Monthly Archives: March 2010

Issue No. 66

March 26, 2010 admin Comments Off

“This makes a tremendous difference in the lives of Americans.”
– Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on government health care

We don’t yet know the half of it, baby!

Needed: PR training for the GOP

Stephen Combs in Orlando, Florida

A precept of public relations practice goes like this: A crisis in full throttle is not the best time to begin planning damage control strategy. Once the crisis is underway, it’s too late to educate. This is where Congressional Republicans find themselves today, defensive against accusations that they want to starve out the unemployed by denying them their “right” to endless cash benefits.

This argument is a loser for Republicans, at least in the short run. Not because they stand on the wrong side of the issue, but – once again – because they have failed to sell the message. Anything they say comes across as heartless. This will be a made-for-TV moment for Democrats. “Senator Foghorn voted to take away your unemployment benefits,” the commercial will blare. “This is the same Senator who didn’t want you to have health care. What will Republicans do next, grab your child’s lunch money like they and Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s?”

The transfer of cash from taxpayers to the unemployed seems, on surface, to be the compassionate thing to do, and something a prosperous economy can afford. Most Americans probably agree with this practice in the short run, the casting of a temporary safety net for people who are willing and able to work. But the grasp of graduate-level economics is not necessary to understand that longer-term assistance breeds eventual dependency. Now your compassionate Democrats just want to extend unemployment benefits up to 99 weeks, and those heartless Republicans want to keep all the money for themselves. Quick, raise your hand. Who in the room thinks the lefty-libs intend to hold this welfare scheme to 99 weeks?

The only way conservatives will ever ultimately prevail in the marketplace of ideas is through education – not the leftist ideological indoctrination practiced in too many of our public schools and in practically all of our colleges, but education in economics and in the ideas that spawned our founding. Until that day arrives when parents take control of their children’s education – that is to disenfranchise the teacher union indoctrinators and their school board enablers – we will continue to scream back and forth with nobody listening. In the meantime, the great mass of uneducated, uninformed and ill-informed voters will continue to take its cue from the obsolete but still dangerous “mainstream” media. The cycle truly will remain endless unless we collectively decide to do something about it.

The late Garrett Hardin was Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of California – Santa Barbara. He devoted much of his working life to explaining the connections between science and society to nonscientific audiences. In his essay “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor,” he correctly argued that a rich society is like a lifeboat. When it tries to take on everyone who needs help, it eventually sinks and everyone drowns. Such is the case now with our American economy, heading to certain, irreversible collapse under Mr. Obama’s Marxist policy of “to each according to his needs” – that is, unless we stop this cruel aggression dead in its tracks. We can only do that at the ballot box in November, and we can only do that with a strong commitment to education.

Dr. Hardin’s essay concerns rich nations and poor nations, but his premises can easily apply to the macroeconomy of the United States. Lifeboat ethics are harsh but necessary for survival. The lifeboat must not take on more than it can support. Just as continued illegal immigration will eventually sink us, so too will endless transfers of wealth from the haves to the have-nots. To keep the lifeboat afloat, firm but fair policy must prevail.

Statists – people of the Left who believe in the Divine Right of Government – will argue that keeping some off the lifeboat isn’t fair. “The concept of blame is simply not relevant here,” Dr. Hardin writes. If one were to place blame for the high jobless rate we now have, one need look no further than Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their eager followers. It is the reckless spending, government seizure of private industry and the threat of higher taxes that keeps consumers from buying and business from hiring. In the meantime, permanent unemployment benefits are not the answer. They do nothing to encourage the search for work, and eventually, pound by pound along with the other government spending, they will sink the boat.

We will post this week’s quotes on the website sometime over the weekend. The website, we are ashamed to say, is nothing short of a mess. An old Letter appears where the homepage should be. To get the homepage, click on “Friday Home” at the right. Subscribers get the first edition of the Letter several hours before it is posted on the webpage. The webpage edition includes corrections, amplifications and additional comments.

See more at www.fridayletter.com. We will follow this story with updates over the weekend. Our home page does not appear as the home page. It is necessary to click on “Friday Home” for this. We have some technical problems with the website and really need some good volunteer help here.

#100326 Year 2, Continuous Issue No. 66

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Issue No. 65

March 19, 2010 admin Comments Off

Playing the game of ‘Let’s pretend’

Stephen Combs in Orlando, Florida

It is laughable to hear Barack Obama described as “a Constitutional scholar.” He got this moniker, one assumes, because he once taught a course in Constitutional law. Perhaps that is how the dinosaur press initially concluded, in its own childlike simplistic way, that he is brilliant. So I teach introduction to literary analysis in the second semester of my freshman composition course. Does that put me up there with Poe and Tolstoy and Ibsen? Or Sophocles? Didn’t he write a little play about Oedipus?

This is worth bringing up because our President pronounces disinterest in “the process” of how the House of Representatives uses whatever sleight-of-hand it can think of to smother Americans in government health care. Presumably with his blessing, since he doesn’t care how it’s done as long as it’s done, the House is taking up the matter of Government of the United States v. the People of the United States with a vote to declare that it has “deemed” the government health care bill to have “passed,” even though it never voted on the bill.

The thorny little problem is Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, which requires both houses of Congress to vote to pass a bill before the President may sign it into law. Having some difficulty rounding up the necessary 216 votes to pass the Senate version of the health care bill, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has agreed with Rep. Louise Slaughter that the convenient way to lead Americans into Utopia is through this procedural rule that “deems” the bill passed when Congressmen approve a procedural rule. In recent days this has become known as “the Slaughterhouse rule.” Thinking as they always do that we are too stupid to understand what’s going on, they avoid the inconvenience of having to stand on their record, or so they think. In defense of this charade, House Democrats point out that Republicans have used the procedure in the past. The Constitutional scholar, who might shed some light on this matter, has been silent.

Here is what we must understand, explained eloquently this week by Mark Levin, a lawyer who is an actual, not fictionalized, expert on the Constitution: Political precedent is not the same as judicial precedent. The fact that Republicans or anyone else in previous Congresses used this procedure without legal challenge does not make it Constitutional. To put this in Rabbi Kushner terms, two wrongs don’t make a right.

Almost certainly tied to Obama’s support of nationalized health care, a new Gallup poll says the President has a 46% approval rating and 48 disapproval. Congress is doing worse: Only 16% of voters approve of its work, 80% disapprove.

Meanwhile, Dow Jones Newswires reported Friday that Caterpillar Inc. said government takeover of health-care in the pending House bill would increase the company’s insurance costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.
In a letter Thursday to Speaker Pelosi and Republican Leader John Boehner, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to reject the plan “because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees.”
Caterpillar, the world’s largest construction machinery manufacturer by sales, said it’s particularly opposed to provisions that would expand Medicare taxes and mandate insurance coverage. The legislation would require nearly all companies to provide health insurance for their employees or face large fines.

Donald Trump spoke of this Friday morning on Fox and Friends when he warned that government health care takes the nation down the road to Third World status by destroying our competitiveness.

Quotes to note. . .

“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care plan – universal health care.”
– Barack Obama, in 2003.

“We will have universal health care for all Americans.”
– James Clyburn, House Majority Whip, March 19, 2010.

“I like it because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.” — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,

on the “Deem and Pass” tactic to avoid a roll call vote on government health care.

News flash: Tom flunked the insurance license test

Governor Tom Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, explained this week that the actuarially responsible and economically necessary insurance industry practice of denying coverage for pre-existing conditions is an “abuse.” When government takes over health care, he said, “immediately Americans will see an end to insurance abuses like the pre-existing ban to getting coverage.”

When this means, presumably after it survives court challenges, is that we will have scenes like the following:

“Hello, Allstate Insurance.”

“Hello, I’d like to buy insurance on my house.”

“Sure, we can help. How much insurance would you like to have?”

“Well, the fire department hasn’t left yet, but the district chief says he’s pretty sure they can save the foundation. I’d say about $250,000. We’ll need to replace the fruit trees too. The cherries are pretty well cooked. They trampled my petunias, too. I’m really steamed.”

“No problem. We’ll send out an agent tomorrow.”

“I won’t be home. Try the Motel 6. Will you cover that too?”

And now, a word from Dirty Harry.

David Alexrod, the President’s political advisor, had a warning for Republicans this week:

“If the Republican Party wants to go our and say to that child who now has insurance or say to that small business that will get tax credits this year if he signs the bill to help their employees get health care – if they want to say to them, ‘You know what, we’re actually going to take that away from you, we don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ I say let’s have that fight. Make my day. I’m ready to have that, and every Member of Congress ought to be willing to have that debate as well.”

See more at www.fridayletter.com. We will follow this story with updates over the weekend.

#100319 Year 2, Continuous Issue No. 65

Please send subscription information (Name, town and email address). Please see our website www.fridayletter.com to post comments. Letters may be edited for brevity. The website is under construction and is not complete. Please click on Friday Home at the right to see the current letter, and Archives for last week’s post.

Issue No. 64

March 12, 2010 admin Comments Off

Legislative update – The Virginia Senate on Wednesday amended and passed HB10, the Health Care Freedom Act, and sent it back to the House of Delegates to reconcile differences between the two versions. Virginia is one of 35 states considering the model bill, which stipulates the rights of a state’s citizens to make their own health care decisions and nullifies the proposed federal mandates.

