The much-hyped speech from the Oval Office by the President came and went last night, leaving me totally unimpressed. Same old lame talking points, with no action to report. And, as expected, he made his plug for "Cap and Tax", using some other name that he evidently felt would be more palatable to the American public. This speech was so empty that even the main stream media, normally loyal supporters of the President, had a hard time coming up with something good to say about it. Of course, Fox News tore it to shreds, but I was expecting that. Of all the comments I heard, I think the best response came from Sarah Palin, reporting from Alaska. As you know, she took on Big Oil in her state and won the battle. She said she learned early that you can't believe everything a big powerful company will tell you. She found out that her regulators were too cozy with the oil companies and weren't doing their job. So, she fired some people and set the agenda for policies going forward. Then she made it clear that the oil companies had to perform correctly or they would no longer be doing business in her state. Oddly enough, in spite of all the criticism leveled at her since the 2008 campaign, she is the only one in the pool who has the executive experience to deal with the situation in which we find ourselves regarding the oil leak. Those of you who think she is just a ditsy airhead with a sing-song delivery would have been surprised last night. She said her piece through clenched teeth (and no smile) and left no doubt that she thought things have been mishandled so far. If Obama really wanted some answers, he would reach out and try to get Sarah to work with him in solving this oil leak problem. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Oh, by the way, Obama did the next best thing - he put a lawyer in charge to be his point man. Evidently there were no oil experts available.
And then today he had a meeting with the executives from BP. With all his boisterous talk leading up to the meeting, what did he get? A twenty billion dollar escrow fund that BP had already agreed to beforehand. Big deal!!
Well, my view is that this problem should have been handled a lot differently. I think that on about day two (after the fires were put out and the dead and injured were accounted for), the best and brightest of the U.S. government should have sat down with the BP people and said, "What can we do to help, and how can we work together to get this leak stopped?" I'm sure that course would have been more productive than Obama's endless bad-mouthing of BP. And I believe I would have put the requests of the respective governors on the fast track to save the wetlands and the beaches. I hate to use the words of the pundits, but they fit. The dithering, the interference, and the incompetence have extracted a very heavy toll.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
"To Your Health!"
Well, it's all over but the celebrating. The Healthcare Bill from Hell is about to become law, and we will have to live with it. I'm feeling about the most depressed right now than I can ever remember. When I think of all of the upcoming media attention that this is going to get, I just want to put my head out the door and toss some cookies. We are going to hear ad nausaem
about a couple of wonderful things the bill does, "Cut the deficit by X amount of dollars", "Insure 30 million more unfortunates", "Coverage can't be cancelled", "No pre-existing conditions restrictions", and a couple more. Even before they had all the votes bought up, the White House had circulated a memo that if anyone did a media appearance, they should only talk about cutting the deficit and insuring 30 million more people. They were admonished not to talk about the nuts and bolts. In other words, "Spin!!" Sure enough, that is all you got on the Sunday news shows last week, and that is all you are getting right now, on the brink of the disaster.
Here are a couple of things you won't hear from them. Basic math tells you that to reduce the deficit, you have to raise taxes enough to pay for the bill and have enough money left over to pay against the deficit. The CBO says the bill will cost 940 billion dollars, and the bill calls for raising 500-600 billion dollars in new taxes. Am I missing something here?? Off the top of my head, this seems like we would be adding 300-400 billion dollars to the deficit. Oh, yeah, they are going to cut Medicare spending by 500 billion dollars - that should do it. Don't hold your breath. They could have cut Medicare spending at any time during the last several administrations without having to pass major legislation, and nobody did it. Their answer is to cut the rate of reimbursement to doctors and hospitals even below the present level. A survey that I saw last week said that more than 40% of doctors would consider retiring early or leaving their profession if they were forced to accept lower reimbursements. But, there is a thing called the "Doctors' Fix" which slips the doctors some extra money to help keep them in the program. The cost of doing this amounts to about 200 billion dollars, and is not included in the 940B figure above. And, yes, that would raise the deficit by about that much. Forget the math for a minute. How are you going to get along if you end up with fewer doctors having to take care of 30 million more patients? Right, you have to ration services. In case you didn't know, there is a provision in the bill that sets up a panel to evaluate the care to be provided (rationing). Everyone will be required to have an insurance policy, subject to a fine if they don't comply. Under certain conditions, employers would be fined if they didn't provide health insurance. Obama said that this bill would create jobs. Here is what he means. The bill provides for the IRS to hire 13,000 new people to do the police work. The IRS, for crying out loud! And the IRS has to share information with the Health and Human Services people, for the sake of coordination. That has to be a comforting bit of information for you - your government having all your tax and health records at their disposal to do with as they deem fit. Now you know why they had to put this together behind closed doors - it could not survive the light of day.
