Senator Ted Kennedy: A Conservative's Appraisal

This is not going to be still another post of the media's slobbering love affair with all things Kennedy. There have been exaggerated claims regarding Kennedy's legacy, power, and influence, even comparing him to legendary nineteenth-century senators like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. Nancy Milligan, for instance, speaks of some 300 laws and over 550 co-cosponsored laws that the third longest-serving US Senator enacted during a 46-year career, in areas like children's health, immigration, mental illness, rights of disabled persons, cancer legislation, and minimum wage increases. Does anyone really believe that any of these "Mom, apple pie and Chevrolet" initiatives required Kennedy's unique political skills to pass?

Kennedy's Alleged Influence and Legislative Effectiveness

In fact, Ted Kennedy never even came close to (say) LBJ's ability to wheel and deal his way to pushing legislation through Congress, including the Great Society programs. Ted Kennedy opposed the liberation of Iraq from the get-go, failing at the time to convince any of Barack Obama's Senate rivals for last year's Presidential nomination. Ted Kennedy even voted against the first major expansion in Medicare (which he favored in principle) to provide a prescription drug benefit because he didn't favor Republican modifications to the concept. During the Nixon Administration, Kennedy went for broke in pushing single-payer national health care, spurning the administration's offer to expand business-sponsored health care, including needs-based subsidies; during the Clinton Administration, Kennedy was among those whom rejected Dole's compromise of catastrophic health care reform in yet another attempt to push for nationalization. More recent failed initiatives include his efforts with McCain to push a Patient's Bill of Rights and 2007 immigration reform.

Kennedy's Purported Bipartisanship

I recently wrote a post criticizing Kennedy's partisan push to reinstate the (currently Democratic) Massachusetts Governor's ability to appoint his own replacement (it was stripped because the Democrats were worried about Republican Governor Mitt Romney's potential appointment to fill John Kerry's seat after the 2004 election). Whereas much has been made of some of Kennedy's bipartisan dealings, e.g., with Senators Hatch and McCain and former President George W. Bush, I know that Ted Kennedy was a strident partisan, one of those responsible for the gridlock Obama disingenuously ran against last fall. Ted Kennedy's bipartisan efforts were politically expedient, and he never was a party to genuine bridging of differences, e.g., McCain's Gang of 14, which defused a crisis over the unconscionable use of the filibuster to prevent floor votes on judicial nominees. In fact, I trace my final break with progressive Democrats to the Robert Bork confirmation hearings and subsequent floor vote rejection, and ironically Ted Kennedy had a leading role in that. [I say "ironically" because just a few years earlier I went to the Houston Democratic precinct caucuses to support Kennedy's bid against Carter's renomination in 1980. I am horrified today to look at Kennedy's platform then, including national health care and wage-and-price controls, things that are inconsistent with my current conservative principles; I think I was responding more towards Kennedy's ideals than his policies and a general dissatisfaction with Jimmy Carter.]

[However, I will give Kennedy credit for being an honest broker, unlike Barack Obama. For instance, in the 2007 immigration reform compromise, Ted Kennedy agreed to concessions for a temporary worker program, which organized labor bitterly opposed, and stood by the concessions when fellow Democrats attempted to strip it from the bill, just like McCain and others stood by concessions to the Democrats.]

Kennedy and the Character Issue

I do wonder how difficult it was to be Ted Kennedy; his oldest brother Joseph died a war hero during WWII, and his slain brothers President John Kennedy and Senator Bobby Kennedy cast a long shadow: how do you establish your own legacy? As a Catholic boy growing up, I saw John Kennedy, the first Catholic President, as a role model; I think a number of us, perhaps unrealistically and unfairly, wanted to see Ted Kennedy as an extension of his brothers' legacy.

Ted Kennedy's involvement in the circumstances of the 1969 tragic drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former secretary to Bobby Kennedy, at Chappaquiddick cast a shadow over his political career and was probably the leading reason why he never became President. This was an issue for me even during my salad days of progressive politics (except for a consistent pro-life stand). Ted Kennedy's explanations for the events never convinced me, his delay in reporting the accident was legally and morally unacceptable, Judge Boyle himself concluded some of Kennedy's story was untrue, and a number of independent articles (not partisan rants) have raised serious issues with Kennedy's account. As a matter of opinion, I also felt that there were double standards at play, that the politically powerful Kennedy name made a difference.

I was somehow hopeful that Ted Kennedy, facing his mortality under brain cancer, would come clean in the end and give the Kopechne family some long-awaited closure. But I think, as always, Kennedy's first instinct was political survival and in this case trying to protect his own legacy.

Final Thoughts

Ted Kennedy was a powerful orator and, in my judgment, the most effective, consistent, articulate, persuasive spokesman for conventional progressive politics; he differed from Barack Obama in the sense he had never attempted to mask his progressive ideology under some sophistical fuzzy moderation.

However, Ted Kennedy never really grasped the significance of the political backlash against the progressive movement--the Reagan landslides, the 1972 Nixon landslide, and the failures not only of his own national candidacy but those of his fellow Massachusetts progressives, Mike Dukakis and John Kerry. Like all progressives, he blamed election losses not on the innate shortcomings of his paternalist, elitist policies, but on failures to "educate" American voters on progressive principles, conservative "lies" and GOP "dirty tricks". Ted Kennedy was an unabashed believer in Big Government. To a certain extent, one has to give Barack Obama credit for his political insight that he could not sell himself as a progressive but had to disguise himself as a fuzzy post-partisan moderate, suggesting that he was open to offshore drilling when oil was selling at over $140/barrel last year, that he believed in the Second Amendment after the Supreme Court reaffirmed its fundamental meaning, and that he also believed in tax cuts.

Arugula-Eating Obama Upset at Whole Foods' CEO

A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America. -- John Mackey, CEO, Whole Foods

One of my favorite Obama anecdotes from the 2008 Presidential campaign, which perfectly encapsulates his Ivy League elitist, condescending progressive paternalism, was his awkward attempt in Iowa to connect with the average joe: "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" Personally, I never knew that the leading topic of discussion for all the brothers in the hood was the high cost of aromatic salad greens. and never mind the fact that at the time Obama made the statement, there were no yuppie-friendly Whole Foods outlets in Iowa.

For the uninitiated, Whole Foods is the market leader in the premium natural/minimally processed/organic food supermarket niche. [I will save detailed discussions of purported benefits for my new nutrition blog, but basically I am skeptical of commensurate nutritional benefit of these foods relative to their higher costs.] There is a Whole Foods store within walking distance of the Metro King Street station in Alexandria, VA; I usually brown-bagged my lunch on my last assignment in the area, but on those other occasions I could always count on the company of work colleagues (especially this one Java developer) if I was going to Whole Foods. They have a hot food bar (pay by the pound), or alternatively I might try one of their poultry or tuna wraps. It was pricier than the standard fast foot fare (even without a drink, my bill started at about $7), but I preferred the selection, quality, and reasonably quick checkout.

So when Whole Foods CEO John Mackey gingerly ventured forth in an August 11 Wall Street Journal column  his constructive criticism of ObamaCare, based on concerns over a $1.8T projected deficit and trillions more for the foreseeable future, I immediately thought to myself, "Uh, oh!" I remembered the experience of Thomas Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza. After firmly establishing the pizza chain, which established its market-leading niche on prompt delivery service, Monaghan, a former Catholic seminarian, left active company leadership in the 1980's to pursue Catholic philanthropic interests, including a prominent role in the pro-life movement. When Monaghan returned to the struggling company in the early 1990's, an incensed National Organization of Women, with its Angry Left allies, organized a boycott of Domino's Pizza. [Knowing that universities are dominated by so-called progressives (liberals) and delivered pizza being a staple of many college students partying or pulling all-nighters, the Angry Left felt that they could use their buying power to intimidate businesses whose owners or managers, on their own time and not in their official capacity, dared voice contrary political opinions.] So I was not surprised that the leftists, many of them upper-income yuppies attracted by Whole Foods' environmentally-friendly and related policies (e.g., seafood sustainability and non-genetically modified foods) and hard-to-find healthy products, felt betrayed and responded with a boycott; labor unions (e.g., SEIU and UFCW), which have a history of clashing with companies like WalMart and Whole Foods, have joined in the boycott. I'm amused to see that the anti-big government Tea Party coalition has countered with a buycott of Whole Foods; save me a Mediterranean tuna wrap or sandwich, guys...

I wonder if President Obama read about the Mackey kerfuffle over  a mouthful of arugula; I suspect that the White House chefs are now looking for alternative suppliers. I guess we conservatives should be grateful that Obama hasn't responded by imposing price controls over arugula or arguing that that the reason arugula prices are so high is the result of inadequate private-sector competition, the answer to which is to create government-owned produce farms...

