A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it, it would be hell on earth.
George Bernard Shaw
A Textbook Example of True Leadership:
Chile's Sebastián Piñera vs. Barack Obama
One can just imagine how Barack Obama would have responded to the recent Chilean mining disaster: play some golf and attend political rallies while bashing mining officials for taking catnaps during the crisis, consult with oxymoronic "government mining experts" exhaustively debating arcane policies while miners are buried underground, reject foreign offers of resources and assistance, issue a 6-month moratorium on all mining activities, extort mining companies to put up a multi-billion dollar escrow account under progressive government control, blame George W. Bush for having established or perpetuated reckless mining safety policies, etc.
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| A Western Hemisphere Leader for Conservative Change Chile's Sebastián Piñera |
One of my favorite columnists, the WSJ's Daniel Henninger, wrote a great piece today, aptly entitled "Capitalism Saved the Miners". I encourage the reader to read this article in its entirety, but I want to point out the difference between the failed "not-invented-here" management style of the hapless progressive Obama regime with the proven pragmatism of a job-creating business leader turned politician, whom welcomed any and all ideas and technology, no matter their origin: Shramm's drill rig (West Chester, PA), Center Rock's drill bit (Berlin, PA), German high-strength cables, Japanese fiber-optic communication cables, even advanced technology socks worn by miners (from Cupron, Richmond, VA), etc.
Compared to the miserable performance of Team Obama during the Deepwater Horizon crisis, the Chilean President set aggressive goals and beat expectations:
The rescue exceeded expectations every step of the way. Initially, officials said it might be December before the men could get out. Once the drill that opened the escape shaft pierced the men's subterranean prison, they estimated it would take 36 to 48 hours to get everyone out. The actual time: 22 hours, 39 minutes.In the meanwhile, given that 40% of economy is based on mining and the fact that largest mine is state-owned, Piñera, unlike Obama, did not have the luxury of a mining ban and scapegoating capitalism or predecessors for government failure; nevertheless, in short order he appointed Laurence Golborne whom deftly managed the crisis, fired the top regulators, announced tripling of the budget for the mining safety bureau, shut down 18 small mines for safety reasons, and launched a post-audit commission. Is Piñera's work done? Might I suggest to my fellow conservative an unfinished bit of business? Privatize the state-owned mining company.
Some leaders talk the talk (and win international prizes), but can't walk the walk. Real leaders let their actions speak for them, take responsibility and don't go around blaming other people. There's an election in less than 3 weeks: Got a vote?
Mixed Results in Legal Challenges to the new Healthcare Law
For anyone with a grain of common sense, the healthcare overhaul bill is manifestly unconstitutional. The comparison of health care insurance with auto liability insurance is clearly inappropriate; an automobile can cause bodily injury or death to pedestrians or other auto passengers, not to mention serious property damage. (My parents' house was hit by an out-of-control auto years ago.) Most people may not have the resources to cover the damages they are responsible for; hence; states demand that in exchange for the privilege of driving, motorists must provide evidence of driving skills and financial responsibility, i.e., auto insurance.
Health care insurance costs differ in several respects. Some diseases or conditions can be the result of genetics, events of violence, acts of God or international events beyond a person's control, simply in the process of living one's life. Auto liability insurers do not take on unlimited risk, but progressives attempt to hold insurers for unlimited risk (e.g., no policy cancellations), rule out risk analysis as a basis for selling insurance (preexisting conditions), and then put a ceiling on rate increases. It's a recipe for bankruptcy and violates the Constitution. Ultimately only the government can feasibly operate at a sustained deficit.
Moreover, we don't require insurance in other aspects; for instance, there is high-margin credit insurance or extended product warranties; I realize by self-insuring (not buying insurance) I take on some risk, but I choose not to pay expenses of the middleman. Let's take life insurance as another example; one of my paternal uncles by marriage died early in life (while my cousins were minors) but had been financially prudent with a sizable life insurance policy. Other people don't purchase insurance and live for decades, saving and investing the difference. It's one thing for health care providers to factor into pricing unrecovered costs from patients, but under what circumstances is it right to require, say, low-risk healthy young adults to pay for unwanted medical services, never mind the overhead of an insurance middleman?