Like a phoenix, this one just won’t die

Stephen Combs in Orlando, Florida

If there is any remaining doubt that Barack Obama is willing to take down his own party to expand the size of government in a massive wealth redistribution scheme, consider a March 8 Fox News Opinion Dynamics Poll: Approve Congress, 14%. Disapprove, 80%. Not sure, 8%.

This does not seem to worry the self-absorbed President or cause him to doubt his belief in himself as a bigger-than-life figure who will be loved by all once we understand how he is trying to help us. He continues to excoriate the health insurance industry and its 4-5% profit margin. He continues to campaign for President rather than govern as President, and he continues to remind us every day that he is the President of Democrats, not of Republicans. This is the most stark change in presidential philosophy in the history of the nation.

Patrick H. Caddell has been warning about the impending implosion for months. In Friday’s Washington Post, he and fellow Democrat pollster Douglas E. Schoen say that “There was a moment when the president and the Democratic leadership seemed to realize the reality of the health-care situation. Yet like some seductive siren of Greek mythology, the lure of health-care reform has arisen again.” (Two weeks ago we had a more crass description of this situation with the Freddie Kruger analogy, he of the long razor-tipped fingers coming back from the dead time and time again in a never-ending nightmare.)

So let us not think for a moment that government health care is dead. As long as there are leftists there will be schemes to grow the power of government by repealing the rights of individuals. Various tallies have the Democrats about 10 votes shy of passing the Senate’s bill when the House votes in a week or so. As so many commentators have pointed out in the last couple of days, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has an endless supply of your cash with which to bribe wishy-washy Democrats for their vote.

Meanwhile, Democrats are floating an idea posed by Rep. Louise Slaughter, the chairman of the Rules Committee, to wave a magic wand and have the Senate government health care bill declared already passed. This would neatly dispense with a rather awkward position Democrats would otherwise find themselves in when they try to explain their votes to the folks back home. See how resourceful these people are? You read this correctly. If you can study the published reports and make some sense of them, please let me know. I certainly can’t.

“Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version,” the National Journal reported this week.
Radio flamethrower Mark Levin, a lawyer and constitutional expert, today called for Mrs. Slaughter’s expulsion from the House under Article 1, Section 7, Clause 2 of the Constitution, which requires both houses to actually pass the bills that become law, not just say they have passed them.

And then there is reconciliation, another thorny problem. The non-partisan Senate parliamentarian, Alan Fruman, issued an advisory this week saying that differences between the Senate bill and what some House Democrats want cannot be reconciled until after President Obama signs the bill into law. By then it will be too late. Obama and the Senate libs will have no incentive to change what they fought hard to get, and that will pretty much be the end of that. The House Democrats who oppose federal funding of abortion in the Senate bill will be out on the street, wondering what happened.

As president of the Senate, Joe Biden could overrule the parliamentarian. That might not be so good politics, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out Thursday on Fox News’ Special Report with Brett Baier.

“That’s not a nuclear option, that a thermonuclear option,” Dr. Krauthammer said. “That’s Krakatau; that’s 100 megatons. That will be a catastrophe if it is seen as pushed through by overruling, a ruling of the neutral parliamentarian, and pass what would otherwise be illegal.”

To win passage and survive the fall mid-term election, Democrats must convince voters that our health care system is broken, and only government can fix it. I don’t accept the premise. Yes, health care has serious problems, problems that will begin to abate once people are allowed more, not less, choice. Medical savings accounts, the freedom to buy insurance wherever it’s written, an end to abusive malpractice lawsuits, full disclosure of pricing, establishment of small-business buying associations, deductibility for individuals – these and other ideas Republicans have been promoting all offer a piece of the solutions pie.

Quote of the week:

“Anyone who would stand before you and say well, if you pass health care reform, next year’s health care premiums are going down, I don’t think is telling the truth. I think it is likely they would go up, but what we’re trying to do is slow the rate of increase.” – Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, Senate majority whip, on the Senate floor.
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#100312 Year 2, Continuous Issue No. 64

Issue No. 63

March 5, 2010 admin Comments Off

Three blind (leftist) mice

Stephen Combs in Orlando, Florida

An obvious sign that the Three Stooges still don’t get it comes from 35 of our state legislatures, which are considering bills in their current sessions that would tell the federal government to keep its hands off their 10^th Amendment right to run their own affairs without the help of Mother Obama. The bills are all variations of a model Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of state legislators that favors federalism and conservative public policy (www.alec.org).

Even in lefty-loon Washington the State Legislature is kicking it around. Its provisions are typical of what the others seek, some of them by statute and some by constitutional amendment (translated from legalize into English by your helpful correspondent):

No person, employer or health care provider may be forced to participate in any health care system.
Any person or employer may purchase lawful health care services directly and shall not be fined for doing so.
Health care providers may accept direct payment for lawful services and will not be fined for doing so.
Private health insurance may not be prohibited by law.