And what were the ideas that Mackey expressed that have the leftists so up in arms?  The ideas are consistent  with my own posts on health care reform:

• Promote high-deductible health insurance and health savings accounts. The idea is for insurance to be insurance and deal with the big, unexpected bills, just like in auto insurance. We don't demand that auto insurers cover the owner's operational or maintenance costs, which we normally cover out of pocket. Part of the problem is many policyholders have come to expect more of an all-bills-paid approach and have no vested interest in saving money, e.g., by using equally effective, less expensive (generic) drugs or services. A health savings account provides a mechanism for taxpayers to shelter expected expenses (without a use-it-or-lose-it provision often related to flexible accounts); since the costs are initially coming out of the taxpayer's pocket, the taxpayer has a natural incentive to minimize costs. I should note, however, that Bush and McCain have pushed similar proposals, and there's a lack of enthusiasm from voters with all-inclusive health plans to sign on. Liberals/progressives still haven't caught on that it's difficult to control costs when individual policyholders are not vested in lowering health costs.
• Provide Equal Protection for Taxpayers Purchasing Health Insurance on Their Own. It is morally indefensible to provide tax subsidies to taxpayers whom work at an employer offering a health plan but the same type of subsidy is not available to taxpayers paying for their own insurance using after-tax dollars.  The liberal/progressive opposition to this idea should be familiar to anyone whom has thought that parents should have the right to apply their prorated school-expense tax payments towards alternative private schools: liberals see it as a zero-sum game; they argue that being fair to all taxpayers would create a hole in the federal budget. (Of course, the response to that is to provide everyone with an equal, smaller exemption, not allow a windfall full share for the selected many or few lucking into tax-subsidized health insurance plans from businesses.) 
• Deregulate the Marketing of Health Insurance Across State Lines. The current system is inefficient; why, for instance, does it make sense to worry whether you'll have to change insurers simply by moving across state lines or have to pay more for coverage because the new (or your current) state requires expensive benefits or regulations you don't want or need?
• Get Government Out of the Business of Setting Mandates. Mackey's point is consistent with Jeffersonian fears of the inherent corruption of government lobbyists (including progressive activists) unduly interfering with the concepts of economic liberty. (Obama was fond during the campaign of arguing that legislation under the Republican Congress or Bush Administration was written by lobbyists, i.e., big business; but his own capitulation to union interests, manifestly obviously in his administration's handling of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, ignoring the higher-standing bondholder claims on company assets, makes the hypocrisy obvious: he believes that his own special-interest allies are "more equal".) Gold-plated mandates and policies constitute barriers to competition. Insurers not offering necessary coverages will be uncompetitive and lose market share and/or go out of business--but ill-considered public policies, such as allowing "hit-and-run" policyholders, essentially forcing companies and policyholders in good faith to subsidize the health costs of other people, and gold-plated, cost-prohibitive mandates are counterproductive. (Only the biggest, most deeply-pocketed competitors can compete in a rigged market--which is precisely the case predicted for the ill-conceived government-run insurance exchange including the public option.)
• Enact Medical Malpractice Tort Reform. Abusive lawsuits drive up costs for everybody in the system, thanks to parasitic trial lawyers. The Obamaian fantasy of controlling sector costs specifically exempts one of the prime factors driving up insurance costs and directly affecting the supply of available physicians. The idea that you can dump millions of more patients in a public option plan on already overextended physicians while at the same time doing nothing about a key factor affecting the supply of doctors and the high cost of defensive medicine is patently absurd.
• Make Costs More Transparent to the Consumer. I have written articles on the usability of information, and what I've seen in terms of piecemeal and restated invoices, various convoluted discounts in products and services, etc., violates almost every practical guidelines, even simply in validating charges, never mind provide actionable information for policyholders to hold down costs. 
• Fix Medicare First. Whereas Medicare is  mostly funded from payroll taxes and so some level of benefits is guaranteed on an ongoing basis, we are rapidly coming to the point (if not already), that the existing reserve will draw down to maintain benefits. This means at some point (if and when the reserve goes to zero), either we'll need to make up the difference from general revenues or raise payroll taxes. The peak issue of Medicare reserves is a far more tangible issue than the dubious necessity of addressing uninsured Americans in the middle of a severe recession. It is also probably a prerequisite to any ObamaCare reform, because Medicare services are largely subsidized by the private sector and any loss of private-sector market share may affect Medicare participants (and costs to the American taxpayer).
• Find a Voluntary Mechanism for Americans to Share Uncovered Health Care Costs for the Needy. This is a worthy philanthropic ambition, but if Mackey thinks that the quarter of Americans whom consider themselves liberal or progressive will pay their fair share, he is sadly mistaken. It is curious, especially given his opening quote from former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." Obama and his fellow progressives are good when it comes to spreading other people's wealth around, but less generous when it comes to giving using their own resources. On multiple occasions, I have cited Arthur C. Brooks' Who Really Cares, which points out that conservatives have been generally more generous than progressives in terms of charitable donations. Another example is the following chart which conservative blogger and author Michelle Malkin composed in 2004 using 2002 charity data and recoding the results in traditional red (Republican/conservative)/blue (Democratic/progressive) states. I realize that the data and cited election are somewhat dated, and last November's results flipped some red states under circumstances favoring a Democratic challenger, but most of the red states in the top 22 below were also carried by McCain.

CatalogueForPhilanthropy.org 2002 Data

Table Courtesy Michelle Malkin 2004

Pastor Martin Niemöller's Lesson on Nazi Germany: Why We Must Speak Out on Congressional Pickpockets

Almost everyone remembers the words attributed to Pastor Niemöller:

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.


Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.


Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.


Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.


Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

We have often heard the same thing from Obama and his progressive allies on Capitol Hill: We can expand government services, in the middle of a recession, and not only cut taxes on 55% of workers (whom do pay federal taxes) but provide reimbursable tax credits to 40% of workers (whom don't pay federal taxes). All of this with only a modest reversion to Clinton-era high tax bracket rates affecting 5% of workers.

This Democratic fantasy that they can expand tax cuts, credits, and program resources available to lower-income people by increasing investment and wage taxes on the job creator class simply sounds too good to be true, and in fact it is too good to be true. Even if you confiscate all the income of the top 5% (and let's pretend for the moment that anti-growth policies of high taxation don't affect business and job opportunities), there's not nearly enough to cover the reckless tab being run up by progressive spendthrifts in Congress.

The progressives, of course, figure that there's very little political risk to targeting 5% of the electorate whom aren't supporting them anyway. (Of course, the Bill of Rights serves to protect minorities, including propertied interests, against the tyranny of majoritarian abuse.) Sooner or later, though, you have to pay your tab. If the government simply prints money, the result is inflation, a particularly cruel tax on those with limited income. Not to mention job-killing, income-shrinking high interest rates once foreign buyers start balking at purchasing T-bills, meaning we have to raise interest rates to attract investment. The bill will have to be paid--if not from the 95% benefiting from most of the new spending, then their children and grandchildren.

It's time for people "in the lower 95%" to speak up. Democratic "Robin Hood" schemes to "soak the rich" (of which I myself am not a member) not only undermine the American dream, but fundamentally require us to make sure that the custodians of our tax revenues are making necessary, efficient, effective utilization of them before coming back for more from any taxpayer, rich or poor.

The health care "reform" legislation is a case in point. We have a private-sector health insurance system which serves over 80% of the American public, generally speaking happily; in fact, federal employees enjoy a selection of vendors probably better than most private-sector workers have access to. What's particularly notable is that the "public option" plan is something even the Congressional Democrats and Obama themselves have admitted they wouldn't want to have for themselves.

The uninsured include a number of segments, including temporarily uninsured (e.g., between jobs) and above-average income households whom self-insure. The Democrats insist that the uninsured are a failure of the private sector (although there is no government mandate for coverage and some individuals prefer to pay for medical costs as needed), that rising costs are the result of inadequate private sector competition (although they refuse to deregulate interstate barriers to entry, including unrealistic, high-cost policies such as enrolling on the day of illness, which fails to address individual responsibility for his health care), disregard the actuarial implications of an aging population (directly related to higher medical costs), refuse to consider reforms directly related to the supply and affordability of physician services, e.g., medical malpractice tort reform, and incoherently argue that the issue of the uninsured has now reached a crisis stage which requires federal government intervention in the middle of a severe recession with a bloated federal deficit. (This certainly is questionable given the fact that patients cannot be denied emergency care based on ability to pay.)

This doesn't mean there aren't issues--but the fact is that government is part of the problem, not the solution. For instance, Medicare and Medicaid patient care is largely subsidized by the private sector since the government established reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals by fiat--at prices some 20 to 30% below market price. We have a problem where many insurance policyholders don't have a stake in the efficient utilization of health care dollars, something Republican proposals for health savings accounts address in part, i.e., high-deductible insurance. We have a problem where high-risk patients are not assigned in a fair manner across providers and where small businesses and others do not have critical mass to attract favorable pricing from vendors; we have a problem of catastrophic health care costs which can bankrupt families, and we have a problem with skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance and defensive medicine costs; the proper response of policymakers is to provide the market with sufficient guidance, regulations and incentives to address these problems--and that does not mean that the answers to these problems is for incompetent government bureaucrats to get into the health insurance business.

