of the event and sent out another six or so Bank of America paid security staff. As an extra precaution, the bank had also hired at least two Wackenhut security officers to augment their usual staff.  Apparently, Bank of America felt it necessary to prepare for some sort of pending siege – these are Tea Party protesters we’re talking about here.  According to our own members of Congress and their allies, they’ve deemed Tea Partiers, the very constituents they are supposed to represent, a violent, racist bunch of potentially unstable people.

Well, when I heard about the incident, I couldn’t wait to get a look at these dangerous rabble-rousers.

So this is the riot mob that Bank of America sent out its security force, including extras from Wackenhut, to aggressively resist.

Meanwhile, these protesters showed up simply to draw attention to Bank of America’s role in trying to influence the current financial reform legislation.  In North Carolina, Bank of America has a special place in the heart of Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, who has been pushing an amendment to the bill on behalf of the giant bank.  (Coincidentally, it also benefits another of the Senator’s AND Bank of America’s favorites, the Center for Responsible Lending…but that’s for another post).

Hagan, a former Vice President with Bank of America who oversaw subprime lending programs there, has proposed the amendment under the guise of “protecting consumers”, but when Bank of America is a staunch supporter of the legislation, it’s easy to be suspicious of anyone’s supposed good intent.

Hagan’s amendment would control the types of financial products that you as a consumer would be permitted, under federal law, to purchase.  It will limit consumers to no more than six and as few as one loan per year during a 12-month period for “covered” loans – those include anything from car title loans, installment loans, and payday loans to even some retail company credit plans.  For instance, if you purchased a large appliance from a department store or home improvement center and financed it through store credit with a payment plan of installments, you might be literally barred by law from purchasing another appliance in that same 12-month period if you intend to pay for it through installments on another company credit plan.

To enforce these controls, the government would create a national database to track the loan products that ordinary citizens are purchasing, and would require certain lending institutions – including banks, mortgage lenders (except for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are both exempted from the bill), car dealers, retail companies that offer credit plans, and even some doctors and dentists – to comply by providing information about you, your loans, and your bank account details to a bureaucratic agency managing the database.

So it’s no wonder local Tea Party, 912 Project groups, and other liberty-minded activists in the Charlotte area tried to pull together a spontaneous grassroots protest at the Bank of America headquarters there.  Upon learning of the amendment and the bank’s support of it, they gathered this past Saturday to draw attention to the amendment, and to the bill in general.

While it was a small gathering, the group arrived with signs and attempted to draw attention to their message from passers-by.  Since the bank was actually open for business, many people were going about their business in and out of the building.  Protesters said the local Charlotte police almost even seemed embarrassed and surprised at the show of force from bank of America. They were courteous to the group and even sent some of their officers back to the station after it was obvious the group posed no threat to the property or to any people.

However, Bank of America security, including the Wackenhut officers, saw it differently.

Protesters describe being spoken to by Bank of America guards with contempt.  They were immediately told to leave the premises, even though the bank was open for business and they’d stayed out on the sidewalk area.  Instead, the security detail then stood them down in a single file.  We’re receiving video and photo as of this writing but it’s almost comical to see the initial visuals, because their show of force actually outnumbered the number of protesters.

After some not-so-friendly direction given them by one of the plain clothes security officers and then a Wackenhut officer, the protesters moved to a different area of the property location, where the boundary line between private and public property was demonstrated for them.  They cooperated without issue and proceeded to simply stand in the designated area with their signs.  Meanwhile, they describe the security detail as angrily watching over them and treating them as though they were common criminals, while passersby looked on.  One plain clothes security officer got on his cell phone and spoke most of the time with an unidentified party, seemingly giving a play by play description of the protesters and their activity.  In viewing some of the initial photos we received, the man clearly wasn’t happy.

The incident is especially interesting because it’s in such stark contrast with similar protests by left wing activists and labor unions.  Take, for example, these photos from other Bank of America protests, where security, if present at all, simply stepped aside and went about their business.

There’s no question that Tea Party, 912 Project groups and other activists who stand for the Constitution and against overreaching government are portrayed by this administration unfairly, and certainly not treated with the same respect and fairness that labor unions and progressive activists enjoy.  That’s because while Democrats and left wing groups have made it a central theme of their platform to demonize companies like Bank of America, chanting slogans like “End Corporate Excess” and “Main Street Not Wall Street,” the truth is that behind the scenes the two are bedfellows on the same side.  After all, Bank of America and many of the other big banks actually support the financial reform bill. And Democrats like Kay Hagan are reeling in the big bucks in donations from the very banks from which they claim to be protecting us helpless consumers.  That’s why it’s no surprise that the financial reform bill has moved so quietly through the legislative process.  If Democrats draw too much attention to it, opposing grassroots activists might take notice.  Instead, they’ve relied upon labor unions and Organizing for America to distract us all from that reality, with their dramatic stunts like “Showdown on Wall Street“, and “Bust up Big Banks” rallies.

Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that’s worked, because the Tea Party grassroots have all but been asleep on this issue.  At least, until now they were.

“I can’t believe people haven’t been aware of this bill and some of the things that are in it. It’s a surprise to many of us – we didn’t even realize it was this close to coming up for the Senate vote.  We’ve been so focused on this statewide Health Care Repeal, that we almost missed the financial reform bill entirely.  Hopefully we have enough time to wake some folks up quickly enough to get engaged in this before it’s too late,” explained David DeGerolamo, a Tea Party and 912 Project organizer from North Carolina who built NCfreedom.us, a statewide coalition and website under which many of the local and state patriot groups could organize and coordinate while still maintaining their independence.

“We need to get these people back to the principles of the constitution that made this country great.  It’s about freedom of enterprise, not government intervention into enterprise.  The government is solely the problem in just about anything that has a problem.  Almost anything that’s wrong can be traced right back to the big fingerprint of the government.”

DeGerolamo was also referring to another statewide effort underway in the state of North Carolina, related to the recently passed Health Care legislation.  On May 12^th, State Senator Debbie Clary will introduce legislation that would exempt citizens and businesses of North Carolina from participation in any federally mandated health care.  According to NCfreedom, twenty-two states have so far filed lawsuits against the health care mandate.

The group is hosting a huge statewide rally on May 12^th, where at least twenty grassroots groups from across the state of North Carolina will march on the general assembly building and peacefully demand that the bills be brought to the floor for a vote. And after this weekend’s incident at Bank of America, he’s decided to expand the topic to the financial reform legislation as well so that the grassroots groups are aware of the importance of the legislation and its constitutional impact on the rights and personal liberties of American citizens and our free enterprise system.

Given the discovery that even many doctors and dentists who accommodate payment plans for their patients may be regulated under this financial reform bill as well, the expansion seems that much more appropriate.

And going back to the protest at Bank of America’s building for a moment, one quick video clip will sum up the story well.

As the protesters began to wrap up their exercise and stood alongside the bank looking on from the sidewalk, four or five kids began riding their bikes and doing tricks in front of the bank, right in the exact same spot from which the protesters had just been chased away for being on private property.  I guess they weren’t as threatening as that crazy, violent bunch of Tea Party protesters.

I think after this Bank of America incident, it’s clear that our rights are being eroded faster than most of us can keep up with.  After all, how many of you have been asleep for this financial reform bill?  But this wakeup call’s come just in time for NCFreedom’s statewide rally on May 12^th in Raleigh, NC.   I have the feeling the Raleigh event has probably just become Tea Party and grassroots central – the hot ticket event for this week.

If you’re anywhere near North Carolina, you can learn more about it here.   BigGovernment editor Mike Flynn has also just been invited to speak at the event.

Stay tuned – we should have some video posted on the Bank of America incident shortly.  I’m not sure whether it will tick you off, or make you laugh, but it will probably do both.

It’s not surprising that so many parents are so worried about autism. After all, the disorder strikes about one out of every 115 kids, its prevalence seems to be growing, and its cause or causes remain mysterious.

A 1998 article published in the British medical journal The Lancet generated enormous impact by proposing a link between autism and childhood vaccines.  Since then, celebrity activists like Jenny McCarthy have argued that common shots like the measles, mumps, and rubellla vaccine (MMR) trigger autism. Countless media stories have covered the alleged link.

Some parents take to the streets to protest the federal government’s vaccine policy and thousands more take the issue to court. Many others, like Kelly Green, who runs AutismHwy and is the mother of an autistic child, feel overwhelmed by the information flooding in from both sides of the debate. Jim Moody, of the think tank Safe Minds, blames the federal government for not being honest about the threat and failing to provide reliable information on the matter. But researchers like UC Santa Barbara’s Lynn Koegel say the evidence is overwhelming that vaccines do not cause autism.

Recently, the debate took another turn when The Lancet retracted the 1998 article that did so much to spark the controversy. Will the retraction finally allay parents’ worries or will some continue to resist vaccinations?

“Do Vaccines Cause Autism?” is written and produced by Ted Balaker, who also hosts. Producer: Hawk Jensen; Associate Producer: Paul Detrick; Camera: Dan Hayes, Hawk Jensen, and Alex Manning. Approximately 5.50 minutes.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Last week I wrote about the certainty that Americans, particularly those younger, healthier Americans who insurance companies need to buy coverage in order to sustain President Obama’s new health care regime, will game the new system of individual mandates, just as they have in Massachusetts.

A new report from the Congressional Research Service, released to Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, details the near certainty that this situation will be gamed by the American people to an unprecedented degree — including drawing out a few fascinating points which weren’t discussed to any great detail during the legislative process. The report paints a far worse picture of the likelihood of gaming the system — rather than just those younger Americans I suggested would choose month to month liquidity over the cost of insurance, this suggests that several other groups will have incentives to game the system.

For instance, CRS writes that the penalty for not purchasing coverage, which is assessed beginning in 2014, will not increase for large families:

Although [the base penalty] is a fixed per person amount, it is capped at three times this amount per year, regardless of the number of individuals in the taxpayer’s household who actually lack adequate coverage during the year. For example, a married couple filing jointly with two dependent children and no health insurance will have the same flat dollar assessment as a similarly situated married couple with three dependent children.

And individual purchasers, who tend to be the people more likely to defer coverage, have an affordability exemption which could cover a great deal of the lower middle class if, as expected, premiums continue to rise at expected levels.

A taxpayer who only has access to health insurance in the individual health insurance market qualifies for the hardship exemption if the annual premium of the lowest cost bronze level plan, minus any potential premium subsidies, exceeds 8% of the taxpayer’s household income.

But bigger than all of these is the question of IRS enforcement, which has been called into serious doubt since the passage of this plan. Since the IRS intends to enforce the individual mandate in the same way as any other enforced tax, there will be a major lag time between lack of coverage and the taxmen chasing you down — and what’s more, their ability to actually enforce the penalty is severely limited.

Unlike typical failures to pay, the IRS cannot threaten you with any liens or take any of your property in order to collect — they can increase interest owed and assess penalties (or go after refunds if you paid ahead), but they can’t apply the same kind of aggressive tactics they do with other forms of nonpayment.

Although there is an automated aspect to this assessment process, the process is not an immediate one. Instead, there is a lag of approximately 10 to 18 months between the filing of a return and the IRS’s issuing a letter proposing adjustments to the return based on the matching program. Thus, unless there is a change in procedures, it is unlikely that the IRS will assess the penalty on a return before routine processing of the return is completed…

Section 5000A(g)(2) of the IRC limits the means the IRS may employ to collect the penalty established in the section. First, the taxpayer is protected from either criminal prosecution or penalty for failure to pay the penalty. Second, the IRS is prohibited from either filing a NFTL [notice of federal tax lien] or levying any property in an effort to collect the penalty.

The Congressional Budget Office previously predicted that roughly 4 million Americans will skip out on the mandate, but reading this CRS report combined with the experience in Massachusetts makes me think it could be much higher than that, especially if the mandate stays at the approximately $1000 per year mark through 2016.

The end result of all this is a situation where individuals only buy coverage after they need it, knowing they’re guaranteed acceptance and will pay no penalty for it, is a system where people only buy coverage after getting sick or needing significant care, then drop it as soon as they are recuperated. The risk pool shrinks, as these “only when I need it” purchasers becoming expensive drags on their insurer, forcing raised costs for others who get care through an employer or have a chronic condition which requires regular care.

Any system of insurance, health care or otherwise, based on people’s good intentions for the community as opposed to themselves isn’t based on a real understanding of how consumers think. Buying health insurance isn’t like buying war bonds in the 1940s — and absent reforms of Obama’s law, people will absolutely game the system.

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This post has been updated from its original version.

Just the other day, President Obama said: “at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”  I wonder how he would feel about Geraldine Dawson.  If the President is so concerned with what people working in the private sector are making, I’m sure he’d be just as interested in the “non-profit” sector.  Kathleen Sebelius’ most recent appointment to the IACC (Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee) would certainly be worth noting.

The IACC is a Federal advisory committee that sets priorities for autism research dollars within the National Institutes of Health. The committee helps to ensure that a wide range of ideas and perspectives are represented and discussed in a public forum by appointing both Federal and public members.

This morning, Secretary Sebelius chose Geraldine Dawson as a public member to represent Autism Speaks, where Dawson serves as Chief Science Officer. According to Autism Speaks’ 2008 Form 990, Dawson received compensation of $644,264.00.  The 990 reports that about $270,000 of her compensation was a one-time relocation expense which puts her annual compensation at approx. $370,000.  $270,000 is a huge “relocation” reimbursement. I don’t know about you, but unless she’s renting a limo for each packing crate, I’m starting to wonder where that money is going to.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Dawson were collecting dollars that she earned through private enterprise. However, her salary and “moving expenses” from Autism Speaks are paid for with donations from families and philanthropists who believe that in donating part of their income to a charity, they’re helping to build a better future for people with autism. Parents and family members didn’t participate in annual walks for autism so they can help pay Geraldine Dawson an AIG/Lehman Brothers type salary – but that’s where their money goes.

Ridiculously high compensation is not the only reason to be concerned with Dawson’s appointment and Autism Speaks.  The IACC provides advice to Sebelius regarding Federal activities related to autism spectrum disorder. (ASD).  They also exchange information on and coordinate activities among the member agencies and organizations.  Dawson’s employment by Autism Speaks ensures that their agenda will be carried out.  Instead of funding services for families and individuals, Autism Speaks’ operating budget goes primarily towards research on the cause of autism, much of it devoted to finding particular genes with an eye to developing a prenatal test. As families of children with Down Syndrome are aware, the existence of prenatal testing for autism means a vast increase in the eugenic abortion of children with autism before they are born.

Organizations like Autism Speaks don’t spend their vast budgets to help children and adults with autism or their families. Instead, they fund research with eugenic implications and help their executives enjoy standards of living far beyond what the average parent or person with autism will ever see. Then, to keep the gravy train flowing, they use fear tactics and demonize autism to compel families to open their pocket books. Autism Speaks advertisements and fundraising videos have featured parents talking about killing their children with autism and portraying their children’s lives as not worth living. Is it any wonder that when Autism Speaks provides them the means and the motive many potential parents will consider abortion as their only option when a pre-natal test is developed? As the mother of an autistic child, I am deeply offended that my child is considered a burden and better off never being born.

The IACC is supposed to increase public understanding of the member agencies; activities, programs, policies, and research by providing a public forum for talks related to ASD research and services.  This is also an area of concern since Autism Speaks is notorious for putting very little funds from their donations into improving services or educational opportunities for children and adults with autism.

Geraldine Dawson is part of a movement determined to eradicate people with autism from our society.  We need more respect and understanding when it comes to the autism community.  Sebelius’ choice to appoint Dawson to the IACC does not represent the hope and change that many in the autism community were expecting.

April was a busy month for bad:   lame financial reform legislation, served up three days in a row like rancid leftovers, SEC fraud filings, Wall Street Hearings in Congress, Greek bailouts, oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and car bombs in Times Square.  With so much occurring, on so many fronts, little attention has been paid to President Obama’s often inflammatory commencement speech at the University of Michigan.

Let’s consider a few of President’s Obama’s pearls of wisdom that he shared with Michigan graduates.

“All you hear in Washington is the clamor of politics – a noise that can drown out the voices of the people who sent you there.” This, of course, is precious, coming as it does from  the leader of the Democratic party, which had to twist arms and bribe legislators to vote for a flawed healthcare bill because members of congress–who were listening to the “voices of the people”–were afraid to vote for a bloated bill that did little to address the most pressing problems in healthcare, a bill which their constituents loudly and repeatedly told congress they didn’t want.

“We’ve got politicians calling each other all sorts of unflattering names.” which may be why in 400 speeches and Q&A sessions, delivered in his first year in office, Obama finds occasion to demonize or blame President George W. Bush, and why Obama, 16 months  into his presidency, continues to use Bush as the whipping boy for bad left wing policies.

“The media tends to play up every hint of conflict, because it makes for a sexier story – which means anyone interested in getting coverage feels compelled to make the most outrageous comments.” This may explain Obama’s unexpected attack, during the Henry Louis Gates fiasco, in which Obama admitted he did not know the details, but  proceeded to attack the Cambridge police department saying that “Cambridge police acted stupidly”, when responding to a 911 call about a alleged break-in at a residence in Cambridge.

“Politics has never been for the thin-skinned” which doesn’t explain why President Obama is so sensitive to criticism.  remember when Major Garrett, of Fox News, asked the question that most of America wanted to the answer to:  “What took you so long to be concerned about Iraq?”  And, Obama seemed quite irritated?

“American democracy has thrived because we have recognized the need for a government that, while limited, can still help us adapt to a changing world.” Then why has Obama ignored the concept of a “limited” government and, instead, presided over the greatest expansion in the federal government’s size and intrusiveness in the lives of Americans in the past 70 years?

“We have held fast to the belief that government doesn’t have all the answers, and we have cherished and fiercely defended our individual freedom.” Then how does he explain the federal government intruding into an every wider range of our personal decisions with wild abandon? Under President Obama, government now wants to direct our use of salt, the purchase of fizzy drinks, legislate how many light bulbs we can use in hot tubs and even provide advice on whether dogs should be given bones?

“We, the people, hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders, change our laws, and shape our own destiny.” Of course, that doesn’t include White House interference in open senate seat appointments or rushing through a healthcare reform bill that less than 1% of Congress had read, and which few Americans had been allowed to view because, as Nancy Pelosi said: “you have to pass the bill if we want to find out what’s in it“,  Nor does it explain White House antipathy to the Tea Party movement which is comprised of Americans who want the opportunity to shape their own destiny.

“We know that too much government can stifle competition, deprive us of choice, and burden us with debt.” Of course Obama knows this–he’s the one who’s doing it.

“In an era of iPods and Tivo, where we have more choices than ever before, government shouldn’t try to dictate your lives.” President Obama seems to be dictating all sorts of outcomes to protect his loyal supporters.   Companies bidding on government contracts, for example,  are now required to first seek approval, support and participation of unions.  Many of President Obama’s policies have delivered is resentment, class warfare, dishonest promises, and further dependency on government.

“Our government shouldn’t try to guarantee results”. Then, why has the government interfered with free markets, funding bailout after bailout? Why has the White House advanced legislation that refuses to allow foreclosures on delinquent mortgages? Why have Unions and other favorites been promised additional benefits and expanded roles in our economy at the cost of the free market?

“We cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down.” Perhaps President Obama could follow his own advice and not blame President Bush for Obama Administration spending sprees, not blame Rush Limbaugh for the Obama Administration’s policy mis-steps and flawed decision making, not criticize Fox News for reporting what they hear and see, not cry “racism” every time opponents have an honest policy disagreement.

“This kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise.” This one is rich.   No President has ever so blindly fallowed the Saul Alinksy tactic (identify, isolate, and vilify) strategy to achieve his political goals.  Obama seems to have  found no shortage of villains to isolate and demonize when the time was right: Healthcare executives, Wall Street, Bankers, Cambridge Policemen, have all served the President well as political piñatas.

“Part of what civility requires is that we recall the simple lesson most of us learned from our parents: treat others as you would like to be treated, with courtesy and respect.” And yet Mr. Obama continues to treat all Americans as if they were mathematically impaired and unable to add up the growing number of promises that will add even more pressure on an already escalating mountain of debt.  Telling children that they can have it all, that they can and should have all the goodies they want, paid for by someone else, is not good parenting.

