Liberal pundit rips health tax

From the N.Y. Times:

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care.

Journalists and objectivity?

Maybe this explains why bloggers do better than established pundits:

But experiments rarely tell us what we think they’re going to tell us. That’s the dirty secret of science.

Democrats destroy party

Democrats seem to think their health-insurance overhaul will be a crowning achievement; instead, it will be the death of the party -- insofar as has been the protector of the little guy.

For that is how it has always seen itself. The party's roots go back to Thomas Jefferson, who inveighed against both the federal government and the money men who always seem to swarm around the federal funds, as in the Bank of the United States (the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac of its day).

His successors continued the tradition. The party took its modern form with Andrew Jackson. Whether it was letting the muddy-booted masses into the White House to celebrate his inauguration, or killing the second version of the Bank of the United States, he made his mark as a champion of the common man.

Our discussion is not about whether their policies were consistent, or in the long run actually helped average Americans. Also left out is the reality that the party became the defender of slavery. What we are talking about is the political and psychological image of the party in the public mind.

That continued after the Civil War, with William Jennings Bryan its emotional leader. But mere opposition must have begun to seem frustrating as the corporations only grew bigger and the rich seemed to grow richer. Under Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic Party no longer sought merely to oppose the concentration of power in Washington and Wall Street, but to take over Washington and dominate Wall Street. Whatever their successes and failures, they at least seemed to be taking the side of the average person.

And that's what average people seek. This may come as a shock to Big Business, but a great host of people don't trust the big corporations. That's why people want an ally. They are under no misconception, in most cases, that the Democratic Party is a perfect ally. But for decades it seemed to be the only ally they had.

That's why the current battle for nationalized health care could mark a serious turning point for the party. WhenBarack Obama took office, most people thought that Democrats would take their side against the big insurance andpharmaceutical companies — and probably the hospitals and doctors, too.

But the battle over the 2,000-plus insurance bills has revealed that, far from being allies of the people, the Democrats have become allies of the big corporations and the elite.

In June, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America cut an infamous backroom deal with the White House and Senate Democrats. The companies vowed to hand over $80 billion in lower drug costs over the next decade and also pony up for a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign to back the Democratic plans. The payoff: The legislation would take it easy on Big Pharma. The longer-term picture: The drug companies get more customers and less competition as government control stifles innovation.

As for Big Insurance, they too sold out. The big firms have already agreed to stop denying coverage to the sick and charging people higher premiums because of their gender or health status. What's in it for them? The mandate: ObamaCare will force Americans to carry health insurance, i.e., be customers, while driving smaller companies out of that business.

Those are just the big guys. Other industries and special interests did all they could to buy off the Democrats.

As the Journal has pointed out, they are finding out that the Democrats may be stabbing them in the back. However, that just shows the truth of the old adage that an honest politician is one that stays bought, and there aren't many in Washington who meet even that low standard.

Nevertheless, ObamaCare changes the psychology of the Democratic Party. It will no longer be a partner of theAmerican people; it will be a partner of business and the professional elites. The Democratic party may be thesenior partner, but it will be a partner nevertheless of the ruling establishment of our day. Allied with the establishment, the Democrats will be invariably drawn every tighter with the corporations and special interests they once fought.

That's just the broad view of the health-insurance bills. In a host of ways, they take power from the people and give it to elites: bureaucrats, businesses, and Washington power players.

If Democrats pass ObamaCare, they will be abandoning the American people. The people will know. They will turn then to who best seems to play the role of Jefferson, Jackson, Bryan or FDR. When that happens, historians will look back and see 2009 as the time the Democratic party turned its back for good on its heritage — and the American people.

Psychology behind Climategate

By Jim Tynen

To understand Climategate, its psychology must be better understood. And then we can perhaps understand why a certain class is so willing to destroy the society that created it.

For it's strange to see scientists, bureaucrats, politicians and journalists backing measures that would destroy the industrial society that sustains them. Lowering carbon emissions along the lines ofAl Gore and the Copenhagen cohorts seek would require taking energy use back to the level of the 19th century. There was far less of a need then for researchers, policy specialists, assistant directors, Ph.D candidates, and the whole New Class that so fanatically supports such measures.

But the modern scientific mindset abhors any thought that the cosmos as an order or purpose. Therefore it must be chaotic, meaningless, random.

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless," physicist Steven Weinberg famously said.

Stephen Jay Gould proclaims, "Darwin argues that evolution has no purpose. Individuals struggle to increase the representation of their genes in future generations, and that is all."