Another way to state these principles would be, “Mind your own business.”

Democrats are reacting normally, accusing conservatives of “playing politics.” This is, of course, expected, because Democrats have made clear their opposition to allowing unsophisticated citizens like us the right to make our own health care decisions. Florence Nightinbama will make them for us because she knows best what we need. But the bills are moving forward at various stages, and the outlook is good in many of the 35 states (Arizona defeated a similar proposal a couple of years ago).

Tennessee’s bill “would say they could not fine anybody in the state of Tennessee, and if they tried, our attorney general would defend us,” Senator Mae Beavers, Republican of Wilson County, told WKRN-TV in Nashville.

The laws are sure to draw fire from the ACLU and other leftist organizations affiliated with the White House in what one analyst called “a federalism clash.” This federalism clash is the 10^th Amendment, which gives the states all powers not specifically granted to the federal government, versus the supremacy clause of the Constitution which states that federal law is the supreme law of the land. That is why it is important for lots of states to pass these get-out-of-our-face laws and amendments, because there are both safety and power in numbers. Even 20 states enacting final legislation would send a strong and unequivocal message. The message would not be received by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid troika – its is impervious to any line of reasoning at any level – but it surely would resound with ordinary voters. Even if the dinosaur media sit on the story – as they surely would do – no laws presently in force can quash talk radio and the blogosphere.

President Obama has shown – and his press doofus has confirmed – that he will stop at nothing to take health care decisions from the hands of ignorant citizens and put them in the hands of the White House. As everyone – and I mean everyone – who truly understands this story has said until blue in the face, the health care legislation has everything to do with expanding the size, scope and power of government and not a single thing to do with health care. If Obama wins, we will have succeeded in destroying capitalism and free markets in America.

Yes, we need to keep up the pressure on wavering Congressmen like Jim Matheson, Democrat of Utah, whose brother was, just by happenstance, nominated this week for the federal appeals court bench. Mr. Matheson should not rest easily if he is giving even a scintilla of thought to changing his position and voting for government health care. At the same time – and this is just as important – we need to let our state representatives and senators know that we support the Freedom of Choice in Health Care acts. Most of the legislatures are in session right now. These folks are easier to reach than Congressmen and U.S. Senators. And most of them are much less immune to constituent opinion. Given that they are not fulltime professional legislators who can hide from voters in Washington, they can’t even hide in Nashville or Olympia or Boise or Tallahassee. They are easier to flush from the brush, and we need not be timid in letting them know where we stand.

Legislatures debating health care freedom of choice acts

The Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act has been filed or prefiled in 33 states—Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Most notably, Arizona’s HCR 2014, a revised version of the ALEC model, will be put on the ballot in 2010.
Lawmakers in Montana, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Utah have publicly announced their intentions to file the legislation. A citizen-led initiative also has been announced in Colorado.

Source: American Legislative Exchange Council

Quote of the week: On the day that pigs will fly

“The proposal I put forward gives Americans control over their health insurance and their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable.” – Barack Obama.
— More accountable than what, the federal government?

Simply stated, Obama is a liar

Not exactly. That is, Americans will not exactly control their health care decisions. This week President Obama put forth his “new” health care plan. Actually, the only one that counts is what comes out of the House of Representatives. If the House passes anything, it goes to Obama’s desk and he signs it. If there is a more urgent need than to stop this in its tracks, somebody please tell us.
The substance of Obama’s plan, government control of all major health care activity, is unchanged from what he proposed a year ago. “This means that the government will be taking over health care,” Fox News Channel legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr., explained Thursday on Fox and Friends. The bullet-point summary is this:

Requires individuals to buy insurance or pay a fine. When employers opt to pay the 8% payroll tax instead of higher-priced premiums, they will save money and employees will have nowhere turn except to the government “option” plan.
Higher payroll taxes, fines and penalties for non-compliance.
Reduced Medicare and Medicaid services to patients.
Reduced income tax deductions and tax credits.
Punish doctors who perform too many procedures or exceed government spending limits.

The Heritage Foundation says 117 new boards, commissions and enforcement agencies will be created if government health care passes. They will look at “qualities” and decide which procedures and treatments will be allowed, based on a formula that considers the procedure and its cost, and the age, health and medical history of the patient. (So don’t bother asking your doctor for advice. It will be meaningless.)
“The reconciliation of this $2.3 trillion program . . . has in fact the transformative power of a constitutional amendment to demand that you buy health insurance,” Johnson said.

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#100305 Year 2, Continuous Issue No. 63