What's rather amusing is hearing the Democrats float around tax ideas in an effort to fund ObamaCare and then hear liberal commentators, media fact checkers, and the like then claim that none of these are in the legislation. For example, we have heard the Democrats insist they could "pay as you go"--the same people whom barely can find $17B or $102M dollars to cut from over a trillion dollar budget (phony progressive lip service to which I refer as "Liberal Trivial Pursuit"). Every single time we've seen a state (e.g., Tennessee and Massachusetts) take up universal coverage, we have seen costs skyrocketing out of control. The Democrats have also floated the idea of a VAT (a national sales tax) to pay for their program, which would adversely affect consumer product/service demand and the jobs linked to them during the recession; they have even floated the idea of limiting the business tax subsidy for gold-plated plans (which Bush and McCain had proposed in an effort to provide a universal tax-advantaged basis for health insurance, under withering criticism from Obama)--not to provide consumers paying for their own insurance from after-tax dollars equal protection but to pay for their health care sinkhole. There has also been discussion of taxing businesses (primarily small businesses whom find health care insurance costs uncompetitive) as if it's the government's business to micromanage how private-sector concerns structure compensation; recall that the involvement of business in providing health care insurance in the first place was to work around federal wage-price controls during WWII!

Obama and his progressive Congressional allies shrink from the CBO trillion-dollar price tags for their ill-considered Trojan horse "public option" proposal (again, the progressive fact checkers will argue against pricing legislation constantly changing and no doubt will attempt to repeat their so-called stimulus plan debacle when they announced the legislation was "too critical" to bother with reformist transparency requirements to enable full public scrutiny of legislation). I recall I had to freeze my dissertation proposal and my dissertation for weeks before my defenses--and yet the Democrats, who claim to be reformers, refuse to allow the freezing of major public policy legislation. There's only one reason for that--given enough public exposure, the taxpayers will rise up against bad legislation.

But taxpayers should think of an alternate extension of Pastor Niemöller's observation: first, Obama and his cronies came after high-income taxpayers ("because it's good to spread the wealth around"). But there's not enough income and assets of the wealthy elite to pay for the list price of Obamaian federal expansion programs. They can't get the money out of poor people without any appreciable assets; they already have some of the highest business tax brackets in the developed world (and businesses losing money during the recession aren't paying income taxes). And heaven knows we can't expect the rest of the world to continue buying T-bills to fund Obama's overspending. So where is Obama going to come next? The middle-income taxpayers may think they have Obama's assurances he won't ask them to pay more in taxes--but if they don't speak up while Democrats are decimating the American dream by punishing success, who is going to be left to speak for them when Obama needs even more money to pay for his initiatives?

Let me close by reminding the reader of that famous line from Shakespeare's Macbeth: "Something wicked this way comes": in our context, the taxman. The late, great George Harrison reminds us of the nature of the taxman below:

Miscellany: 8/23/09

Robert Novak: RIP

The 78-year-old conservative television/print host, journalist and columnist, with a long collaboration with partner Rowland Evans, last week passed away from complications of brain cancer. Novak headed a short list of conservative columnists I have considered a must-read, including the late William F. Buckley, George Will, and Charles Krauthammer; Novak's regular straight-talk political analyses of upcoming Congressional swing races always made for fascinating reading. 

Unfortunately, many people will remember Bob for his controversial column in 2003 noting that the wife of former Ambassador Wilson, a prominent Bush Administration critic, worked in the CIA department making the request for Wilson's trip to Niger to investigate unconfirmed rumors of Saddam Hussein's attempted procurement of yellowcake (uranium). Wilson, in a preemptive attempt to counter any Administration attempt to question his credibility, dubiously claimed that Vice President Cheney himself had requested Wilson's 2002 week-long junket to Niger. Novak's column, in response, raised the issue of nepotism. Wilson angrily accused the Administration of dirty tricks, attacking him through his wife Valerie Plame and illegally exposing her covert operative status. (Novak did not identify Plame by name or her prior assignments at the CIA. Furthermore, it should be noted that it had been years since Plame's last overseas assignment, and she had been pulled from the field because of a belief that she had been exposed.) It was later exposed that US Attorney Fitzgerald became aware of the fact Richard Armitage, a deputy to then Secretary of State Colin Powell, was Novak's source when he expanded his investigation as the special prosecutor, eventually putting former Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby's faulty memory (of whom said what about Plame to whom and when) on trial and winning a conviction. (Armitage, who reportedly had his own doubts about Bush's policy on Iraq, was not aware of Plame's former covert status, and Fitzgerald did not charge anyone of violating the law with respect to Plame's revelation. In fact, there are stories that Wilson had previously introduced Plame socially as his "CIA wife." Novak claimed that Wilson's concern before publication of the column was not the revelation about his wife but with his own characterization chiefly as an Iraq policy opponent and that Plame went by her married name. (Plame's marriage to Wilson occurred after she was recalled to Washington. This further undermines the credibility of the allegation of an intent to expose her covert status.))

Don Hewitt: RIP


I tend to be ambivalent about the national news networks which are notoriously unbalanced and clearly biased with a liberal/progressive perspective; I do have a certain fondness for ABC-TV's token libertarian John Stossel featured on 20/20. Producer Hewitt's 60 Minutes news magazine concept was innovative in a number of respects: crisply produced 13-minute news segments with anchor correspondents, with a distinctive emphasis on hidden-camera, ambush reporting on private and public sector corrupt officials and public safety issues; there are also celebrity interviews, which often include a biographical element and go beyond shilling the celebrity's latest project (movie, CD, book, etc.); and at various periods, there have been liberal/conservative commentaries on current topics.

What I particularly like about Hewitt's television legacy is the fact that he proved that there is a prime-time audience for intelligent, well-produced, newsworthy stories, as 60 Minutes went from winning their time slot by the mid-70's to becoming the highest-rated program overall by the end of the decade. In fact, some of the show's segments became newsworthy on their own merits. In a medium characterized by sitcoms, law-and-order series, soap operas and other drama series, and game shows, 60 Minutes is a refreshing alternative.

Ted Kennedy: Resign Now!

Ted Kennedy, afraid that Republican Governor Mitt Romney might appoint a Republican to fill 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry's Senate seat if Kerry was elected President, pushed the Massachusetts state legislature to strip the governor of that function. It has become increasingly obvious that Kennedy, in the advanced stages of brain cancer, will likely not survive the remainder of his term. Given a Democratic governor (Deval Patrick) in power, Kennedy has suddenly rediscovered the virtues of the governor being able to appoint a replacement Democrat given a Kennedy resignation or his death (no doubt this would be to given an appointee the advantage of incumbency in defending the seat in a subsequent election).

Mr. Kennedy, the Senate seat belongs to the people of Massachusetts, not you! The idea that Democratic governors are "more equal" than Republicans ones when it comes to selecting Senate successors is blatantly partisan and unworthy of a principled public servant whom put the people first. I'm empathetic towards your personal fight against cancer, a ruthless killer, but the people of Massachusetts deserve a full-time senator. It's time to resign your seat, Senator!

Obama: Putting Lipstick on his Health Care "Reform" Pig

I'm amused, watching the give and take of Democrats in a state of denial over their ill-conceived health care reform package. Liberal Democrats, led by Speaker Pelosi, angry at hints that centrists may drop the sacrosanct "public option" (i.e., government-run health care), have vowed to vote against any compromise bill. There is even renewed talk of using the so-called "nuclear option", using unconventionally a budget reconciliation process to bypass Senate filibuster rules. I'm confident that is pure bluff.

The "Nuclear Option" is Unlikely

First, it would be political suicide to push a bill that polls already show is against public sentiment; it would occur with no Republican support. The Democrats should be very cautious because they should remember the last time they tried to ram national health care down the nation's throat--they ended up getting voted out of power in the Congress in 1994. The Clintons turned a compromise proposal from Senator Dole for catastrophic health insurance. But if Obama and the Congressional Democrats think that the answer to their own declining approval ratings is to double-down and push through a costly government-run option allegedly to help the uninsured with an existing $1.25T deficit and nearly 10% unemployment, they are delusional. The fact is that innovative state plans (e.g., Massachusetts) are drowning in red ink--even when allowing hardship exemptions from a coverage mandate. Adding new patients to an already costly system not only could have unintended consequences for existing policyholders in the private sector (e.g., if businesses drop their plans in a cost-saving move), but federal cost coverage could affect access and quality of health care for seniors (i.e., Medicare cuts), add disproportionately higher costs for smaller businesses (affecting business growth and employment), and will likely adversely affect patient time with family physicians, given limited slack capacity of available and supply of new doctors.

