Socialized medicine fails to impress

Prez Osama is fond of pointing out that the US Chamber of Commerce is on-board for socialized medicine. But it isn't.

Apparently the Chamber was invited to participate in the behind-closed-doors dealings by which legislation is created in the USA today. Apparently they agreed with legislators on some points and goals for "health care reform." However, in statements released yesterday -- as Osama was in Wisconsin touting their support -- the Chamber released several statements that show just the opposite.

Regarding a health care reform bill currently being considered in the Senate, the US Chamber of Commerce states in a news release:

Moses could change the Nile to run red, but we cannot wave a wand and create profits. The payments will come off the bottom line in some way such as lower wages and job loss and perhaps ultimately result in driving the employer out of business.

While there has been much focus on the so-called government public plan option, I believe, the issue of a new employer mandate, euphemistically called "play or pay," has largely been lost in the debate and in the press. This is highly ironic given that this is, let's be clear, a sweeping new burden on employers of unprecedented proportion in the benefits areas.

After meeting with stakeholders behind closed doors for nearly a year, the committee released a proposal that bears almost no resemblance to the points of consensus reached, which raises significant concerns to the employer community as a whole.

Rather than focusing on improving quality and lowering cost, the proposal centers on creating new burdens on America's job creators, significantly expanding public programs, and creating a new government-run insurance company.

I don't know. Does this sound like enthusiastic support or more like indignation and a sense of betrayal?

According to the US Chamber's full testimony (like the news release, this is available at http://www.uschamber.com/ look under the MEDIA tab), the bill in front of the Senate includes providing government-subsidized health insurance for families of four with incomes of up to $110,250 per year. Jeez, is this the new "poverty level"? Seems like most of America is doing awfully good.

Or maybe the Democrats are (still) trying to buy off the middle class. On the other hand, I would guess that any family of four making more than $110,250 per year would be expected to pay, and pay, and pay, and pay for this plan.

The Chamber's full statement notes:

Another concerning proposal is the creation of a new government-run health plan, euphemistically referred to as the “public option,” or brazenly referred to as “consumer driven.” Proponents say that this is necessary to “keep private insurers honest,” yet proposed market reforms should accomplish this goal without the creation of a new entitlement plan. Proponents claim that a government-run plan can compete on an equal playing field with private plans, but this would put the government in the position of being both a team owner and the referee; inevitably the government would move to give unfair advantages to the “public option,” just as they are considering doing now with the public financing of student loans.

Must admit that the AMA (American Medical Assn.) has disappointed me in the past in their position on socialized medicine. A few weeks ago I looked at their website for statements on where they stand and could find only rather vague yet lofty pronouncments about how everyone should have access to health care. They didn't say anything specific about how this should be provided.

Now Nancy H. Nielsen, M.D., AMA president, says:

Make no mistake: Health reform that covers the uninsured is AMA’s top priority this year. Every American deserves affordable, high-quality health care coverage.

Today's New York Times story creates a false impression about the AMA's position on a public plan option in health care reform legislation. The AMA opposes any public plan that forces physicians to participate, expands the fiscally-challenged Medicare program or pays Medicare rates, but the AMA is willing to consider other variations of a public plan that are currently under discussion in Congress. This includes a federally chartered co-op health plan or a level playing field option for all plans. The AMA is working to achieve meaningful health reform this year and is ready to stand behind legislation that includes coverage options that work for patients and physicians.

So it seems the AMA is not too happy with the way their position has been bandied about and mischaracterized by the liberal left. Uh, I mean the New York Times.

I will only comment that Rule #1 from Alinsky's Rules for Radicals suggests that even if your organization is small, you should figure out a way for them to make a lot of noise so that it seems you have lots and lots of support. I guess claiming that the AMA and the US Chamber of Commerce are solidly behind the federal government's socialized medicine scheme is just one example.

Was going to call this blog "Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!" but the search engines wouldn't have picked up on it being about socialized medicine. They just aren't as smart as American citizens are in picking up these kinds of things.