“If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we will become more polarized and set in our ways.” So why does President Obama allow the Democratic leadership in Congress to draft legislation behind closed door, excluding Republicans?

“When we don’t pay close attention to the decisions made by our leaders; when we fail to educate ourselves about the major issues of the day; when we choose not to make our voices and opinions heard, that’s when democracy breaks down.” Case in point.

Much like the Fonz, who first jumped the shark in Happy Days, with this commencement speech at the University of Michigan, President Obama may have jumped the shark with his teleprompted rhetoric, and reached the point where whatever he says from this point forward has no, absolutely no, credibility because the dichotomy between his words and his actions is so very extreme, and Obama seems oblivious to these differences.

President Obama continues to believe he can fool all of the people all of the time.   By preaching to the choir, President Obama may be able to continue to delude himself just a bit longer.

My latest Health Care News podcast, brought to you by FreedomPub, is with Merrill Matthews, executive director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance and a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation, about his latest column on the individual mandate. You can listen to it here or stream it below:

When I’m asked on the radio or in person about the biggest problem with President Obama’s health care reform, the answer I usually give isn’t that it’s a recipe for trillions in costs for the American people, that it creates massive new taxes on businesses and entrepeneurs, that it effectively divides us into two Americas, that it squelches innovative programs or that it’s possibly unconstitutional.

My answer is much simpler: it’s a model of health care which is proven not to work, because it assumes consumers will act irrationally.

We’ve seen the proof in Massachusetts. Here’s one report from the Boston Globe:

In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state’s largest private insurer provided the Globe…

Other insurers could not produce such detailed information for short-term customers but said they have witnessed a similar pattern. And, they said, the phenomenon is likely to be repeated on a grander scale when the new national health care law begins requiring most people to have insurance in 2014, unless federal regulators craft regulations to avoid the pitfall.

The point is, we should always assume consumers will behave rationally, in their own best interest. With the penalties for failing to purchase insurance so low, and with the IRS lacking the power and the ability to properly enforce the mandate, we should expect the exact same thing to happen across the country which happened in the Bay State: people will game the system, and costs will continue to rise. More on that here, here and here.

The entire point of an individual mandate was ensuring that younger, healthier people who don’t currently buy insurance (and make up a significant portion of the uninsured) and whose employers don’t provide it are forced to buy into the insurance market. But if insurers are required to cover you after you get sick, and the penalties are so much cheaper than the insurance costs month to month — a divide which will be even greater by 2014 — there’s no rational reason for these people to enter the market except for small chunks of time, when they will rack up high expenses, and then drop back off. Take the example of one private insurer who reported that from April 2008 to March 2009, a full 40 percent of the individual applicants were covered for less than five months, but ran up bills averaging $2,400 a month.

What’s the left’s response to this obvious policy failing? Well, essentially, they ask consumers to roll back human nature. Think not of yourself or your family, but of the collective!

Ezra and others have argued that doing so would take a cynical customer — someone who would disregard the impact of one’s individual actions on the well-being of others, as well as their own future insurance rates. But unfortunately, I do think that more than a few customers will be tempted to go down that path, since the penalties of not complying with the mandate will be so weak. As a result, supporters of health reform will need to be bolder about emphasizing the moral and civic imperative of buying insurance for those who can afford it — and how collective non-compliance could jack up everyone’s own premiums in the future, as Jonathan Cohn argues.

Maybe they’ve got something there. Harry Reid says the health care law is the “most important thing for the world” — maybe because he believes it will fundamentally change human nature, and make people behave like they do in bad utopian fiction, not how they do in real life?

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In 2008 Patrick Swayze was treated with an advanced medical tool called a “CyberKnife.” It helped add months to his life as he tried to beat the cancer that was consuming him. But, Swayze wasn’t the only American with the good fortune to have this highly advanced medical technology available to him. In fact, there are 100 such machines across the United States. From California, to Minnesota, to Illinois and Washington D.C. Americans currently have the luxury of these wonderful new devices.

Sadly, Britons are not so lucky. There are two CyberKnife machines in the Britain, but they aren’t going to do anyone in the country’s socialist healthcare system any good because despite how successful these machines are British authorities won’t allow them to be used on patients.

Despite that the Mount Vernon cancer hospital in London is part of the National Health Services, despite that they spent £3m to purchase the machine, and quite despite the praise the machines receive in the U.S. and throughout the world, British NHS authorities won’t let NHS doctors use the machine on their patients.

Sadly, these heartless, uncaring socialist healthcare officials are uninterested in helping the estimated 10,000 British patients a year that could benefit from use of the CyberKnife. And why is this? Why, it’s because the treatments are expensive, of course.

You see money is far, far more important to Britain’s socialist healthcare system then patients.

As I said above, the U.S. is lucky to have many of these machines on our shores. In fact we have 100 of the 150 machines world-wide, all available for anyone that needs them. But this happy situation will not survive the implementation of America’s own socialist healthcare system when it institutes its rationing rules as the English have done. Sooner rather than later advanced tools like the CyberKnife will be eschewed as too expensive by Obamacre bean counters and such advanced technology will dwindle and wither away despite the lives it could save.

This is what is meant when it is said that Obamacare features death panels. After all, a socialist healthcare system that won’t pay for advanced technology because it’s just too darn expensive — just as is happening right now in England — is a defacto death panel.

And don’t imagine that this is just hyperbole. The same situation exists in nearly every country that has the kind of socialist healthcare that Barack Obama wants to force on the U.S.A. That’s why so many foreigners come to the U.S. for their advanced treatments. After all, one has to understand that there is a reason that America has 100 of the 150 machines that exist in the world today.

It is true that Obamacare does not provide for death panels in its legislation. But it doesn’t have to when its price control measures and rationing will eliminate the sort of life saving tools that technology will bring us, technology that Obamacare will destroy.

An April 30th Press Release issued by Leading Authorities, Inc., announces Andy Stern’s latest move:

“Leading Authorities, Inc. has signed Andrew (Andy) L. Stern, the former president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the fastest-growing union in North America. Stern turned SEIU into a powerful political force, and Stern and SEIU were widely credited for helping elect Barack Obama in 2008.

“We are extremely proud and privileged to be representing Andy Stern,” said Leading Authorities founder and CEO Mark French. “He is a major force in Washington politics. He transformed the labor movement, raised huge sums for President Obama’s election, and exerted monumental influence on the health care debate. Everyone at LAI is thrilled to be working with Andy.”   The release goes on to state,  “Stern will be addressing audiences about politics and issues such as fiscal policy, entitlements, immigration, healthcare, and the future of the labor movement.  He will speak independently, and also be matched with leading Republican thinkers.”

About the company:

“Leading Authorities, Inc. is one of the nation’s most progressive event design firms as well as a renowned lecture agency and production house. LAI represents thought leaders in business, politics and contemporary life as well as nationally-recognized entertainment acts. Our award-winning video and production departments provide professionally managed events and cutting-edge media products. Our experiential event design experts conduct workshops to improve attendance, engagement, and return on investment. With tools such as our Strategic Event Evaluation and our Event Design Workshops, Leading Authorities is setting the standard in customized, fully integrated event design.”

Aw, Andy’s got himself an agent.  Show him the money.

No, it’s not a full-time White House post. Not yet at least.  Keep in mind, it was only a few years ago that Leading Authorities launched its Health Care Speakers Network.  Who knows, maybe Stern is honing his skills and re-engineering his brand from just Leading Labor Leader to add that of Leading Health Care Leader.  It would certainly position him to take on the head of any one of those new hundreds of agencies and panels that were recently created in the health care bill..er…law.  Maybe even the big agency someday, after the health care law expands it.

In addition to Leading Authorities personalities such as FOX News’ Dana Perino and Alexis Glick, Andy Stern will be joining the likes of Jon Corzine and Anita Dunn.  While the former two are recent adds to the FOX family, the latter three seem to be waiting in an Obama holding room for their next move.  Either that, or purgatory.

The health care bill that Congress passed recently is now being challenged by 18 states to date. The constitutionality of the bill will be a close call, with strong arguments on both sides. As former staff director of the bipartisan Commission on the Bicentennial of the U. S. Constitution, I wish here to present – as impartially as possible – both sides of the case, believing along with John Stuart Mill that “he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs reported that its counsel opined that the individual mandate requiring all to purchase health insurance is constitutional under the commerce clause. True or wishful thinking? The nub of the controversy seems this: Will the Supreme Court, citing the commerce clause, permit Congress to regulate inactivity – that is, the absence of commerce – by forcing citizens to buy a certain private-sector service or product?

But to this argument, defenders of the bill will counter that the aim of the commerce clause is not to regulate economic inactivity but to regulate health insurance and health care – an altogether different focus.

In response, opponents of the bill will argue that health insurance is a 10^th Amendment states’ right, not a federal government right. States currently regulate health insurance.

As if matters aren’t confused enough, the Supreme Court has taken polar positions on the commerce clause. In Gonzalez v. Raich (2005), it ruled that the commerce clause can be used to regulate home-grown marijuana even if only for personal use. But in U. S. v. Lopez (1995), it ruled that the commerce clause does not authorize federal law banning guns in local school districts.

The constitutionality of the individual mandate will also be tested under the 16^th Amendment, which grants Congress the broad “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes.” Opponents of the individual mandate will argue that the mandate is not a tax, but a premium to insurance companies or a fine. Defenders of the mandate will counter that this premium or fine amounts to a tax, falling under the jurisdiction of the 16^th Amendment. Also cited will be the enumerated power of the “general welfare” clause.

Opponents of the individual mandate will argue that the 16^th Amendment, if used to permit the mandate, discriminates against freely choosing citizens who don’t want health insurance. But defenders will counter that the 16^th Amendment already discriminates broadly: a graduated income tax is discriminatory. Mortgage deductions or deductions for children are discriminatory. We see a host of other discriminatory taxes whenever we file our yearly taxes.

Defenders of the individual mandate will argue that there are well established precedents for government coercion. Few people these days think that coerced social security payments or withheld Medicare premiums are unconstitutional. Car insurance is often cited, though that analogy fails: such is a mandated liability insurance for driving on roads and possibly getting into an accident – quite different from a mandated health insurance for simply living and breathing on American soil. And car insurance is a 10^th Amendment states’ right, not a federal government right.

There is another unknown that could well enter into the matter of the constitutionality of the health care bill. The Supreme Court may elect not to meddle – on such an enormous, radical scale – into the domains of two constitutional branches of government: the presidency and Congress. Marbury v. Madison established the court’s power to rule an act of Congress unconstitutional, but the court in the health care matter might opt for recommending legislative relief.

Defenders of the bill will argue that the Constitution’s supremacy clause states explicitly that federal law shall be the “supreme law of the land.” Opponents will counter that federal law cannot be the supreme law of the land if that law is found unconstitutional, as in Marbury.

If any part of the health care bill is found unconstitutional, the whole bill fails because it contains no severability clause. Consensus holds that it will take two years for the constitutional challenge to progress through the federal district court, then the appellate court, and finally the Supreme Court. In the meantime, it is possible that an injunction from the district or appellate courts could put the entire bill on hold until the injunction is lifted or the case finally resolved.

My own view is that the Supreme Court will rule the health care bill unconstitutional because never in the history of jurisprudence has the court required a citizen to buy a certain private-sector product or service and never has it defined an insurance premium or resulting fine as a tax.

Ronald L. Trowbridge, Ph. D. is a Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. He served as chief of staff to the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger and to the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution.

In the novel, the hero Galt and his followers retreat to a hideaway where they wait for society to collapse. But in America, regular citizens have organised in masses against Obama’s vision of socialized medicine, and they’ve embraced their own John Galt – a Texan scholar-activist named John Goodman. Known to many as the inventor of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and a key figure in defeating Hillarycare in the 90’s, Goodman has become the intellectual heavyweight of Obamacare’s opponents and his arguments are increasingly embraced by the new “Repeal and Replace” movement.

According to Goodman, the real problems with the bill are only just starting to emerge. As soon it was set to pass, Caterpillar announced the bill would cost them $100 million in its first year alone. And Verizon told its employees their costs would go up almost immediately because of the 40% excise tax the bill puts on the kind of high-end plans the telco giant provides. But looking ahead it’s clear to Goodman that the legislation’s inverted incentives would result in much more than changes to the healthcare system and the company costs but that the impact on the economy would be disastrous: labor dislocation, hiring freezes, economic assaults on lower paid workers, and spikes in unemployment.

In a “the health alerts” email Goodman listed last week the troubles ahead for the economy and for Obamacare advocates:

1.       People will be required to buy a product whose price will be rising at twice the rate of growth of their incomes and they will be barred from doing many of the things needed to control these costs.

2.      A bizarre system of subsidies will profoundly disrupt the labor market, leading to massive layoffs, contracting and outsourcing.

3.      A health insurance exchange will give health plans incentives to attract the healthy and avoid the sick; and after enrolment, to over-provide to the healthy and under-provide to the sick.

4.      A weakly enforced individual mandate will give people incentives to game the system – remaining uninsured while healthy and obtaining insurance only after they get sick; choosing limited-benefit plans while healthy and scaling up to richer plans after they get sick.

TAKING IT TO THE CROWDS

As opposition to Obamacare intensifies in anticipation of the mid-term elections, and the movement to “Repeal and Replace” grows, Goodman will continue to deploy the tactics that brought him to the forefront of the legislative struggle.  When opposition began to build with the tea party demonstrations last summer, Goodman gave the movement intellectual heft and a media high point. Teaming up his think tank — The National Centre for Policy Analysis (NCPA) located in Dallas Texas with Salem Radio in September 2009 — he got live media coverage and 1.3 million signatures in a petition against the bill that crystallized the opposition.

“Combining new media with talk radio- it’s never been done before” says Goodman, “it was the largest online petition ever delivered to Congress”. According to Lee Habeeb, Salem Radio’s network director and a leading talk radio producer, “What John is great at is taking big ideas and making them understood”, and it’s making the public understand the bill that was his goal from the start. Habeeb explained that they had seen the healthcare bill coming early on – “I knew Barack Obama was serious. John Goodman knew he was serious… we knew what they were going to do and we knew who ‘they’ were. We knew what the agenda would be.” So they took it to the airwaves: “we really worked to deconstruct the numbers before they hit us so that people would be armed for when the swing came”.

As the fight reached the breaking point, the NCPA and Salem radio also launched their “million email” campaign, getting over 1 million citizens from all 50 states to send emails against the bill to their Congressmen. To Habeeb, the bill was “a catalyst… healthcare was an over-reach, this is a call to arms” — and Goodman provided the arms.

One of the reasons Goodman has been so effective at rallying people to oppose the healthcare bill is that aside from being an academic armed with facts and numbers, he’s also engaged the public in media-savvy ways. His blog on the NCPA website went from 48th to 8th as the debate heated up. After Paul Krugman took a joking comment on his blog seriously and attacked him in the New York Times, Goodman installed a “satire button” for Krugman and any other sombre critics. He wanted readers to make it clear when they were mocking the situation, underscoring how much of a minefield the healthcare debate has become.

Dr. John Goodman, "Father of the HSAs"

GOING TO CORE AGRUMENTS

But although he embraces a media culture that many academics avoid, Goodman doesn’t just go for the quick hit: he takes the time to go to the opposition’s core arguments. He took on Michael Moore’s Sicko movie in 2007 with rigor, breaking it down piece by piece, dispelling typical healthcare myths by offering facts on foreign government’s healthcare that Moore had ignored. Myths like the notion that people abroad are able to obtain better healthcare because their country calls healthcare a “right”: but talking about healthcare as a fundamental “right” in theory doesn’t translate into results in practice – waiting times abroad are staggeringly long. In Britain, about 1 million are waiting to be admitted to hospitals at any one time. And as for Cuba, Goodman dryly pointed out that Marxist abstraction about a “right to care” doesn’t come with a “right to an MRI or heart surgery.”

Then, there’s the myth that nationalized healthcare is better, because people in some countries with state-run systems are healthier. Advocates of a government takeover of medicine often argue that life expectancy is higher and infant mortality lower where healthcare is state-run and that therefore national systems are better. Such comparisons, Goodman says, are misleading for three reasons. First, comparing European countries that are homogeneous and the US that is a heterogeneous nation with high and lows in incomes and social conditions — is to compare unlike things. Compare a European country with parts of the US that are similar, however, Sweden to Minnesota, and the numbers are similar. Second, life expectancy and infant mortality are affected by lifestyle choices like diet, exercise, and alcohol far more than health care delivery, so whether healthcare is state-run or private is a secondary issue. Third, any comparison of survival rates for diseases where health care assistance can make the difference like cancer, diabetes and hypertension shows the US system simply walking away with the honors.

He also challenged the notion of more “fairness” in nationalized systems, pointing out that in state-run systems healthcare costs are redirected away from those who need it most because of political incentives. People often say that foreign healthcare is more “fair” because healthcare costs are spread more evenly abroad – but healthcare costs should be allocated disproportionately: by going to the sick, who need it most. In America, only 4% of people consume half of health care costs, which is actually the way it should be: the truly sick get the attention, that’s what health care systems are for. In state run systems, however, politicians have an electoral incentive to spread money across their voters – and away from the very sick, who are a minority, and who often cannot vote. In making the point that government run-systems are politicized and that the money goes where the votes are, he notes that the real victims in state run systems are the very people politicians claim they are trying to help – the poor, the elderly and those who live in rural areas.

NUMBERS, WORDS AND ACTION

But even when opposing people like Moore, Goodman stays away from the kind of firebrand rhetoric that often surrounds healthcare– which may be why he’s gone under the radar of major media outlets. According to former Delaware governor Pete Dupont, “Dr. Goodman doesn’t enrage people […] They might not agree, but they listen. When he’s done, people with either say, ‘That’s right’ or ‘That’s interesting, and I’ll think about it.’” He attracts both libertarian and traditional conservatives, but he approaches people of all political folds, doing Congressional briefings for everyone willing to listen. He does this based on arguments grounded in research and numbers, including some that have not yet been really picked up by the opposition. .

So “Who is John Goodman?” A telegenic Texan academic, he started his career defending market-based economics at Columbia. He went on to teach as a fellow at Sarah Lawrence, Dartmouth and Stanford, and after investigating the British health care system wrote Patient Power in 1992. Published by the CATO institute, the book laid out how to reform America’s healthcare and sold over 300,000 copies; a bestseller for a policy book. A few years later, he took his ideas to the political table: along with Bill Kristol and then Texas Senator Phil Gramm, Goodman led the fight against Hillarycare. Together, they took on Clinton’s proposal to force all employers to provide health insurance controlled by a gatekeeper- the HMOs. They succeeded.

Goodman then became what the Wall Street Journal calls “the father of HSAs.” Working from his think tank Goodman developed Health Savings Accounts in the early 2000s. Today, almost 9 million Americans benefit from HSA’s: they’re accounts in which taxpayers can accumulate money free of federal taxes to pay for expenses not covered by their insurance. Until Goodman developed HSAs, deposits to these kind of savings accounts by employers or employees were taxed just like wage income.

But getting HSA’s implemented wasn’t easy: at first, Congress found them so controversial that Senator Ted Kennedy fought to repeal them. But now, 70% of users want HSAs to expand. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this March, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels showed the game-changing potential of HSAs when he wrote how the accounts kept patients satisfied and helped both the people enrolled and the state save money. Among Indiana state workers, 70% chose to enroll in HSA’s introduced by Daniels and only 3% switched back. By the end of 2010, those enrolled will have saved more than $8 million compared to their peers belonging to regular PPOs, and the state’s costs will go down 11% due to HSAs alone.

But it’s not because patients are forgoing necessary treatment or preventative care: a review by independent healthcare experts at Mercer Consulting found no evidence of this- rather, patients were now making smarter choices like choosing generic drugs over brand-named ones and eliminating unnecessary expenditures. Thanks to Goodman’s idea, people were making better healthcare choices because they felt they were spending their own money.