The facts that Obama and the Democrats have to date refused to seriously consider medical malpractice tort reform (because of their ties to trial lawyers) and that they are looking to cut Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements, even as these patients are already essentially subsidized by business from private sector patients, underscores the Democrats' failure to adequately address the provider supply side of the equation. Any loss of private sector market share necessarily implies that the federal government will have to pay its fair share or further drive down the supply of physicians at the very time they are seeking to expand the number of aggregate patients. Any government-run program will never be allowed to pass along its true costs to public program policyholders, because payments are subject to political pressure, not economic factors; the private sector cannot afford to do this from a long-term perspective. This is an inherent form of corruption and makes for fundamentally unjust competition, the same kind of muddled thinking that led Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to dominating the home mortgage market from a single-digit percentage share in the early 60's--and we know what resulted from this Democratic-sponsored expansion using their GSE access to cheap Treasury funds as a competitive advantage, i.e., a key element of last year's economic tsunami.

Taxpayers, I believe, understand this bureaucratic power grab for exactly what it is. We, as human beings, have all sorts of needs and desires, e.g., food, shelter, utilities, clothing, as well as medical assistance. Our Founding Fathers understood that; they did not guarantee coverage of these needs; in fact, economic liberty ensures a vibrant private sector that addresses these needs. The federal government seems to understand, at least in other sectors, that the solution to ensuring fair, affordable access is to provide reasonable guidance, regulations, and subsidies, not some fiction of providing "competition" to keep the private sector honest: If sugar prices are high, farmers, on their own, will chase the higher prices; there's no need for the government to get in the sugar plantation business in order to guarantee low sugar prices. What "progressives" fail to point out is that health care is business, just like any other business, subject to the same concepts of supply and demand. What we do know is that farmers, as businessmen, will cut back on their costs, including their use of temporary help during planting and harvesting, in an adverse market; the federal government has hardly given us assurances it would lay off federal workers on the plantations, not to mention the heavy bureaucracy running them--and no doubt have no problem with dumping below-cost sugar on the market, justifying it as a "pro-consumer" move, but in reality anti-competitive behavior, undermining the natural incentive for private-sector farmers to plant sugar. Generally speaking, we have seen the federal government resort to temporary assistance, e.g., welfare and subsidies, to help manage living costs.

Second, if the Democrats were to use gimmicky tactics in an unprecedented move to pass major policy, it would essentially undermine the integrity of the Senate itself and the very compromise underlying our Constitution: it would undermine states' and pluralist rights. It would render the filibuster essentially moot. It would all but ensure full-fledged bipartisan war in Congress, undermining any chance Obama has to carry the rest of his agenda. From a political standard, even senior citizens, who have often supported Democrats for political support of generous social security and Medicare assistance, understand the implications of health care rationing, e.g., the horror stories of Canada's single-payer system where patients sometimes experience a devastating delay in treatment of diseases like cancer or effective new prescription drugs are not used because of their cost. The Democrats seem to forget they were out of power in Congress just 3 years ago, and elections can reverse political fortunes quickly (e.g., among Democrat US Senate seats in danger in 2010: Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Harry Reid (D-NV), Chris Dodd (D-CN), Biden's old Senate seat (D-DE), Gillibrand (D-NY), and Burris (D-IL)). The point here is that I suspect some Democrats will essentially join with Republicans in a revamped version of McCain's Gang of 14, which preserved the potential use of filibusters, if not in terms of principle, then surely out of the fact that Republicans, if and when the tables are turned, can use the same tactics.

Democrats Underestimating the Electoral Consequences of "Progressive" Arrogance and Condescension

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), who won by 2 percentage points in a Republican-leaning district during a change election, has recently been quoted saying to progressive activists that he would vote against his own district's interests, not only in supporting the idea of government-run health care in HR 3200, but in pushing for a single-payer system. This kind of arrogance is part of the reason that Republicans next year are targeting at least 70 US House seats held by Democrats (especially Massa), including over a dozen Blue Dogs next election. Speaker Pelosi and other progressives seem oblivious to the fact that some 40% of Americans consider themselves conservative, versus 25% or so whom identify themselves as progressives. Rasmussen and other pollsters show a continuing dissatisfaction with both the Congress and the direction that the nation is headed, under the Democrats (some 60% or so disagreeing); the Democrats, under a slumping economy and the health care kerfuffle, have steadily been eroding their advantage in a generic ballot horse race to the point a couple of RealClearPolitics-tracked pollsters now show a narrow advantage to Republicans.

This trend is occurring despite the best efforts of Obama and his progressive cronies to paint the Republicans and conservative Democrats as unconstructive opponents in state of denial regarding the need for "reform". In fact, we conservatives do believe in reforming health care. Obama and his propagandists want to present to the American people a false dichotomous choice, defining "reform" as some ill-defined, seat-of-the-pants set of mutually inconsistent proposals being pursued in the House and Senate, with only 3 moderate Senate Republicans having an input in discussions. Conservatives have discussed reform, not in some megalomaniacal Obamaian delusion to manage sector costs, but do deal with specific problems through relevant reforms, e.g., catastrophic health insurance to deal with problems of insurance caps and the rise of household bankruptcies due to medical costs; assigned risk pools to deal with preexisting issues (where risks of higher-cost patients are spread fairly across insurers and the government), and deregulation of health insurance marketing across states, without having to deal with expensive mandates (such as allowing people to start insurance on a day they seek medical treatment) which constitute barriers to entry, medical malpractice tort reform, and improved information and accessibility to available providers and medical service/drug prices.

Obama himself is ignoring the message of his declining poll numbers, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs seemed to suggest, that Obama was willing to sacrifice a possible second term in office over this still not fleshed out health care "reform".

Concluding Thoughts

Obama is dismayed, seeing his approval numbers drop, public polls showing popular sentiment now against his "reforms", not just conservatives, but independents and moderates and blue dogs: Oh my! (Just follow the red brick road...) He's baffled--he thought it all figured out: the reason that health care "reform" in 1993-1994 failed was because of the Clintons' mismanagement of the issue. Obama was smarter and politically savvier than the Clintons; he would avoid the political risk inherent in providing his own solution, let politically invulnerable progressive Congressional Democrat leaders do the heavy lifting and continue his campaign-proven Teflon-style masquerade as a political moderate in cheerleading reform.

But America is hungering for leadership instead of an ongoing political campaign now well into its third year; in addition to Bush bashing, Obama is running against private sector health care insurer "greed", a single cable news outlet, and conservative radio hosts for sabotaging "reform"; all of that, of course, outweighs the liberal mass media's uncritical cheerleading for Obama's political agenda and the fact that progressives are outspending conservative critics by better than 2-to-1 in media ads. [We have seen a typical response by the media by trying to portray dissidents to "reform" as wackos, e.g., highlighting one townhall critic's characterization of the reform as "Nazi" or David Gregory's recent focus in Meet the Press on a solitary protester wearing a Thomas Jefferson quote (which Gregory intentionally linked to domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh). The quote basically encourages people to speak up when they see the government doing something wrong--perhaps like the unnecessary government intervention into health care.]

After all, Barack Obama is the One, the Pied Piper of Failed Liberalism, and made sure that government-bred pig was wearing just the right shade of deficit-red lipstick... He continues to "educate" the people (because they need the government, which can't balance its own budgets, to manage the health care sector's share of the economy). The White House continues its outrageous assault on American liberty, seeking to intimidate legitimate debate and dissent by having encouraged the reporting of anti-interventionist "fishy" emails: No doubt that Barack Obama wants to be your Big Brother and may one day suggest, as some rogue regimes have, that children have a patriotic duty to inform on their parents (e.g., alternative medical approaches not yet sanctioned by government bureaucrats). To paraphrase William Shakespeare, "something is rotten in the District of Columbia."

Obama: Six Month Performance Review

In my May 2 post appraising the President's first 100 days, I gave Obama a D+ on domestic policy, an F on defense policy, and a C+ on foreign relations. I think the discussions and critical remarks made then are still relevant, so I want to focus on a few salient points.