Keeping the private sector honest

President Osama had me in stitches today. He was in Green Bay, Wisc., kicking off his socialized medicine putsch. When he said a government-run insurance program would "keep the private sector honest," I actually had Diet Pepsi shooting out my nose. My cat was alarmed, seeing his thumb-equipped link to the can opener actually collapsed in a heap on the floor, gasping for breath, doubled over in laughter. That was a good one, Barry!

I think I mentioned before that I write fiction, among other things. (At least I'm honest about it.) A couple months ago I was trying to contrive some dire plot for a mystery, surfin' the Web, looking for interesting crime stories. Man, I never realized that Medicare/Medicaid is such an easy mark.

If you watch any TV, you've probably seen those commercials for the padded scooters for seniors and others. They're like upholstered wheelchairs, motorized. Some of the sellers give you a "Grabber" for free if you order the scooter. And the ads always claim, "You pay nothing!!" The seller will be happy to fill out all the paper work for you and submit it to Medicare/Medicaid for payment. Then there are also other ads for companies who sell diabetes supplies and other medical equipment. They usually feature some older movie star, apparently to lend some credibility to the whole thing since Hollywood is so full of heavyweights.

I don't mean to cast aspersions on all of these companies. I suppose some are honest, especially if they've been around for a while. However....

In doing the research for the mystery, I came across many, many accounts of rather elaborate scams involving these types of companies. Sure, they'll do all the paper work. They want your Medicare/Medicaid account number and your doctor's ID number, and then they'll just keep on billin' and never look back! Whether or not you receive anything more than a scooter and a grabber, the supplier will bill Medicare/Medicaid for hospital beds, a lifetime inventory of adult diapers, all kinds of stuff. You may be surprised to learn some day that you had major surgery that one weekend you thought you spent at the casino.

Something like 15% of all Medicare/Medicaid is wasted through fraud. Though I don't have the statistics in front of me, I do believe the last number I heard was that something like $60 billion (with a b) was flushed down the toilet last year through these schemes.

The federal government doesn't have the time or the staff to double-check all the claims they get in, and it's not their money anyway. They just pay and pay and pay.... Your tax dollars at work --or actually resting comfortably in somebody's bank account in the Cayman Islands.

On the other hand, in the free market, or at least among privately-owned insurance carriers, fraud like this just couldn't be tolerated. Private companies are actually accountable to their shareholders and even to their customers. They don't have a printing press in the back room to keep grinding out hundred-dollar bills. They actually keep track of their claims and expenditures. Unlike the buffoons in Washington.

So, anyway, I had a good laugh, and after a time, my cat came out from behind the couch.

It boggles my mind that President Osama so underestimates the intelligence of the American public. Here's a news flash for you, Barry -- in the US, the brightest and the best are not in government; they work in the private sector, where they have more freedom to innovate and to grow. Until you got into office, the private sector in America offered some real freedom to do this. So apparently since you've never worked in the private sector, you're judging all of us by the butthead louts you've encountered in your government work.

Most of us private American citizens are a whole lot smarter than that, but you really have no way of knowing that, do you? Your conversations with the public usually go only one way.... for fear of encountering another Joe-the-Plumber, maybe, who might ask you an embarrasing question? Like... isn't that socialism?

Oh, hey... ol' Barry isn't a socialist. Nah.... He's.... Santa Claus.

Does anyone except Nancy Pelosi believe anything this clown says anymore? And she's probably afraid Barry will take away the Air Force jet if she questions him too closely.

I don't know how he does it. He doesn't want to run an auto company. He doesn't want to run banks and financial institutions. He's just strolling down the street and these companies glom onto him, begging him to nationalize them and seize control. It's actually amazing. Nothing like that has ever happened to me or to anyone else I've ever met. It must be part of the Messiah thing.

Because it can't all be a coincidence, can it?

By the way, I found a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and Prez Osama definitely does play by those rules. I'm paraphrasing them and will post them. Apparently Saul Alinsky, a devout communist, or his heirs, who apparently are not opposed to collecting scummy capitalist profits, have pretty tight clamps on the copyright -- they don't want to lose a penny on unauthorized circulation -- so I'll have to paraphrase to prevent a law suit.

Liars and hypocrites. It's really amazing. Well, not really amazing, considering where they come from and where they want to go.

The civil society

The civil society is a certain type of ideal where people meet and discuss issues that affect them all and try to reason out solutions that they all can live with. Notice especially that this ideal is based on reason -- the human capacity to deal with reality in the abstract, to discern cause-and-effect relationships, to project the future consequences of actions taken now. It's also closely related to the concept of "rule by law, not by man." That is, dispassionate, objective law, not the subjective, arbitrary (though maybe empathetic) personal preference of an individual authoritarian.

The Enlightenment is the historical period that made a virtue of reason. It's even called The Age of Reason. Some people believe reason has failed, but it only fails when we fail to exercise it.

And when reason fails, what are we left with?

People grabbing a gun and going down to the Holocaust Museum, or the local Army recruiting office, or an abortion clinic to fix things on their own. I could go on naming particular issues, but hopefully you get the drift.

The US government in particular is very special creation. If government in general -- any government -- is a given society's method of making decisions that are binding on all members, then the US government was devised to make such decision-making as fair and open a process as possible. The Constitution describes a government that provides a forum for reasoned and fair decision-making in areas that constitute "public" life.

The US government was never intended to serve as a moral authority in the same way that religion or philosophy is. It was never supposed to micro-manage everyone's lives, rather only to protect our ability to make personal decisions for ourselves.

Right now the US is involved in a broad argument about how extensive the reach of government should be. The argument has gotten away from the issues enumerated in the Bill of Rights, so that now apparently whatever personal decisions we are allowed come under the vague and changeable heading of The Right to Privacy.

This is pretty much the opposite of what the Founding Fathers had in mind. The public space -- that part of life that's controlled by governmental authority -- was supposed to be kept relatively small in its scope, but that's not what's happened over time.

Conservatives want government limited to one degree or another. Liberals want government expanded to control as much as possible. Everyone seems to have some hobby-horse that they believe requires the compulsion of government control. The Founding Fathers talked about "toleration," or letting others be, even if you believed they were wrong. Now special interest groups of every stripe own one or another issue that they claim needs to be legislated one way or the other for the good of all.

But you see, when you try to extend governmental -- or really any kind -- of social control, you only generate ever-accelerating controversy about what is "good" for all people, since all people will be forced to live with it or under it. Non-conformists, including creative people, often feel the pressure first, feel that they're being pushed into places that they don't want to go.

The alternative is to agree to disagree. In other words, abandon attempts at control and simply tolerate behavior that might be repugnant to us personally. As Jefferson said, "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg...."

The conflict is not incidentally between right and left, Democrats and Republicans, socialists and capitalists. The primary source of the conflict is between individual rights and social control.

So not only is there is a loonie firing randomly (?) at visitors at the Holocaust Museum, but the killing of Dr. Tiller, who performed abortions, and also of a US soldier by a radical muslim, all over the last couple of weeks.

Seems people of every political shade are abandoning law, since the law just isn't working out in their favor. Or maybe the law has become less and less reasonable, less and less tolerant, and more and more oppressive -- for everyone. Maybe there's just too much of it.

As government control increasingly becomes social control -- that is, polticizing every aspect of human life and carving out laws of behavior for every person in every possible situation -- there's only going to more of this kind of thing. People feeling pressured and abused, yet helpless to save themselves in any other way but to strike out at whomever they perceive to be "the enemy."

In public relations Lesson #1 is: Don't corner your opponent, because if you push them up against the wall, they have no option but to attack you.

Exactly when and who they attack is pretty much up to them, and no amount of government control and additional legislation will ever change it. In fact, harsher control only makes it worse.

When China laughs in your face

Fresh from watching Mr. ManiacalSpend announcing his support for "Pay-Go," or pay-as-you-go government spending. Of course, he couched his remarks in such as way that, God forbid, he has no responsibility for the monstrous debt. Evil goblins crept into the White House at night and jacked up the budget, forging Mr. ManiacalSpend's signature on the Stimulus Package and the Pork Bill. Mr. ManiacalSpend himself had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was overseas, currying favor with the Social Democrats, or someplace....

What is a president to do when he sends his Treasury Nerd to the Peoples' Republic of China to ask for money and they laugh it off, sincere in their belief that he must be joking?

But let's look at this again. Mr. ManiacalSpend still wants socialized medicine, he still wants to own the UAW and for them to own all the rest of us, he still wants to grind US industry into the dust with cap-and-tax... He just wants someone else to figure out some way to pay for it.

For my money, he's got his fingers crossed for some monumental tax increase. Of course he'll say, "If you-all want socialized medicine and horrendous electricity bills, it's going to cost you."

Never for one moment considering that no one with a damn brain in their head wants any of this, except Nancy Pelosi, maybe, or Harry Reid, or some bozo in San Francisco who spends most of his time eating lotuses.

I'd love to think Mr. ManiacalSpend would use this opportunity to rein in his own gargantuan schemes for government expansion, but knowing him as we all do, I totally doubt it.

Yeah... more like he's saying in that inimical and lovable way -- wait until next April. You guys are gonna be royally screwed.

Europe loves Obama?

Rather interesting results of the European elections. Most nations moved somewhat to the right -- the "right" in Europe being anything less than total state ownership of absolutely everything. So I'm wondering: Where is the love for Obama?

You'd think they'd all be jumping on the bandwagon for even higher taxes and government spending and all those other Obama-related things.

I guess you can love the sinner but not the sin. (sigh....)

Saw British MEP Daniel Hannon on TV tonight talking about this. Has anyone else noticed that he has beautiful eyes?

And wasn't Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg supposed to be a liberal? And yet she questions the wisdom of stiffing the secured bondholders in the Chrysler-Fiat deal? Seems this is such an extraordinary violation of property rights and the spirit of the law in the US that the honest people who remain in government just can't let it pass unnoticed. About time, isn't it?

Read a commentary on this deal on Bloomberg, and I'm sorry but I'm not sure who wrote it. The author noted, rather too quickly, that shafting the secured bondholders will have a chilling effect on the investment of private capital in American businesses. Gee, do ya think?

But we don't need no stinkin' private capital when we have Treasury bail-outs, do we?

(I always think of the Frito Bandito: We can just print more!!)

And it's all to support UAW retirees' health care benefits. Why can't they use Medicare like everyone else? Medicare already is such a drain on the economy, and it's already socialized medicine, I'm surprised that the UAW and those-in-government-with-whom-they-are-in-bed aren't jumping up and down at the opportunity to collect big-time on Medicare. Just to show us all how terrific the system is and that it's something we all want when we retire. Or hell, when we retire?? Why not right now?? For everyone!! You'd think it would be the UAW's civic duty.

But no-o-o-o, they'd rather go to the health care providers and insurers they know in the private sector. No hypocrisy there.

So Obama's trying to speed up the Stimulus spending. Not enough inflation yet or what?

Hm-m-m-m-m what else?

North Korea continues to rant and foam at the mouth. They just handed down a 12-year sentence of hard labor for two journalists arrested there for crossing the border. The journalists work for Al Gore's TV station. What the heck were they doing in Korea? Trying to measure the pollution? I mean, really.... Sorry for them, though. Apparently Kim Jung Il (or whatever his name is) is certifiably batty. Although I must say, I think it would be a hoot to just arbitrarily shoot off missiles whenever the mood struck.

I've worked with many Koreans. One guy, Jimmy, worked on a night shift with me and he took me out for a late lunch a couple times after we got off work. He was a nice guy, and I think looking for an American girlfriend. He was also all alone -- no family here. A Korean girl used to give me rides part-way home on yet another night shift job. I don't think I've ever met people who were harder working or more entrepreneurial. Or, actually, better-natured. No matter how many jobs they had, how exhausted, how crummy the company policy, they just kept plugging away. I wish I was so dedicated to my own goals.

'Course it doesn't do to generalize. Used to live in an apartment complex, and my family were about the only people there who were native English-speakers. On one side of the building was one Korean family who must have had about 16 people living in that apartment, all of them with three or four jobs. Their kids used to race each other down the hallway. They didn't speak really good English, so I didn't know them well, but one of the kids asked me once if I would write her a check for a college entrance application. She gave me the cash for it right away; she just needed a check to send in with the application. Hope she was accepted.

On the other side of the building was another Korean family. They had a daughter who was a complete lunatic. She was really a pretty girl, about 20 years old or so, and had a few boyfriends. Seems she was most attached to one who wasn't as into her as she was into him. They used to have these fights in the middle of the night right below my window, which overlooked the parking lot.

You'd hear this screaming -- and I do mean screaming -- then often her footsteps slamming up the stairs and down the hall, then a stream of objects flying out her window. In the morning the lawn would be littered with cans of hairspray, the odd cowboy boot, cassette tapes, etc. One night apparently her boyfriend was trying to simply go home, this accompanied by the raging and screaming. Then she threw herself down in front of his car. Someone else called the police.

So there go the stereotypes. That crazy O'Rourke guy -- wrote for Rolling Stone, now a conservative and very funny -- once said that Koreans were "the Irish of Asia." Maybe he had a point.

Don't know how I got here from where I started, but here we are....

But anyway, looks like the tide is turning as people all over the world are beginning to see what all this government-run crap is going to mean in real terms, and no more USA to carry the load for them.

Socialism is no longer a supposedly "high moral" platform from which to bitch and whine at those of us who are mere self-absorbed money-grubbers. Socialsim is starting to look a lot like the rough-shod looting of the productive. And that view is closer to reality.

Cloward-Piven Strategy

Been watching Glenn Beck, notably the show about Acorn and the Cloward-Piven Strategy. Check it out here:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967

Cloward-Piven is based on an article two radical left sociologists published in The Nation in 1966, suggesting that the most effective way to do away with capitalism is to overwhelm the system with demands for entitlements, busting the economy and forcing a redistribution of wealth. Rudy Giuliani believed it was this strategy deliberately implemented, that was responsible for throwing New York City into bankruptcy (or near-bankruptcy) a few years back. David Horowitz also is aware of all of this. It's not a lunatic conspiracy. Well, yes it is; what I mean is, it really does exist.

To me, this sounds like Barack Obama's blueprint for America.

The prez has noted that the US is out of money now, and that the current level of debt is unsustainable. And he continues to propose mind-bogglingly expensive social programs. Entitlement programs that will surely drive the nation only more irretrievably into debt.

Am I missing something here? I mean, if socialized medicine is bankrupting the economy now, how is this situation going to get any better by adding a couple hundred million more people onto the subscriber rolls?

Cap-and-trade is designed primarily to ensure that the US economy cannot recover. It has no other useful purpose and will have no other perceivable impact.

Anyway, Cloward-Piven spawned many followers, including Acorn, the amorphous conglomeration of left-wing "activists-for-hire," for want of a better word. Apparently Acorn is sort of an umbrella for a couple hundred other activist groups. And they don't function as overtly political organizations advocating one point of view or another, but work almost as contractors for the federal government and other organizations. They do things like voter registration drives, petition campaigns, community organizing, and apparently they're currently being recruited to take the 2010 Census. And to hop on a bus and terrorize AIG executives at their homes in Connecticut.

Who paid for that? You know, George Soros is one of the big-money donors behind all this. What the hell is his problem? Not enough democracy in America? This man should be in jail.

Don't know if anyone but Acorn's organizer, or board, or parent organization -- or whoever runs this octopus -- really knows how extensive this organization's reach is, but they do get federal money. And they will probably get at least $1 billion (with a b) from the Stimulus package. Your tax dollars at work.

This is like some "B" movie from the 1960s, where you rob a bank (attack capitalists) to fund the bombing of a draft board office.

So the lunatics really are running the asylum. No surprise there. Who needs al-Qaeda? Just hire Acorn. They're already inside the borders.

Change the subject a bit....

Watched Obama's speech in Cairo the other day, where he likened the displaced Palestinians to the six million Jews Hitler gassed, and implied that women in the US have much in common with muslim women who are stoned in the streets for talking to men-who-are-not-their-husbands.

He was trying to establish common bonds with "The Muslim World." I doubt it worked very well.

You know, people resort to violence when:

1.) They can't get a fair hearing;
2.) They don't have a convincing argument.

What is the case of nations like Iran, do you suppose? Their Prez Abracadabrajab actually was allowed to speak at the U.N. a couple years ago, and launched into an anti-US, anti-Israel diatribe and, if I recall correctly, promised even in that forum that he was working actively to kill all the Jews in Israel.

The U.N. gave him a fair hearing, so it must be the other thing.

How do you imagine he'll respond to Obama's sweetness and light? (Incoming!)

Abracadabrajab is right now involved in an election campaign in Iran, and apparently his opponent, who is more moderate, blasted the hell out of him in a televised debate. So maybe Iranians will reject this nutjob on their own.

To me, Abracadabrajab looks like an extra from the stage production of Oliver, a street-thief working with Fagan, but that's just me.

Anyway, I've been busy and I'm tired, so that's it for now.

The missing link

Something I find disturbing is that so many people -- most notably those who support the current US regime -- disconnect the actions this administration is taking from their inevitable consequences. They're missing that link: that actions have consequences; that we will all pay for all of this, and not only in dollars.

That is, they believe the US is not becoming a socialist nation because Obama scoffs when anyone calls him a socialist. Rather, he just wants to run all the industry and control about 60% of every citizen's personal income and spending. But it's for their own good. It's not that nasty-nasty unworkable, totalitarian "socialism."

Hey! Wake up! Obama's program is socialism. By any definition. No matter what else you call it.

Or there's the other thing.... "Well, it's not his fault. He inherited this mess."

So, he inherited it. He's also taken certain specific steps to make it worse by massively expanding the role of the government in the private sector -- against the advice of some and in opposition to the lessons of history.

Here's something to think about: You cannot be both an independent person and a government dependent at the same time. That's a contradiction in terms. It can't happen, despite the fact that so many liberals seem to think the US government can construct a "safety net" that is there when we need it but invisible otherwise.

I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog, about a college class I had that was run by two feminists. They advocated that women "overthrow" the oppression of their husbands and substitute it with government support. Like government support doesn't come with any strings or a whole new set of rules to follow. The professors were well-educated and sophisticated people, but so totally blind....

On a personal level, Obama and his fellow travelers may not want to run everyone's life, but they can't provide us all with health care, ensure we drive environmentally-correct cars, work in "green" industries, and all achieve college degrees without taking us by the hand and walking us through all that. Whether we want it or not. They determine what our values will be and then compel us to uphold them one way or another. Whether or not we agree.

There's no wiggle-room in there for "living by your own lights," which was the very basis for establishing the USA 233 years ago.

The alternative to following government directives is.... What do you think?

What do you think government is? It's a method of making decisions for the society as a whole. Any decision the government makes for you has the force of law. And I do mean "force." If you don't agree to uphold the law, you suffer the consequences. Mao Tse-Tung said all government power grows out of the barrel of a gun. He was right. The guns come out when people fail to uphold the law voluntarily.

Government can be a positive force, can keep us from robbing and killing each other, can enforce property rights so that what we each earn we keep; it can create an orderly and peaceful social environment to encourage human growth and achievement.

But by its very nature, government also can be very destructive of individual liberty, private property, and everything else. George Washington once said "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

He was right, too.

Here's something else to consider:

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0

Yeah, this an opinion column from the Russian newspaper Pravda. This author very clearly sees where we're headed, even if we refuse to. And apparently he's been there and done that. Maybe he knows a little something about it that American liberals are not yet willing to admit?

Maybe people should start paying attention before we're so far gone, there's no way out of it.