Apparently democrats represent the richest regions in the country:

Democratic members of the House of Representatives now represent most of the nation’s wealthiest people, a sharp turnaround from the long-standing dominance that Republicans have held over affluent districts.

…

Democrats now represent 57% of the 4.8 million households that had incomes of $200,000 or more in 2008. In 2005, Republicans represented 55% of those affluent households.

Have the rich even hear of charity? Why are they so keen on increasing state power to tax themselves to do good when they could simply just give their money to charity. Anyway, this trend is not likely to last especially with the kind of policies liberals have been putting forth recently.

After Olympia Snowe voted to pass the healthcare reform legislation out of committee I wondered what she has to gain from it. This national review article provides an excellent reason:

In 2003, Maine created a state-run insurance plan called DirigoChoice (the state motto, Dirigo, means “I lead”), offering subsidized insurance to families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Even with the subsidies, enrollment has been far lower than expected. Approximately 10,000 people are currently enrolled in DirigoChoice. Of those, around 3,400 were previously uninsured, representing only 2.5 percent of Maine’s uninsured population. The other 6,600 dropped out of private plans in order to take advantage of the subsidies.

Even though enrollment has fallen short of the state’s goals, the cost of the program has exceeded the state’s ability to pay. The economics are simple: The low-cost program immediately attracted the sickest patients, who ditched their more expensive private plans. The associated costs drove DirigoChoice premiums up by 74 percent, pricing out healthier Mainers. Earlier this year, a small-business owner told the Bangor Daily News that even with the generous subsidies — and even though she offered to pay 60 percent of their premiums — her eight employees still found DirigoChoice too expensive and declined its coverage.

The skewed economics of DirigoChoice have left it highly dependent on government financing, which has created a series of problems for policymakers. The program’s initial funding mechanism was nothing short of bizarre: Each year, the Dirigo Health Agency had to come up with a number that (according to its experts) represented the amount of money DirigoChoice had “saved” the Maine health-care system; the law then required Maine insurance companies to pay that amount to the state. Needless to say, those calculations ended up being something less than rigorous, and the insurance companies objected. Employers argued that insurers were simply passing on the bill for these “savings-offset payments” to private policyholders. Last year, the furor over the payments led the agency to downgrade its savings estimate by $40 million, making the whole process look like an arbitrary sham.

The Democratic legislature tried to replace this funding mechanism with a tax on beer, wine, and soda, but Mainers exercised a “voters’ veto” and repealed this tax via referendum. Running out of money, the legislature went back to taxing Maine insurance companies (and, by extension, private policyholders), enacting a 2 percent tax on all paid insurance claims. The state also has capped enrollment in order to keep costs from spiraling further out of control. The program’s supporters are now looking to Washington for help. “We have a very limited capacity because of limited resources,” Maine Office of Health Policy and Finance director Trish Riley said recently. “With federal money, more people would become eligible and the federal government would require people to have coverage.”

If Snowe voted for reform in part because she wanted to help bail out her state’s program, it would be ironic that she supported legislation at the federal level that clearly will fail financially simply to support a state program that is already failing in just about every measurable way.

This National Review piece looks at several states attempts at providing more healthcare to more individuals via government intervention:

Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts all force insurance companies to offer coverage to individuals regardless of health status, an arrangement known as “guaranteed issue.” All three states also forbid insurers to charge different rates based on health status, a policy known as “community rating.” Maine has a form of the “public option,” a government-run insurance plan that competes with private plans and offers taxpayer-subsidized premiums, while Massachusetts has an “individual mandate” requiring everyone to purchase health insurance. Even New Hampshire — sometimes held up as an island of individualism in a collectivist sea — has, when it comes to health care, been swept along with the currents.

Unsurprisingly:

The result: Health care costs more in New England than it does anywhere else in the country. Insurance companies have fled the region, leading to less competition and higher premiums. The number of uninsured has gone down, true, but not by nearly as much as proponents of these reforms had predicted, while health-care subsidies eat up an ever-growing share of the states’ budgets, with the consequences of higher taxes and — yes — rationed care.

While the Obama administration has attempted to sell universal healthcare as a matter of cost saving, many on the left sell healthcare on an emotional level. That’s why the laws that are passed are so beyond basic common sense that they practically parody themselves. For example, you can’t force insurances companies to take on riskier individuals and forbid them from charging these individuals more without adversely affecting the industry. It so obvious that these are bad laws but they have been passed because those on the left appeal to voters emotional side.

Vermont was a trailblazer on this misguided path. In the spring of 1992, the Green Mountain State enacted the nation’s first guaranteed-issue and community-rating mandates for individual coverage. According to an industry-sponsored study undertaken by Milliman, a consultancy, the passage of those laws led many insurance companies to stop offering individual coverage in the state; today, individuals can purchase plans from only two companies in Vermont.

In regards to Vermont, a study found:

In 2006, the Vermont insurance department studied the effects of these reforms on the market for individual health insurance and reached the following unsurprising conclusions: “The individual market seems to be performing badly: the number of people buying such coverage is falling drastically; coverage is unaffordable for many; and the only coverage that is available has very high cost sharing.”

You don’t say. So forcing companies to take on risky individuals and not being able to charge them more has made the overall cost of healthcare go up? Big surprise there.

