Hold on to what is good, even if it's a handful of earth.
Hopi prayer
House Vote to Repeal ObamaCare January 12: Thumbs UP!
From a strategic standpoint, I'm not sure I agree with the plan to bring up repeal one of the first things tackled by the House. I've made it clear that I think that a quick hit win-win strategy would probably be in their (and the country's) best interest. I think basically the current repeal initiative amounts to political theater, and I think this nation's problems are far too serious to engage in symbolic measures. The fact is if it gets filibustered in the Senate (it takes only 41 out of 53 Democrats/allies to do that) and/or gets to the President's desk for a certain veto, a veto almost inevitably would get enough Democratic support in either house to sustain it. The mainstream media almost surely would cheerlead a GOP defeat on ObamaCare and subsequently questions the House's relevance and ability to deliver.
Is it a bad move? No. For one thing, it deliberately galvanizes the GOP/independent base. It puts any remaining Blue Dog/conservative Democrats in the House and Senate instantly on the spot before next year's general election. The legislation is opposed by a clear majority of the American people (even if you claim part of that is due to progressives dissatisfied with the lack of a public option); it's difficult to see how the Republicans will be adversely affected for wanting to repeal an unpopular bill. It immediately becomes the first litmus-test issue for potential GOP challengers to Obama's reelection (if Romney is smart, he will be leading the crowd cheerleading the repeal vote). And whereas spending issues should be a key priority, it's hard to argue with the fact that the new entitlement will exacerbate the national debt out of control, despite the disingenuous accounting gimmicks claiming that the deficit will be "reduced" by shoving more patients into an already capacity-strained, inflationary system.
I also suspect that the Supreme Court will eventually decide the constitutionality of ObamaCare, although perhaps not by the next general election: will Democrats, who have seen at least one federal judge rule against the constitutionality of the individual mandate, not to mention the post-passage Pandora's box of necessary exemptions and financial statement surprises, really fight to maintain a half-baked entitlement program everybody had to hold their noses to vote for in the first place?
Charles Krauthammer on today's O'Reilly Factor did voice a well-considered opinion that if the Republicans tinker with the insides of the ObamaCare engine ("death by a thousand cuts" by mucking up constituent program development, etc.), the GOP could find itself being charged with causing the ObamaCare failure (versus the intrinsic nature of the 2800-page house of cards).
What would Speaker Guillemette do? A surgical act: I would create a bill consisting of two primary points: (1) repeal the individual mandate; (2) allow states the right to grandfather/freeze preexisting Medicaid eligibility criteria (i.e., exemptions from unilateral ObamaCare criteria expansion). I believe if you remove these two cards, the ObamaCare house of cards will collapse under its own weight.
Darrell Issa's (R-CA) Comment on Corruption of the Obama Administration:
A Separate Concurring Opinion
I briefly referenced the controversial Issa comments in yesterday's discussion of federal R&D/science/engineering programs and whether they were right-sized to promote further economic growth. (I argued that we have been eating our seed corn and if anything Congress should be sharply increasing its contribution to basic science and engineering. )
"Corruption" can be taken in multiple ways. Perhaps the most classic way is in terms of bribery in many third-world countries (e.g., the notoriously corrupt Afghan government) or former Congressman William Jefferson's (D-LA) cash-in-the-freezer scandal. Issa and other Republicans/conservatives are not suggesting that Obama and members are directly engaged in bribery. But you can alternatively get political benefit, e.g., by delivering to special-interest parties (e.g., the auto union bailouts), using TARP funds in unauthorized ways, or through earmarks (among other things).
(For a transcript of this conversation, see here.)
I'm not really interested in finger-pointing, because members of both parties (including Senator Obama) have sought to obtain federal funds for dubious projects, expenditures, credits or exemptions for local companies or organizations, etc., all for fairly transparent political reasons.
I'm more interested in the corrupting influence of progressive policies on individual self-actualization and responsibility. Take, for example, an investment blogger who had this to say about if he was elected or nominated:
If I were president of the United States, or chairman of the Fed, my choices [would be] limited to what’s politically possible. The right thing, which is to liquidate much of the malinvestment of recent decades, is not politically possible. With more than 50% of the people in the United States being net recipients of government largesse, no one can get elected, nor stay elected, who applies the breaks to the gravy train. The system is totally corrupt at this point.I'm not as fatalistic as that writer; I do think we need to focus on core government processes and outputs and limit eligibility of programs to the truly needy, to simplify and scale back foreign policy to a few key alliances consistent with our limited resources, to regulate on an unobtrusive, limited, as-needed basis to ensure integrity of transactions and due process. We need to focus on what we need to do, not what we would like to happen in an imperfect world. I do think people are willing to make sacrifices, provided everyone shares in the burden.
But at the same time, I do not underestimate the withdrawal symptoms of people used to getting something for free, which results in a false sense of entitlement at the expense of future generations; one need only recall the recent riots or protest in Greece, France, and Britain to even modest changes like raising the eligibility date for retirement by a couple of years. I'm not particularly in the habit of quoting Russian anarchists, but Mikhail Bakunin said the following in "The Immorality of the State": "The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost,...the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty." He also suggests that power is intrinsically corrupting. I would like to say that a key mechanism by which Obama and others have sought to expand government is class warfare; Bush and Obama have used the politics of fear to promote things like the Patriot Act, expanding reach of the TSA at the price of individual dignity, and the like.
Political Humor
President Obama says he read three books while he was on vacation. Or as Sarah Palin put it, “showoff.” - Jimmy Fallon
[But rereading his two autobiographies and his recent children's book shouldn't count. I do understand that Obama really likes and admires the author...]
We have a new governor in California. Former Gov. Jerry Brown replaces Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don’t know if I trust a governor who’s never done steroids. - Jimmy Kimmel
[It's all about California's passion for recycling. They are now recycling governors and progressive ideas from the 70's...]
Musical Interlude: One-Hit Wonders/Instrumentals
Apollo 100, "Joy"
