ObamaCare - March 2010

ObamaCare’s Immediate Impact - Brad Warbiany

So there you have it, folks. Of 18 highlighted points, most or all of them will increase payments made by government or increase health insurance premiums. This is “bending the cost curve”.

Not Yours to Give - U.S. Rep. (TN) David Crockett

The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other.

The Parable of the Satellite Dish - Doctor Zero

Here are some lessons to ponder from the Parable of the Satellite Dish:

Never accept permanent solutions that are nearly impossible to change, when simpler and more easily modified plans are available. It’s foolish to let the advocates of permanent programs dismiss flexible alternatives before they have been tried.

A proposal that requires you to ignore both the past and the future is a swindle, not a solution.

Free people do not accept restrictions from which their government is exempt. This is one of the differences between leaders and rulers.

A demand for commitment without a guarantee of performance is domination, not service.

When free people are told something is “inevitable,” their response should be an immediate and overwhelming refusal to accept it. Inevitability is a self-fulfilling prophecy in the absence of resistance. Freedom is the never-ending quest for alternatives.

The people who loudly celebrate “diversity” keep coming up with universal plans. Their State is a giant who trims citizens to fit its bed, using rusty implements. The giant, the bed, and the implements were all equal sins in the eyes of our Founders. They come as a set.

When the State refuses to let you debate the terms of its plans individually, you can rest assured the whole is worse than the sum of its parts.

Freedom requires the courage to avoid being stampeded. You should ask more questions about something you are told is an “essential right.” Sober reflection is a hallmark of maturity. A wise State would not require its citizens to act like children.

The State cannot give you anything worth having. You’ll eventually find yourself guilty of the crime of wanting more. As the State fails to live up to its promises, it will be increasingly tempted to convict you of that crime… in advance.

Interestingly, a commenter criticized the parable because "you cannot equate entertainment with health care services", but that is entirely beside the point. The purpose of the parable is not to prove that health care and entertainment are equivalent. One certainly is much more important than the other. Rather the point is that if free citizens have the right to make free decisions about a relatively unimportant issue, like entertainment, then they certainly should have that right for more important matters, like health care. And furthermore, under the Constitution the government has no right to take that freedom away.

Hospital wards to shut in secret NHS cuts - Jon Swaine and Holly Watt

Last year all English health authorities were ordered by Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, to reconsider their plans after the recession forced the Government to freeze health spending from April next year.

This left a ''black hole’’ of up to £20 billion in health budgets up to 2014, prompting the drawing up of new proposals by the 10 strategic health authorities (SHAs).

They had until Friday to submit their plans to Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary. He is under pressure from the Treasury to show how money will be saved to help bring down Britain’s record £167 billion deficit.

O-Care - A Good Government Advocate's Nightmare - cleangovernmentnow.org

The essence of O-Care is quite simple: Health insurance is now an arm of the federal government by virtue of extensive federal regulation of the terms, conditions and comparative rates health insurers can offer. The law tells insurers how to run their business and then offers to pick up the cost where conditions prove uneconomic. Hmmmm. If this all sounds a little dodgy, your instincts are correct. We tried this kind of experiment in housing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were pressed to buy non-economic sub-prime loan dressed up to look respectable via bundling and shaky insurance.

This secondary market "nudge" by the government was a major reason for the bubble and subsequent collapse of the financial system under the weight of $2T of bogus AAA securities. Expect similar results from health insurers who will look a lot like the housing Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) going forward. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started with a modest mission of helping first time home buyers and morphed into near monopolies in the residential home market.

It gets even worse with O-Care. Housing is real property with an underlying intrinsic value. Medical expenses are consumer expenditures. Extensive regulation will mean only a few "too big to fail" mega-insurers are likely to survive. With fewer competitors, the prices go only one direction: UP. Americans will not put up with rationing, and they have come to expect the best care in the world, so any pretense of cost controls is just that: pretense. O-Care only expands the cancerous dynamics of the third party payer and creates more of a sense of entitlement to be paid for by the ever diminishing "other guy".

Non-Enforcement: A Feature Or A Bug? - John Hinderaker

Quite simply, Obamacare has created a ticking time bomb for the insurance industry. Those with preëxisting conditions will be covered.....and demand continuation of the coverage at prescribed rates....and those who ignore the mandate, presumably anybody at all affected by it, face no consequences. As costs spiral out of control, premiums will have to rise and subsidies increase. Insurance companies would have to either fold or shift costs....to those covered by employers....becoming a perfect target for left wing demagoguery and vilification. The only way out as more and more of those covered by employers get pushed into the exchanges as costs get shifted to them and employers no longer offer insurance -- yet another intended consequence -- is the public "option" or outright nationalization through a single payer plan.