BREAKING IT DOWN

The reasons for Goodman’s belief that the fallout over Obamacare is just beginning lie in his breakdown of his recent “health alert.”  According to Goodman, the most potent arguments against the bill for the public is the dramatic impact on peoples’ wallets. “The bill that’s passed will require all non-elderly people to buy insurance plans with costs that will grow at twice the rate of their income” he explains. And above all, there’s the impact on jobs. One of the strangest effects of the bill is the irresistible pressure it creates for employers to avoid providing health insurance, despite the penalties it puts in place. Goodman explains that for $30,000 a year employees who receive employer health insurance, the federal government ends up providing a subsidy of around $2,300. But employees who are not receiving health insurance from their employers and are required to obtain it on the new health insurance exchange created by the bill, the government ends up providing a federal subsidy of  up to $19,400 – what Goodman calls “an enormous federal government gift to the employer and the employee”. For employers who do not provide insurance, the penalty is lower than this “gift”, so they have an incentive to avoid giving insurance. And since the state is footing the bill for the insurance, these employers can raise their employees’ wages by the amount they would have spent on insurance (minus whatever penalties they pay). What then happens to employer health insurance? It disappears for $30,000 a year employees, who all have an incentive to migrate to the exchange. Who pays this soaring bill? The taxpayer.

But there’s more: take an employer of many uninsured $30,000 a year employees. He now has to either offer all his employees insurance, or else have them all go to the exchange and pay the fine for not providing insurance: in both cases, his labor costs either rise dramatically – which means he has to fire workers to cover these costs, or else, he must absorb these costs by cutting wages. They can also just outsource the jobs. However you look at it, the bill will end up causing serious unemployment and huge shifts in the labor market.

To be clear: Goodman does not support the previous status quo either. The system before the bill discriminated against individuals by giving major tax breaks to businesses providing health insurance, without providing equivalent tax breaks to people saving their own funds. This model is designed for a different age — a time when most employees spent their working lifetimes with one company. But Goodman points out that today, one-third of workers are outside the workplace and would do better if they could manage their own healthcare expenditures in a competitive market. Instead, not only are they taxed, but they’re unable to take or buy their insurance across state lines.  Yet the current bill is worse: “The cost will go up compared to what it was and the quality will decrease compared to what it was” he says, “even though we insure an additional 23 million, access to care may not improve at all. There’s not a single dollar in this bill that’s allocated to new doctors or to build hospitals. There’s nothing to increase the supply of care to meet the needs of the 23 million newly insured”.  It will be just like Massachusetts, he says: “they cut in half the number of uninsured… but they had a huge problem finding doctors. In Boston you have to wait twice as long, and just as many people go to the ERs as before”. More insurance doesn’t mean more care, unless there are also more doctors and hospitals.

WHAT’S NEXT?

So what can regular citizens do? First, Goodman says citizens should act through the ballot box: “if you have someone representing you and they totally ignore what you think” he says, talking about how Pelosi forced Democrats to vote for the bill, “I hope they punish the people who voted for this”.

But then, there will be real reforms needed to create a good healthcare reform bill: in an op-ed with Newt Gingrich in the Wall Street Journal last month, Goodman explained just a few of the ten key reforms that would make what he considers a very good bill. They include making sure people can buy insurance across state lines, allowing providers to create special insurance packages to meet the needs of the chronically ill, and provisions to help individuals save for when their health status changes and they need to switch plans. “If Republicans want to govern, they can’t be a party of ‘No’” he says, “they’ll have to change the bill in fundamental ways.” Lee Habeeb agrees: “they won” he says of the House vote – “it’s time to stop protesting about the process take back Congress and reunite on the legislation.” Healthcare’s John Galt isn’t about to retreat.

DEMOCRATS HID DAMNING HEALTH CARE REPORT FROM PUBLIC UNTIL A MONTH AFTER VOTE

More hope and change–

A damning health care report generated by actuaries at the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department was given to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the health care vote. She hid the report from the public until a month after democrats rammed their nationalized health care bill through Congress.

The results from the report were troubling. The report released by Medicare and Medicaid actuaries shows that medical costs will skyrocket rising $389 billion 10 years. 14 million will lose their employer-based coverage. Millions of Americans will be left without insurance. And, millions more may be dumped into the already overwhelmed Medicaid system. 4 million American families will be hit with tax penalties under this new law.

Of course, these were ALL things that President Obama and Democratic leaders assured us would not happen.

Via Special Report:

The American Spectator reported, via FOX Nation:

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

“The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,” says an HHS source. “Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.”

The analysis, performed by Medicare’s Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a “nonpolitical” office, set off alarm bells when submitted. “We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff,” says the HHS staffer, “and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary’s office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report.”

In the end, the report was released several weeks after the vote.

When Nancy Pelosi told America, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” she forgot to mention that democrats already knew what was in it. They just didn’t want the rest of the country to find out.

If we had a responsible media this would make headlines for about the next year and a half.

Here we go again. Harry Reid intends to force a vote at 5pm on Monday in a desperate attempt to push yet another bloated bill that will do more harm than good.

This time, the Democrats seem to have zeroed in on reforming the entire American finance system without bothering to read, or even consider, the many, negative, unintended consequences to our economy (and especially to small businesses) that this legislation will unleash.

Once again, the Democrats are keen to push a flawed agenda to capitalize on the remarkably convenient timing of the ever-so-welcomed, SEC fraud charges levied against Goldman Sachs.

Once again, Democrats are keen to push long standing, left-wing, ideological dreams that Americans have long resisted.  But, pity the poor small business community that will, once again, be forced to pay a disproportional cost of the 1336 page monstrosity of a financial reform bill.

Embedded deep within the Democrats’ financial bill is an inexplicable assault on Angel Investors who help drive small business expansion and entrepreneurialism.  Sections 412 and 413 (p.380-381) adjust (i.e.increase) the “Accredited Investor” dollar threshold to $1 million dollars—which could affect the amount of angel investing, especially those that invest in small businesses.

If that isn’t enough bad news, in Section 740B“Small Business Loan Data Collection”, (p.1219-1224), Congress requires the collection of proprietary data, and storage for three years of data that must be obtained from any small business attempting a loan.

Then, Congress stipulates that this information about the small business must be made available to the public upon request.  These are the kinds of intrusive requirements that could only be drafted by persons who have no experience in what it takes to start, maintain and grow a business.

This most recent attack on small business development has absolutely nothing to do with reform of the financial system. So, we are left to wonder, why does Congress consistently tack job destroying initiatives onto these huge legislative packages, and then ram them through Congress? Do Dems hope to kill American competitiveness or do they just have no clue?

Democrats do not seem to understand that jobs and innovation are correlated?  Have Democrats become so misdirected, so confused, and so arrogant that they believe that they, and they alone, must dictate how other Americans should live? Put bluntly, Democrats seem not know what is included in the voluminous legislative packages that they push with wild abandon, but they seem to think that all Americans would be better people if only they could be forced to accept the dogma of the Left.

I think it is clear that most Americans support the need for some kind of financial reform.  At the same time, Americans do not want their lives taken over by the federal government.   Increasingly, Americans are distrustful and worried that government is growing too large, is becoming too intrusive into daily affairs, and that our government seeks to dictate decisions that should remain private and beyond the grasping hand of government.  Yet, Pelosi’s Congress, with full support and backing of Team Obama moves forward with its meddling agenda.

For example, just last week at a time when the nation is considering the very complicated reform of the entire financial industry, Congressman Waxman believed it more important to launch a campaign against baseball players and smokeless chewing tobacco. My goodness!

At a time when the nation’s debt is becoming nightmarish, when new (and more accurate) estimates emerge from CMS, outlining much higher, long-term costs of the recently passed Health Care Legislation, at a time when Americans are fighting two wars, why does Henry Waxman focus on chewing tobacco in baseball?  Is chewing tobacco really the most important issue of the day?  And, if so, why wouldn’t Henry Waxman start closer to home—his home—in Los Angeles, where Hollywood produces more movies and TV programs in a year with smoking—of cigarettes—than is seen in a year’s worth of baseball games?

It might seem that Waxman’s tangent into the ludicrous is simply the ranting of an unhinged Congressman, but regrettably, there are other, equally disturbing, examples of the Obama nanny state.  Last week, Obama’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided that the time was right to tackle the looming dangers of Americans giving their dogs a bone.  Yes, that’s right.  The FDA issued guidance to advise Americans to stop giving dogs their nightly bone. Doing so, the FDA argues represents a significant new risk to dogs.  Who would have known?

Millions of American dogs, for hundreds of years, have been thrown a bone and were happy.  But now, thanks to the advanced research of the FDA, giving a dog a bone is ruled dangerous.   One might think that there are other, far more important priorities; such as the  alarming concerns of loss of innovation in the healthcare industry as a result of the newly approved Healthcare Legislation, or the high cost of new drug approvals, or the difficulties of safeguarding our nation’s food supply.  But, no.

Our President and Congress seem to be confused.  Small, strange, picayunish issues are being pursued at precisely the same time our nation faces far more urgent issues.  But, rather than focusing on, and solving, the biggest issues of  the day, Democrats seem determined to launch any number of weird efforts aimed at compelling Americans to accept liberal orthodoxy and an ever more demanding nanny state.

Most curious of all, most Democrats, to include President Obama, seem genuinely confused, not understanding why the simple message of a more limited government, less intrusive in its reach, and less hectoring in its message is so compelling to millions of Americans.

Given all the misdirection of efforts going on in Washington, can anyone really be surprised that one of the most commonly purchased flags over the past year is the Gadsden flag, with a snake that says “Don’t Tread on Me”?

At a time when the American taxpayer is on the hook for trillions in current and future federal spending—when the Congressional Budget Office warns that the current rate of federal spending is “unsustainable”—liberal Democrats in Congress have earmarked over $68 million of taxpayer dollars for a Boston shrine to the late Senator Edward Kennedy.

In a detailed report, the Boston Herald describes the planned Edward M. Kennedy Institute as a “temple for Ted Kennedy built with pork.”

According to their account, congressional Democrats—especially Massachusetts senators John Kerry and Edward Markey—have been cramming earmarks for the project into various government funding bills. The Herald found that Kerry and Markey even intend to siphon $28.9 million of the institute’s funding from the Defense Department budget, with almost $19 million of that amount already signed into law.

Why do they think taxpayers should be paying for this shrine? A statement from a Kerry spokesman declared that the institute will bring “knowledge and good citizenship to thousands of young people.”

This has raised the ire of taxpayer watchdog groups. “If the Kennedy family wants to honor the senator, they should find a way to fund it themselves,” David E. Williams of Citizens Against Government Waste told the newspaper. Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense agreed that “this could be independently funded and doesn’t need to be getting taxpayer dollars.”

Indeed.

Clearly, it’s not as if the Kennedy clan is without financial means to fund the project themselves. Or, if they wished, they could send out private appeals on the family stationery to, say, George Soros—or to John Kerry’s wife, catsup heir Teresa Heinz Kerry—right from their posh family compound in Hyannisport. I’m sure Laurie David could be prevailed upon to throw a fundraiser in memory of “the lion of liberalism” at the Beverly Wilshire.

However, their reliance on federal funding suggests a broader agenda is in play. After all, in an era of trillions in red ink, why would congressional liberals insist on adding tens of millions to a national debt that their president has promised to “get serious about”? Why earmarks for something that most Americans would find to be a frivolous expenditure?

Obviously because liberals don’t think of it as a frivolous expenditure. In fact, it is a project of great importance to them—because it’s meant to establish an official, symbolic, governmental shrine to political liberalism.

Consider: What, exactly, is significant about Senator Kennedy? What does he symbolize?

To millions in Flyover America, “Teddy” was despised as a pampered playboy, known for decades of drunken philandering even after his unforgivable role in the death of a girl in Massachusetts.

But to the left, Ted Kennedy was and remains an icon of liberalism—and specifically, a lifelong champion of socialized medicine. That, after all, was his signature cause.

So, I believe that establishing Teddy’s Temple with millions of taxpayer dollars is meant to serve twin purposes.

First, it is intended to enshrine the pretense that one’s politics is more important than any other aspect of one’s personal character. The issue here transcends Kennedy. A central pillar of the liberal worldview is its sweeping rejection of self-responsibility—its claim that no one is ultimately responsible for his actions, but is instead a victim or plaything of circumstances beyond his control. Liberals forgave Kennedy for his personal failings just as they did Bill Clinton—because in their worldview, nobody is to be held individually accountable, either for his sins or his virtues. The ironic flip side of this premise is that everyone is instead his “brother’s keeper,” responsible for everyone on the planet except himself.

Thus, professing liberalism gives you a free pass for all manner of personal immorality and irresponsibility. All you need to do to dry clean your reputation is to advocate policies that promote egalitarian “fairness” toward your fellow “victims of circumstance.”

Second, Teddy’s Temple is a means to an even broader end. That end is to elevate his liberal ideology to the status of an official, government-approved “ideal.” You can be sure that the “good citizenship” propagated at his shrine will translate into speeches, writings, video clips, totems, classes, and materials extolling his liberalism generally, and his advocacy of socialized medicine specifically—all paid for with your hard-earned dollars.

The leftists backing this institute know all this, and they intend for precisely these lessons to be preached there and absorbed by future generations. They understand perfectly well the power of moral symbolism and government-imposed “standards.” So, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute is calculated to establish liberalism’s anti-self-responsibility ideology as a national moral doctrine, to supplant the American legacy of individualism and personal self-responsibility that they despise.

I believe there is a third, more subtle goal here, too. Senator Kennedy was a fierce opponent of a strong national defense generally, and of virtually every specific military action our nation has conducted since World War II. Diverting millions from the Defense Department budget to the Kennedy Institute can only symbolize the liberal value hierarchy, which places a moral priority on domestic social-welfare programs over national defense.

Opposition to federal funding for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute has focused almost exclusively on its ballooning costs to the taxpayer. But we should not oppose this simply as a wasteful and unnecessary expenditure of federal funds. We should oppose the use of taxpayer dollars for this project on grounds of ethical principle—as both an explicit and symbolic rejection of American individualist ideals, and as a deliberate slap in the face of our men and women in uniform.

Thomas Jefferson summed up concisely the moral issue at stake: “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”

From the Associated Press:

Nearly 4 million Americans will have to pay a penalty if they fail to get health insurance when that element of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law kicks in, according to congressional projections released Thursday.

The penalties will average a little more than $1,000 apiece in 2016, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report.

The vast majority of people paying the fine will be middle class, which would violate Obama’s 2008 campaign pledge not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000.

Republicans have criticized the penalties, even though the idea for a mandate was originally proposed by Republicans in the 1990s and is part of the Massachusetts health care plan signed into law by then Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, in 2006. Attorneys general in more than a dozen states are working to challenge the mandate in federal court as unconstitutional.

Democrats argue the mandate and the penalties are a necessary part of a massive overhaul designed to expand coverage to millions who now lack it. They point out that getting young, healthy Americans in the insurance pool will reduce costs for others.

Americans who don’t get qualified health insurance will be required to pay penalties starting in 2014, unless they are exempt because of low income, religious beliefs, or because they are members of American Indian tribes. The penalties will be fully phased in by 2016.

Continue reading here.

President Obama signed into law what will surely be known as one of the worst pieces of public policy in American history.  His big-government takeover of America’s healthcare system passed against the will of many Americans.  It marks a loss for liberty and a victory for greater government control.

The Democrats rejected bipartisan input and compromise to pass this misguided legislation along a narrow, partisan vote.  They hit us with a bloated, constitutionally-suspect bill that grows government and fails to achieve the reforms necessary to constrain the costs of American health care.  The bill not only forces intolerable new costs on consumers and state budgets during an economic downturn, it fails to include basic protections against illegal immigrants in the system.

Consumers will bear the burden of higher health insurance premiums and health care costs, in addition to an onerous federal mandate that will require residents to have health insurance, whether they want it or not.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2016, premiums in the individual market will be 10 percent to 13 percent higher under the health care bill than they would have been under current law.  The chief actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that, overall, the bill will increase health care spending by $222 billion over the next ten years.

Californians will also have to bear the burden of an enormous new strain on state finances.  The health care bill achieves expanded health coverage in part by radically enlarging the Medicaid program.  State governments pay a substantial portion of Medicaid’s costs.  The chief deputy director for California’s health care programs has stated the bill’s Medicaid provisions will add an additional $2 billion to $3 billion to the state budget annually.  Our state has already been struggling to close a $20 billion budget gap.  Now the health care bill will force us to pay for expansion of a program riddled with waste and abuse.

Even as Californians struggle with rising health costs and growing budget deficits, Obamacare will slam them with new taxes and fees.  Worse still, the proceeds these taxes may be used to provide benefits to illegal immigrants.

The health care bill ostensibly limits benefits to lawful residents and bars illegal immigrants from the bill’s programs. But there is reason to believe that these provisions are little more than a sham designed to provide political cover for congressional Democrats while giving a wink and nod to fraudulent participation by illegal immigrants.

Existing law sets up the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. The SAVE system is similar to the E-Verify system used by employers.  SAVE has been in operation for more than 20 years and is the established method for determining benefit eligibility and preventing fraudulent enrollment by illegal immigrants.

Yet the health care bill does not require the use of this existing system.  Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) introduced language to make screening under SAVE an explicit requirement of the health care bill, but this language did not make it into the final version.

Instead, the bill creates new procedures that will likely prove to be less robust and less reliable than the proven SAVE system.  This leaves the door open to widespread fraud and the de-facto coverage of illegal immigrants at taxpayer expense.  There is no excuse for this.

Fortunately, conservatives continue to fight against the general government takeover of our health system and the specific flaws of this health care bill.  For example, shortly after the House Democrats approved Obamacare, House Republicans made another effort to add language prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortion.  The House Democrats voted down this motion. While my opponent sides with the Democrats on this issue, I side with the conservatives who oppose taxpayer-funded abortions.

There is no doubt that America’s health care system needs serious reform.  Obamacare, however, is not the way to fix it.  The weak protections against illegal immigrants and the huge new costs on already strained state budgets are just two of the many reasons why 59 percent of Americans oppose this legislation. The health care bill is completely at odds with the American traditions of liberty and federalism that pervade our societal and constitutional norms.  I encourage leaders and patriots across our state and nation to fight implementation of this ill-conceived law.  As governor, you can be sure that I will do the same.

One of the dirty little secrets of Capitol Hill is that most politicians – even the ones the horserace-focused media depicts as irredeemably ideologically divided – actually have no coherent driving ideology. The secret is revealed only occasionally. If powerful oversight chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) hadn’t reconsidered his plans this week to call the CEOs of major companies into committee chambers for his version of Beltway blackmail, the American people might have had an opportunity to witness it being revealed.

Waxman originally called the hearing in a characteristic fit of pique. After more than nine months of labor, the House of Representatives had finally given birth to the gargantuan ogre of Obamacare. Yet before the Democratic leadership could finish tousling the hair of the prop children at their signing ceremonies, corporate America started following the law, in the most inconvenient manner possible: they reported to their investors and employees the effects the new legislation would have on their benefit plans.

In each case, the analysts employed by major companies like AT&T, Verizon Communications, Caterpillar, Deere & Co. and others did their job: they delivered reports detailing the ramifications – higher premiums, dropped drug coverage, and forcing their employees into taxpayer-funded plans – thanks to the new bill. Waxman, infuriated, demanded the CEOs of these troublesome companies turn over all internal communications about the predicted results, as if he thought they would reveal some devious Republican plot, instead of the simple mathematical calculations of the green eyeshades and the diligent efforts of company lawyers to ensure that the companies complied with federal disclosure laws.

The inconvenient truth for Waxman – something he would know if he weren’t a dogmatic partisan – is that he’s seeing a feature of Obamacare, not a bug. The ideological basis of the health reform package was never about lowering insurance premiums for the American people, increasing the quality of care, or decreasing the burden of health costs on corporate America. Quite the contrary; it was designed to advance a long-term agenda to cede massive authority to government, and to achieve a permanent social change in the path to prosperity.  And, yes, to use increased costs to limit the options open to large corporations.

The aims of socialism are often misunderstood by most Americans, as the only socialist most know of is that harmless disheveled professor on the local campus. It’s a word which can hardly be considered insulting when an elected Senator of the Socialist party caucuses with the Democrats. While socialism is sold as a way to elevate the underclass, the actual result of its application isn’t to increase the prosperity of the poor – it’s a method of achieving permanent stratification by allowing the more productive members of society to pass any losses onto others.