Evolution advocate Richard Dawkins asserts, ‘The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

As biologist George Gaylord Simpson put it, "Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind."

This is what members of the scientific establishment believe, on some level. The result, however, must be that they hate and fear nature.

How could it be otherwise? There is, Darwin forbid, no organization in nature. It is a ceaseless, random swirl of matter, headed in no particular direction. Therefore, it is a danger to man. Anything could happen, for no reason at all, and therefore the cosmos, and nature, always threaten humankind. So that's how scientists must imagine the future.

Look at the warming scenarios. The ice caps melt; rising seas swamp Bangladesh and New York; monsoons smash into India, hurricanes ravage the U.S; the Amazon jungle dies off; the American Southwest becomes an uninhabitable desert; millions die of diseases; societies are devastated; millions of refugees roam the continents.

This reflects perfectly the scientific worldview. So in a sense the data are beside the point. The scientific imagination, shaped by a nihilistic worldview, can't help seeing nature as a malign, chaotic force. One decade it's another Ice Age, the next it's devastating heat.

That's a fundamental reason Climategate happened. Some of the e-mails depict scientists bewildered at the failure of a warming trend to develop. To them, the data just can't be right. So the scientists fix the data.

Such bias is true of all human beings, as psychologists have long known. In climate science this is especially true when the data are so complex and hard to evaluate. This isn't Galileo measuring the speed of a falling object. This is the evaluation of thousands of temperature readings. The difficulty is multiplied when that data is used to understand the world climate; then made even more complex when trying to predict the effects on the globe.

More importantly, it suggests that no actual action could quell these fears.

For instance, the Copenhagen goal for worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide us 450 parts per million. Al Gore has said a better target would be 350 parts per million.

He's been quoted as saying, “Are we doing enough? The answer is obviously no — 450 is not the right target. But it is presently seen as beyond the capacity of governments around the world."

But no target can still the anxieties of those whose fundamental worldview is that the cosmos is chaotic and malign. For, logically, if carbon dioxide is a threat in such a world, any amount could be dangerous. It would be very difficult to assuage such anxiety. And f somehow those fears are relieved, another fear will take its place. For global warming, like a neurotic's fear, is just a symptom of a deeper anxiety. A couple of decades ago it was a new Ice Age; it could be that again in a few years; or something else. But only a change in the fundamental worldview will erase such terror. There's little sign of that happening.

On a practical level, moreover, there is no point in trying to compromise with the warming crowd. Nothing humanity can do will relieve their fears. The only reasonable course is to pursue common sense ways of using energy more efficiently, such as nuclear power, and brace to meet the next panic in the scientific world.

The uncertainty principle

Kausfiles:

Lots of talk on the Sunday chat shows about how the uncertainty over health care reform is discouraging businesses from hiring, since they don't know what sort of taxes, etc. they'll be facing. But if what business wants is certainty ... well, at this point the fastest way to get certainty is for the Dems to pass a bill quickly, no?

My response:

No -- this measure makes uncertainly perpetual. A hundred federal agencies will be issuing diktats; no business can ever keep up with them or be sure it won't be blindsided.

And if anxiety among the people is the problem ... ditto. I'm 58. I know what my insurance covers now. But if ObamaCare passes -- I will never know if one of those hundred agencies has just passed a diktat that will hurt me. I may be OK -- but what if the over-65 crowd pushes through a new mandate, and Congress decides my cohort should pay for it? OK, we Boomers have had a lot of clout so far. But what if Congress starts thinking like the ad agencies -- we in the 55-to-65 set are too, um, set in our ways, we'll never switch brands, so they can abuse us at their will.

The invention of lying

On Climategate and the psychology of lying:

Let us look only at the psychology of this. Key fact: they destroyed notes to the most important discovery of all time.

The CRU people reportedly destroyed the original data. That is a lie; it is psychologically impossible. Look, this was the data to the most important scientific discovery of all time -- in their minds.

This wasn't old sales receipts from ten years ago. This wasn't your old pile of National Geographic. This was key information. You have to keep that. What if something comes up? What if you need to take a look at it? You keep it in a safe.

If -- if -- you treasure that information.

There's another aspect that's just as important. This information is the equivalent of Darwin's notebooks. Someday it will be displayed in the Museum of Climatology, as a memorial to how brave scientists saved the planet.

If you believe that, that is. There's no way you destroy that information.

2. The howls. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. (Pevear and Volokhonsy translation.) The elder Zosima, on lying: (p.44, paperback ed.)

"A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense,doesn't it? ... And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it,that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea ...."

If it's a minor thing, why the howling?

