| Courtesy of freeinternetpictures.com |
Treasure the love you have received above all.
It will survive long after
your gold and good health have vanished.
Og Mandino
Chart of the Day: Waiting For a Doctor To See You: Government "Fixes" To Healthcare
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| Via Bastiat Institute |
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| Via Rand Paul |
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| Via LFC |
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| /Via National Review: The Senate Tea Party Fab Four Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio |
John Goodman, "Liberals Are Already Trying to Re-Write the History of the Obama Presidency", Thumbs UP!
The Obama presidency is a failed presidency. He has presided over one of the slowest economic recoveries in history. His foreign policy has been a disaster. ObamaCare is a mess. And it’s hard to lay the blame off on anyone else. The president didn’t make Republicans part of any of his decisions and most of the time he ignored congressional Democrats as well.I realize that a post critical of Obama is not surprising to familiar readers. But let us look at the fact that Obama set himself to be the messianic post-partisan, post-racial President; perhaps those expectations were unrealistic, but how did he handle expectations? And really, there are comparisons; you can look at votes on major bills, mid-term election results, numbers of bipartisan legislation. Both FDR and LBJ got a significant number of GOP votes on their signature entitlement bills; Bill Clinton managed to achieve a balanced budget, certain investment tax and welfare reform. The GOP did not have a great second mid-term against Clinton, despite his impeachment. To argue, as many Dem apologists have, that the GOP opposition is obstructionist or racist or both is utterly pathetic; for one thing, the GOP actually has worse approval ratings than Obama, but the midterms were telling; most Dem candidates avoided public appearances with Obama (a few didn't even want to admit voting for him) and most GOP challengers attacked their opponent's voting record as pro-Obama). Even Chuck Schumer now admits the healthcare bill was a strategic error. Public opinion had turned against ObamaCare and was a key factor in Scott Brown's improbable victory in the special election for Ted Kennedy's old seat--and Scott Brown openly campaigned in deep blue Massachusetts as (filibuster-enabling) vote #41. Now the practical meaning is that the Senate and the House would normally reconcile their different bills, but Brown's vote would essentially kill any reconciled bill, so the House Dems basically held their nose and voted for a Senate bill they didn't like and then used the budget reconciliation process, not subject to a filibuster, to gain certain face-saving concessions. Obama and the Congressional Dems knew passing an unpopular partisan health bill had risks--they couldn't share the blame with GOP members who all voted against the bill.
I have frequently quoted Goodman, a health policy expert, in this blog. Goodman points out that ironically McCain's healthcare proposal during the 2008 campaign was, which involved a universal tax-free deduction for health insurance, was much more preferable than the Dems' own proposal. Right now individuals without employer-sponsored healthcare have to purchase with post-tax dollars, which means depending on their tax bracket they pay more for the same-cost coverage out of pocket. Although Goodman doesn't discuss these, the GOP might have also pressed for increasing marketing of policies across state lines, enabling pooling and/or self-insuring entities across states, shoring up state or regional high risk pools, and universal catastrophic coverage. Work with existing state regulators instead of centralizing authority, devolving/matching subsidy distributions; the fact is the Dems wanted to centralize regulation and expand already unsustainable Medicare/Medicaid programs. These were totally ideological and unnecessary goals. If the goal was really to reduce the uninsured or to improve medical access, I would argue that freeing the healthcare industry is the best way to ensure that, but there are ways of using interstate authority to enabling basic major medical policies, break down anti-competitive state regulatory policy, occupational cartels, etc., and/or provide incentives for regional state arrangements. I would think that there was far less political risk working with existing state regulatory frameworks than trying to create a novel new federal entitlement. But the Dems, among other reasons, didn't like McCain's univeral deduction policy because union contracts often included Cadillac healthcare plans with full tax exemption, and they would likely lose some of their implicit tax subsidies, saying if you had a standard $15,000 deduction and their policies averaged, say, $23,000. But the greater injustice is that those who did not have an employer plan did not get an implicit tax subsidy.
Note that I do not personally agree to tax-advantaged policies in the sense I think they are unwise interventions in the marketplace--e.g., encourage consumption of unnecessary resources by artificially lowering medical costs. I think in part the consumer is artificially divorced from controlling medical costs because he has little apparent skin in the game other than co-pays. But what Goodman and I are both saying is that Obama could have struck a non-libertarian grand bargain by being more practical, pragmatic instead of insisting on centralization and ideology. But Obama, by reacting to Brown's elections in pushing the Senate bill through the House's throat, made a strategic choice for purely political reasons. He avoided political compromise at all costs, even as popular support had turned on him. ObamaCare was a key reason he lost the House in the 2010 election, and it was all his own fault. I remember one former Arkansas Congressman warned him that Clinton had similarly lost the Congress after pushing through a tax increase and the failure of HillaryCare; Obama basically responded that he was not Clinton--he was a better politician. But the fact is that Clinton had much more success than "post-partisan" Obama in dealing with the GOP. No more excuses for Obama. You have to win with the cards you've been dealt, and Obama has had less success in dealing with an opposition Congress than either Clinton or Bush.
Facebook Corner
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| Via Dollar Vigilante |
(Mercatus Center). If you could put an economist on a cereal box, who would it be and what would the brand be called? Join in and submit your suggestions on MRUniversity.com
Austrian Booms and Busts
(Reason). Robert Draper's August 7 cover story in The New York Times Magazine about the ascendance of libertarianism in American political life featured a report from reason's "posh" Washington, D.C,. office, numerous interviews with reason staffers, and a glimpse at how libertarian thinking is changing American politics.
I hope so. I'd love to be having arguments with other libertarians about just how small government should be rather than arguments with fascists, who don't even know that they are fascists, about just how much power government should have.
Actually, anarcho-capitalists have always seemed to be more interested in taking on the allegedly heretical minarchists (like myself) than taking on the fascists/"progressives". To equate non-interventionist minarchists with meddlesome neocons/progressives is intellectually dishonest.
It's a big mistake to confuse libertarianism with the Libertarian Party, even in politics. Better, for example, to look at the ease with which Justin Amash gained reelection despite establishment opposition.
Amash, the Pauls, Massey and others are more fusion libertarian-conservatives (like myself). We still get steamrolled on issues like the Patriot Act. I think the LP gets marginalized for things like a preoccupation with drug legalization. More successful politicians look for interim steps, e.g., audit the Fed and/or audit the DoD, vs. an all-or-nothing end the Fed.
Rand is not a Libertarian
He's a more pragmatic libertarian-conservative.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of the original artist via IPI |
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Facebook |
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| Courtesy of Glenn McCoy via Townhall |
Pentatonix, "Mary, Did You Know?". This a cappella group a few years won an NBC singing competition. I love this version and the accompanying video; my overall favorite remake is still the following Christ Church Choir's (Mark Lowry, one of the song's writers, calls it his favorite also).