The Economy - March 2010

What Unsustainable Looks Like - Veronique de Rugy

In 2010, Medicare and Medicaid cost 5.0 percent of GDP and Social Security cost 4.8 percent of GDP. Combined, that’s less than 10 percent of GDP. By 2020, the combined cost of these three programs is already projected to grow to 11.4 percent of GDP; extrapolating forward at constant growth rates, their cost will be at about 14.4 percent of GDP by 2030.

This is why President Obama’s recently announced freeze of the non-defense, non-homeland security side of the budget will do nothing to get us back on the path of fiscal responsibility

The Parable of the Bread Aisle - Doctor Zero

The reason for the failure of collectivism is revealed in the parable of the bread aisle. Why are there many different flavors of bread? Because people demand them. Why are those flavors provided by different companies, at various price points? Because there is competition to satisfy demand. These factors produce reductions in price, and increases in quality… and the burning truth every statist desperately needs you to forget is that political commandments cannot produce either of these things.

The War on Toyota

Toyota Fires Back: Electronics Don't Rewire Themselves - Mike Allen

Whew. I must say the video footage that ABC aired is compelling. Gilbert demonstrates how a seemingly simple short in the throttle pedals' circuitry can make the car go to wide-open throttle (WOT) at whim. Hide the women and children.

Except he's wrong.

Firestone Revisited: Was Toyota a Takedown Target in the Name of NUMMI? - Liberty Chick

To see the full picture, the story begins in California with the history of General Motors and the United Auto Workers in the 1980’s, and GM’s rescue by Toyota through a little venture called NUMMI. Today, in 2010, the NUMMI chapter nears its close. But before it does, the Fremont, California plant and its rank and file workers will serve as unwilling pawns in what could turn out to be an orchestrated blueprint for incapacitating the strongest competitor to Government Motors and one of the most significant threats to labor unions here and around the globe.

Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax - Michael Fumento

During over 20 harrowing minutes, according to NBC's report, Sikes "did everything he could to try to slow down that Prius." Others said, "Radio traffic indicated the driver was unable to turn off the engine or shift the car into neutral."

In fact, almost none of this was true. Virtually every aspect of Sikes's story as told to reporters makes no sense. His claim that he'd tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute.

How To Deal With Unintended Acceleration - Dave VanderWerp

With the Camry’s throttle pinned while going 70 mph, the brakes easily overcame all 268 horsepower straining against them and stopped the car in 190 feet—that’s a foot shorter than the performance of a Ford Taurus without any gas-pedal problems and just 16 feet longer than with the Camry’s throttle closed. From 100 mph, the stopping-distance differential was 88 feet—noticeable to be sure, but the car still slowed enthusiastically enough to impart a feeling of confidence. We also tried one go-for-broke run at 120 mph, and, even then, the car quickly decelerated to about 10 mph before the brakes got excessively hot and the car refused to decelerate any further. So even in the most extreme case, it should be possible to get a car’s speed down to a point where a resulting accident should be a low-speed and relatively minor event.

Exorcising Toyota’s Demons - Walter Olsen

For those who’ve been setting up the Japanese automaker as the latest symbol of heartless capitalism, it’s been a bewildering few days. On Wednesday the media jumped hard for the story of a man who frantically called 911 while his Prius ran away on a San Diego freeway (outstandingly gullible CBS News coverage here). Before long observers had begun poking holes in the story, and colorful details on the man’s earlier doings have been emerging all weekend. On Thursday, meanwhile, the New York Times — whose news columns had helped set the tone for the panic with accusatory coverage — ran what was actually a surprisingly good op-ed advancing the possibility that most of the Toyota cases will turn out to be the result of . . . driver error.

California - March 2010

Dronism - Victor Davis Hanson

It is taboo to ask our failing youth a simple question, “What exactly have you done the last month to ensure your birthright to the world’s most sophisticated lifestyle propped up by advanced math, science, social stability, and political tranquility?”

It other words, our elite is becoming more elite and refined, while our non-elite is becoming more rough around the edges. But they share a disturbing commonality: both expect something that they are not willing to invest in.

Low-tax Texas beats big-government California - Michael Barone

In the two decades after World War II California, with its pleasant weather, was the Golden State, a promised land, for most Americans, while Texas seemed a provincial rural backwater. Many saw postwar California's expansion of universities, freeways and water systems a model for the nation. Few experts praised Texas' low-tax, low-services government.