And we aren't even talking about the fact that health care has been traditionally regulated at the state/local level, not the federal level. What Obama and his cronies have done is create centralized points of corruption: does anyone really doubt that activist progressives intend to load expensive special interest mandates (e.g., in-vitro fertilization) into insurance coverages? Is it any wonder that cost projections show health costs expected to reach 25% of the US GDP (while Obama insists he can reduce health costs to the 10% or so for other countries, a departure from reality). Why is it that family coverage in high-mandate Massachusetts is multiple times the cost in Utah? Is it because people in Utah experience significantly lower relative proportions of cancer and other catastrophic diseases? (If so, we should all move to Utah...) Health costs are driven by a number of factors, including prescription drugs, hospital costs, benefit mandates, higher consumer demand, legal costs, and advances in medical technology. Government has been part of the problem, not the solution: we need solutions that vest consumers in the efficient utilization of medical products and services, that limit litigation to economic, not lottery-style punitive costs, that provide incentives to establish and maintain healthy lifestyles, etc., instead of guaranteeing below-cost coverage for people pursuing unhealthy lifestyles.
There's a second issue: the cost split between state and federal governments on the cost of Medicaid. So when the federal government, under Obama, unilaterally increases eligibility for Medicaid, it is essentially writing a check on the backs of states. This is a perversion of the very concept of federalism. In fact, one wonders, given activist expansionist judicial interpretation of the commerce clause, whether the tenth amendment has any practical meaning.
Federal Judge Roger Vinson today, while not at this point ruling the individual mandate is unconstitutional, ruled that the 20 states challenging the mandate and Medicaid expansion, rejected the Obama Administration's motion for summary judgment, injecting a rare dose of common sense into the debate:
The individual mandate … is not based on an activity that they make the choice to undertake... Rather, it is based solely on citizenship and on being alive. As the nonpartisan CBO concluded sixteen years ago (…): 'A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States'.The legal picture is muddy, with federal judges in California, Michigan, and Virginia issuing divergent opinions (the Michigan Judge, George Steeh, last week found no constitutional problem with the concept of an individual mandate). I think this is headed for the Supreme Court, and I don't think that SCOTUS will ultimately uphold a beachhead for the slippery slope of an unrestricted interpretation of the commerce clause.
Political Humor
"Somebody threw a book at President Obama. If you're trying to scare a president by throwing a book at him, you're one president too late." –David Letterman
[It was a copy of the US Constitution. Obama easily sidestepped it, by habit... The culprit intended to throw his shoe, but the TSA lost his shoes when he went through airport security... The Secret Service threw their own book at the culprit--all 2000 pages.]
"President Obama met with students in the Oval Office who have started their own businesses. Or, as those students are known on campus, 'weed dealers.'" –Jimmy Fallon
[They brought samples to the White House; Barack quoted the great Bob Dylan ("everybody must get stoned"), told them not to tell Michelle, because he had promised her he had stopped smoking, and reciprocated the favor by serving his favorite brand of coke (Karzai's Own). He showed them Michelle's garden patch and wondered if there were any tangible benefits to weeding her garden. Barack promised to help with small business set-asides for medical marijuana in the new healthcare exchanges and suggested they might qualify for loans from community banks participating in the newly passed $30B small business TARP. Obama also railed against other dealers exporting pot-growing jobs to foreign economies.]
Musical Interlude: The "British Invasion" of the 1960's Series
Herman's Hermits, [Sam Cooke's] "Wonderful World" (actual teenagers when they recorded this song (vs a 25-year-old man))
However, my favorite version of this song is the angelic version by the superstar trio of adult male vocalists: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, and James Taylor:
