What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?
Here’s a case study.
On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”
The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”
I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.
In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)
Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.
How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
Regardless of political persuasion, all voters should object to this kind of law making. However, large legislation like this will necessarily have these kind of things in it. For that reason its hard for me to understand why the default position of most voters, is to support more legislation. Why aren’t more voters by default libertarian?
Jammie wearing fool details what is left out of an AP story reporting on a healthcare bill:
Of course what the Associated Press does not even mention in their story is probably the most relevant part:
In general, do you support, oppose or neither support nor oppose the health care reform plans being discussed in Congress? (IF SUPPORT/OPPOSE Is that strongly support/oppose or somewhat support/oppose?
To no surprise that’s opposed by 43-41%. Eleven percent neither support or oppose and 4% “don’t know.”
Why does the AP select the question about support when other people are paying for it over the question that asks generally if the people support the legislation. If, the data showed a majority supported the healthcare legislation but only a minority supported it if the rich had to pay for it, would the AP still run with the same headline or would the headline emphasize that the majority supported healthcare? Liberal bias dictates whats parts of the polling data are to be highlighted and which are to be downplayed.
The poll also asks which is not even mentioned by the news story:
Would you favor, oppose, or neither favor nor oppose a law that would require every person to have health insurance, and pay money to the government as a penalty if they
do not, unless the person is very poor?
The outcome: 28% favor it while 64% are opposed. In point of fact, this provision was in the house bill. Which effectively means, according to this poll, that the healthcare passed by congress, is opposed by a large majority of those polled. This is not even mentioned in the story. The attitude towards the current legislation on healthcare reform that was passed in the house was deemed not important enough to be mentioned by a story supposedly reporting on the attitudes of citizens towards healthcare reform. That my friends is what is called liberal bias in mainstream press.
Can you imagine in 2005 the AP ignoring poling data that showed strong disapproval of increasing troop levels in Iraq. I can’t either.
James Taranto rightly characterizes the administration decision to try several terrorists in civilan courts as being merely a show trial.
As Morris Davis, a retired military prosecutor, argued the other day in The Wall Street Journal, under the administration’s plan, “the standard of justice for each detainee will depend in large part upon the government’s assessment of how high the prosecution’s evidence can jump and which evidentiary bar it can clear.” Detainees will get a “fair trial” in civilian court only if their conviction is assured. By implication, that suggests that detainees who go before military commissions will get an unfair trial. Presumably the administration would deny this and say the commission trials will be fair too. But if so, why is such a trial not good enough for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad?
The answer seems to be that the administration is conducting a limited number of civilian trials of high-profile terrorists for show, so as to win “credibility” with the international left. These trials will differ from an ordinary show trial in that the process will be fair even though the verdict is predetermined. But people who wrongly think that either military commissions or detention without trial are unjust will not be satisfied with some detainees getting civilian trials–unless, of course, they are simply eager to be impressed by Barack Obama.
To select only the terrorists you believe will be convicted in a civilian court while keeping the rest in military tribunals is not justice. This seems like a bad move by the administration.
When comparing communism to Nazism, one thing is for sure, communism killed many more people. Despite its massive murders, its has never came close to receiving the kind of reputation that Nazism received. Marian Tupy has this to say about that:
Unlike the Germans after the World War II, the people in ex-communist countries were never forced to face their demons. As a consequence, communist rule has not acquired the moral opprobrium of Nazism. As long as that remains the case, socialist economics will continue to enjoy an aura of plausibility.
he also notes:
In spite of its monumental failure to bring social peace and material abundance, socialism is enjoying something of a renaissance. From Venezuela to Bolivia to South Africa, government ministers espouse the supposed virtues of socialism. Even in the West, some policies are taking government intervention in the economy to levels unseen in decades. Given the renewed interest in alternatives to capitalism, it is perhaps appropriate to recall the last time that socialism was tried with real gusto.
Some 100 million people have died in the pursuit of a communist utopia.
Few recall communist rule in Eastern Europe in the 1950s—the height of its glory. The fog of time shrouds painful memories of firing squads and forced labor camps. However, I am old enough to remember communism on its last leg—communism that no longer had the confidence to pull the trigger, but still had the strength to lock the door of a prison cell. For, by the late 1980s, not even the communists believed in communism. What was once humanity’s greatest threat became a pathetic joke—except that the people in ex-communist countries were not a happy, giggling lot.
Shortages, some Americans will recall from the 1984 Robin Williams movie “Moscow on the Hudson,” were an everyday reality in the Soviet bloc. As a kid, I remember being taken by my aunt (a hardcore communist) to a shop where the only sign of life was a fat fly buzzing atop a lonely gray sausage—the sole indicator that the shop was, in fact, a butchery. Born after the communist take-over of Czechoslovakia in 1948, she did not know any better. Like Williams’s character Vladimir Ivanoff, she saw endless lines for one or two rolls of low-grade toilet paper as perfectly normal. Paradoxically, it was her trip to the workers’ paradise (a reward of sorts for true believers) that made her doubt communism. “Russia,” she said upon her return, “is a very poor country.”
Its shame that the communistic rhetoric, and by extension socialism, has never received the association to murder and destruction that occurs when you take the people’s right to private property. It is after all the most basic and fundamental right of them all. Its no surprise that millions can die when the state forbids the right to private property.
Apparently there is a price war going between major retailers selling DVDs.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. started another price war Thursday, trimming the online preorder prices of some upcoming DVDs following its price cut on books last month. And, once again, competitors Amazon.com and Target scrambled to match the prices.
It’s the latest salvo in an ongoing online push by Wal-Mart designed to make sure everyone knows it intends to be the low-price leader on the Web, as well as in stores.
Hmmm. Its odd how this price war does not requires state intervention to keeps the retailers ‘honest’. Its also interesting how the state doesn’t force consumers to purchase DVDs from the retailer close to their house like the how the state forces consumers to purchase health insurance from providers only in their state.
Gosh I wonder if their is a relationship between business competition and low prices? I wonder if their is a relationship between state prohibition of competition and high prices?
Instanpundit points to the chart below plotting the predicted unemployment rates of the Obama administration including the actual rate of unemployment.
Whats remarkable is that literally after only three months their prediction about unemployment were off. Within six months they were wildly wrong. However, these predictions were in part used to justify the tremendous amount of spending to help the economic recovery.
Bearing in mind that this administration was unable to predict unemployment literally three month into the future, I ask you what kind of confidence do you have in the administration’s ability to predict climate trends literally 45 years into the future. Any reasonable person would conclude such prognostication are foolishly inane at best. And yet, the house supported by the president, several months ago passed a massive and expensive piece of legislation (cap and trade) to try and prevent so called prediction of our climate many many years from now.
Given that we can’t even predict unemployment numbers three months into the future, perhaps it would be wise to refrain from massive legislation to stop outcomes that have been ‘predicted’ to occur many many years into the future.
One would think such a historic and noble action, as the Democrats have styled it, would enjoy robust support from the full spectrum of the House Democratic caucus. But in this case, only those who occupy safe seats (or think they do) can be corralled. If Pelosi gets her 218 votes, it will be unprecedented. It is fair to say that never will a piece of legislation this sweeping (and damaging) have been passed over the opposition of so much of the electorate and on the votes of such a narrow ideological slice of the governing class.
Only liberals support, arguably the worst piece of legislation proposed in the last 75 years.
You support putting people in jail who don’t get health insurance.
Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.
emphasis mine
Their is only one word for this: coercion. Supporting this legislation means explicitly supporting coercion.
Apparently the republican health care reform legislation will actually do what the Obama claims his legislation will do:
The Congressional Budget Office Wednesday night released its cost analysis of the Republican health care plan and found that it would reduce health care premiums and cut the deficit by $68 billion over ten years.
The Republican plan does not call for a government insurance plan but rather attempts to reform the system by creating high-risk insurance pools, allowing people to purchase health insurance policies across state lines and instituting medical malpractice reforms.
“Not only does the GOP plan lower health care costs, but it also increases access to quality care, including for those with pre-existing conditions, at a price our country can afford,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said.
How about that, deregulating a market decrease price while increasing regulation makes it cost more? Who would’ve thought?