Now it is California's ruinously expensive and increasingly incompetent government that seems dysfunctional, while Texas' approach has generated more creativity and opportunity. So it's not surprising that Texas voters preferred Perry over an opponent who has spent 16 years in Washington. What's surprising is that Democrats in Washington are still trying to impose policies like those that have ravaged California rather than those that have proved so successful in Texas.

Billions in red ink drowning California's cities, schools and counties, too - Steve Bartin

Here's the money quote about saving the status quo:

"We cannot survive without raising taxes," Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone said. "We're just going to sit and wallow in deficits until somebody steps up."

How the Campuses Helped Ruin California's Economy - John Ellis

In short, California is a disaster for business. The state has piled up so many taxes, regulations and mandates that businesses are leaving the state. Just this week I learned that a spare part order for my Lennox fireplace is delayed because Lennox is moving this division of its business to Tennessee. Wealthy individuals are also fleeing the state to avoid the country's highest tax bracket. When both wealth and wealth creation leave the state, tax revenues leave with them.

...

The irony here really cries out for attention: a large state university system needs a free market economy that hums along in top gear so that the revenue needed to support it can be generated. But California's two unusually well developed state university systems provide enormous local voting power in many Assembly districts for a bitterly anti-capitalist ideology that sabotages the California economy. The campuses are shooting themselves in the foot. The power that those students and faculty chanted about is indeed theirs, and if they used it to elect sensible assemblymen and state senators their problems would be solved by the healthy business climate that would result. The votes that they actually cast are the source of their troubles.

Sun and Socialism - Victor Davis Hanson

So far, the sunny socialist state has gotten by on two general truths: Most people won’t leave the beautiful coastlines, sunny weather, and scenic landscapes no matter how high the taxes go to subsidize less productive or more needy others; and, second, lots of tourists will visit to bask in the beauty and warmth — and pay quite a lot for even that brief taste of natural paradise.

Yet those smug assurances of the Lala Land redistributive state may be ending. An estimated 3,500 upper-income Californians are leaving their beautiful state each week. They seem to think that crumbling highways, schools rated at near to last in the nation, 5 to 7 million illegal aliens, and overfilling prisons aren’t worth the 10 percent sales tax, 10 percent income tax, and 63-cent-a-gallon combined state and federal gasoline taxes. And they don’t think that Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, or the California legislature can or wants to fix things.

On Citizenship

To Keep and Bear Arms - Doctor Zero

Citizen access to firearms has reduced crime rates time and again, but this is more than a matter of practicality. It’s a question of principle. The people of an orderly nation surrender the business of vengeance to the government, replacing it with the rule of law. They cannot be expected to surrender the right of defense. The right to protect yourself, and your family, from injury and death is an essential part of your dignity as a free man or woman. Without the First Amendment, you are a slave. Without the Second, you are a child.

The Western nations which have abandoned this essential understanding of an individual’s right to self-defense have become rotting orphanages filled with dependent children. They’re not dealing very well with the invasion of a determined ideology that has complete confidence in its own righteousness, and few reservations about using violence to assert itself. Losing the dignity of self-defense is part of the degeneration from master of the State to its client. As this dignity fades, the people and their government speak less of responsibilities, and more of entitlements.

Consent of the governed - and the lack thereof - Glenn Harlan Reynolds

The political class sold its legitimacy off in drips and drabs. As "smart politics" has come over the past decades to mean not persuasion but the practice of legerdemain, the use of political deals, cover from a friendly press apparat and taking advantage of voters' rational ignorance, the governing classes have managed to achieve things that would surely have failed had the people known what was going on.

But though each little trick may have slipped by the voters, the voters have nonetheless noticed that the ultimate product isn't what it used to be. The end result, as with Schlitz, is a tarnished brand.

Imperishable - Bill Whittle

When Abraham Lincoln, now sitting on his throne in that temple of glory, wrote that We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth he was talking about the Declaration. He was talking about the idea that free people consent to be governed by their representatives, not ruled over by people who see them only as a source of revenue. And that one essential ideal is preserved not in marble, or even on parchment, but rather in the hearts of people willing to stand out in the rain and say they will not tolerate this any longer.

There is no marble monument to these ideals. This we will have to do ourselves. We will keep these ideals alive. We will copy them by hand. We will keep these imperishable ideals alive because they keep us alive. And as long as we do this, with our own hands, they – and we – will never die.