The British prime minister quoted in the Guardian:

"With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics," Brown told the Guardian. "We know the science. We know what we must do. We must now act and close the 5bn-tonne gap. That will seal the deal."

Similarly, raising the ante. Al Gore: “Are we doing enough? The answer is obviously no — 450 is not the right target. But it is presently seen as beyond the capacity of governments around the world. We are stretching the capacity of governments even to hit a 450 target.” Gore thinks the target should be 350. This raising the ante is another form of bluff, as it is in cards.Which of course comes back to the data. Why wouldn't you be showing it off everywhere? Publishing it on the Internet.

3. A lot of mysteries begin with motive. There is no money in saying: "The weather for tomorrow is immensely complex. The world climate is exponentially more difficult."

There is a motive to lie, as many have said. Billions are being thrown around, if you can say there is a huge cataclysm.

Moreover, how can it be disproved? It's huge, it's complex. And who want to get off the gravy train? It's like the Madoff scam. Who can prove you wrong? You can make money, for awhile.

Conclusion: The best thing I ever learned about politicians was: Assume they are lying until proven otherwise.

Sadly, this may now apply to scientists. There are a lot of reasons why they might be lying.

Was data dumped?

So does CRU have data?

Say you had raw data for the most important scientific finding of all time. In your eyes, the fate of the world hangs on this.

Moreover, it's your legacy. If you're right -- and you are absolutely positive you are — that data will be a treasure someday. It will be like Newton's or Darwin's notebooks. It will be displayed in the British Museum. Or have its own museum. You will keep it in a fireproof vault guarded night and day.

You won't toss it in the Dumpster because it might clutter your new offices. No way, no how.

See also good summary at:
http://tinyurl.com/yc3kv9g

When Times gets scared about deficits ...

OK, now I'm scared.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

Palin

I'm just not interested. She can't take a punch. It's all whine, whine, whine.

And you can't be a major candidate -- OK, Republican candidate -- if you can't take a punch.

That's all. She's irrelevant.

Fight the nanny state!

Brit faces five years in prison -- for going into the police station and turning over a gun he found in his garden.

Signs of decline

Another warning shot:

But it is not just taxation that is chasing corporations out of America. Another top consideration is access to talent. The U.S. now spends more per capita on public education than any other OECD country, but its students test in the bottom decile.

More health care sellouts

Just remember, you can't trust business either.

MS Health, a company that supplies the pharmaceutical companies with sales data, predicts that new health reform legislation -- combined with a projected upswing in the economy -- will result in a net gain of more than $137 billion in total market sales over the next four years.


http://tinyurl.com/ygbvqt2

More alarm

Provocative writer's take on Pelosicare:

Holy Hygeia, why can't my fellow Democrats see that the creation of another huge, inefficient federal bureaucracy would slow and disrupt the delivery of basic healthcare and subject us all to a labyrinthine mass of incompetent, unaccountable petty dictators?

fascinating piece

Or, here's the truth: There are better, more cost-effective ways to fight global warming. And if we want to fight the problems that will be made worse by global warming, the solutions have very little to do with cutting CO2 emissions.

Just don't think about these things

Mysteries.

Also, how can there be one set of rules for the quantum level, and another physics for the observable level?

Is health plan counter to liberal values?

What would liberals say if GOP ran a plan like the one described below -- one that left millions "uninsured."

As recent work from the Center on the Budget and Policy Priorites has shown, the bill that the Senate Finance Committee approved actually offers substantially less protection for people making less than twice the poverty line. If the bill were to pass, the result could be significant financial hardship for people least equipped to deal with it:

Republicans ready plan

Hear, hear:

Instead of taking more potshots, some Republicans say their party should present a coherent alternative to whatever final Democratic plans emerge in the House and Senate. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee reportedly are drafting legislation the GOP could introduce when Democrats bring their proposals to the floor.

Here's hoping they do. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who sponsored a health reform bill, said recently: "The job of the opposition is not just to point out all the flaws in legislation coming to the floor, but to offer ideas for how you would fix it."

Populism and GOP

Interesting:

In Republican hands, populism could become a strong force for positive change.

Where does it stop?

Just as Congressional leaders are calling to extend a popular $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, or even to expand it to all home purchasers, government investigators are reporting new findings that point to widespread abuse and errors in the program.

Provo gangs

Gangs in Provo? http://tinyurl.com/ProvoGangs

Interesting epistemlogical question: are we judging only the present actualities, or the potentialities?