The reason socialism fails, as my colleague Francis Cianfrocca describes it, is that it socializes losses, not gains. It is an application of the “too big to fail” policy across all levels of society – because the losers no longer face consequences for their mistakes, businessmen are happy to make more of them, morphing into the oligarchs of the Soviet era. The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and the classless society becomes one where the boundaries of class are nigh impossible to break.

President Obama has drawn many comparisons to Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson, but his agenda is, in its all-encompassing approach, far more ambitious. As Josh Trevino has pointed out, where liberal projects once consisted of focused attacks on either end of the economic continuum – punitive taxes on the wealthy, union enabling, the minimum wage, and Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty – Obama’s agenda is designed to destroy the ability to transit from one end of the continuum to the other. Every new cushion, apparently designed to ease the pain of losses, means new barriers obstructing individual freedom of action and the expected rewards of risk-taking, resulting in an immovable class society.

What is unprecedented about this agenda is that it fundamentally alters the traditional pathways to prosperity in American life. Social mobility is a distinctive, near-unique feature of America throughout its history. But if you are going to achieve financial success in Obama’s America, you will do so by following the path of these CEOs: passing the costs of benefits onto the taxpayers, spreading the burden of your losses to others, and, ideally, selling something to the government – the customer who never stops buying.

This is our future, designed by the leftist philosophers who inform President Obama’s views, and shepherded into law by partisan politicians like Henry Waxman. Welcome to the new American way.

The Obama Administration, once again, is in need of a villain to serve as a political piñata, and it is now clear that Goldman Sachs has been selected to fill the villain void.

Careful observers will note that Team Obama  is never content to argue the potential benefits of their increasingly dodgy legislation (e.g. Stimulus, Healthcare, Cap and Trade).  Obama is no fool; he understands that his wealth redistribution schemes, his desire to grow government, to provide new kickbacks to Unions, and to crush small business growth are so antithetical to most Americans that passage and support require that a villain be found that can be blamed for any and all possible evils.

Already, we have seem Team Obama single out CEOs of automotive manufacturing corporations, financial industries, drug manufacturers, and health insurance companies for special, public floggings.  So, it should come as no surprise that, once again, President Obama has found a convenient, new villain, Goldman Sachs, to be publicly flogged and abused, to help drive support for the President’s complicated, new, financial regulations and bank oversight legislation.

Cynical minds must wonder at the timeliness of the SEC’s charges of fraud levied against Goldman Sachs . Consider the exhaustion of Congress after the recent healthcare reform struggle.  As a result, the legislation for financial reform, among other proposed reforms,  had been lagging and moving lethargically in the Senate.  With another election cycle approaching, legislators were finding it hard to rally interest in, yet another, bloated piece of legislation which did little to address the Wall Street abuses that initially caused the interest in the financial reform.

All 41 GOP senators were united, voicing strong language against a useless, toothless piece of legislation, and their objections began to garner support.  Even Obama apologist,  Paul Krugman, weighed in, saying that no reform was better than the lame legislation currently being considered.

But then, just as Financial reform was crawling on its belly, going off to die, the “crisis” with Goldman Sachs suddenly occurred.  How remarkably convenient!   Suddenly, the financial reform legislation has new life, and a pitchfork campaign to further demonize Goldman Sachs is in full gear.

As with  many of their previous efforts, there will likely be repercussions and unintended consequences that Team Obama may have underestimated.

First, Goldman executives are unlikely to go willingly and compliantly to the gallows as so many other executives have done during the last year.   It seems that  Goldman was caught off guard, for they have not yet rallied to launch an effective public opinion campaign to combat the attacks.

Perhaps, Goldman foolishly assumed that  their generous, political campaign contributions of  approximately $34 million dollars were sufficient insurance.   For example, in 2008, Goldman Sachs’ individuals and affiliates  made donations of approximately$105,000.00 to Senator Chris  Dodd and   approximately $55,000 to Senator Max Baucus to name but a few.  And, they donated a whopping  $994,000.00 just to Barack Obama during the last campaign cycle, perhaps thinking these generous donations would serve as ample protection money.  Wrong.

Will any Goldman employee be similarly so stupid as to ever contribute another penny to Team Obama?  At the same time, pity the poor Goldman shareholders who must be furious with management for being so conciliatory to Team Obama, participating in any number of glorified photo ops when summoned to the White House in order to help push a flawed economic agenda.

Goldman executives have been exposed as chumps, and there is a good likelihood that  a one day loss of 13% of shareholders’ value in Goldman will focus shareholder attention and ire as nothing has before.

Watch as Goldman shareholders start questioning the wisdom of nearly $1 million in campaign donations to Obama.  Others will question the process: how objective can the Administration, and members of Congress, be when they are so clearly beholden to the financial largesse of Goldman Sachs?

The Goldman Sachs case may become a primer for what happens when there is a too-close relationship between Wall Street and the White House and between Wall Street and Congress.   But, before all of that, it should become the primer for campaign donations and what not to do.

The $34million that Goldman spent on capaign donations for the 2008 election for protection didn’t work.  Trying to game the system with political donations, especially to a group that is hostile to the free market system, is a bad bet.

Expect the public flogging of Goldman Sachs to go on for some time.  It will only stop when the Obama Administration moves on to Immigration Reform or Cap-and Trade, when they will, once again, select a new villain to spur along bad legislation.

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An eclectic show this week as Rob, Peter and Mark are joined by columnist and author Shelby Steele who discusses Obama and how race and gender are defining his presidency and his quest to redefine America and the world. At the other end of the spectrum, we’re joined by Ricochet contributor and truck driver David Carter who illuminates us with his unique perspective on the world. All that and a little more inside Hollywood POV from Rob Long. Apologies in advance for the audio quality. We’ll try to do better next time. Questions? Comments? Fan us on our Facebook page or write us at podcast@ricochet.com.

On Sunday morning, March 21^st, I sent an e-mail to a handful of individuals, including Mike Flynn of Big Government.com, who have been very supportive of my efforts in informing people, family and businesses on Prevention, cost containment and health care reform. The topic was the impending passage of Obama Care and the stripping of Freedom and Liberty from every American which will be the end result.

One of the people I contacted was, Dennis Gartman. One of the nation’s and world’s leading financial analysts, investors and financial public educators through his work in the media.  Dennis is the founder of The Gartman Letter….a daily financial road map for corporations, individuals, investment funds and governments. Dennis asked if he could include my e-mail in The Gartman Letter. Below is Dennis’s article concerning my e-mail.

* * * * * *

GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE CAPITAL MARKETS ON ONE WELL KNOWN DOCTOR’S PERSPECTIVE ON HEALTH CARE:

Our friend, Dr. David Janda, is a nationally well known orthopaedic surgeon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, involved in delivering health care for 29 years.

David’s a clinical researcher in Prevention and Health care cost containment and he founded The Institute For Preventative Sports Medicine which is the only health care cost containment organization of its kind in North America. According to the Federal government, one of his studies has lead to the prevention of 1.7 million people from being injured every year in the U.S. and saved $2 billion in health care costs per year.

David also wrote a bestselling book….The Awakening of a Surgeon…… featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and it’s been referred to as a “Weapon of Mass Instruction” as it tells people and families how to take control of their health care and to free themselves from the insurance companies, from the HMO industry and most importantly from federal bureaucrats.

That being said, David wrote to us last evening as the health care legislation was making its way to the House floor. He’s told us in the past about the ills involved in this legislation, but now it has passed and it has come to this. We believe David’s thoughts, as a physician of some renown to be worthy of our clients’ collective attention, He wrote:

It is Sunday and it looks like Obama, Pelosi and Reid have succeeded in passing their health care plan which will destroy every person, family and business in Our country. In the process they have shredded The Constitution and Our democratic republic.

Thank you for all that you have done in informing the public and allowing my voice and my information to be heard. I believe my perspective as a “grunt” on the front line of health care delivery and 29 years experience in doing so matters. By networking my information, you allowed me to share my insight with the American public. The democrats and progressives believe the war has been won…..wrong….they might have won the battle but the War has just begun.

In the next several weeks I will be sending out an e-mail announcing that I will be leaving the medical delivery profession. My wife and daughters support my decision. The legislation authored by Obama, Pelosi and Reid is a violation of The Hippocratic Oath I took 29 years ago…..”Do No Harm”. The core of their legislation is to deny and ration care…..the most inhumane and unethical means of cutting costs. I have dedicated my life….day and night to my patients for the past 29 years…..I have attempted to add to the oath through my research and published studies which have focused on prevention…. “Preventing Harm”.

Their legislation puts me in the position of harming the very people I have been helping for the past 29 years.

In 1920, the federal government instituted legislation that took my great grandfather’s business away from him.  He owned a brewery in Chicago. He died a broken and destroyed man within a month of that event. Ninety years later, the federal government has passed] a law that will take away my beloved profession of health care delivery. I will continue to fight and will not meet the same fate as my great grandfather. If I can be further service to you please call on me.

Warm Regards,

When good men like David leave medicine we know that we are in very serious trouble. Mark our words; a year from now the state of medicine and health care here in the US will be demonstrably worse than it is now; it shall also be demonstrably more expensive and it will be even more demonstrably less available to anyone and everyone. Last night’s legislation was what the Left has been aiming for many, many years. They’ve succeeded in nationalizing health care, and they’ve succeeded in sending men such as David to the sidelines. We are all the worse for it…. demonstrably so.

* * * * * *

I appreciate Dennis’s friendship and kind words. I do plan on continuing to fight to repeal and replace this prohibitive legislation on behalf of America, my fellow citizens and my patients.  The medical “oversight” component will occur on January 1, 2013.  I will continue at my post on the front line until December 31, 2012 then I will continue the fight from another front. The battle might have been lost for Health Care Freedom on March 21^st but the War is far from over in bringing health care freedom to every American.

Health insurance company CEOs will apparently be spared the public thrashing planned for April 21 by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Hollywood). Waxman notified committee members of the cancellation in a memo released Wednesday.

The memo implies that the companies which had been asked to appear – Verizon, Caterpillar, AT&T and Deere & Co. – were being less critical of the new healthcare law, but there is nothing to support that implication.

The memo says that, “…several companies and their representatives expressed the view that the new law could have beneficial impacts on large employers if implemented properly.”  But the memo appears to back away from the accusatory letters and press releases which preceded it.

The hearing – the sort of public lashing that the Energy and Commerce Committee became famous for under Waxman’s predecessor, John Dingell (D-Mi) – was called because Waxman wanted to bash the companies for making (legally-required) financial disclosures of huge expected losses to be incurred due to Obamacare. (Caterpillar alone expected to lose $100 million in 2010, according to its financial filings).

In his demand letter, Waxman had demanded that the companies produce an enormous quantity of potentially proprietary (and some legally-privileged) documents.  This demand was apparently canceled along with the hearing.

Before the hearing was announced, the Energy Committee’s ranking Republican, Joe Barton of Texas, took to the floor to denounce Waxman’s intimidation tactics.  He condemned the April 21 hearing and Waxman’s announced investigation into the American Farm Bureau’s opposition to the global warming tax “cap and trade” legislation Waxman’s committee has passed.   Barton accused Waxman of using his power to intimidate Americans out of using their First Amendment rights, and suggested that Waxman’s actions should be investigated.

And, equally revealing, is the staff memo which accompanies Waxman’s announcement.

That memo says that the committee’s staff investigators found that the companies had followed the law by filing the loss reports Waxman wanted to attack.

We don’t yet know whether the companies did as I suggested in my original piece on these hearings and refuse to produce privileged or proprietary information.  If they did, they should be congratulated.  Waxman never wanted to find fact, only to bash the healthcare heretics and score soundbites on the evening news.

Obamacare has become a TEA Party issue, and that’s a good thing for the TEA Partiers, and all freedom-loving Americans.

At the April 15 TEA Party gathering here in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, speakers will include a hopeful candidate for Congress, a pastor, and even a law enforcement official.  What really caught my eye, though, was the announcement beforehand that “a local orthopedic surgeon will address the recently passed health care  legislation.”  This is hardly an isolated incident.

Think about it — the TEA Party is all about protesting massive, out of control government spending, and the excessive taxation that is necessary to support it.  Obamacare has been largely debated as healthcare reform.  Why should TEA Partiers care about healthcare reform?  You may think that the TEA Party is branching out into more areas than the core issue that has made it such a huge and ever-growing success.  You may find this risky and perhaps alarming.  Let me disabuse you of that notion, and assure you that Obamacare was destined to be a core TEA Party issue from the very beginning.

Liberty, Taxes and ObamaCare

Rassmussen Reports recently published an article that began:  “The number of people who say they’re part of the Tea Party Movement nationally has grown to 24%. That’s up from 16% a month ago, but the movement still defies easy description.”

The TEA Party is all about excessive taxes and our huge national debt, to be sure, but the increase in TEA Partiers grew by well over one-third in one month.  How can this be?  According to “new data” from Rasmussen Reports, among those who are part of the movement, 89% disapprove of the way that Barack Obama is handling his job as president. That figure includes 82% who Strongly Disapprove.  One cannot possibly think that this has nothing to do with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the “Obamacare” statute, that was passed in the waning days of March, concomitant with the surge in TEA Party numbers.  As Rasmussen puts it:

The rise in Tea party support is perhaps not surprising at a time when more voters than ever (58%) favor repeal of the national health care plan just passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Obama. Most voters remain convinced that the health care plan will require an increase in taxes on the middle class as a time when 66% of voters believe America is already overtaxed.

TEA: It's about the LIBERTY, folks!

I posit the theory that Obamacare has become a TEA Party issue — in fact, not just “an” issue, but perhaps the most pressing one.  Rassmussen Reports has found that ninety-six percent (96%) of those in the Tea Party movement believe America is overtaxed, not a surprising result for a movement whose acronym, TEA, is widely considered to mean “Taxed Enough Already,” and which harkens back to a tax protest that changed world history — the Boston Tea Party.  These folks know that there is no such thing as a free lunch — somebody has to pay for that hoagie.  When the hoagie is government mandated/controlled/subsidized health insurance, the people paying for it are taxpayers.

Liberal/Progressive types constantly berate those voters who “remain convinced that the health care plan will require an increase in taxes on the middle class” a just blithering idiots who cannot hope to understand the brilliance of Obamacare.  They constantly snipe that the CBO report shows that our gargantuan budget deficit will actually be reduced by their new “healthcare” law (and if you believe that, I have some prime snow-skiing property here in Mississippi that I would like to sell you).  TEA Partiers, though, are a pretty common-sense bunch.  When they see something that costs money, they know that the money must come from somewhere.  Since the only source of income for the federal government is taxes, every non-Liberal instantly recognizes that taxes will have to be raised if the new spending is to be “budget neutral.”

Indeed, the list of “new and improved” taxes in the Obamacare law is staggering.  According to an April 13th op-ed for the Washington Examiner by Grace-Marie Turner at the Galen Institute, “The health overhaul plan just enacted represents the largest tax hike in U.S. history – $569 billion over 10 years through a dizzying array of taxes and fees that promise to frustrate taxpayers at every turn.  ObamaCare will make every day feel like April 15th.  And despite President Obama’s campaign promise that no one making $250,000 or less would see a tax increase, Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation confirms that these tax hikes will hit millions of middle- and working-class families who are struggling to make ends meet.”  (Emphasis added).  According to well-documented research by Americans for Tax Reform in Washington DC, besides the penalty tax for lawbreakers who fail to carry health insurance (which the CBO says will cost taxpayers $39 billion from 2010-2019), there is the  Medicine Cabinet Tax,   the HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike, Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka “Special Needs Kids Tax”  Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers, a tax on Indoor Tanning Services, a Blue Cross/Blue Shield tax , an excise tax on charitable hospitals,  a tax on Innovator Drug Companies,   a tax on health insurers,  the elimination of a tax deduction for employer-provided retirement prescription drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D, and other draconian tax-related measures, such as the Marxist $500,000 annual executive compensation limit for health insurance executives,  and red tape like employer reporting of insurance on W-2 and Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting, which creates enormous compliance burdens for small businesses and makes additional penalties likely.

I for one have concluded that Obamacare is not truly about healthcare.  I take Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) at his word — it’s about controlling the people.  Is there any issue nearer and dearer to the hearts of TEA Partiers than governmental control over their lives?  Out of control spending and excessive taxation can only be rationally explained as a power grab by a tiny faction who control our federal government, and want to further control us.

Like the generation that fought the Revolutionary War and gave us the Constitution, the TEA Party movement recognizes that excessive taxation is a form of tyranny in and of itself.  Obamacare is tyrannical in the way it mandates penalties, forces you to purchase insurance and commandeers state employees, to be sure, but it also constitutes a massive increase in taxation.  TEA Partiers know this, and they don’t like it.  Since 48% of voters now say the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than President Obama and 58% want Obamacare repealed, I conclude that opposition to Obamacare is not only a major issue for the Tea Party movement, it is a winning issue.

Obamacare has become a TEA Party issue, and that’s a good thing for the TEA Partiers, and all freedom-loving Americans.

At the April 15 TEA Party gathering here in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, speakers will include a hopeful candidate for Congress, a pastor, and even a law enforcement official.  What really caught my eye, though, was the announcement beforehand that “a local orthopedic surgeon will address the recently passed health care  legislation.”  This is hardly an isolated incident.

Think about it — the TEA Party is all about protesting massive, out of control government spending, and the excessive taxation that is necessary to support it.  Obamacare has been largely debated as healthcare reform.  Why should TEA Partiers care about healthcare reform?  You may think that the TEA Party is branching out into more areas than the core issue that has made it such a huge and ever-growing success.  You may find this risky and perhaps alarming.  Let me disabuse you of that notion, and assure you that Obamacare was destined to be a core TEA Party issue from the very beginning.

Liberty, Taxes and ObamaCare

Rassmussen Reports recently published an article that began:  “The number of people who say they’re part of the Tea Party Movement nationally has grown to 24%. That’s up from 16% a month ago, but the movement still defies easy description.”

The TEA Party is all about excessive taxes and our huge national debt, to be sure, but the increase in TEA Partiers grew by well over one-third in one month.  How can this be?  According to “new data” from Rasmussen Reports, among those who are part of the movement, 89% disapprove of the way that Barack Obama is handling his job as president. That figure includes 82% who Strongly Disapprove.  One cannot possibly think that this has nothing to do with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the “Obamacare” statute, that was passed in the waning days of March, concomitant with the surge in TEA Party numbers.  As Rasmussen puts it:

The rise in Tea party support is perhaps not surprising at a time when more voters than ever (58%) favor repeal of the national health care plan just passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Obama. Most voters remain convinced that the health care plan will require an increase in taxes on the middle class as a time when 66% of voters believe America is already overtaxed.

TEA: It's about the LIBERTY, folks!

I posit the theory that Obamacare has become a TEA Party issue — in fact, not just “an” issue, but perhaps the most pressing one.  Rassmussen Reports has found that ninety-six percent (96%) of those in the Tea Party movement believe America is overtaxed, not a surprising result for a movement whose acronym, TEA, is widely considered to mean “Taxed Enough Already,” and which harkens back to a tax protest that changed world history — the Boston Tea Party.  These folks know that there is no such thing as a free lunch — somebody has to pay for that hoagie.  When the hoagie is government mandated/controlled/subsidized health insurance, the people paying for it are taxpayers.

Liberal/Progressive types constantly berate those voters who “remain convinced that the health care plan will require an increase in taxes on the middle class” a just blithering idiots who cannot hope to understand the brilliance of Obamacare.  They constantly snipe that the CBO report shows that our gargantuan budget deficit will actually be reduced by their new “healthcare” law (and if you believe that, I have some prime snow-skiing property here in Mississippi that I would like to sell you).  TEA Partiers, though, are a pretty common-sense bunch.  When they see something that costs money, they know that the money must come from somewhere.  Since the only source of income for the federal government is taxes, every non-Liberal instantly recognizes that taxes will have to be raised if the new spending is to be “budget neutral.”