• Obama is Reaping the Rewards of Over-Promise and Under-Delivery. The President boxed himself in by unconditionally expanding government services without addressing revenues in sufficient detail. In the process, he put constraints on revenues by exempting most Americans from federal tax increases and maintaining a disparate taxation scheme for health care insurance and related expenses, i.e., maintaining a tax-favored basis for business-sponsored health insurance. Possible long-term consequences of scaled-up federal spending without commensurate revenue increases include inflation (a de facto tax cutting across all income classes) and bond interest expenses crowding out key domestic and defense spending initiatives. In addition, the nearly trillion dollar stimulus package was sold with oversold benefits and payback in terms of employment statistics.
• Obama Must Establish Credibility and Accept Responsibility. Obama recently was quoted crediting his  administration's economic policies for the government not falling into depression. This is patently preposterous.  What could have resulted in a global collapse was last September's economic tsunami. The bipartisan TARP legislation and various bailouts probably staved off a credit freeze and more severe economic collapse. The idea that the single-percentage spending of the massive so-called stimulus bill and Obama's union-biased version of a belated bankruptcy proceeding of GM and Chrysler prevented an economic collapse simply lacks credibility. Scapegoating the Bush Administration for the economic tsunami is, at best, debatable; first, the Obama Administration has been in power long enough for policy decisions to influence macroeconomic variables; second, political pressure on the mortgage market to expand home ownership among riskier lower-income Americans and/or regulatory reform issues (especially of the secondary market) also reflect Clinton Administration and/or Congressional Democratic policy goals.
• Obama and the Congressional Democrats Have Transparency Problems. Convoluted bills, like the grab-bag stimulus and omnibus budget bill and prospective health care legislation, not to mention Obama's unprecedented utilization of so-called czars, limited bipartisan participation, and short-shrifted review periods make it difficult to evaluate legislation and assess outcomes and responsibility.
• Obama's True Test of Leadership is To Confront his Base. We have yet to see Obama jawboning trial lawyers on the need for medical malpractice reform, a key issue in discussing physician availability and medical costs. Obama's short-sighted capitulation to union demands to bypass bondholders in the GM and Chrysler bailouts will no doubt have a negative impact on the automakers' post-bankruptcy attempts to borrow. Obama has also refused to address public school union monopolies standing in the way of educational diversity and competition.
• Obama is too Detached from Legislative Processes. We have seen a lack of sufficient direction by the White House in Congressional Democratic sausage-making on the stimulus bill, the omnibus budget bill (i.e., earmarks), cap-and-trade, and the health care legislation. This puts him on the defensive as Congressional Democrats pursue their own priorities (e.g., earmarks) or refuse to compromise with Republican leadership.
• Obama is Too Abstract, Makes Dubious Assumptions, Uses Questionable Statistics, and Sets Unrealistic Expectations. Obama during the early Democratic nomination had a reputation for being long-winded and professorial.  Obama makes a dubious case for  a significant expansion of federal involvement in the health care industry, particularly given chronic budget deficits and double-digit percentage tax revenue shortfalls from individuals and businesses; he needs to be more focused, e.g., addressing specific issues like the effects of malpractice insurance on availability of doctors willing to practice, the difficulty of high-risk individuals in finding affordable coverages, and increasing household bankruptcies due to catastrophic medical costs. It is doubtful that green energy can scale to the degree Obama hypes, not to mention his promise of a material generator of new jobs, and that a public sector option will compete fairly against private health insurers. He promises to maintain campaign promises not to touch tax-advantaged basis of company health insurance and not to increase taxes on all but the highest tax brackets and still pay for sharply higher federal spending. The idea that the Administration can find enough money to displace hundreds of billions on health care, when a deficit budget savings effort yielded just $17B, doesn't seem credible. Obama tries to use gimmick unconventional indicators such as "jobs saved". Obama has to make the case how the government presiding over Katrina, the economic tsunami, and massive federal deficits cam credibly argue that it (versus the private sector) can provide leadership on diagnosing and controlling health care costs. He also needs to address the problems his friend, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, has faced given his state's huge funding shortfalls for its own initiative, well beyond projections. We need to seriously address whether Obama is deliberately understating costs in a disingenuous bait-and-switch operation, which is really  a Trojan horse strategy to nationalize health care.
• Obama Must Scale Back His Agenda and Set Different Priorities. The budget deficit is huge; there is a risk that a growing federal interest tab will come at the expense of other domestic and defense priorities; initiatives like the health care and cap-and-trade initiatives which involve an expansion of government and new passed-along costs to consumers or taxes are not well-suited for an economy struggling to find its footing. Obama's attempts to tie in Medicare for his separate health care initiative for are not credible, The reserve issues for Medicare and social security have become even more critical given recessionary effects of payroll contributions; yet Obama has placed dubious higher priorities on carbon emissions and a small percentage of uninsured Americans. Moreover, the effectiveness of Obama's proposals would require certain preconditions which are unfulfilled. For example, unilateral cutbacks in American generation of carbon emissions would be overwhelmed by escalating carbon emissions by developing economies (e.g., China and India), which are reluctant to saddle their corporations with additional costs in an increasingly competitive global economy. With respect to Obama's health care initiative, it seems that the President is putting the cart before the horse; given existing medical staffing shortfalls, increasingly difficult problems in new patients finding available physicians,  and unevenly distributed medical facilities and personnel, where are tens of millions of new patients in the system going to find doctors?
• Obama's Deployment of Czars Raises Constitutional Issues. I believe that Obama is deliberately empowering individuals with material impact over national policies as a workaround to traditional Congressional approval and oversight
• Obama's Record is Contradicting His Post-Partisan Rhetoric. One of the things that appealed to voters about Obama last November was a change in tone and more constructive attitude towards seriously addressing the nation's problems. But in fact, Obama has routinely blamed the Bush Administration for economic issues, has hinted that he could pursue prosecution of Bush Administration members involved with enhanced interrogation techniques, contradicted his campaign promise not to sign "business-as-usual" Congressional pork earmarks sweetening the omnibus budget bill, and has signaled that he would go along with unconventional Senate voting procedures enabling bypass of GOP compromise on health care reform legislation. In addition, the Obama Administration gave equity stakes to lower-ranking union interests above those for higher-ranking creditors for bankruptcy proceedings, a counterproductive appeasement of their own special interest groups, undermining Obama's frequent allegations of improper lobbyist influence during the Bush Administration.
• Obama and the Congressional Dems Have Undermined Their Credibility With a False Sense of Urgency and Ineffective Results. For partisans who alleged that Republicans were running a politics of fear, Obama and the Congressional Democrats have deliberately promoted the so-called stimulus bill and the bailout/bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler in apocalyptic terms. The stimulus package actually spent only a tiny percentage in the first 6 months, which undermined Obama's sense of urgency in selling the bill, without sufficient time for public review. Past Democratic criticisms of budget deficits under the Bush Administration have been silenced by a recently reported record $1.27T budget deficit, largely reflecting the result of bills passed without appreciable GOP support, not to mention trivial budget cuts (by percentage). Credibility on effective use of tax money to achieve objectives (e.g., getting less fuel-efficient, higher-polluting vehicles off the road) has also been undermined by a badly designed "cash for clunkers" program, which unnecessarily expands the deficit for trivial environmental impact.
• Obama Needs to Assert a More Positive Style of Leadership. Obama seems obsessed with criticizing/acknowledging past administration actions or troubling moments in America's past (e.g., slavery, nuclear weapon deployment, the Bay of Pigs, and, of course, George W. Bush), even on foreign soil, speaking to foreign leaders. Obama has constantly scapegoated the Bush Administration for the hand he's been dealt, and he routinely ran down the economy, particularly over the first 4 months of his term. This is not the "yes, we can" inspirational leadership which resonated so well particularly among younger voters; it comes across as defensive and seems to reflect a lack of confidence in his own ability to deal with today's problems. Whatever events occurred in the past are irrelevant; Obama did not control the Executive Branch prior to his inauguration. It is particularly important to project an upbeat confidence in the resilience of the US economy and its recovery.
• Obama's Legislative Agenda Too Diffuse, Risky Politically. The Democrats seem to be trying to make up for lost time with a blizzard of initiatives (including immigration reform), seeking to take advantage of legislative majorities unlikely to improve over coming elections; Obama has set aggressive deadlines, most recently the missed August target vote on his health care initiative. Among other things, Obama has discovered that Congressional Democrats are a coalition which can vary by issue (with many Democrats representing districts or states which McCain carried strongly), with many Democrats worried about supporting initiatives that lack significant public support (e.g., deficit spending, the energy-tax cap-and-trade proposal, and health care reform). Democrats are discovering even though ad spending for Obama health care reform enjoys something like a 5-1 advantage over  opponents, the reform measure is opposed in many polls. Obama is now in a place where he needs to compromise, strongly opposed by progressives. With falling approval rantings, Obama may have put other goals in his political agenda in danger. 
• Obama Has Overstepped His Change Mandate. Obama seems to have forgotten that nearly half of American voters rejected his candidacy, despite factors strongly in his favor, including economic uncertainty, a highly unpopular GOP incumbent President to whom Obama tied to McCain, a normal change election year, a hopelessly inept GOP campaign against him (including baffling miscues by McCain in suspending his campaign over TARP and the selection of an incompetent running mate) and a massive campaign funding advantage. At least half of the votes Obama got were not progressive or liberal, but from moderates, independents and conservatives. These voters were responding more to Obama's smoother personal style and less strident rhetoric on issues. While almost everyone is concerned about a struggling economy, it's difficult to argue these voters share Obama's priorities on progressive priorities of cap-and-trade and transformative change in the health care sector
• Obama Has Failed to Support a Pro-Growth Economic Agenda. We had a stimulus bill which all but ignored the business spending side of the economy; Obama has continued to intervene in the private sector (e.g., the auto sector) or threatened to intervene (e.g., possible tax penalties for small companies not offering health care and/or deep pockets behind the "public option" health care proposal)  in ways counter to business interests, Obama signed into law certain buy-American provisions which were counterproductive for American exporters, and Obama continues to stress tax hikes on the investor class and increasing the number of rules and regulations on business, an indirect form of taxation.