Dithering

Telling article, because it's in the Times:

Last week the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Thomas J. Tradewell Sr., gave voice to the concerns of those in the military when he issued a terse statement criticizing Mr. Obama’s review of Afghan war strategy.

“The extremists are sensing weakness and indecision within the U.S. government, which plays into their hands,” said Mr. Tradewell’s statement

wah, wah, wah

Can there be anything plainer than that the proposed bribes to those on Social Security are a ripoff and a sign that Washington has lost all bearings on spending?

From an alternative universe

Fragment from American History, RandomHouseGoogleGoldmanSachs, Inc., Plano, Texas, 2137:

...... sudden rise in the administration's stature happened shortly after the Russians administered what people then called "a bitch slap" to the U.S. Secretary of State, thus, by extension, the president and the United States.

As described in a "newspaper" -- a primitive information-distribution device of the time -- called the Washington Times:

All this was while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Moscow, trying to find out just how much help the Russians intend to give to the West. Mrs. Clinton could not even see Mr. Putin, the real head man; there was a conflict of schedules and he had to depart for Beijing. This was a remarkable snub, treating the secretary of state as if she were merely the representative of the PTA, lobbying for more vegetables in the school lunchroom. Maybe there really was a conflict; maybe Mr. Putin had scheduled a haircut at the only hour she was available.

The Russians succeeded in putting Mr. Obama and the Americans in their place. Nikolai Patrushev, the chief of the Presidential Security Council, manufactured an occasion while Mrs. Clinton was in Moscow to warn that Moscow reserves the right to make "a pre-emptive nuclear strike" against both small and large enemies.

It so happened that the president and some of his aides happened to view one of great works of literature of that era. Mr. Obama was heard muttering "nut up or shut up!" as he exited the screening room.

The next day he called a press conference ....

Fresh take on Afghanistan

So why can't China and Russia help us?

NY Times essay: "In Afghanistan, American and Chinese interests converge."

More on global 'warming'

Breaking the hockey stick.

CEO and health reform

now here's a capitalist!

 He calls his concept "conscious capitalism."

What is that? "It means that business has the potential to have a deeper purpose. I mean, Whole Foods has a deeper purpose," he says, now sounding very much like a philosopher. "Most of the companies I most admire in the world I think have a deeper purpose." He continues, "I've met a lot of successful entrepreneurs. They all started their businesses not to maximize shareholder value or money but because they were pursuing a dream."

zombie legislation

Cap and trade rears its ugly head:

The expected costs are at least 10 times the expected benefits, even using the EPA's cost estimates and assuming achievement of the primary goal of the legislation.



http://shorten.ws/55934f

More bad news about warming theory

The hockey stick is dead.

http://shorten.ws/33fa5a

More shivers

"This policy does not in any way permit euthanasia."  Naw, of course not!

And liberals would never push to kill old people. Never!

Reasons why government health care is deadly:

1. You're an expense.

2. Regulations suffocate conscience.

3. You've become passive pawn, thus easy prey.

Obama Bush

I wouldn't mind if Obama just came out and said, "I got into the White House, read the confidential reports, and realized this was the best option. Hey, George, my bad."

But he can't, can he?

Who called cops?

from Wall Street Journal:

A McClatchy Newspapers story on the history of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) that ran Saturday, Sept. 19, mischaracterized the number of times ACORN staffers turned away two young conservative activists and called police. Police were called at two locations, and the activists were asked to leave at a third, according to ACORN.

To tot up what is known so far, out of seven offices, five (71%) offered help to the supposed sex-slavers, two (29%) called police, and one (14%) turned the pair away without getting involved. (These numbers add up to more than 100% because one Acorn office, in National City, Calif., cooperated and later called police.)

This looks even worse for Acorn than we had expected. We would have guessed that the number of Acorn offices that turned the investigators away was greater than one.

Shooting down another health care myth

From NY Times:

But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.

And this

I knew that the Obama administration was moving fast to socialize the United States. I had no idea that its efforts at enforcing conformity through propaganda had reached such an advanced stage.

We can't even keep up.

Another scandal:

Drawing the NEA into an Obama-boosting project

"may well have been illegal. Public funds are not supposed to be expended to support partisan projects. Beyond that, it is unconstitutional to grant or deny federal funds on the basis of the recipient's political actions or opinions."

Another problem with Obama

From Kausfiles:

The more I think about it, the more the townhall anti-Obama anger isn't explained completely by the issues (sorry, Frank ). There's also something about Obama himself-. But that something (or the main something) isn't his race. It's that he's a relative newcomer, as Presidents go--an unknown quantity, an enigma, with a short track record and patches of that record left fuzzy.