Indeed, the list of “new and improved” taxes in the Obamacare law is staggering.  According to an April 13th op-ed for the Washington Examiner by Grace-Marie Turner at the Galen Institute, “The health overhaul plan just enacted represents the largest tax hike in U.S. history – $569 billion over 10 years through a dizzying array of taxes and fees that promise to frustrate taxpayers at every turn.  ObamaCare will make every day feel like April 15th.  And despite President Obama’s campaign promise that no one making $250,000 or less would see a tax increase, Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation confirms that these tax hikes will hit millions of middle- and working-class families who are struggling to make ends meet.”  (Emphasis added).  According to well-documented research by Americans for Tax Reform in Washington DC, besides the penalty tax for lawbreakers who fail to carry health insurance (which the CBO says will cost taxpayers $39 billion from 2010-2019), there is the  Medicine Cabinet Tax,   the HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike, Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka “Special Needs Kids Tax”  Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers, a tax on Indoor Tanning Services, a Blue Cross/Blue Shield tax , an excise tax on charitable hospitals,  a tax on Innovator Drug Companies,   a tax on health insurers,  the elimination of a tax deduction for employer-provided retirement prescription drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D, and other draconian tax-related measures, such as the Marxist $500,000 annual executive compensation limit for health insurance executives,  and red tape like employer reporting of insurance on W-2 and Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting, which creates enormous compliance burdens for small businesses and makes additional penalties likely.

I for one have concluded that Obamacare is not truly about healthcare.  I take Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) at his word — it’s about controlling the people.  Is there any issue nearer and dearer to the hearts of TEA Partiers than governmental control over their lives?  Out of control spending and excessive taxation can only be rationally explained as a power grab by a tiny faction who control our federal government, and want to further control us.

Like the generation that fought the Revolutionary War and gave us the Constitution, the TEA Party movement recognizes that excessive taxation is a form of tyranny in and of itself.  Obamacare is tyrannical in the way it mandates penalties, forces you to purchase insurance and commandeers state employees, to be sure, but it also constitutes a massive increase in taxation.  TEA Partiers know this, and they don’t like it.  Since 48% of voters now say the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than President Obama and 58% want Obamacare repealed, I conclude that opposition to Obamacare is not only a major issue for the Tea Party movement, it is a winning issue.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, it’s not happening. The Hill reports

“Taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxes—in 2019 alone—due to healthcare reform, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s official scorekeeper.

The new law raises $15.2 billion over 10 years by limiting the medical expense deduction, a provision widely used by taxpayers who either have a serious illness or are older.

Taxpayers can currently deduct medical expenses in excess of 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income. Starting in 2013, most taxpayers will only be able to deduct expenses greater than 10 percent of AGI. Older taxpayers are hit by this threshold increase in 2017.

Once the law is fully implemented in 2019, the JCT estimates the deduction limitation will affect 14.8 million taxpayers — 14.7 million of them will earn less than $200,000 a year. These taxpayers are single and joint filers, as well as heads of households.”

Here is more, as if this wasn’t enough. Over at the Washington Examiner Marie Grace Turner gives a list of the new taxes brought to you by “Obamacare.”

• “Breath tax”:  The infamous “death tax” now has a new sibling: the $17 billion “breath tax.”  The new health overhaul law requires everyone in America who breathes to have health insurance by 2014; some will get subsidies, but most will have to pay a fine if they don’t buy the health insurance required by the federal government.  Last week, Internal Revenue Commissioner Douglas Shulman said that enforcement of the individual mandate will come by seizing tax refunds and “collection, if need be.”

• Taxes on medical devices:  Surgical scissors, wheelchairs, intravenous bags, dental retainers and braces, CT scanners, stretchers, exam room tables, heart stents, pacemakers, surgical gloves, spineboards at every local pool, scales at a doctor’s office or health club, any diagnostic test for any disease or condition – all will be among the products and procedures subject to ObamaCare’s special $20 billion medical device tax beginning in 2013.  This tax will make these medical supplies more expensive, will drive up the cost of health care and health insurance for Americans, will threaten jobs in the medical device industry, and confiscate money needed for new innovative breakthroughs.

• New Tax on Health Insurance Providers:  Even though soaring health costs are the problem Americans most wanted government to solve, ObamaCare promises to drive costs even higher by instituting a new $60 billion tax on health insurers.  Insurers and health plans can be expected to pass along this tax to policyholders through higher premiums.  So starting in 2014, Americans will be forced to buy health insurance, and the federal government will be actively making it more expensive.

• Medicare Payroll Tax:  Starting in 2013, ObamaCare increases the Medicare payroll tax for many small business owners and others earning more than $250,000 a year.  This tax hike will place yet another burden on small business owners who the country needs to create jobs and lead the economy into recovery.  This job-killing payroll tax is estimated to raise $86.8 billion over seven years.

• New Tax on Investment: In addition to the Medicare payroll tax hike, investment income will now be subject to a tax of 3.8% starting in 2013 for those in higher income categories.  Even middle-class homeowners who realize a capital gain of $250,000 or more on the sale of their home will be hit by this Medicare tax, which will drain another $123.4 billion out of taxpayers’ pockets and into the government’s coffers over seven years.

• New Drug Tax:  ObamaCare’s new tax on brand-name drugs kicks in next year and is estimated to raise $27 billion over nine years.  The public can expect to have these costs passed on to them in the form of higher drug prices and higher insurance costs.

For decades abortion supporters argued that restrictions on abortion would cause women to die in unsafe “back alley abortions” all across the land. This scare tactic was a mantra that seemed to work quite well to spread abortions throughout the states and helped spur the Supreme Court to penumbra its way to a pseudo Constitutional “right” for abortions. But the main thrust of the tactic was ostensibly warning about unsafe medical procedures, a situation that they wanted to change. Flash forward to 2010 and we see President Barack Obama and his Democrats about to send not just abortions, but our entire medial system into a veritable “back alley” situation with a shortage of doctors, rationing, denials of service, and outrageously high insurance premiums.

And now we can add a new twist to the dangerous situation that Obama is forcing on patients in the U.S. The Associated Press reports that 28 states are already seeing a shortage of primary care physicians, a dearth of doctors that will only get worse with Obamacare, and these states are looking toward expanding the medical responsibilities of nurses to cover the shortage.

So, what we see here is a situation where less qualified practitioners will see their roles expanding in the era of Obamacare! Healthcare practitioners with less training and experience are being given more responsibilities in our healthcare system even as Obama claimed that his goal was to improve our nation’s healthcare.

This news comes out on the very same day that a Massachusetts judge ruled that the not-for-profit insurance industry in the Bay State is not allowed to raise its premiums to cover rising expenses.

In Massachusetts, then, even a not-for-profit insurance company will be forced to go upside down in expense to income ratios. According to this court the state can mandate every last business practice, can force the insurance companies to cover any procedure that it is politically motivated to demand it provide and can also deny the company the ability to raise the funds to actually cover all those procedures! At this point it is no longer insurance but has become straight out welfare.

And guess where the extra money will have to come from? Taxes. So, instead of the insurance company being allowed to raise the money it needs to fund the government mandated coverage, the insurance will be faced with a dilemma. How will it approve procedures that there is no money to cover? And when they turn to government to ask that question, government will simply raise taxes to cover the loss. And all the while wait times will increase, services will be denied more often, and people will be ill served. (Already wait times in Massachusetts are increasing. It is now a 50-day wait to see a primary care physician.)

What will it all mean? With some states giving lower trained personnel a larger role in healthcare which will surely put patients in danger, with wait times increasing wildly and denials sure to come, why can’t we expect “back alley healthcare” to come soon on the tail of all these ills?

Obama is certainly putting American patients in danger with his ill-conceived policies. Can “back alley healthcare” be too far off?

Hopefully by now you are aware that Senator Chris McDaniel and I have filed a citizens class action lawsuit against the PPACA, the liberty-robbing “Obamacare” statute, in the federal court for the Southern District of Mississippi.  Please see our prior article on this subject here. The response from liberty-loving Americans has been overwhelming — from Big Media, not so much.  I understand their disinterest, though, because really important things like the travails of a billionaire golfer takes up so much of their time.

That’s quite alright, because I would rather come directly to you to make important announcements like this:  Lt. Governor Phil Bryant has entered our class action lawsuit against the PPACA as an individual, private citizen.  He is serving as a Petitioner, and is the class representative for a uniquely important class:  employees of the State of Mississippi.

Lt. Governor Phil Bryant addresses crowd in Jackson, Mississippi

Why this new class is important.

Congress is now dictating what must be — and must not be — in your health insurance plan.  In other words, they are controlling the health insurance that your employer is offering you.  Socialism is defined as “government ownership or control of all the means of production (farms, factories, mines, and natural resources) and all the means of distribution (transportation, communications, and the instruments of commerce).”  Realize, “socialized medicine” is here, right now.  Even worse, by controlling what health insurance plans must be offered, Congress and the Executive branch are controlling your employer, and thus your employment.

Your liberty depends on the survival of your republic.  The PPACA is a direct attack on the republican form of government.

Every kid who’s ever put hand over heart and recited the Pledge of Allegiance knows that we live in a republic:  “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Kids pledging allegiance to the flag, and "to the republic for which it stands"

In fact, we have been blessed with what James Madison called “the compound republic of America,” having been guaranteed that each state is a sovereign republic in itself, not just the national government.  In this unique and hugely successful system of government, federal control over the states is an anathema:

This separation of the two spheres is one of the Constitution’s structural protections of liberty. “Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch, a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front.”

Printz v. U.S., 521 U.S. 898 (1997) (Scalia, J).  We’ve spent so much time focusing on the separation of powers amongst the three branches of government that we’ve forgotten about the very vital separation of powers between the States and Congress.  If the federal government dictates what the States can do, our republic is destroyed, and liberty-robbing tyranny is all that can result.

Congress has chosen to commandeer our state employees, even our elected officials, with the PPACA.  Lest you think that “commandeer” is too strong of a word to use, consider that the federal government now controls the terms and conditions of employment for all state workers everywhere.  States now must offer health insurance plans dictated only by the federal government; we all recognize that a health insurance plan is one of the most important aspects of the employer-employee relationship.  In fact, since it is nothing more than a form of compensation, it really is the most important aspect.

In the Printz v. US case I cited above, Justice Scalia said:  “When we were at last confronted squarely with a federal statute that unambiguously required the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program, our decision should have come as no surprise.”  I think you can guess that the Court’s response was rather chilly toward the federal government’s overreaching.  In FERC v. Mississipi, the Supreme Court said that “this Court never has sanctioned explicitly a federal command to the States to promulgate and enforce laws and regulations.” FERC v. Mississippi, 456 U.S. 742, 761-62 (1982).  Congress may not commandeer state officials, or any state employees, in order to implement federal law.  In substance, this is exactly what Congress has done with the PPACA.  This is a clear violation of state sovereignty, and utterly destructive of the Constitution’s guarantee of a compound republic.

This class, that of state employees, is uniquely important.  Do you really want Congress to dictate the terms of employment between your state government and your state officials and civil servants?  Realize, this is 180 degrees out of phase with the intentions of the Framers, and with the clear statements implementing their vision found in the Constitution that they wrote.

Why is it important that Lt. Governor Bryant is a petitioner?

Lt. Governor Bryant is showing that any elected official can do this.  Actually, any state employee can do this, but we all recognize how important it is for us to get our elected leaders to take point, and lead.

Lt. Governor Bryant has a long history of fighting for conservative beliefs and traditional values.  His persistence in promoting conservative public policy stems from his belief that people, not the government, know best how to take care of themselves.  The way I see it, he has been fighting for liberty — freedom — for years.  I cannot think of a better person in this great State to represent the new class we have added.

He’s also a candidate for Governor.  Think about this — why shouldn’t our candidates, whether currently in office of not, be petitioners?  Why shouldn’t we go to town hall meetings, campaign rallies, and press conferences in order to push them into action, not just into making statements?

Here in Mississippi, as in other states, most people want for our state to enter into the lawsuit filed in Florida by fifteen other states.  Governor Haley Barbour (the very effective chairman of the Republican Governors Association and a former RNC chairman) has been pushing our Attorney General — a Democrat — to get into the lawsuit, but to no avail.  Governor Barbour is quite resourceful, and we hope that he will find a way to work around this obstacle.  Regardless, Lt. Governor Bryant isn’t waiting for anyone — he’s taking action now.

Put up or shut up.

Here in Mississippi, I’m proud to say that we’re up to two prominent elected officials (Senator Chris McDaniel and Lt. Governor Phil Bryant) who are taking positive, substantive action to save our healthcare system from the clutches of socialism, and our republican form of government from Congress.  How many does your state have?  None?  Well then, maybe it’s time that you made them earn their pay.

Write a letter, fax or email to the elected officials in your own state and tell them it’s time to stop posturing.  Are any of them hiding behind their Attorney General, saying “gee whiz, I want the state to get involved, but we can’t force the AG to do it, sorry guys”?  Tell them it’s time to put up, or shut up.  It takes courage for an elected state official to do what Lt. Governor Bryant is doing, but that is precisely what we demand of our elected officials — courage to do what is right.

So, what are you waiting for?  Get busy.

Have you wondered how healthcare reform will play out? You only need to look at how healthcare has been laid out by the World Health Organization (WHO). The International Classification of Disease also known as the ICD is the coding system that is used to classify diseases. It is published by the (WHO), and it is also the basis for reimbursement for hospitals and physicians.

There have been several iterations of the ICD. The most recent is ICD-10. Seven countries have adopted it to date. The first country to adopt it for clinical use was Australia in 1998 then Canada in 2000. The most recent country to adopt it was Thailand in 2007. The United States is scheduled to adopt it in 2013. Just in time for the major pieces for the healthcare reform pieces to take effect. The mad rush to pass healthcare reform makes a lot of sense when this time table is taken into consideration. It finally brings the US healthcare system into the global healthcare system overseen by the WHO.

How will our healthcare system change when 30 million new people will be covered and will need healthcare? The system in British Columbia, Canada provides an example of what we can expect. They have adopted a healthcare system that has clinical treatment guidelines set forth by a protocols advisory committee. Our healthcare reform system also sets up an advisory panel that will use evidence based medicine.

These advisory panels set up treatment flow sheets that will make it easy for healthcare providers such as physician assistants to provide care. Now I understand how Governor Rendell can make the statement that he did a couple of weeks ago that health care providers are “just as good as primary care physicians”. Although we have a shortage of physicians, the statement is clearly based in the premise that anyone can use algorithms to cookbook medical care. All you need to do is connect the dots.

This is great until you apply it to the real world. Take for example the treatment of middle ear infections or sore throats. I have treated many children who finally get referred to an ENT after months of recurrent ear infections after they have speech delay and/or are not doing well in school because of hearing loss from the chronic infection. I have also treated adults with hearing loss that resulted from childhood ear infections that were never definitively treated as children with ventilation tubes. What is lost in these guidelines is the fact that in some patients surgical intervention is cheaper in the long run because it can solve the underlying problem instead of managing the symptom.

The one size fits all approach takes away the importance of individualized medical care. Although these guidelines are based on research they will inevitably lag behind research, and that will have a negative impact on patient care. For example, the Canadian Advisory Panel guideline for the treatment of sore throats is not true. “With the exception of rare infections by certain pharyngeal bacterial pathogens (e.g., Corynebacterium diphtheriae, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Arcanobacterium haemolyticum), antimicrobial therapy is of no proven benefit in the treatment of acute pharyngitis due to bacteria other than group A streptococcus”.  I just drained an abscess on a patient who was not placed on antibiotics because the strep test was negative. He actually had a staphylococcal infection. This blanket application if applied to other diseases such as screening mammograms and other ailments can lead to people falling through clinical cracks and getting sicker requiring more expensive and invasive care.  The practice of good medicine will always be unpredictable and will require the ability to practice the art of medicine.

A preview of the future:

1. the payment set up with covered medical services in British Columbia
2. Physicians in the US are already being paid using this system of bundling charges.  The Canadian fee schedule is similar to rates paid by Medicaid. If healthcare reform leads to the implementation of the ICD-10 fee schedule with the adoption of these lower rates, it will likely lead physicians in private practice to drop out of the system in order to stay in business. Quite simply, adding this to the ever rising overhead and malpractice premiums will simply be overwhelming.

More than 100 staff members appointed by three Minnesota congressmen who serve as chairman or ranking member on powerful House committees appear to be exempt from a key requirement in the controversial health care reform bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law.

• Cong. James Oberstar (D), Chairman, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee–59 Democrat committee staff.
• Cong. Collin Peterson (D), Chairman, House Agriculture Committee–33 Democrat committee staff.
• Cong. John Kline (R), Ranking Member, House Education and Labor Committee–23 Republican committee staff.

This is the question that Rush Limbaugh posed to his listeners on Monday: Is Paul Rahe right? And it is, alas, an all-too-open question. Rush was responding to a piece, entitled “A New Birth of Freedom,” posted on BigGovernment.com early on Saturday, in which I endorsed in part the analysis of our current situation articulated by Mark Steyn here and, at greater length, here, but insisted that he underestimates American civic spirit. Where Mark sees catastrophe, I see opportunity.

Mark is, I believe, undoubtedly right in supposing that, if we acquiesce in the massive expansion of the administrative entitlement state shoved through a reluctant Congress on 21 March by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, the game is up. The progressives have for the most part dominated American politics for something like a century — ever since the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 in a presidential race in which the only defender of the American constitution came in third. And step by step they have centralized power and influence in Washington and subverted the separation of powers. In consequence, today, our real rulers are the bureaucrats. Within the administrative state, they make rules that have the force of law, they enforce those rules, they adjudicate all disputes arising therefore, and they are unaccountable. It is no accident that civil servants have tenure in their jobs and boast of higher salaries and far better benefits than their counterparts in the private sector.

Moreover, the progressives have succeeded in making a substantial proportion of the American people wards of the state — dependent in one fashion or another on federal largesse — and no body of men is more beholden to the federal government than the CEOs of our largest corporations. It is telling that Wall Street voted with its pocketbook for Barack Obama in 2008. It is telling that the pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies lined up behind the Obama administration’s healthcare proposals. And it is telling that big business is treading cautiously now. Those who run these companies know where their bread is buttered.

Mark Steyn’s two replies to my piece — here and, more emphatically, here — are cogent.

He is nobody’s fool, and he understands the argument articulated in my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift as well as I do, if not better. He comes from Canada; he has lived in Great Britain. He has witnessed the collapse of civic spirit elsewhere, and he recognizes what are the consequences of a wholesale abandonment of the spirit of self-reliance. After all, one can be a citizen only if one enters the public arena on one’s own two feet. Local self-government, where Alexis de Tocqueville’s Americans were trained in citizenship, is now just another beggar lining up with a tin cup in search of federal largesse. Civic associations are now for the most part lobbying operations with their own tin cups. Americans are losing the capacity to join together with their neighbors to do themselves the things that need doing. As I argued in a piece posted almost a year ago on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Tocqueville’s death, we have become increasingly European in our outlook and conduct. We have contracted what I call in my book “The French Disease.”

Here is the warning that Congressman Paul Ryan issued in a speech delivered in Oklahoma City on 31 March:

…In 2004, 20 percent of US households were getting about 75 percent of their income from the federal government.

In other words, one out of five families in America is already government dependent. Another 20 percent were receiving almost 40 percent of their income from federal programs, so another one in five has become government reliant for their livelihood.

All told, 60 percent – three out of five households in America – were receiving more government benefits and services (in dollar value) than they were paying back in taxes.

On the face of it, as Mark intimates in the last of his posts cited above, the task of restoring limited government is insuperable.

Perhaps it is. But I think the contrary. My reasons are simple. The administrative state, as we know it, grew for the most part gradually and unobtrusively. Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave it a mighty push, but he did so in a time in which the majority of Americans were desperate. Yes, Lyndon Baines Johnson gave it another mighty push, but he had the advantage that the opposition was divided and disheartened. This is not the case now. Barack Obama has torn the mask off. We can now see the tyrannical ambition at the heart of the progressive impulse. Moreover, thanks to the Tea-Party Movement, fear of which caused the Republican Party to grow a spine, Barack Obama now faces a united opposition; and, in opposing his healthcare initiative, the Republicans have articulated an argument that is both true and cogent — that there is no way to pay for a massive, new entitlement program on this scale without crippling the American economy.

This is not a matter of rocket science. When the situation we are in is explained, anyone who has ever managed to balance a checkbook can understand what is at stake. If taxes — especially taxes on employment and investment, the two areas targeted in the healthcare bill — are raised to a sufficient level, investors will not risk what they have acquired by investing it in new and expanded enterprises — they will hoard their funds as they did in the 1930s and the early 1940s– and businesses will not hire. The practical consequence of Obamacare is economic stagnation and long-term structural unemployment of just the sort that has dogged France now for something like thirty years. If this argument is restated, if it is advanced time and again over the next three years, it will strike home. It already has.

The simple truth is that the welfare state is bankrupt. The money that earners pay for Medicare does not come close to covering the costs. This year, Social Security will pay out more money than it takes in. There is no Social Security Trust Fund. Lyndon Johnson and his successors borrowed that money long ago and spent it. All that the so-called trust fund has is a collection of IOUs about to come due.

There is a reason for the crisis of the welfare state. Before Otto von Bismarck invented social insurance, before his invention was picked up in country after country, the elderly looked to their children for support; and, in part with this in mind, they had them aplenty. Everywhere in the world, however, where social insurance has been instituted, the birthrate has gradually gone down, as mores and manners have adjusted to new circumstances — and, irony of ironies, this deterioration in the birthrate has everywhere had as a consequence a relative decline in the number of earners able to fund the benefits expected by the retired. The shortfall would not be all that severe were it not for the fact that modern medicine enables Americans to live much longer lives than those who established the Social Security Administration and Medicare imagined possible. Doubling down with Obamacare promises to turn what was already a very serious problem into an unmitigated catastrophe, and plenty of Americans recognize the gravity of the situation. It was the so-called “stimulus bill,” which ostentatiously looted the future to support constituencies loyal to the Democratic Party, that initiated the eruption we call the Tea-Party Movement. And now we have “healthcare reform” to complete what the “stimulus bill” did not accomplish.

Economically, all of this is a disaster. Politically, however, it is an opportunity that did not exist in 1936 or in 1965. I believe, in fact, that it is a greater opportunity than the one that the Republicans halfheartedly grasped in 1946. As I contended in an earlier post, all that the Republicans have to do now is to restate the critique that FDR directed at Herbert Hoover and the business progressives at the Democratic Convention in 1936, for the argument that he advanced on that occasion — that “a small group” of his fellow Americans was intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives” — is now quite obviously true. FDR’s words should be posted on every billboard in America.

What, you might ask, about the 60% of Americans who receive more from the government than they pay in? I will respond to a what amounts to a rhetorical question with a series of rhetorical questions. Can this be sustained in the age of Obamacare? What happens when those who pay the taxes go on strike, as they did in the 1930s and 1940s? Keep in mind that, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, unemployment was still at 15%. Moreover, many of those who depend on federal largesse are ashamed to be in the condition they are in. When the Republicans forced Bill Clinton to acquiesce in welfare reform in the 1990s, those forced off the rolls went to work with hardly a whimper. There is something shameful about living off others, and everyone in the United States understands as much. What Americans want are genuine jobs, and that is precisely what Barack Obama intends to deny them.

What seems like a catastrophe is a grand opportunity, and the only thing that can save Barack Obama and the Democrats is the Republican Party. If they Republicans cave in, if they return to their traditional role as tax collectors for the welfare state, then and only then will Obama’s coup d’état become a success. If, however, under fierce pressure from the Tea Party Movement, they stick to their guns, if they articulate the argument for limited government and balanced budgets, if they are unwilling to compromise, there will be a realignment. If Mark Steyn is right about the plight we are in — and he may well be right — it will not be because the American people are corrupt beyond repair. It will be because the Republicans are a worthless lot. This is their testing time — and ours, for if we keep the pressure up, if we push from office anyone inclined to cave in, the Republicans may surprise us by conducting themselves in an honorable fashion.

Democrats understand that passage of Obama’s healthcare “reforms” will probably hurt them in November, so they’re doing everything they can to dampen the anger directed at them and turn it against someone – anyone – else.

Anger-dampening was built into the bill, postponing the tax increases and other burdens Americans will feel directly until after the 2010 elections (and some until after 2012). Obama and the congressional Democrats are out bragging about the rainbows and unicorns they’ve produced.

But now several major American companies – AT&T, Verizon, Deere & Co. and Caterpillar – are spoiling the carefully-planned narrative by saying that they will incur huge losses (impliedly causing job losses) because of the costs they will incur under the Obamacare plan.

As a result, congressional Dems are planning a public punishment of the heretics.

According to a Washington Examiner report, “Caterpillar stated in an SEC filing they would earn $100M less in 2010, Verizon sent emails to employees informing them of their expected costs to increase in the short term, and AT&T filed with the SEC that they expect a $1B hit because of the new law.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Cal), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has asked the CEO’s of AT&T, Deere & Co., Verizon and Caterpillar to testify on April 21 at a hearing into the companies’ declared financial losses caused by the new healthcare legislation.

In letters to the CEOs, Waxman has demanded that they produce every piece of paper (and e-mail) seen or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the cost impact projections of the healthcare “reforms.”

The hearing will be a nasty show trial. It is intended to vilify, not find fact: to shift the blame from congress to the industry executives who are trying to do their jobs in accordance with the law.

I know. I’ve been before the same committee three times, twice advising and accompanying principal witnesses and once as a witness myself, as a Defense Department official under House subpoena.

These hearings will be run with the same playbook. But the CEOs shouldn’t play by the standard industry rules: if they play hardball, they’ll come out unscathed.

The companies (or the government agency) always play defensive. Industry executives have to answer to risk-averse boards and government officials don’t want to risk an open breach with congressional appropriators. If they are unwise in the extreme, they fail to claim the protections and assert the privileges against giving up documents they are entitled to claim. (Most of the documents Waxman wants will be proprietary to the company, containing financial details they cannot make public without giving competitors an advantage. Many will be protected by the attorney-client privilege).

The companies should refuse to produce any documents that are proprietary or legally privileged. What is produced before the hearing will be selectively leaked (no matter what assurances they get from committee staffers) to bolster the narrative of wrongdoing the committee wants to create and sustain. And then comes the hearing.

Before an assembled array of television news cameras and reporters, the witnesses will first be subjected to verbal assault by Waxman and the other committee Dems in their “introductory remarks.”

These remarks will be comprised of freighted words – “fraud,” “overcharging,” “manipulation of accounting” and such – that the witnesses must endure stoically, every frown duly televised. The freighted words are written into these speeches in a manner calculated to score soundbites on the evening news.

The day’s victims then give their opening statements which are uniformly non-combative. Advised by too many defensive subordinates, they welcome the chance to clear up the record. And that chance is never given.

For hours they will be subjected to accusatory questions, their answers cut short by interruptions by seemingly-exasperated Democrats who will roll their eyes to the skies for the cameras, and chuckle in a “you can’t expect us to believe that” tone at what answers are permitted.

But there is another way, one which will keep the blame for the costs and job-killing effects where it belongs. It should be built into the CEOs statements and every answer they give.

It’s in two parts. First, attack the Dems’ strategy in every answer. Avoid using the freighted words the Dems will use. Don’t say, “We didn’t manipulate accounting.” Say, instead, “We are following the law to the letter. We didn’t vote for it.”

Second, say, and keep saying, “We didn’t create this situation. The 219 House members who voted for this bill are responsible.” Have in your hand the list of congressmen who voted for the Senate bill. Begin every answer with, “I note, sir, that you voted (or didn’t vote) for the bill which causes these problems.”

Afterward, don’t run from the hearing room. Hold your own press conference in the hall outside and stay on the offensive. Only audacity will win the healthcare political war, and that’s all this hearing is about.

[Note: This is Part II in an ongoing series about the Clinton Redux, the Obama Administration and their political wars against Americans. Click here for Part I and Part II]

The attacks on the tea party movement are continuing. In a March 28 New York Times article, When Does Political Anger Turn to Violence? The NYT ran a photograph juxtaposing the 1960s terrorist group, the Weather Underground Organization, on top of a photo of protestors protesting Obamacare in Washington.

The caption: “Varying degrees of rage: The Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, second from right, during the Days of Rage in 1969, and anti-health reform protesters in Washington on Sunday.”

In the article, the “anti-health reform” protestors are identified as tea party protestors. Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist and former leader of the Weathermen, by his own account, is President Obama’s “family friend,” At minimum, Ayers launched Obama’s political career from his house in Chicago. Today he is a “distinguished” professor. During his Weathermen days, Ayers said: “We are revolutionary Communists. We’re fighting to destroy imperialism and established (sic) a socialist state.” Does that sound like the Tea Party Movement?

Let’s take a look at Ayers’ Weathermen to distinguish where their anger came from that turned to violence to see if the NYT is on to something. We know the anti-health reform/tea party protestors are angry over Obamacare.

To start, to my knowledge, the tea party protestors have not traveled to Fidel Castro’s Cuba to conspire against America, unlike Bill Ayers. According to a series of declassified 1976 FBI reports, released under the Freedom of Information Act, Ayers, and his future wife Bernadine Dohrn traveled to Castro’s Cuba before the October 1969 Days of Rage riots as part of the Venceremos Brigades.

The Venceremo Brigades was a Cuban spy operation tasked to recruit “individuals who are politically oriented and who someday may obtain a position, elective or appointive, somewhere in the U.S. Government, which would provide the Cuban Government with access to political, economic and military intelligence.”

“The ideological mating between the American radical left and the Vietnamese Communist, with Fidel Castro playing matchmaker, exploded in…the streets of Chicago. It is love that feeds the inextinguishable hate against the United States.”

Following are highlights–according to the FBI.

In a September 1969 speech entitled “A Strategy to Win” Weatherman Ayers said, “We’re not just saying… bring the U.S. troops home and deploy them some place some other time, we’re saying bring the war home…”

How did Weatherman Ayers propose to achieve his objectives? By quickly setting up a “National Action Staff,” all over the county to “build a revolutionary youth movement…”

POLITICS AND STRATEGY: BRING THE WAR HOME!

One of the most important reasons for calling the National Action lies with the decision… that it was possible and necessary to build an anti-imperialist, working class youth movement in the mother country…

And what became clear to people—through the struggles at Columbia and Chicago, at San Francisco State and at Kent State—was that putting forward our politics in an aggressive way was the ONLY way to organize the masses of people in this country. That only by dealing with the issues of white supremacy, the black liberation struggle, Third World struggles, and the fight against imperialism, only by challenging the consciousness of the people could we ever develop a movement capable of helping topple the imperialist state…

Chicago is the site…We are coming back to turn pig city into the people’s city.”

After Ayers’ Days of Rage, a four-day “war on the Chicago police” where 287 people were arrested and 59 police officers “sustained personal injury,” the FBI report tells us on October 21, 1969, the New Left Notes reported a Weatherman update:

“…We came to do material damage to pig Amerika and all that it’s about — its school-jails, its pig armies, its fat businessmen, and its greedy empire. We came to do it in the road—in the open—so that white Amerika could dig on the opening of the a new front, on the birth of a new brigade in the world liberation army. We came to attack—because we know that the only things to defend in honkie Amerika are the privileges—the cars, the apartments, the hotels, the TV’s,–that we’ve gained off the sweat of the people of the world. We came to vamp on those privileges and destroy the m—–f—– from the inside…

From here on it’s one battle after another… Pig Amerika—Beware: There’s an army growing right in your guts, and it’s going to help bring you down.”

Now we have a good idea where the Weathermen anger came from. Was NYT attempting to draw a moral equivalency to the tea party movement and Ayers’ Weathermen?

That remains unclear as does the reason why Ayers, who dodged prison because of a prosecutorial misconduct, befriended Barack Obama.

Perhaps, the FBI report offers an answer, “Good revolutionaries are never deterred by odds.”

Incidentally, Bill Ayers expertise in creating youth movements may help explain how President Obama, formerly a relatively unknown Senator from Chicago, was able to build such a remarkable youth movement and grass roots organization that outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton and propelled him into the White House. Perhaps that’s a story the New York Times might want to check out.

Cross-posted at marinkapeschmann.com

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…”

Rep. Phil Hare, January 3, 2007, Washington D.C.

“I don’t worry about the Constitution…”

Rep. Phil Hare, April 1, 2010, Quincy IL

Three years after my opponent Rep. Phil Hare took his first oath to defend and uphold the Constitution, he voted in lockstep with Nancy Pelosi and other left coast liberals to take away individual freedom from every citizen in the United States.

When he was recently asked at a town hall meeting in Quincy, Ill. why he so stridently supported the Pelosi-Reid Obamacare bill, even though it unconstitutionally forces every U.S. Citizen to buy government approved health insurance or face a state imposed penalty, he stated that he didn’t worry about the constitution.

His decision to knowingly disregard his oath to defend the constitution so that he could support the now infamous Obamacare bill and the Chicago-style, strong-arm tactics that made it’s passage possible reveals a troubling and radical belief that our rights as Americans are not God given but are based on his power as our congressman.

This elitist, out of touch mentality that representative Hare has espoused and which has taken hold in our nation’s capital, I believe, must be forcefully rejected.  I am running to replace Representative Hare in Congress in order to get rid of Obamacare, the elitist ideology that it represents and to restore the trust of the people of western Illinois

My name is Bobby Schilling. I am the father of 10 beautiful children, a small business owner and I care about the constitution.

Here in western Illinois, we are like most Americans.  We work hard, look out for our neighbors and are willing to fight to preserve our families and communities. We are proud of the men and women who have made our country great.

But for the past three years we have been represented by an elitist politician who has been more concerned with his own advancement than the rights of his constituents in here in western Illinois

He has broken the promise that he made to us to protect our most fundamental rights as Americans enshrined in the constitution.

Representative Phil Hare swore to us before God that he would defend the constitution and by his own recent admission, he knowingly broke that promise.

We need a congressman who will represent western Illinois, not the power brokers and lobbyists in Washington.

Please join my campaign in the fight to restore Constitution.

Contribute to my campaign here.

Join my campaign here.

If I had a dollar for every time some tool during the health care debate brought up how “we’re the only industrialized” nation in the world without socialized health care I’d have a lot of money. Why, I could even retire from my current job of poisoning the environment and taking advantage of the working man. I could, you know, relax.

Even the U.K., the drones blather, has government run health care. I guess they think we can identify better with the U.K. because they’re mostly white and speak English. I don’t know. I won’t waste any time trying to figure out the left’s thought process. Doing so would be as dangerous and pointless as trying to decipher the Necronomicon.

Invoking the U.K. as a model should, naturally, have the opposite effect on the American psyche. I hate to bring it up, but we kinda fought a war a couple hundred years ago to insure that we were NOT just like England. We already had the English life. We were right there and we rejected it.

Think of all the things we missed out on, only to aspire to end up in the same place. Our fish and chips are inferior. Guinness served over here is never quite as fresh. We don’t have tea time. I really like tea. We also ditched the cool accents. I mean seriously, I could have sounded like Ian McKellan or Sean Connery if it wasn’t for those clowns Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Thanks to the American Revolution we can’t claim Led Zepplin, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Arctic Monkeys, The Smiths, Blur or the Spice Girls as our own. James Bond is not our brother. Neither is Dr. Who. On top of it, I would probably be a Lord or Earl or something. Damn it, Lord Leigh Scott of Wauwatosa sounds freaking awesome! Thanks a lot Thomas Paine.

Jerks.

The second half to the whole “we’re the only nation to not have” nonsense is that we are the “richest” nation. To that, I would like to affirm the obvious. We are the richest nation precisely because we DON’T have bloated, intrusive, nanny state government.

But Leigh, they say, it’s over. They passed it. Elections have consequences. Just deal with it.

I think that’s a dangerous idea. Accepting defeat when it is so far on the horizon for our great nation would be a huge mistake. I quote my almost countryman Winston Churchill when I say “Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old”.

No matter how you want to spin it, what happened at the end of March was indeed historic. Circumventing the “spirit” of the law to force a massive expansion of government has never happened before. Both the Social Security Acts of 1935 and 1965 passed with healthy bipartisan majorities. They weren’t “squeakers” voted late on a Sunday night after months of back room deals and shady pay-offs.

The process that just gave us the Obamacare more closely resembles the power grabs in Central America than it does anything Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton wasted their time writing about.

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention Lily Allen and Oasis. Great, we can claim Lady Gaga and Avril Lavigne. Wait, Avril Lavigne is Canadian? Damn it. Thanks again Alexander Hamilton.

Back to the point. The Left has made a critical error here. My Dad used to say “never make a threat unless you’re willing to follow through”. He was talking about fights on the playground, and later in business about suing people, but I think it’s true here. When you try to rig the system, ignore the will of the people, and rely on a favorable press to push a socialist agenda you better have the other toys that usually come in the evil dictator/commie/socialist toolkit. The American Left doesn’t.

Do you really think that any of this stuff is enforceable? What are they going to do when we all just stop paying taxes? What if we simply say “no thanks” to signing up with Blue Cross/Blue Shield? There aren’t enough jails. How long before the local police refuse to arrest people? The new bill calls for 15,000 new IRS agents, not 15 million.

Do you think that the 101st Airborne is going to accept an order to invade Arlington, TX?

The only way socialism overtakes America is if we accept it. If we simply mope around and complain about our taxes and the government like we always have. The only way this becomes the nightmare we all fear is if we let it.

And that is exactly what they expect us to do.

Unlike their heroes in Venezuela and Cuba, the left doesn’t have the muscle. I’ve gone head to head with union thugs. Not that scary. Sorry Nancy Pelosi, but I don’t see a Che Guevara in your future who can force social justice with the barrel of a gun.

It’s going to take more than Nancy Pelosi’s over-sized gavel, MSNBC, and presidential double talk to drive this country into the same recycle bin that the EU finds itself. It would take guns. And thanks to George Washington and Co., we have those too.

The Second American Revolution will be bloodless. It will amount to rank and file citizens sitting on their hands and on their wallets. Remember what our almost countrywoman Margaret Thatcher said; “the problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”. Agreed Maggie. I say we cut it the purse strings early.

The ultimate genius of the Founding Fathers wasn’t simply the Constitution. We saw how malleable that piece of paper was Sunday night. No, their genius is the political philosophy behind it. It’s in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and Paine’s Common Sense. It’s now part of our DNA, our national identity. The government works for us, we don’t work for it. When the government forgets that and oversteps its bounds…time for a new government.

And that idea, my friends, it tougher to beat than a few parliamentary procedures or stubborn representatives.

So I take back what I said. Who wants to be an Earl anyway? The American Revolution insured that we have what no one else has: true liberty and freedom. Millions of our countrymen did not sacrifice their lives to allow us to slip into the same wretched trap that the rest of the world has. Our countrymen stared down legions of Redcoats, and we can’t stare down a botoxed illiterate like Nancy Pelosi? Our countrymen endured hand to hand combat with Nazi SS soldiers and we can’t put a moron like Paul Krugman in his place? Right now our brave brothers and sisters battle crazed Islamic militants who dream of death, and we can’t tell the goon at Starbucks with three earrings who lives in his parent’s basement, working on his “band”, where to stick it? Please.

Outside of our fondness for scotch and red meat, we are now nothing like our cousins in jolly old England. Thank God for that. Sure, the U.K. can claim Duran Duran, but we have Nirvana. And Prince. And The Doors. Plus, we have MGD and PBR. Guinness is good, but it’s a bit filling, like a milkshake. I’d like to insert a Daniel Day Lewis “milkshake” joke here, but I don’t think enough people will get it.

Anyway, I still kinda wish I had the cool accent.

Back in November, when Peter Robinson interviewed me for Uncommon Knowledge, he waited until the last segment to throw down the gauntlet, asking me bluntly why I was so much more sanguine regarding the future than was the estimable Mark Steyn. My reply, which caught him off guard, was what he jocularly called “a low blow.” For I said something like this: “Mark Steyn is a Canadian. What would you expect? I’d be a pessimist myself if I were a Canadian.”

I would not want to deny that my ad hominem argument struck a bit below the belt, but I nonetheless thought it apt, and I have not in any way changed my mind. Mark is a man of keen understanding and quick wit, and he bears comparison with George Will and Charles Krauthammer, the very best of our pundits. Moreover; as a Canadian who has lived in Great Britain, he has firsthand experience of the profound damage done by what I, echoing Alexis de Tocqueville, termed soft despotism in my recent book. When he writes, in a recent post, “ it’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished,” he is surely right. Indeed, I agree with almost every word in the following:

Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: . . . the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be “insurers”  in any meaningful sense of that term (i.e., evaluators of risk), and once that’s clear we’ll be on the fast track to Obama’s desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.

If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It’s a huge transformative event in Americans’ view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Their bet is that it can’t be undone, and that over time, as I’ve been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there’s plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.

More prosaically, it’s also unaffordable. That’s why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it’s less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we’ll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America’s enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.

Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon.

Mark’s ruminations make for a depressing read, as does the longer version that originally appeared in the pages of National Review, but what he has to say comes close to being on the mark. If the program passed in the House of Representatives on March 21st and signed into law thirty-six hours thereafter is fully implemented and left in place for any considerable length of time, it will complete the project begun by the Progressives when they first took control of the federal government in 1912. We will, as Mark argues, be indistinguishable from the Canadians and the Europeans; our character as a people will change; we will be transformed into subjects and wards of the state, and we will no longer be citizens; our economy will stagnate; and we will have neither the resolve nor the resources with which to defend our country and its way of life. If we acquiesce, we really are doomed.

This is what gives me hope. For we are not yet a people apt to acquiesce in dictates handed down by our lords and masters. When Britain and Canada drifted into socialism, there were no tea parties spontaneously formed by ordinary citizens to buck the trend. The British and the Canadians lacked the spirit of resistance – though, to be fair, it lived on in the likes of Margaret Thatcher.

We Americans are made of sterner stuff. During the Cold War, we defended the Free World. In our absence, I am convinced, everyone else would have given way. I do not mean that we are everything that once we were. The public school system, the welfare state, the consumer culture, the sexual revolution, social security, and Medicare have sapped our sense of self-reliance, our energies, and our strength. After Pearl Harbor, entire fraternities marched into town to join the armed forces. On 9/11, I was teaching a class at the University of Tulsa entitled Historical Studies in the Origins of War. That evening my students interrupted my lecture to ask that I speak about what had happened that day. When I told them that we were at war and asked how many of them intended to enlist, not a single hand went up. We are, sadly, less instinctively apt to insist on looking after ourselves than were our forebears.

But, Mark Steyn to the contrary notwithstanding, we have not yet entirely lost the American spirit. What happened at the town halls in August, what took place in Virginia, in New Jersey, and, most dramatically, in Massachusetts proves the contrary. Barack Obama and his minions are indeed persuaded that public sentiment does not matter. They could not care less that the citizens do not consent, and they believe that what they have done cannot be undone. “Yes, we can,” they chant. But the truth is they can’t, for they are wrong.

Never, in the history of the United States, has a political party dared, in the face of public opinion fully formed and fiercely adverse, to carry so ambitious a bill without a modicum of cover from the opposition. What the Democrats have done is a breathtaking expression of contempt not just for public sentiment as revealed in the polling data but also for the verdict handed down by the people of Massachusetts at the polls in January. What they have done would never have been attempted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a healthy respect for public opinion. What Barack Obama calls the audacity of hope is reckless in the extreme.

As I have argued in a recent post, Abraham Lincoln was right when he wrote, “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” What this means in the present circumstances cannot be overestimated. The Republicans, if they seize the occasion, will have the rapt attention of their compatriots. If they expose fully the tyrannical ambition at the heart of the healthcare bill, they not only can, they will prevail. All that they then have to do is to restate in contemporary terms what FDR said with an eye to Herbert Hoover and the business progressives of the 1920s and the early 1930s: that “a small group” of his fellow Americans was intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives,” for, as is perfectly obvious, that is precisely what Barack Obama and his minions are attempting to do.

This is, as Mark Steyn insists, a very dangerous time. In my judgment, however, it is also a time of almost unprecedented opportunity. We have options that have not been vouchsafed to the friends of liberty for more than sixty years. For, if the Republicans manage to articulate, on the basis of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the rationale for limited government as that rationale is pertinent to the healthcare bill, they will at the same time have articulated the grounds for doing away with the administrative state, and everyone will recognize the consequences.

The larger danger – which I analyzed in detail in Montesquieu & the Logic of Liberty and in Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift – has never been that we Americans would succumb to socialism as a consequence of a coup d’état of the sort being attempted by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and their acolytes. The larger danger has always been what Tocqueville feared: that the citizens of liberal democratic republics would gradually and unobtrusively come to depend on centralized administration for help in every aspect of their lives. Our propensity to drift in the direction of obliviously surrendering our liberties one by one in search of a security that no government can really guarantee has always been where the greatest peril lay.

Like Mark Steyn, I view Barack Obama as “one of the most consequential presidents in history,” but not for the same reasons. In my view, he and today’s Democratic Party represent the last gasp of the Progressive impulse. The tyrannical ambition hidden at the heart of Progressivism’s quest for what Franklin Delano Roosevelt termed “rational administration” Barack Obama has made manifest; and to all with eyes to see, the danger that we have temporized with for nearly a century is now perfectly visible. As Obama himself has insisted in speech after speech, the moment in which we now live is a “defining moment.” What is required in what he calls “this defining moment” is what Abraham Lincoln once called “a new birth of freedom.” The period we just entered could be our finest hour.

Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel and I have filed a class action lawsuit today, Good Friday 2010, challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as “ObamaCare” and a variety of other less polite euphemisms.

We believe that the PPACA is DOA for several equally important reasons, but only one of which has received much attention. Most folks know by now that Congress has invoked the Commerce Clause to justify this massive expansion of governmental power. Our “Good Friday” Complaint spends many pages discussing how Congress has clearly exceeded the limits of its power under the Commerce Clause. I strongly urge you to read the entire Complaint. What I really want to point out, though, are some things you probably don’t know, and definitely will not like — even if you consider yourself a “Liberal.”

Consider for a moment that you have now been commanded to enter into a contract with an insurance corporation, whether you want to or not, whether you need to or not. Yes, there are many who actually choose to be uninsured. For most, it is simply an economic decision that often works out to the uninsured’s economic advantage. Not always, of course, but that’s the beauty of liberty — you get to make the decisions, and live with the good or bad that comes of them.

Now that you realize that a dictate has been handed down, compelling you to contract with an insurance corporation or else, consider what you have to do. It’s not like you can go to a vending machine, swipe your debit card and pull out a policy. You still have to apply. True, they cannot turn you down, but so what? You still have to give a big, scary, mean corporation a lot of private medical and psychological information about yourself and your family. Then, forever after, the insurance corporation’s bureaucrats will gather this private information without even bothering to let you know. As our Complaint states:

Moreover, compelling Plaintiffs to enter into a private contract to purchase insurance from another entity will legally require them to share private and personal information with the contracting party. Specifically, by requiring Plaintiffs to abide by the Act’s individual mandate, Congress is also compelling Plaintiffs to fully disclose past medical conditions, habits and behaviors. Not only will the insurer be privy to all past medical information, Congress’s individual mandate will, by necessity, allow the compelled insurer access to Plaintiffs’ present and future medical information of a confidential nature. If judicially enforceable privacy rights mean anything, then private and confidential medical details certainly merit Constitutional protection. Plaintiffs should not be forced to disclose the most intimate details of their past, present and future medical information.

Do you have an STD? How many abortions have you had? How about a sexual dysfunction? Did your father or mother have cancer? Do you have a birth defect? Have you ever been prescribed drugs for a mental condition, such as anxiety or depression? There are many reasons people have concerns over their medical privacy. The desire to keep one’s medical history private is universal.

Privacy, choice, and Roe v. Wade

Medical privacy is so important that we have enshrined it as fundamental right in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution — just ask the Supreme Court, which even allows women to kill unborn children in order to protect their constitutional right to medical privacy.

If you want health insurance badly enough, you’ll probably choose to give up your medical privacy rights to an insurance corporation. But perhaps you are indifferent to buying health insurance in the first place, and really, you don’t want it in writing anywhere that you’ve had two abortions, or eat Viagra like popcorn. You’ve decided that it would just be better to pay for your healthcare directly and avoid the entire insurance hassle. What’s wrong with this choice? Nothing, if you believe in the concept of liberty.

Forcing citizens to enter into a contract to buy insurance is a bit different than requiring them to buy a loaf of bread. Congress cannot conceivably be said to have the power to force you to buy a loaf of bread, even though that would indeed have some effect on interstate commerce. Think about how much more egregious a denial of liberty it is to force people to contract with an insurance corporation. Those contracts create rights and obligations for both parties, but guess who gets to write the contract? Hint: insurance corporation lawyers. It’s an actual contract that you will actually be forced to sign by your government. You will not have any bargaining power to alter the contract; it’s not even a “take it or leave it” situation, it’s “take it or face the legal consequences.”

Which brings us to another important but poorly understood issue: Just what are the consequences? Exactly how will the mandate will be enforced? Unfortunately, this is something that none of us really know. Congress states outright that there will be a “penalty” assessed for citizens who disobey their command. These lawbreakers will have to pay an amount that will be assessed as a tax. Yes, we all know Congress has the power to tax, but remember, Congress itself has called this tax a “penalty.” As we explain in our Complaint,

Central to the definition of penalty is the “idea of punishment” – “[p]unishment imposed on a wrongdoer . . . in the form of imprisonment or fine. Though usually for crimes, penalties are also sometimes imposed for civil wrongs.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1153 (7th ed. 1999).

Yes, you wrongdoers who decide to go without insurance will be punished by the federal government. You will have to pay a special tax that applies only to wrongdoers like you. The Complaint points out that this “constitutes a capitation and a direct tax that is not apportioned among the states according to census data,” which is unconstitutional in itself. But this does not make great bedtime reading, so I’ll let you in on a secret: It’s a tax that they cannot make you pay.

A plain reading of the individual mandate shows that Congress first sets forth a penalty for failure to buy insurance, then says that regardless of anything written anywhere else in any other law, there can be no criminal penalty:

‘‘(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.—In the case of
any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed
by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any
criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.

Then, to make it even very difficult (perhaps impossible) to civilly enforce the penalty/tax, Congress denied the government any power to file liens or levy any wrongdoer’s property:

‘‘(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.—The Secretary
shall not—
‘‘(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property
of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the
penalty imposed by this section, or
‘‘(ii) levy on any such property with respect to
such failure.’’.

If the feds cannot levy or lien you, then what can they do to get your money? Write scary letters to you? Just what happens to the authority of the federal government when people laugh at these scary letters?

What indeed. We have demanded in our Complaint that if the government has some trick up its sleeve, that we be told what it is. If we are to be punished for not buying something, we deserve to know ahead of time what that punishment might be. That’s not just an old American tradition, it’s a constitutional principle.

The alternative, of course, is for the feds to admit that there is no enforcement mechanism. Consider what that means for a minute: the pièce de résistance of the PPACA is the individual mandate. Without an enforcement mechanism, the individual mandate fails; without the mandate, the entire legislative act fails utterly.

If the government admits, or the federal judiciary declares, that there is no enforcement mechanism for the individual mandate, millions will be free to ignore it. We believe, though, that the lack of an enforcement mechanism makes the individual mandate unconstitutional for reasons that we will discuss further with the federal court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

A call to service

We’ve got Mississippi covered. Now we need for you to do your part to take back your liberty. This lawsuit can be filed in every state in the greatest nation on earth, and it should be. Wherever this abomination applies, there is at least one federal court, often many. Find them, take our lawsuit, change the names and file it. Add to it if you have more arguments. If you are serious about doing so and need information, we are easy to find.

We have much more to say about the unconstitutionality of this abominable act of Congress, and we’re looking forward to your comments. God bless America!

Full Complaint below:

PPACA class action Complaint filed 4-2-10

We have heard a lot lately about my comments relating Obamacare to the failed socialist policies of the Soviet Union. Liberals and a host of radical leftists have mocked my observation in their blogs and some mainstream news outlets have even poked fun at me. However, the transformation of America is no laughing matter.

The parallels between leftist policies today and those of failed socialist states are undeniable; so much so that even a Russian state-owned news commentator was forced to concede my point:

“Republican Devin Nunes accused the bill of continuing the failed Soviet experiment. He was overly emotional but there is a grain of truth in what he said… Apparently, the socialist experience has proved too tempting to be resisted.” (RIANOVOSTI News, March 22, 2010)

Thanks to increasing regulation, rising taxes and greater centralization of power in Washington America is slowly leaving behind the foundation of its economic strength; namely the entrepreneurial energy that comes from freedom. And while a full-fledged Marxist revolution may not be on the horizon, the transformation of America in the image of European socialism is real and it should be of great concern to us all.

The most obvious example of failed central planning remains the Soviet Union. However, failed socialist policies are not limited to the history books. Consider the economic decline and social unrest in Europe.

As a result of government dominance throughout the European economy, member states are facing the current global economic crisis with limited options. The direct pain confronting Europeans is therefore magnified, just as the prospects for economic recovery are limited. These limitations are practical, resulting from the patchwork of laws and regulations imposed on their economies, as well as political, the result of mass dependence on government programs—a dependence shared by all but a handful of wealthy elites.

Evidence of this fact is widely available today. For example, French leaders recently cut federal spending in an attempt to address their national debt crisis. The cuts, however, resulted in massive general strikes, as well as social unrest—riots, looting and mass demonstrations.

Throughout Europe political leaders have been burned in effigy by protestors. They are being forced to choose between social order and financial order. Pay cuts for government employees, for example, result in general strikes. More radical reforms, including those needed for long-term economic health, can’t even be discussed openly.

In the final analysis, without the support of the masses, EU governments are left without the ability to change course and are forced to preside over national decline. I refer to this condition as an economic death spiral.

EU democracies face this threat because deficit spending cannot sustain an economy long-term. At some point, foreign lenders will resist additional financing—a problem already faced by a group of European countries known as the PIGS. The PIGS are Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. Together they have a combined debt of approximately $198 billion. Spain’s debt is highest, at $116 billion, followed by Greece at $37 billion, Ireland at $30 billion and Portugal at $15 billion.

Some have suggested these nations could be the first in the developed world to default on their credit obligations but the more likely scenario is that they will face long-term economic stagnation. This means high unemployment, high interest rates and little prospect for improvement.

Interestingly, you don’t have to look as far as Europe to find such as doomsday scenario. Leftists in California have driven the state to the brink of bankruptcy with a deficit of $20 billion. If major reforms are not enacted, California will join the PIGS of Europe as another failed social democracy. Perhaps worse, if Obamacare and other Democratic policies are allowed to continue unaltered, America itself will join in this fate.

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It’s time for your weekly dose of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your home for conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we’re talking about deficits, the economic future, entitlement spending and the possibility of a grand compromise on taxes.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

National Affairs: America in the Red
Steven Malanga: How Much Debt is Too Much?
WSJ: What to Expect From Jobs Report
KSK: Death Panel Podcast on Health Care Reform
Daily Caller: CEOs Won’t Challenge Waxman, Even With Facts
TNL: The Real Goals of Health Reform = Redistribution

Last week, Democrats in Congress rammed through a wildly unpopular healthcare bill before heading out of town to celebrate the accomplishment. As it turns out, not all Americans are celebrating.

In the few short days since, a growing wave of U.S. employers have come forward to denounce the massive new costs, hidden problems and bureaucratic hurdles contained in the recently passed healthcare legislation—costs that will choke off job creation and be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices on a wide array of goods and services.

Under one deeply misguided provision in Speaker Pelosi’s health overhaul legislation, for example, companies will face a costly new tax on prescription drug benefits they provide to retired workers. Those benefits ensure high quality drug coverage for retired seniors and spare the taxpayer the full cost of covering these individuals under the Medicare program. Due to the healthcare bill, though, employers will now face massive new costs, while retirees stand to lose their prescription drug coverage.

The legislation hits Illinois particularly hard.

Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction equipment, expects a $100 million hit, while another bread-and-butter Illinois manufacturer, John Deere, faces $150 million in new costs. Boeing, the world’s largest maker of jetliners and military aircraft, anticipates $150 million in new costs as well. All told, benefits consultant Towers Watson estimates that the very companies across America we are asking to create jobs and grow the economy will face $14 billion in lower earnings due to this single provision.

Democratic Leaders have responded to this predictable news with surprise, anger and disbelief. Yet in December, in the midst of the healthcare debate, the Chief Financial Officers of major U.S. employers Caterpillar, John Deere, Verizon, Xerox, Boeing and others sent a letter to Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi warning that the proposed new tax would “negatively impact both retirees and companies”, raising costs and forcing them to scale back or drop prescription drug coverage for retirees. Democrats disregarded this information as “fearmongering”.

Saddling these companies with crushing new expenses didn’t seem like a good idea during the healthcare debate when many of my colleagues and I opposed it, and now that the Pelosi plan is the law of the land, it’s clear why. Realizing the destructive real world impact of this tax change, I submitted an amendment to the bill that would have remedied the situation, preventing retirees from losing the coverage they currently enjoy and protecting employers from large health cost increases. The fact of the matter is the recently passed healthcare legislation leaves employers with less money to pay current employees, less money to invest in research and development, and less money to hire new workers.

It’s important to remember that it will be months before the public really knows the true cost of this sweeping healthcare legislation, as thousands of programs and regulations are not yet created. Countless new costs will fall to already struggling families and businesses. With a provision that will force up to 2 million seniors off their current prescription drug benefits and cost America’s top employers billions, the healthcare bill is off to a rough start.

An effective approach to healthcare reform must work to improve the current system, building on what works and replacing what doesn’t. Before the healthcare legislation passed, many large employers were doing a good job providing prescription drug benefits to employees. Eliminating this effective approach gets reform exactly wrong and fails to address the many real shortcomings in our healthcare system that urgently need attention, like lowering costs for individuals and improving flexibility and affordability for small businesses.

Creating jobs and growing the economy requires legislation that works with families and businesses to improve the nation’s healthcare system. That’s why we need to repeal the current flawed plan and replace it with reforms that actually reduce healthcare costs.

Within one week of ObamaCare being crammed through the Congress, we had Rep Jesse Jackson Jr. admiting that programs would need to be cut to pay for it and we had Sen. Max Baucus admit that it was really a wealth re-distribution plan.

Now we have Rep. Phil Hare admitting that when it comes to health care “reform,” he doesn’t “worry about the Constitution”:

“Jackpot” is right, brother.  And the greatest shock of all?  He’s an Illinois Democrat. (You can find info on his opponent here.)

Can’t wait to see what next week will bring.

Tea Party Paranoia is apparently setting in for progressives.  It’s like the old Bob Dylan song, “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues:”

Well, I wus sittin’ home alone an’ started to sweat
Figured they wus in my T.V. set
Peeked behind the picture frame
Got a shock from my feet, hittin’ right up in the brain
Them Reds caused it!
I know they did . . . them hard-core ones

Case in point?  New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica uses graffiti on a stop sign to launch into the prevalent anti-Obama attitude that is currently strong in America.  You see, without a single shred of evidence, Lupica presumes Tea Party crazies must have painted ‘Obama’ under ‘Stop’ – 100 yards from a school no less!!  Won’t someone think of the children?!?

Why has somebody done it? Because in the current climate, people have been convinced they can. Or, more likely, that they should.

…

At least here it is only vandalism about this President and the country’s new health care bill, not phone threats left for some members of Congress.

…

As always, you wonder where this patriotism and righteousness and Tea Party activism was during Bush-Cheney. You wonder if all the people who want to take to the streets – and to the television cameras now – decided they weren’t needed for eight years because they thought the country was going so good. Or maybe they have just convinced themselves that the Obama who must now be stopped didn’t just inherit this America, he created it.

This is no longer about political dissent. It is about storm trooper sound bites, and hate.

That’s funny – I don’t see an explanation taped to the bottom of the stop sign.  I certainly don’t see a Joker-style Tea Party calling card left anywhere.

So Lupica presumes any dissent to the president and his health care reform must only be coming from those nutty Tea Partiers.

Perhaps Lupica forgot about when many progressive Democrats – Howard Dean and Enforcement Czar Andy Stern come to mind – advocated passing no bill instead of a watered-down version.  Or perhaps that just didn’t fit his argument.  As Dylan said:

Well, I fin’ly started thinkin’ straight
When I run outa things to investigate
Couldn’t imagine doin’ anything else
So now I’m sittin’ home investigatin’ myself!
Hope I don’t find out anything . . . hmm, great God!

Be careful Mike.  Look inward and you may just find yourself wondering where your freedom went.  Rest assured, it wasn’t the Tea Party crazies that took it!