Miscellany: 8/16/09

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) is the Poster Lady for Congressional Arrogance

This widely-reported incident, from an August 11 townhall meeting in Houston, featured Democratic Congresswoman Jackson-Lee talking on her cellphone, ignoring cancer survivor Tracy Miller's raising concerns with HR 3200 (i.e., the euphemistically and oxymoronically named "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009"). It just crystallizes the callous disregard of arrogant, publicity-seeking politicians masquerading behind a gimmicky show of pretentious, disingenuous "listening" and "openness" to constituent concerns, but in reality politically exploiting citizens' concerns over the unintended consequences of an unprecedented, unnecessary, unfocused massive federal intervention, the culmination of liberal/progressive paternalism. This country has a history of over 200 years of economic liberty in patients transacting with their physicians without even more intrusiveness and exorbitant costs of bureaucratic rules, regulations, and paperwork of tyrannical, corrupt, self-perpetuating federal bureaucrats in health-related decisions.

It is embarrassing, even pathetic, listening to Ms. Jackson-Lee's state of denial over her boorish, inexcusable, unprofessional behavior, in full display during a subsequent interview with CNN's Rick Sanchez. She just can't bring herself to stop the implausible excuses, to publicly admit that she was wrong and to offer an unconditional apology to Ms. Miller. As a professor, I would never allow a student to disrupt a class with a cellphone conversation, I think cellphone calls and text messaging by drivers are a public safety hazard and should be prosecuted, and I never take a call during a meeting with a user or client: it's a fundamental issue of respect. I realize that it is unlikely that voters in Jackson-Lee's district are going to elect a conservative to the House, but I urge them to consider voting for leadership change next year in Texas' eighteenth Congressional district.


Death Panels? Palin's Failure in Constructive Leadership


As a pro-life conservative, I am pleased to hear the Senate bipartisan Gang of 6 seems to have dropped a mandatory "life counseling" requirement in their attempts to broker a compromise to health care reform. Former Vice Presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has famously and pithily characterized these as "death panels".

We do need to acknowledge the fact that a large amount of medical expenses is incurred near the end of life by a number of elderly patients. There is no doubt that Medicare (and American workers) pay a large percentage of these costs. Especially as Americans live longer lives and encounter such circumstances, we do need to discuss how to control these costs, especially as any reserves are rapidly drawn down during recessionary times. Certainly when we start talking about the use of medical technologies where a person is terminally ill and has virtually no quality of life, one can argue that the patient has a moral right to make that decision. There is a line between a moral right and a moral obligation (to hurry up and die for the benefit of inheritance-seeking relatives or society). Ideally we would prefer individuals to establish "living wills" at times of their choosing, during periods of health and mental clarity, not while ill, emotionally vulnerable, and being manipulated by others with a material vested interest in medical decisions. (Somehow I suspect that "life counseling" is not aimed at encouraging seniors to exercise their rights to extraordinary means for life preservation...)

Palin and Gingrich do a service in pointing out the slippery slope of the government's intrusion into end-of-life medical decisions and the clueless arrogance of American progressive paternalism that government bureaucrats can effectively micromanage health care sector costs. What I would prefer to focus on is not the obvious question of morally unacceptable government rationing (if not elimination) of end-of-life technologies, but addressing research, development and market introduction of more cost-efficient medical technologies and treatment. I would prefer a less provocative approach than references to "death panels" and Nazi genocide to discussing end-of-life issues, but progressives need to address frankly the logical implications of what mandatory "life counseling" means instead of putting lipstick on a pig.

Obama Reverts to Attacking Health Care Insurers, Politically Exploiting His Late Mother, Grandmother

It was just a matter of time before Obama went back into campaign mode, in the face of plunging approval ratings and rising public opposition to the Dems' transparent Trojan horse approach to a single-payer health care system. You see, Obama thought he had it all figured out: what he felt went wrong with the Clintons' politically fatal attempts to nationalize health care was the Clinton Administration's high-profile involvement on the issue. He manufactured a crisis involving a small percentage of uninsured Americans and underestimated the American people's concerns about the impact of a public option on their existing health care coverage: would their employers simply dump their plans as a cost-saving move and force them into a plan even the President and Congress wouldn't want for themselves? Of course, Obama and his progressive allies conclude the issue is not with their "solution" to health care "reform", but with "misinformation" by conservative talk show hosts and Fox News: they need to "educate" (i.e., brainwash) Americans.

The progressives, however, are in a state of denial. They can argue all they want that conservatives are engaged in a politics of fear (now there's the pot calling the kettle black given the extremes Obama went through in promoting a bloated "stimulus" package with only a tiny percentage disbursed over the first 6 months). There is a deep suspicion that the hyped cost savings that the progressives are pushing are ethereal and taxpayers and future generations will end up paying for it, that Medicare cuts will affect senior citizen access to and quality of health care, and the federal government will not be a fair competitor in the marketplace. Despite the national media all but endorsing the progressive agenda and attempting to portray dissenters as chronic unconstructive complainers or extremists, the progressives find themselves with a health care reform package opposed by most voters in recent polls. There are enormous political risks for Obama and Congressional Democrats in pushing a significant reform package without net popular support and virtually no meaningful GOP buy-in. This means, for instance, any significant relevant adverse developments (such as employers dumping their plans or ballooning program costs) could result in a backlash against Democratic control of the Congress and the White House.

The fact is that Obama just can't bring himself towards legitimate compromise. Recall last summer, when gas prices were pushing $4.50 a gallon? Obama was beginning to soften his opposition to offshore drilling--but just as soon as oil prices sharply declined in the aftermath of the economic tsunami, Obama immediately backed off. Never mind the fact that the basic supply-demand equation has not changed, that the developing world's consumption of oil is on the uptrend and the oil exporters' fields are maturing or declining, and America's own production continues to peter out, requiring even more external supplies at a steep price. We are going to see the same old same old play out in the future--the Democrats, who have done nothing since they regained power in Congress over 2 years ago towards expanding local production, are going to AGAIN argue it takes so many years to bring new finds into production--not a word about the fact they've frittered away 2.5 more years on their watch...

The second example is how Obama earlier this year seemed to flirt with the idea of medical malpractice tort reform. Everyone knows he has an issue with a limited supply of doctors to handle millions of newly insured, and there's no question that one of the highest cost factors in health care is defensive medicine, which is strongly related to the issue of medical malpractice. But Obama is so tied to the financial support of trial lawyers opposing malpractice tort reform, he simply can't bring himself to do the right thing. I've outlined a number of things in past posts where he could find consensus with Republicans, including catastrophic health care, improved public access to cost/availability information on health care products and services, expanded immigration quotas for qualified medical professionals, deregulation of the health care insurers to operate across state lines, and reforming and expanding assigned risk pools in states (to handle preexisting conditions).

Obama feels that he has no alternative but to go back to his scapegoating campaign style: he has been unable to sell his health care reforms on their merits. What better way to convince the American people that the "public option" will be a fair competitor to private health care insurers than to demonize the industry? Is it a good political tactic to attack private sector insurers popular with their policyholders? Does Obama really want to bring attention to government-run programs in other countries (like Canada and the UK), where treatment is often delayed and more effective drugs are not prescribed (versus comparable private sector patients in the US)?

Then Obama brings up the facts that (1) his mother had to fight to be covered for preexisting conditions (cancer) and (2) his maternal grandmother died of cancer days before his election as President (re: death panels). Speaking as someone who underwent an outpatient procedure less than 2 months under a new insurer, I had no problem because I was able to show continuous coverage over the two preceding years. The condition was diagnosed under the old provider, but the surgery was postponed because of a transition in my primary care physician.Without knowing the specifics of Obama's mother, I would infer that she had not been enrolled in a health care insurance plan prior to her diagnosis. The issue is one more of fairness to insurance companies, whom feel they are being exploited by last-minute patients dumping their costs onto the insurer, just like coastal homeowners waiting until a hurricane approaches before attempting a purchase of flood insurance. Without some sort of an insurance mandate and/or assigned risk system in place, e.g., BEFORE a woman becomes pregnant, insurers could find themselves saddled with "hit-and-run" policyholders whom only hold coverage long enough to collect during periods of illness, pregnancy, etc. There are ways to handle this WITHOUT resorting to Obama's public option scheme.