When the Obama Administration held a press conference with doctors to show how physicians support his reform policies some of them forget their lab coats. No problem:

A sea of 150 white-coated doctors, all enthusiastically supportive of the president and representing all 50 states, looked as if they were at a costume party as they posed in the Rose Garden before hearing Obama’s pitch for the Democratic overhaul bills moving through Congress.
OOPS! A crowd of 150 doctors gathers in the Rose Garden to support the health-care overhaul — as White House staffers scramble to hand out camera-ready white coats to those who forgot their own.
EPA
OOPS! A crowd of 150 doctors gathers in the Rose Garden to support the health-care overhaul — as White House staffers scramble to hand out camera-ready white coats to those who forgot their own.
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The physicians, all invited guests, were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image.

But some docs apparently forgot, failing to meet the White House dress code by showing up in business suits or dresses.

So the White House rustled up white coats for them and handed them to the suited physicians who had taken seats in the sun-splashed lawn area.

Now that some hope and change we can all believe in.

Our current president has argued for people having positive rights. Examples of positive rights are the right to healthcare or the right to air conditioners. Basically a positive right is a right to have the government give you something.

In that 2001 Chicago public radio interview, Obama tells a radio talk show host, “One of the I think tragedies of the civil rights movement was [the] tendency to lose track of political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.” To this effect, he criticizes the radical Warren court (1953-1969) as not being radical enough: “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constitution generally, the constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what states can’t do to you, says what federal government can’t do to you. But it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”

I think positive rights are extremely problematic. Those that advocate for them have a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of a right. A rights is not a gift from the state but a prohibition to keep the state in check. Rights exist to prevent state abuse. Positive rights end up mandating state abuse. For example, a right to health care mandates that the state abuse it’s power by unfairly discriminating against the wealthy to steal their resources to provide to the poor.

CNN reports:

Driving along a pockmarked road amid rocks and Joshua trees in a lonely southern California desert, religious controversy might be the last thing you’d expect to encounter.
A judge ruled the Mojave Cross must be covered until a First Amendment issue can be resolved.

A judge ruled the Mojave Cross must be covered until a First Amendment issue can be resolved.

And if you don’t look too closely, you’re likely to zip right past the focus of a hotly contested Supreme Court battle.

A federal judge has ordered the Mojave Cross, a war memorial erected by a veterans group 75 years ago, to be covered. It’s boxed in plywood.

Here’s the history of how the cross got there.

Riley Bembry, who served as a medic in World War I, helped erect the cross in 1934. It sits on a 4,000-foot plateau and was a place of reflection for many vets who retreated to the desert in part to recover from severe lung diseases caused by mustard gas attacks during the Great War. An annual Easter service is held there, but until recently only locals knew about it. The site is not on any maps. Video Watch a video about the Mojave monument »

Bembry never got permission from the government to erect the cross, but for decades nobody seemed to care. He was the caretaker of the memorial for five decades until he died in 1984.

In 1994, 1.6 million acres of desert — including the land with the cross on it — was transferred to the National Park Service. A few years later, a resident wanted to put up a Buddhist shrine near the cross. The request was denied.

And now this asshole files a lawsuit.

Frank Buono, a former deputy superintendent of the preserve, filed a lawsuit with the help of the ACLU, claiming federal officials were acting unfairly.

Technically, the federal officials are being unfair. And if some guy wanted to build a cross there today, then the bureaucrats should deny that request. But this cross has been there for decades and has taken on special meaning. Furthermore, its literally in the middle of nowhere. For me this is good reason why it should be kept up. If this was a Buddhist site commemorating those that died in WW1 and some christian filed lawsuit to take it down, I would call them an asshole to. Pissing all over a 70 year old non state sanctioned war memorial because you can’t have your monument built makes you an asshole, regardless of your religion.

This is one of those things were you have the wisdom to not make a big deal because you realize its significance is more important than you petty quibble. Somethings you just let roll off your back.

Anthony Gregory writes in response to the government spending to get the economy out of the recession:

The major flaw with the theory was summed up by humorist Dave Barry, who once wrote, “See, when the Government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of Taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.”

This succinctly summarizes the counter argument to government spending. Honestly, I don’t think it can be said any better.

People on the left have a tendency to forget that rich people spend money. I have on many occasions had to remind them that, unlike scrooge McDuck, rich people don’t actually have pools of cash that they swim around in. In fact, when the rich use their wealth to purchase something ostentatious, they end up providing employment for many people.

Anthony continues:

And there’s the rub. The idea that government spending creates jobs ignores the jobs that are lost in the process. If Americans have more money that represents actual wealth, then jobs will be created and society will become richer. But if the government simply prints the money, effectively reducing the value of the money they already have — or if it takes the money directly through taxation — that money has simply been sent to Washington and back again.

Effectively, the state is taking a large amount of money, charging some kind of ‘fee’, and then returns it back to the people and calls it creating jobs. However, had the state abstained from taking the money, the ‘fee’ they charged, could of been put to better use creating jobs. In this analysis, one might argue that those that support government job creation are willing to pay the government a ‘fee’ so that they can say they helped others.

It’s unclear why those on the left argue in favor of letting the state extract a fee from their funds, when they could directly gives those funds to charity themselves. In so doing they could then feel good about helping others. The only reason I have ever heard was because they couldn’t trust charities. There is something odd speaking generally about the state being more trustworthy then charitable organizations.

When it comes to federal income tax, almost half the country will not have to pay it.

In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

That seems fair to me.