At least one other problem: he's an enigma whose party is being run by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. I wouldn't trust George Washington as president if he had a Congress like this one.

The sad part is, he could have been, like Clinton, a fairly successful moderate, if facing as GOP or moderate Dem Congress (if the latter is possible.) Whether his party pulled him left is perhaps a question mark, although with every Van Jones the evidence mounts that he was far left himself.

ACORN isn't just one scandal

This is the real problem. ACORN's real problem isn't the hooker problem. It's the fraud and graft.

More liveblogging

Boustany replies. some good ideas. We'll see

Liveblogging

I just don't believe him.

And I certainly don't trust Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Liveblogging

I will not sign a plan that will add one dime to the deficits now or in the future.

Good one.

Tort reform! OK, if he does this, as per our editorial, he'll win some kudos from me.

But I notice the Dems' applause is definitely tepid.

Cuts will be spent by removing waste. And that's what government does so well.

liveblogging

death panels:  "It's a lie."

No, you're the liar, Mr. President. Both the mechanics and the structure of the plan will do this.

Look at U.K.

"This too is false" on illegal immigrants. 

He's lying.

Government takeover? You're lying there too.

No one would be forced to choose it -- until it pushes companies to drop policies.

The public option would have to to pay its way. LOL!  Like the post office pays its way! Like Amtrak does!

Like public colleges? They don't pay their way!

liveblogging

"another man."  "A woman." Who? When?

"No one should be treated that way." So we'll have the government do it.

The time for bickering is past, he says. 

Man, plan has everything. They can't turn you down. So you don't sign up till you get sick. As Krauthammer said, costs will explode.

A new health exchange: why not let Utah test this out?

It won't start in four years. After the next election! What pure hypocrisy!

And that media whore McCain is going for it.

liveblogging the address to joint session

Let me say I can barely stand listening to this pompous phony. He doesn't believe much of what he says. He won't fight for what he does. Therefore his words are empty.

These pompous asses. Standing ovations for "I'm determined to be the last." Every president will have to deal with it!

Preview of national health care

Thank God there won't be any death panels!

From WSJ:

If you ever find yourself traveling on the Liverpool Care Pathway, you've taken a wrong turn. London's Daily Telegraph explains:

Rosemary Munkenbeck says her father Eric Troake, who entered hospital after suffering a stroke, had fluid and drugs withdrawn and she claims doctors wanted to put him on morphine until he passed away under a scheme for dying patients called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).

Mrs Munkenbeck, 56, from Bracknell, said her father, who previously said he wanted to live until he was 100, has now said he wants to die after being deprived of fluids for five days. . . .

Last week The Daily Telegraph reported a warning from experts that some patients with terminal illnesses were being wrongly put on the NHS scheme and allowed to die prematurely if they ticked "the right boxes."

Two thoughts

OK, I read the text, so I don't have to listen to his blather.

First, he could be an inspirational president.

But why do you have to go to college to be a success? Don't we need good mechanics and factory hands and farmers and carpenters?

Bore-in-chief

Sorry, just couldn't stand listing to Obama's speech. He's a pompous bore. And I don't believe a thing he says anyway.

Zap

Kapow:

Ezekiel Emanuel is upset. The president's health care czar sees the growing resistance to his vision, to his brave new world of government-run "communitarian" health care in which politicians and bureaucrats control one-sixth of the economy and 100% of our bodies. He doesn't quite understand how it all came apart on him, but he does know who started the unraveling: Sarah Palin.

Living document

All right, it is a living document. 

The founders never thought it was perfect or immutable. It grew under John Marshall.

It grew under Jefferson, for gosh sakes. He knew a limited reading wouldn't support Louisiana Purchase. But it was his duty to take the deal.

Polk stretched war-making power. Utah conservatives wouldn't regret being in U.S., would they? would they?

Then Lincoln and the postwar amendments.

Kennedy

Ted Kennedy died yesterday. I worked on his campaign in '80. I thought then he spoke for the forgetten people.

But, as Amity Shlaes (?) pointed out, the real "forgotten man" is the person who works, pays taxes, supports the community. Kennedy too often forgot about him, or at least took him for granted.

Yeah, we are scared

All the stuff we've been writing about is from proposed legislation, the president's own words in the New York Times, commentary from liberals such as Nat Hentoff and Mickey Kaus, and a Washington Post editorial writer, with more support from mainstream pubs such as the Wall Street Journal.

No blogs, no pols (aside from one quote from Palin).

Who decides? And when?