As far as Obama's grandmother, this was a thinly-veiled criticism of Sarah Palin; Obama expressed mock indignation that he would be accused of wanting to pull the plug on his grandmother; he also wanted to accuse her of hypocrisy for promoting consideration of living wills as governor. This doesn't wash; it depends on the circumstances of when, how, and with whom living wills are discussed. The issue isn't whether bureaucrats will pull the plug on Grandma but whether Grandma will feel pressured to give her consent. Obama is being disingenuous about the motivation for such a provision is in the health care reform legislation at all. He seems to think voters have forgotten his fantasy over being able to control health care sector costs. Since end-of-life costs are a significant cost factor, is there any question about why such a provision was in the bill in the first place? Surely not because information on living wills is unknown or unavailable to senior citizens...

Obama: Comparing Government-Run Health Care to the US Post Office

Obama wants to reassure voters that public sector competition to the health care industry to address, by one account, roughly 9% of Americans not covered by some form of health insurance, means little more than the US Post Office providing necessary price competition to private sector overnight and package delivery competitors Fed Ex and UPS. (Of course, if the USPS was a private corporation, no doubt anti-trust regulators would be carefully reviewing whether the post office was unfairly using its public monopoly revenues to undercut the competition in other market segments...)

Oh, please, Mr. President; I just love your analogies; you have a big enough mouth that I bet you can also stick your other foot in it, too...

How Credible is Obama's Belief That More Government is the Answer? Remember Katrina?

Before considering the USPS specifically, let us recall the legendary ability of the government sector's ability to plan and execute before and during the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina tragedy. First of all, just how well did the federal government design and implement effective infrastructure support to mitigate New Orleans' known vulnerabilities to serious storms like Katrina? How well did they proactively address crumbling wetland buffers protecting New Orleans from catastrophic storms? How well did those levees hold out? Just how well did local and state authorities act upon preexisting evacuation plans (developed in the aftermath of 9/11), use and deploy public assets (remember the school buses, unoccupied and flooded out in low lying areas) and personnel (recall National Guard troops blocking relief supplies from coming into New Orleans)? Now we want to trust the federal government with effectively micromanaging one-sixth of the US economy, when it doesn't even root out the kinds of fraud (e.g., in Medicare, decades after its introduction) that private sector companies routinely screen on their own? Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in his grave over the very idea of corruption implicit in a federal government takeover of health care!

The USPS: Personal Examples of Poor Customer Service

What better example for Obama to use than the USPS, that shining example of federal competition? Tell me, when was the last time you tried to track a package you sent via USPS? The fact is, the USPS did not bring this innovative service to the marketplace; it is only now starting to implement intelligent barcoding, years after its competition. I'm sure that almost any reader of this post probably can cite his or her own examples of abysmal USPS package delivery service, but let me list three of my own here.

I had purchased some PC software in 1990 which had a money-back guarantee. I ran into functional problems with the software and returned the software as required via USPS, insuring the package. The company, in my view disingenuously, claimed it never received the package. I had insured the package for the cost of the software and filed a claim (after the necessary waiting period for delivery completion). The El Paso post office refused to process the claim, saying it was my responsibility to get the company to sign a statement saying, under penalty of fraud, it had not received the package. I, of course, had no leverage to force the company to sign such a statement, and argued that it was the USPS' responsibility to do so. [They refused to discuss the situation in public view and had me discuss the matter in a manager's office away from public view. While I was standing there debating the paperwork issue, about a half dozen postal employees entered the room behind me, and one of them shortly thereafter sharply punched me around my left kidney (of course, I never suspected an imminent physical attack with my back turned). The postal manager and his employees pretended that the physical assault never occurred; the burden of proof, of course, was on me. I should have known better being in a place without public witnesses. I later received a lip service apology from a higher-level postal bureaucrat.] I escalated my complaint over the paperwork dispute and finally got the post office to agree to address the paperwork issue with the software publisher. Shortly thereafter, the vendor suddenly "found" my returned software and issued the long overdue refund.

The second example is the fact that I had bought a nice jewelry box for my mother (for Christmas or her birthday) that had stained glass panels. I had shipped it, in pristine condition and original packaging. My mother later tactfully told me that the stained glass had completely shattered during postal handling; the post office had 101 excuses for not handling the package with due professional care (i.e., as if they were delivering a package to their own mothers); off the top of my head, they were attempting to argue that it was MY (the customer's) fault: I should have mailed it higher priority because priority packages are handled "better" (I guess careful handling of other people's property is an extra-cost service...) and/or perhaps I had not labeled the package clearly enough as "fragile".

The final examples dealt with a couple of holiday/birthday packages my mother sent (insured) for my niece (living in east Texas) and myself. My niece had recently moved without notifying relatives, and my mom mailed the package to her granddaughter's former address. The package was never received or located (my niece went to her former address to check on it); my mother's initial attempt to collect insurance was turned down, based on the fact that a former address had been used. In my case, I was at work, and normally my apartment management office accepts packages on my behalf, but the postal carrier says that his postal software indicated my personal signature was required. (My mother's post office denied that allegation based on package valuation.) I was never able to recover the package; there was finger-pointing between two suburban Baltimore postal facilities over which facility had possession of the package, which was never found after the carrier allegedly returned it (another sterling example of how the federal government practices state-of-the-art inventory tracking, such as RFID solutions). The USPS customer relations representative claimed that this was a known issue in the area (with other lost packages as well) which new managers were attempting to address. My personal carrier, furious that I had escalated the issue, passive-aggressively went to my apartment management and subsequently left a note in my box saying they had decided they would not accept any future packages on my behalf. (The apartment management was confused, thinking that they were being held liable for a missing insured package, but in fact the carrier never left the package with them. I had to file a complaint with the post office and my apartment management to resolve the future package delivery issue.) My mother was eventually able to collect on the insurance claims, but it took an undue amount of time, effort, and persistence.

Looking More Closely at Obama's Teaching Moment of the USPS Analogy

There has never been a fully effective monopoly over communication, something even zealous defenders of the US postal monopoly readily concede in a new technology world of cellphones, text messaging, virtually no-cost emails, Internet shopping, bill payment and financial institution softcopy document delivery, and courier services.

It is instructive to note how government bureaucrats, even in the case of the USPS, seek to protect their turf, even as technological and economic changes have largely undercut its business model, with shrinking service volumes, overbuilt infrastructure, and bloated labor costs. This is the "real" teaching moment of Obama's misleading analogy: once the federal government entangles itself into the health care sector, it will be all but impossible to uproot the bureaucracy, the whole cost of which will be passed along to American consumer, not one dime of which assures the deployment of creative destructive medical technologies, personalized medicine or more efficient, effective deployment of scarce medical personnel. No, the corrupt government bureaucrats have primary goals of self-preservation and expanding their scope of authority.

The US Constitution provides for the establishment of the post office in the first article. Rick Geddes points out the some of the historical reasons, no longer relevant, resulting in the creation of the post office and its historical exclusive monopoly privileges over first-class mail delivery and private mailbox access, including national defense, lack of existing, reliable universal-service private sector alternatives, and subsidization of western territory expansion. Geddes notes that the same type arguments have been used to rationalize preservation of this monopolistic anachronism, in particular, the myth that rural and other sparsely-populated areas will not have the volumes necessary to attract the private sector.

This disingenuous argument is important enough to address specifically: as Geddes points out, the issue is not whether or not markets will be available but whether the government artificially and unfairly subsidizes certain cherry-picked costs associated with living in more remote areas. A good example was during last year's high fuel costs, which underscored the trade-off between more affordable housing and the cost of commuting. Businesses in more rural areas may have less volume to cover their costs, including additional (e.g., logistics) costs. Mail will still be available just as food, physician and banking services, energy supplies, and consumer goods make their way to small town economies; it may well be that the nature, timeliness, and cost of mail services may change, but the underlying demand for communication services still exists, and enterprising businesspeople will develop to meet that need. However, those solutions will not emerge as a viable concern so long as the USPS is allowed to market its services below its true costs of operating in these areas; no private sector solution can emerge if the private business loses money from day one.

To a large extent, the USPS has been able to decide where it will allow competition. One example is highly urgent communications. But to illustrate how zealously the USPS protects its monopoly, a former employer, Equifax, was once fined for using competitor communication services for materials not deemed urgent.

Obama ironically does a service by drawing attention and reminding us how remarkably ineffectual the USPS is as a competitor; UPS and Fed Ex have gained market share at the expense of USPS not because they are undercutting USPS' prices, but because of more effective, efficient, innovative services. Geddes argues that the government is doing postal consumers no favors by enforcing the monopoly, which is guaranteed no matter how inefficient, costly or uncompetitive its operations and consumer-oriented services. Geddes identifies a number of countries (Canada, European, Australia) where phased-in private sector postal competition has been permitted (with stamp costs a certain multiple of public sector monopoly prices).