On the campaign trail, now President Obama regularly excoriated lobbyists. He said he’d make the government “open and transparent” and said he’d make it hard for lobbyists to “curry favor” with his administration “based on how much they can spend on a fancy dinner.” Once elected, John Podesta, a member of his transition team, said that Obama would be implementing the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to those scoundrel lobbyists. In his 2009 State of the Union address Obama puffed up his chest, proud of himself that he “excluded lobbyists” from important jobs in his administration.

With all that bombast and populist wind from Obama and his cohorts, then, one would expect to see a dearth of lobbyists in important positions in Obama’s Washington. One’s expectation, however, would easily be dashed by the truth.

Remember the rarefied air of Obama’s campaign for president? Wanna see some, shall we say, “broken promises”?

Transcript of Obama campaign appearance: (My bold for emphasis)

I’ll also institute an absolute gift ban so that no registered lobbyist can curry favor with members of my administration based on how much they can spend on a fancy dinner. I’ll make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people’s business. Justice Louis Brandeis once said “Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant,” and as president I am going to make it impossible for congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one’s looking because when I’m president meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public… no more secrecy, that’s a commitment I make to you as president. No more secrecy!

And, when there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look on-line and find out what’s in it before I sign it so that you know what your government’s doing. When there are meetings between lobbyists and a government agency we’ll put as many as pos… as many of those meetings as possible on-line for every American to watch. When there’s a tax bill being debated in Congress you will now the names of the corporations that would benefit and how much money they would get. And we will put every corporate tax break and every pork barrel project on-line for every American to see, you will know who asked for them and you can decide whether your representative is actually representing you!

Oh, the dreamy dream of hope-n-change. It’s what you voted for, America. So did we get it?

Not even close.

In fact, at least 50 some lobbyists have won the Obama lottery and found themselves landing plumb jobs in the Obama administration. All sorts of Obama’s favorite special interests have found their lobbyists suddenly riding the gravy train. From Big Agriculture, to Big Financial and Big Banking, to Trial Lawyers, to Military, Communications, and Big Bio, Obama’s buddies have lined up around the block to get his favor and found the honey pot well supplied.

Alarmingly, though, the biggest winners seem to be lobbyists from ideologically left-wing think tanks and issue advocacy groups.

Here are some of the known lobbyists that have hit the Obama jackpot:

Left-Wing Organizations

Barnes, Melody: ACLU; Center for Reproductive Rights
Jacquelin: NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Butts, Cassandra: Center for American Progress
Coven, Martha: Center on Budget & Policy Priorities
Crowley, Phillip J: Center for American Progress
Frye, Jocelyn: Nat’l Partnership for Women & Families
Corr, William: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
McDonough, Dennis: Center for American Progress
Munoz, Cecilia: National Council of La Raza
Perciasepe, Robert: National Audubon Society
Rundlet, Peter: Center for American Progress
Stoner, Nancy: Natural Resources Defense Council
Trasvina, John: Mexican American Legal Defense Fund
Stein, Eric: Center for Responsible Lending
Douglas, Derek: Center for American Progress

Banking/Insurance/Financial
Beliveau, Emmett: PriceWaterhouseCoopers; Worldwide Medical Technologies; Shaw Group
Donilon, Thomas: Fannie Mae
Klain, Ron: Time Warner; Fannie Mae
Patterson, Mark: Goldman Sachs
Turton, Dan: Freddie Mac; Visa
Singiser, Dana: Insurance
Wilkins, William J.: Swiss Bankers Association
Sutphen, Mona: Angliss Int’l

Biotech/Military/Energy
Hayes, David: Sempra Energy; San Diego Gas & Electric; General Cigar Holdings
Eric L. Hirschhorn: Lockheed Martin; Sun Chemicals
Hoffman, Alan: RAND Corporation, Unocal
Holder, Eric: Global Crossing; Large Scale Biology Corporation
Lynn, William J.: Raytheon
Strickland, Thomas: Amgen

Technology/Internet/ Communications
Harris, Scott: Microsoft; Cisco; Dell; Sprint
Kennedy, Sean: AT&T
Marantis, Demetrios J.: Lucent Technologies
Punke, Michael: Time Warner
Sapiro, Miriam: VeriSign

Union Lobbyists
Gaspard, Patrick: American Federation of Teachers
Liebowitz, Jon: Motion Picture Association of America
Vilsack, Thomas: National Education Association

Big Agriculture
Harden, Krysta: Gordley Associates
Isi Siddiqui: CropLife America
Taylor, Michael: Monsanto

Medicine/Hospitals/Big Pharma
Sher, Susan: University of Chicago Hospitals
Sussman, Robert M.: Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, Navistar, Business Roundtable

Trial Lawyers
Sebelius, Kathleen: Kansas Trial Lawyers Association
Strautmanis, Michael: Association of Trial Lawyers of America

Hollywood/Entertainment
Litt, Robert: Recording Industry Association of America

Car Makers
Varney, Christine: Hogan & Hartson

Others
Panetta, Leon: Seismic Safety Coalition
Perrelli, Thomas J.: American Survivors of 8/7/98 Bombings of Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
Poneman, Daniel: Payless Shoe Source
Verma, Richard: Cigna; National Association of Convenience Stores; U.S.-India Business Council

Timothy P. Carney of the Washington Examiner has been Keeping a list of the lobbyists that have won the Obama Lottery and he has some rich details of from which firms they’ve come and what clients were represented.

So much for being post partisan, non-ideological, transparent…. all those bight and shiny hope-n-changie sort of things Obama told us all he’d force Washington to observe.

Looks to me like it is business as usual with Obama’s Washington.

The Hysteria of the political establishment and the media that covers it is incredible. I’m not a politician and I don’t talk like one .On March 23rd ,I went on the Curtis Sliwa Show on 970AM the Apple in New York City to discuss my opposition to Obamacare.

Source: CATO Institute

Here is what I actually said:

“This day, the day that that bill was passed, will be remembered just as 9/11 was remembered from history. It was an attempt by these people in Washington to defy the Constitution it is clearly in conflict with all of the basic precepts of the constitution.”

Within minutes liberals were insisting that  this madman from Buffalo had compared the passage of Obamacare with the tradgedy of 9/11. Why would reporters willfully misrepresent what I said and political hatchetmen like Congressman Jerrold Nadler attack me when I made no such comparison? Why would they smear me?

Any fair-minded person could see that I merely said both days would be widely remembered like JFK’s murder or the Space Shuttle Crash or the1929 stockmarket crash. Why would the pundits and commentators twist my words and seek to make me out an insensitive rube from upstate?

The political class in Albany and New York City know the taxpayers are finally fed up and a reform revolution that returns power to the people is rising. They want to discredit me before voters get a chance to learn my  common sense platform or my record of always doing what I say I’m going to do in business and civic life.

Congressman Nadler dismissed my criticism of the constitutionality of the Health Care Bill passed by Congress noting that he is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. That does not make him the final authority on this flawed law.

I too, am an attorney. There are several critical unconstitutional provisions in this bill, including:

• For the first time ever, the federal government is forcing people to buy a good or service in the marketplace. In my view, this exceeds Congress’s power under the commerce clause and brings into play the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution which reserves such decisions to the states and the people.

• Some versions of the bill stretch the general welfare and equal protection clauses of the US Constitution past the breaking point by exempting some states from certain provisions and giving special privileges to others; and

• By forcing the states to create “benefit exchanges,” the bill violates federalism and threatens to make states into mere administrative branches of the federal government.

In short, this bill simultaneously establishes a precedent for total elimination of both federalism and individual economic freedom.

Obamacare must be stopped – for New Yorkers especially, who pay more for insurance than most Americans. Our Medicaid program is the nation’s most expensive, and we pay exorbitant local and state taxes to support it.

I have called on new york Attorney general Andrew Cuomo to  join other attorneys general in
filing suit to halt this destructive and unconstitutional legislation before it does irreparable harm to our already depressed economy.

To date I have not heard back from the Attorney General.

If I were Governor, on Monday I would ask the Attorney General to join in unison with dozens of states that will file suit against the federal government to stop Obamacare.

The fight over Health Care and the totally incompetent and dysfunctional system in Albany have energized me to get in the fight for reform and return New York to the greatness and land of opportunity it once was. I have met with over 2000 individual Tea Party Activists as well as dozens of Conservative and Republican Party Leaders.

I’m mad as hell about what is happening to New York.I have been encouraged to lead a grass roots rebellion for reform in the Empire State, to turn Albany upside down and take out the trash.

On April 5th I will announce my intentions regarding the New York Governor’s race.

One can only imagine the “Dean Scream” that came out of Burlington, Vermont the night the government takeover of health care passed the House of Representatives.

The always daffy Howard Dean appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Sunday to discuss the health care reform bill.  He explained that the broader principle of the legislation has less to do with fixing the health system and more to do with a Marxist principle of redistributing wealth.

“When [wealth distribution] gets out of whack as it did in the ’20s and it has now, you need to do some redistribution.  This is a form of redistribution.”

Ever the politician, Dean cautions that there could be “too much” redistribution, which could result in the “incentive” being taken out of the system.  I’m sorry – when have extreme liberals ever worried about people having incentive to do anything on their own?

In the interview, Dean wonders what the “right balance” of income distribution might be for America.  Again, as I wondered a few days ago, how are politicians qualified to determine what that “right balance” should be? If the way they handle our money in Washington, D.C. is any indication, the politicians would do us a service by steering completely clear of financial matters.

Welcome to the transforming America.

We have politicians “tweaking” the system in an effort to spread the wealth more equally among hard working people and people who prefer not to work at all. I doubt this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

In modern day America, if you criticize the government you are now fair game to be called upon to explain yourself in front of it.  As Byron York reported in a recent Washington Examiner column, Rep. Henry Waxman sent letters to executives of major corporations such as Verizon and Caterpillar, requesting their testimony at hearings of the Subcomittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by none other than Rep. Bart Stupak, as each of the companies “announced that provisions in the [healthcare] law could adversely affect” their “ability to provide health insurance.”  AT&T for instance had disclosed in an SEC form that changes in the tax treatment of a Medicare subsidy would lead to a $1 billion write-off in earnings from the first quarter of 2010, and said it was considering changes to the health care benefits it provides for its employees.

That the legislation would negatively affect the earnings of these corporations and potentially hamper their ability to provide healthcare is for Rep. Waxman “a matter of concern,” as the “new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs.”

But I wonder, for whom are the negative effects of this legislation really a concern?  For Rep. Waxman and his fellow Democrats who already forced the egregious bill on the public?  For the private enterprises pummeled seemingly on a daily basis by these same politicians?  Perhaps for the American people faced with all kinds of economy-crippling unintended consequences as a result of the legislation, on top of the higher costs and worse healthcare they will ultimately receive?

Is it in response to the criticism of the bill or out of the selfless devotion to public service of Rep. Waxman (he who never read his own cap-and-tax bill) that he has the gall to call individuals critical of the healthcare albatross to personally testify in front of members of his House Committee?  It sure seems like the former when he is challenging the executives simply because their prognoses happen to differ from those of the almighty independent CBO.

Even more shocking is the fact that companies are being asked to provide records such as proprietary analyses on projected health care costs and “any documents including email messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of health care reform,” for the hearing. As York asserts, “The executives will undoubtedly view such documents as confidential, but if they fail to give Waxman everything he wants, they run the risk of subpoenas and threats from the chairman.  And all as punishment for making a business decision in light of a new tax situation.”  That Waxman is requesting internal emails related to the financial decisions of these companies should send a chill down our collective spine.

The threat to free speech and private enterprise represented by this hearing fits in well with the increasingly authoritarian atmosphere emanating from Washington, replete with the abrogation of contracts, bailout of businesses, levy of arbitrary taxes on bonuses, takeover of large swaths of private industry and the populist attack on commerce in general.  Rep. Max Baucus articulated clearly the mentality of this government when he argued that “the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy,” with the goal of healthcare reform to correct the so-called “mal-distribution of income in America.”

This philosophy and its political manifestation bring to mind that of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.  Both Presidents accelerated our break from laissez-faire, the misguided ideologue Hoover (opposed by the “leave-it-alone liquidationist” to whom my pseudonym stands in tribute, Andrew Mellon), as a technocratic central planner who felt that the “cooperation” through cartelization of industry to keep men employed, maintain high wages and encourage consumption was the key to ending recession; and FDR in his tyrannical New Deal in which he outright attacked businesses on principle, saying of entrepreneurs that “A mere builder of more industrial plants, a creator of more railroad systems, an organizer of more corporations, is as likely to be a danger as a help,” noting of Wall Street that “Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men…The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit,” and taunting his “economic royalist” and “organized money” critics in gloating:

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.  They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.  I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.  I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

The Obama administration and much of our Congress combines the worst elements of these two leaders: the socialist ideology and elitism of Hoover and the ruthless lust for power and related hatred of private enterprise of Roosevelt.

Henry Waxman’s call for justifiably critical business leaders to take the stand in his show trial typifies this mindset.  In threatening executives with Congressional Hearings, he is following in the footsteps of National Recovery Administration enforcer Hugh Johnson, who vowed that those who would not abide by Roosevelt’s policies would “get a sock in the nose.”  After witnessing Waxman’s best Hugh Johnson impression, does anyone think that the ratings agencies would ever dare downgrade our national debt, or that indeed any business would do anything to challenge this set of leaders?  Quelling dissent and putting business in its place was the goal during the original Depression as it is in today’s depression.

As we know, the capricious and heavy-handed policy and politics of the 1930s not only made the first Depression “Great” as a result of its immediate economic effects, but also its psychological ones, which themselves had a secondary economic impact.  This second blow was that of the uncertainty created by Hoover and FDR with regard to the rights to liberty and property, an uncertainty that led to a capital strike.  The loss of confidence in our markets and thus the fleeing of capital is illustrated in the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average did not again reach its 1929 high until 1954.  Consider today’s parallel economic struggles (to which we can add that we are now the world’s largest debtor) along with the Nazism in the Islamic world, and history appears to be eerily repeating itself, but we shall leave this discussion for another day.

In closing, there are very real consequences to the threats to our First Amendment and our free enterprise system.  What kind of country is my generation going to inherit, and in what kind of country are we going to raise our children?  Where will man turn when the last best hope of man on Earth repudiates its fundamental tenets?  How will the tragic tale of the tyranny of statism in America end?

Winston Churchill – the statesman who defined champagne as “bottled sunshine” – often suffered bouts of deep depression.  He called that frequent companion his “black dog.”   After their drubbing in 2008 and Obama’s legislative tsunami – pausing, not ending in the enactment of the healthcare reform bill – some Republicans appear ready to settle in for a long political winter with Churchill’s black dog curled up at their feet.

Former presidential speechwriter David Frum, apparently eager to hug the black dog, wrote that the passage of Obamacare is the Republicans’ Waterloo, and that while they may retake the House or Senate this November, that wouldn’t matter because “This healthcare bill is forever.”

Frum merely gives voice to the thinking of the Old Republican Establishment.  They are comfortable in the minority, smiling – as former House Minority Leader Bob Michel used to – at the inability to direct national policy, adept at getting re-elected without the burden of leadership.

Frum’s reference to Waterloo is almost apt.  But the enactment of Obamacare isn’t the Republicans’ Waterloo.  If Frum knew his military history, he’d see it not as Waterloo, but as Marengo: a defeat that turned what could have been a devastating defeat into a crushing victory for Napoleon in June 1800.

Having split his forces in Northern Italy, an overconfident Napoleon found himself under attack by Gen. Michael Melas’ Austrian armies in what the French emperor first thought was a feint.  But as the battle grew into a meeting engagement, French forces fell back into Marengo’s vineyards, desperate for reinforcement.

As the afternoon wore on – after the Austrians fell back to regroup in the heat of the day – Napoleon’s friend and confidant Lieutenant General Louis Desaix’s force arrived and turned the tide of the battle.  Desaix is the man who famously “rode to the sound of the guns” and turned defeat into victory.

Republicans should not surrender: this healthcare bill is not forever. And the American equivalent of Desaix’s force – the vast majority of Americans who oppose nationalization of healthcare – is ready to advance against the hyperliberal congress.

But they won’t if Republicans fall into the trap they so often lay for themselves.  Republicans and especially conservatives are by nature incrementalists: they take things in small digestible bites. But incrementalism is a trap: the temptation to “fix” Obamacare is a quagmire from which they will not escape.

To embrace a strategy attempting to fix Obamacare is to be hypnotized by the siren song of the New York Times and the Washington Post, to pursue – as John McCain did to his ultimate defeat – allies among those who are committed ideologues of the left.  Republicans would have to invest enormous amounts of time and energy on legislation that won’t succeed any more than the good bills they introduced since June of last year to repair what ails American healthcare.

And, inevitably, they will be characterized – fairly or not, but nevertheless effectively — as embracing the major elements of Obamacare that the Democrats will never agree to change.  Which means the Republicans will lose all the political momentum given them by the arrogant, corrupt enactment of Obamacare.

Republicans need to insist that there was no healthcare “crisis” before the president signed the legislation, and that the one we face now is dire:  created by new taxes and big government’s intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship, Americans will find fewer doctors who can provide the medical care they want and need. They will find that the quality of the services they can get is degraded by the reduced production of high-tech medical equipment and by the bureaucrats who now stand between them and their personal physicians.

And they need to listen to the anguished words of the physicians themselves.  Speaking at a conference held by the new group “Docs4PatientCare” last Thursday, I heard an outpouring of frustration and anger from doctors who came from Georgia, Oregon, Colorado and many other states.  These dedicated people who only want to heal and help are crying out, and Republicans had better listen.

Their anger results from one fact: under Obamacare, government regulations will impose a new and lesser standard of care: doctors will be able to do only what the government allows insurers to pay for, not what the doctor and patient believe is best for the patient.  That cannot be allowed to stand, and voters will judge Republicans who want to “fix” the healthcare legislation to be no better than the statists who imposed it.

Frum – like other Republican establishmentarians – seeks to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Obamacare isn’t forever.  But it is only with us unless conservatives and Republicans act with the audacity needed to regain political power and then repeal it.  They cannot do either by half-measures or timid actions.

Obama and the congressional Democrats are revolutionaries.  They cannot be defeated in 2010 or 2012 unless Republicans turn the political anger that surrounds Obamacare into political energy.  That requires a principled audacity that avoids the trap of incrementalism.

One conservative House member called me on Thursday, worried that a few of his colleagues were walking into that trap.  Some, he said, were planning legislative “fixes” to the new law.  They may as well go to Frum’s house and curl up on the carpet with the black dog.

Repealing Obamacare must be, as Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said, Job 1.  He and other conservative leaders, including House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.), are agreed on that.

As Mike Pence is fond of saying, a congressional minority plus the American people is a majority.  I don’t know if Pence has studied the Napoleonic Wars.  But it appears that he understands the difference between Waterloo and Marengo.

We don’t have to wait until we have a Republican in the White House to rid this nation of the shackles of Obamacare. We can do it next year if we win simple majorities in one or both houses of Congress.

The Obama health care bill was an authorization measure which established a program and set down its parameters. But authorization bills are not appropriations. Each year the Congress must act on appropriations for each department and agency in the government. If no funds are appropriated, nothing can be spent.

So if Republicans take the House (where appropriations have to originate) – and especially if they also take the Senate – they will have the capacity to zero fund Obamacare, appropriating not a dime for it in their spending bills. Indeed, they can and should include a specific amendment to their appropriations bills banning the expenditure of any of the funds on Obama’s health care program.

In the wake of the passage of the health care bill, states are filing lawsuits and talk of repeal is in the air. Both are useful efforts. But litigation takes time and the key challenge – to the constitutionality of the requirement that everybody buy insurance – cannot even begin until it takes effect in 2014. And repeal will obviously be impossible as long as Obama wields the veto from his Oval Office. It would be impossible mathematically for the Republicans to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate and unlikely in the House, so an override is out of the question. Repeal will have to wait until 2013, after Obama’s defeat in 2012.

But zero funding can happen immediately after the Republicans take Congress. All this makes the elections of 2010 critical. If we can stop this bill from getting off the ground, it will be possible to repeal it when we take over the White House. But if the Democrats keep their majorities, the program will be so entrenched by the time we defeat Obama that its repeal would be unlikely.

Article written with Eileen McGann.