From kausfiles:

A debate on long-term cost control and end-of-life care--especially an emotional and acrimonious debate--is a highly useful debate to have. But it's not a useful debate to have right now. Right now it is killing Obama's universal care plans. ... And it wasn't a debate we had to have right now. It's a debate Obama has brought on himself by framing health care as an attempt to "bend the curve" of long term costs decades from now. He could have just said "Here's how I would guarantee health security for everyone. And here's how we're going to pay for it for the next ten years."

Kaus is one of the most insightful writers around. But here it's backwards.

We should have the discussion about cost control and end-of-life care first. How can we design change the system if we don't know what it will cover?

That's like saying: "Let's not worry about our destination. Let's just plan everything else about the trip."

Decide the destination first. Then decide the trip.

And Obama does bring up a good point. Why do we pay so much on the last weeks, when that neither prolongs nor betters life?

Most people don't want to be tormented at the very end of their lives. But they don't want a bureaucrat to decide when that will be.

But until we decide that, we can't really reform the system.

Just because you're paranoid ...

Death panels? from IBD:

Death panels are already here it seems, just as they have been for some time in Britain and Canada. The concept behind deciding who lives and who dies and how finite resources should be allocated was described by key Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

In his paper, "Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions," he expounds on what he calls "The Complete Lives System" for allocating treatments and resources.

"When the worse-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly," he says, "allocating to the better-off is often justifiable."

These are Dr. Emanuel's words, not Palin's. We're not making this up and neither is she. It is not hard to see this formula for rationing forcing children such as Trig and the elderly such as Barbara Morgan to take a number — a very high number.

White House for sale

Robert Reich on health care sellout:

But I'm appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying arm to buy their support.

More scorn and contempt from Dems

Maybe Pelosi and Reid could start a new committee. Call it the ... oh, you know.

Health bill's 'end of life' clauses are scary

Lane has good insights in Post:

Section 1233, however, addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they're just trying to facilitate choice -- even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to "bend the curve" on health-care costs?

Comment on Charles Lane:

His comments are very insightful. Still, you have to go farther. Look at the whole bill.

1. It clearly enmeshes every patient in a government-run system.

That makes the patient an object. Nothing in it will be voluntary, in a real sense. Read Sartre, all the modern thinkers. Subject and object: this makes us into objects of the government, which will the only true subject.

At one point I thought this bill would make us all serfs. (Mark Steyn has good insights here.) But it's worse than that: we just become things, statistics. And, for most of us over 50, bad statistics.

2. It makes every patient not a citizen but an expense. Look at the clauses that would take the money out of your account, or let government troll through your accounts and IRS returns.

This is what makes the end of life clauses so ominous.

And you have to read the whole thing. I don't care what one clause here or there says. The occasional reassuring sentence is negated by clause after clause, and, more important, the whole structure of the thing.

We wrote about it at Herald. Version also at:

http://tinyurl.com/DHhealthedit

Instapundit also links.

Sixties redux?

Thugs attack protestors? White House and Dems decry dissent?

Bad moon rising?

If VDH is mad ....

Nailing it:

There is, again, a mounting anxiety that the current federal expansion is politically-driven in rather radical ways—an effort to create a permanent new constituency of millions who either receive expanded federal largess or are gleefully employed in doling it out. The zealotry of expansive bureaucracy and dependency instills fears, rational or not, of a radicalized huge federal work force, a sort of national version of Acorn to the nth degree that in pack-like fashion is mobilized to target potential naysayers.

Internet watershed?

Is the fight over Obamacare another milestone in online connection?

I'm an editorial page editor. I get paid to look this stuff up. But I strongly doubt whether, pre-Internet, I could have accessed HR 3200 so easily.

And, until you look at the whole thing, you don't really grasp how all-encompassing it is. No summary or comment can convey that; but once you at least look at the whole thing, then and only then can you grasp how this will completely overwhelm any "private" aspect of health care. Everything, everything, will be run by the government. Any "private" aspect will be private in name only; doctors and hospitals and insurance companies will be mere proxies for Big Bro. And they can't last long anyway -- as we said in edit, any more than a tropical bird can last long in Antarctica.

More important, online info (from e-mails and on the Web) helped me navigate this monster bill better than I ever could have done on my own.

Perhaps most important, I was able to get a sense of how others felt, and that this was a winnable fight.

I'm old enough to remember the Great Society. I was only a teenager, but there was no sense of any debate or opposition, with this kind of scale or intensity. Maybe it was there, but now you can see it.

And, of course, we're no longer just throwing words out there on page, but connecting back.