The United States needs to be a leader, not a follower, in postal deregulation, which is in the best interests of American postal consumers. I recommend consideration of relevant organizations and legislative proposals, e.g., the Consumer Postal Council and the Free & Fair Postal Initiative.

Miscellany: 8/11/09

Eunice Kennedy Shriver: RIP

One of JFK's little sisters, Eunice Shriver was the wife of Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps and McGovern's running mate on the 1972 Democratic national ticket. Eunice is best known for her role in the establishment of the celebrated sports games of handicapped individuals, known as the Special Olympics, inspired in part by Eunice's big sister Rosemary. (Some authorities believe that Rosemary was mildly retarded, despite the fact she could do arithmetic and write letters; others believe that Rosemary was mentally ill and merely slower than her exceptionally intelligent siblings.) Eunice Shriver, mother-in-law to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, husband to former NBC News journalist Maria Shriver, was also a prominent champion of children's health and, unlike her famous little brother US Senator Ted Kennedy, a rare passionate voice for the human rights of unborn children in the Democratic Party.

We conservatives are admirers of Eunice Shriver's outstanding feminist leadership and accomplishments in making a positive difference in the lives of children and personally challenged individuals, all too often lost, forgotten and politically powerless in our society. Let us never forget her example of what is possible for individuals to do for the common good, given their rights and responsibilities under our nation's Constitution.

Congratulations to SCOTUS Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor

As I watched Justice Sotomayor's nationally televised swearing-in last Saturday, I reflected on the pride my former Latino schoolmates, friends, and students in Texas must have felt on this occasion. No matter what differences I may have regarding Justice Sotomayor's judicial philosophy and past decisions, I am encouraged by the fact we have reached a point in history where Latinos, a vibrant and increasingly important community in the American melting pot, now have a voice at the upper echelon of our national government; I firmly believe that God creates talented individuals across all races and ethnicities, and we must honor merit wherever it may be found. I expect Justice Sotomayor will exercise her new responsibilities with due professional care and consistent with the nation's finest legal traditions; I fully expect Justice Sotomayor's historic confirmation to the Supreme Court to be just the first of many high-profile national leadership roles for Latinos, including, perhaps, I hope within my lifetime, the office of the President of the United States.

Pelosi/Hoyer Attack on Americans Angry at Health Care "Reform" Is Un-American

Liberal Democrats just don't get it. They are talking about an unprecedented intervention in the private health care system, by all accounts highly popular with most policy-holding Americans, all on the dubious case of building a federal bureaucracy to accommodate a small percentage of uninsured people, whom cannot be denied emergency, at a time of sharply diminished federal revenues and bloated federal deficits with related inflationary concerns. Liberals are wildly inconsistent, of course; food is a necessity of life, and some people go hungry, but we don't argue that the answer to the problem of hunger is government-managed supermarkets. We look at solutions not requiring an undue federal footprint, including foodstamps. Seniors are rightly worried that Draconian cuts to Medicare funding will affect the quality of their health care; others have justifiable concerns that the taxpayer will essentially subsidize any "public option", creating unfair competition and de facto a Trojan horse ultimately resulting a single-payer system. Health care providers are worried about how the system will suddenly absorb millions of new insured patients given already overutilized medical personnel.

Polls have made it very clear that the reform is in serious trouble, with some now showing net opposition to Obama's and Congress' ill-defined, convoluted proposals. Obama's approval numbers have sharply declined during the period he's been pushing his "reform". Unsurprisingly, liberals consider the protests of opponents to an unconscionable expansion of governmental incompetence to be "less equal" than similarly impassioned protests with it comes to their own special interest groups, including anti-war, labor union, community activist and civil rights protesters. As the morally self-righteous Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer hypocritically assert in Monday's USA Today:

It is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway...to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue...These disruptions are...simply un-American.

Pelosi and Hoyer, as typically condescending liberals, think that the First Amendment exists solely for the benefit of their political cronies and causes, and they believe that they have a right to dictate the nature and extent of opposition to their Trojan horse proposals, political spin and propaganda.

Conservatives do not fear legitimate debate over health care issues--but there is no legitimate bipartisan consensus in a convoluted health care proposal almost no ordinary American citizen can read or understand--one that Obama had constantly demanded for a vote before the Congressional August recess. We are talking about liberals trying to ram through the Congress a partisan proposal, reflecting their own political agenda. We've already been there, done that. It was called the so-called stimulus bill where unrealistic unemployment outcomes and an Obamaian false sense of urgency and fear were similarly used. The American people deserve better.

Bill O'Reilly and the CFTC Report: Chortling Over Oil Price "Speculation"

I knew, as soon as I heard that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (chaired by Clinton Administration political hack Gary Gensler) was going to issue a report on alleged speculators in the energy market, that populist conservative cable host Bill O'Reilly was going to gloat insufferably. And, in fact, Bill O'Reilly did not disappoint, as his "I-told-you-so" talking point memo earlier this week derisively spat out earlier explanations of supply and demand.

But, to quote Lucy's Cuban bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo, O'Reilly "got some splainin' to do".  He specifically, arbitrarily and contemptuously dismissed last summer's related CFTC investigation which concluded that it was simply a matter of supply and demand. What exactly changed, Mr. O'Reilly? Did new "facts" emerge which contradicted last summer's investigation? Or could the new report simply reflect the Obama Administration's populist rhetoric? Is it simply Bill O'Reilly regards the Obama Administration more "credible" on economic matters than the Bush Administration? (After all, Obama promised passage of the $787B so-called stimulus bill would keep unemployment below 9%, and his Administration has invented unconventional economic statistics in saving jobs, e.g., bailing out states for failing to establish rainy day funds and control spending during economic expansion .)  I think that Bill O'Reilly is simply cherry-picking the report which reflects his preexisting opinion.

There are some basic economic facts underlying energy costs which I've raised in past posts and which I summarize here. The United States imports most of its energy, despite (for political reasons, i.e., Democratic Party special interests) having unexploited energy development (incidentally, a key component of a perpetual trade imbalance). The California economy boomed during the 1990's, without an increase in power plant ecapacity (obstructed by environmentalist interests), resulting in brownouts, etc. The environmentalists furthermore shackled nuclear power plant deployment while France over the interim has generated most of its electricity by nuclear power (without Nevada mountain repositories to store nuclear waste). The result? An expansion of carbon-based power plants, utilizing an abundant American source of energy, coal; now, of course, environmentalists are worried about carbon dioxide emissions. And, of course, environmentalists for decades have promoted green energy, which account for less than 5%, is largely government-subsidized, and hardly keeps up with dwindling American domestic oil sources; Obama, with a straight face, promises that green technology will be a key American growth sector and job generator.

In fact, the Arab oil states have not been a promoter of perpetually high oil prices, although they would benefit from that. Why? Because oil prices track the global economy; high oil prices result in recessions (and lower demand/oil prices), not to mention investment in energy alternatives and supplies (e.g., oil sands).

What happens is although the US has slowed the growth of its daily oil consumption (it accounts for about 25% of world consumption, many times its proportion of the world's population), other growing economies (e.g., China and India) are increasing their imports, and some countries that used to export oil (like the US) are now net importers (e.g., China and Indonesia), existing oil exporters find their fields maturing and/or declining, and new global oil finds are difficult to come by (China and Brazil have announced massive new offshore discoveries, while Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders stonewall American exploration off our own shores, ANWR, etc.)

Economists will tell you that spot prices for oil are determined at the margin. (We should also note that currency prices are also in the equation; as the dollar weakens, we would expect the price of oil to increase, and as the dollar strengthens, the price of oil should decrease. In the long term, we would expect, with domestic and trade imbalances, that the dollar would weaken. This would be good for US exports (cheaper for foreign consumers with stronger currencies), but American consumers would face inflation, as the cost of imported commodities and components increase and foreign consumers compete with domestic consumers for American-produced goods and services.) The demand  for oil imports depends on a number of factors, including the status of domestic oil inventories, and aggregate competitor net consumption.

Here's one of the facts that O'Reilly conveniently ignores and a recent Wall Street Journal editorial points out: speculator activities were actually in OPPOSITE directions, with speculators at net SHORTS before oil barrel price peaks and they started going LONG, even as oil prices were still dropping. (In other words, they were convinced the price of oil had gotten ahead of itself and domestic oil demand would drop with sky-high prices; at the other end, they reasoned that the long-term tight supply/demand had not gone away with a recession.)

If speculators were responsible for an artificial spike in oil prices, why didn't they do it earlier? Why did they stop? In fact, one could argue without the shorts of speculators (i.e., bets that future oil prices would be lower), the price of oil would have peaked higher than it did.  Apparently speculators drive prices up, but prices go down naturally, despite the best efforts of OPEC and the energy corporations with a vested interest in higher prices and profits! It's like ancient men who posited anthropomorphic gods to explain powerful forces of nature. What Bill O'Reilly here needs is Ockham's razor: to quote Gertrude Stein, there is no there there.