So this is not only an important moment in politics, it's important in communications and political action.

Health care options

Yes, Obamacare would be worse than nothing.

And there are better options.

A patient-centered health-care reform begins with individual ownership of insurance policies and leverages Health Savings Accounts, a low-premium, high-deductible alternative to traditional insurance that includes a tax-advantaged savings account. It allows people to purchase insurance policies across state lines and reduces the number of mandated benefits insurers are required to cover. It reallocates the majority of Medicaid spending into a simple voucher for low-income individuals to purchase their own insurance. And it reduces the cost of medical procedures by reforming tort liability laws.

By empowering patients and doctors to manage health-care decisions, a patient-centered health-care reform will control costs, improve health outcomes, and improve the overall efficiency of the health-care system.

email to Mickey Kaus

Kausfiles: We pay 77 percent more on prescription drugs, we're paying $6,000 more per individual on health care than any other industrialized nation; here's all the failures in the delivery system that account for it. It's not just because we are somehow more obese or more unhealthy. It turns out actually we're a little bit healthier than most of these other countries because our smoking rates are lower and we're younger. So we should actually be paying less than they are.

kf wold be even more persuasive if could explain how the government is going to make things more efficient and effective, yet less costly.

You've been a trenchant critic of the auto takeover; you could explain why THIS takeover will be different.

The real poll

(Thanks to Instapundit)

The results of the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are a major warning sign for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. On some key issues, the gains that Democrats had made on Republicans in the last couple of years have disappeared, and the GOP has begun to reassert itself. In other policy areas, traditional Democratic leads are diminishing.

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What I'd like to see: The Jerk Poll: which party has bigger jerks?

That's what people react to. When they see Wall Street traders pulling down hundreds of millions -- and then a worldwide financial meltdown reveals most of those jerks literally don't know what they're doing -- then the Democrats gain.

When people see arrogant Democrats passing huge spending bills and planning a huge health care bill -- and literally not knowing what's in the bills -- then the GOP gains.

That's what people react to: who's the bigger jerk.

Why Romney will never be president

His well-intentioned experiment in Massachusetts has flopped. This is too much ammo for opponents.

And, as per the NRO article, let's hope the Republicans don't get rolled in Congress.

Again.

What really needs to happen

In our editorial today, we noted a local couple who actually gave stimulus money back.

Amos and Gloria Wright sent $500 back to President Obama at the White House.

Personally, I think this is what is needed. Tea parties and so forth are interesting. But protests against spending won't have any impact until people demand the government stop spending when it benefits them or one of their causes.

So maybe we can do without some F-22s for awhile. Or Social Security raises needed to be dialed back or frozen.

I love hiking. But if the national parks need to cut back on maintenance or even close, so be it.

The Retirement Home for Widowed Mothers of American War Heroes? Put it on hold.

Let's go back to the tea parties. A lot of them are my age (58) or older. Would they be willing to deal with a freeze on Social Security cost-of-living raises? Or work longer without taking it?

When the tea parties and other protests begin having that effect, then they'll be a force to reckon with. Not before, however.

Gates brouhaha

A shocking admission for a blogger: I wasn't there so I don't know what happened.

One fact sometimes overlooked: Gates needed a cane to get out to squad car. So how dangerous can he be?

So we newspaper people like to take one incident and think we can find the meaning. That's like saying one day can tell you what the climate will be.

So what do we learn from this? Old men can be cranky, Harvard profs can be arrogant, cops can be pushy, people sometimes don't understand each other, it's not a racial paradise, no kidding.

OK, and even presidents blurt out things they later regret.

Important move by Utah senator

Sen. Hatch shows backbone:

A senior Republican senator who sits on the two Senate committees dealing with health care legislation said Wednesday that he is stepping away from the negotiating table, citing concerns about the towering cost of the plans on the table and the lack of bipartisanship

Options

A health care suggestion:

Don't increase government spending and taxes in the midst of a recession and further strangle productivity and kill jobs. Instead, develop incremental, patient-centered reforms that address fundamental problems. Help the low-income uninsured, eliminate fraud and waste in federal health programs, and empower small businesses to expand coverage.

Look on my works

Contemplating Las Vegas, thinking of "Ozymandias." tinyurl.com/VegasBust

Now this is frightening

I thought Joe Pyrah's story on indigent deceased was one of the scariest of the year.

Funeral home director says:

"People want what they want, and think they should get it without paying for it," she said. And if they can't do that?

"Ethically they just walk away from their loved ones and not think twice," Sundberg said. "It's just a change in the human element."

She said a woman came in recently pleading poverty despite owning a home and having an income of nearly $60,000 a year.

The story says it's a nationwide trend.

Have we as a nation become such moochers, such freeloaders, so greedy and needy, that we can't even summon the moxie to take care of these basic responsibilities?

That scares me. Go a few trillion into debt -- that can be paid off. But if we have become just serfs, begging the government for everything, then we're done. Finished. Kaput.

That's what conservatives are really, and rightly, concerned about: that our willingness to assume responsibility is being whittled away by big government.

And note this: It's part of the collapse of values. More and more, we just don't care about anything but our own pleasures. If we can't taste it or touch it, too bad.

Then too we'll be serfs, as long as we're well fed.

On health care overhaul

From a while back:

Utah's senators are being styled as key players in a frenzied Democratic push to fundamentally alter the American health-insurance system.

According to a Washington Post pundit, "Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch may hail from one of the most Republican states in the country, but both men are seen by Democrats as critical to their efforts to sell the bill."

If that's the case, then it might be argued that it's more urgent than ever that Bennett and Hatch use their clout to stop such reforms. Any attempt in Washington to tinker with health insurance right now courts disaster.

Clearly, there are some features of the health care system that should be changed. Bennett in particular has floated some interesting ideas. Republicans are working out their own proposals that, at the proper time, may well be worthy of serious consideration.

One might wonder if today is premature. The nation is listing badly and taking on water as a result of economic strains, so it might be prudent to put aside health care legislation until the ship is secure -- meaning after federal spending is reined in and the issues can be considered calmly and rationally.

Look at the news from Monday, for instance. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of national health care plan put forward by Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. Although President Obama says health-insurance changes would save money, the CBO said the plan would cost at least $1 trillion over the first decade.

Moreover, the scheme would fail on its own terms. One of the reasons Democrats have long pushed the idea is to cover people with no health insurance. But the Kennedy/Dodd plan would still leave 36 million people uninsured.

Thus, the nation would add to its spiraling debt, yet fall short of the main goal.

Democrats have been scrambling for ways to cut costs. But that only means that any final plan will fall even further short of its original goals. Congress is in such disarray that any health-insurance legislation passed this year will likely disappoint everyone.

Consider another key wrinkle: a government-run health-insurance plan that's called a "public plan." The problem is that the government plan would undercut the private insurance industry and conceivably damage or drive it out of business. That's not just GOP rhetoric, either. The CBO estimate of the Kennedy-Dodd bill says it would cause 23 million people to lose their private coverage. Analyses of similar proposals yield similar results.

"A public plan is a non-starter," Hatch said. "They are trying several ways to come up with a public plan without calling it that. I just don't see that as working."

Bennett was also critical: "The sticking point in this entire debate is the demand on the part of the Obama administration that the final product have a government plan as one of the options; and if that happens, I will do everything I can to say no because I am convinced we would end up with only one option that survives.

"Right now, nearly 1.8 million Britons are waiting for hospital or outpatient treatments at any given time. Let's realize that the American voter will never stand for the kind of rationing by delay that seems to have crept into every other government-run health care system."

That's the kind of role Utahns should hope their senators continue to play. Both Bennett and Hatch have been around for awhile and have earned respect in Washington. They're in a position to say "Whoa!"

The danger, however, is that Republicans will get sucked into the debate this summer. Washington has been in chaos since the financial meltdown began last fall. In just months, the inconceivable has become routine on Capitol Hill. For example, a year ago even the most fanatical socialist or paranoid right-winger wouldn't have thought the government would end up running General Motors and Chrysler, but it happened. In this political cyclone, keeping a stable footing is difficult or impossible.

And that's what proponents of national health care appear to be counting on. It was best put by New York Times columnist David Brooks, who recently wrote that Obama wants to lure Republicans and the health care industry into "the final stage, the scrum."

"This is the set of all-night meetings at the end of the Congressional summer session when all the different pieces actually get put together," Brooks wrote.

In the hurly-burly of those sessions, laws can be passed without even being read by the lawmakers, much less understood. (Remember the bailout package?) Before the American people realize it, government might be running health care and telling you what medical procedures you can or can't have.

The longer the debate goes on, the worse the reforms look. No wonder the majority party is in a hurry to pass them. As Hatch has said, among other criticisms of the big push to get this done by August, "Why? What is the rush? What are we trying to hide?"

Should Bennett and Hatch go along? Or should they do everything possible to put health-insurance changes on hold until some sanity returns to Washington?

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_0279c458-1495-520e-afa8-9eeccef4c5af.html