We have been played for fools. The very people we hired to represent us have treated us as if we are too stupid to figure out what is happening. Well, I've got news - we aren't that stupid. And we won't forget what happened here.
about a couple of wonderful things the bill does, "Cut the deficit by X amount of dollars", "Insure 30 million more unfortunates", "Coverage can't be cancelled", "No pre-existing conditions restrictions", and a couple more. Even before they had all the votes bought up, the White House had circulated a memo that if anyone did a media appearance, they should only talk about cutting the deficit and insuring 30 million more people. They were admonished not to talk about the nuts and bolts. In other words, "Spin!!" Sure enough, that is all you got on the Sunday news shows last week, and that is all you are getting right now, on the brink of the disaster.
Here are a couple of things you won't hear from them. Basic math tells you that to reduce the deficit, you have to raise taxes enough to pay for the bill and have enough money left over to pay against the deficit. The CBO says the bill will cost 940 billion dollars, and the bill calls for raising 500-600 billion dollars in new taxes. Am I missing something here?? Off the top of my head, this seems like we would be adding 300-400 billion dollars to the deficit. Oh, yeah, they are going to cut Medicare spending by 500 billion dollars - that should do it. Don't hold your breath. They could have cut Medicare spending at any time during the last several administrations without having to pass major legislation, and nobody did it. Their answer is to cut the rate of reimbursement to doctors and hospitals even below the present level. A survey that I saw last week said that more than 40% of doctors would consider retiring early or leaving their profession if they were forced to accept lower reimbursements. But, there is a thing called the "Doctors' Fix" which slips the doctors some extra money to help keep them in the program. The cost of doing this amounts to about 200 billion dollars, and is not included in the 940B figure above. And, yes, that would raise the deficit by about that much. Forget the math for a minute. How are you going to get along if you end up with fewer doctors having to take care of 30 million more patients? Right, you have to ration services. In case you didn't know, there is a provision in the bill that sets up a panel to evaluate the care to be provided (rationing). Everyone will be required to have an insurance policy, subject to a fine if they don't comply. Under certain conditions, employers would be fined if they didn't provide health insurance. Obama said that this bill would create jobs. Here is what he means. The bill provides for the IRS to hire 13,000 new people to do the police work. The IRS, for crying out loud! And the IRS has to share information with the Health and Human Services people, for the sake of coordination. That has to be a comforting bit of information for you - your government having all your tax and health records at their disposal to do with as they deem fit. Now you know why they had to put this together behind closed doors - it could not survive the light of day.
We have been played for fools. The very people we hired to represent us have treated us as if we are too stupid to figure out what is happening. Well, I've got news - we aren't that stupid. And we won't forget what happened here.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Beware of Progressives
I just finished watching the Glenn Beck Show on TV. He has a program on Fox News at 4:00 PM every day, and chooses one of the shows to repeat on the weekend. Tonight the show was about the evils of progressivism and about their effect on current politics. According to Glenn, the biggest danger of succumbing to progressive ideas is the abandoning of the principles of the Constitution, a document that he holds dear to his heart. "Progressives" evidently believe that it is OK to mess with the Constitution if a situation warrants it. The villain of this episode was Woodrow Wilson, who in a concerted effort to bring our society to its knees, instigated the Income Tax, founded the Federal Reserve, and enrolled our country in the First World War. He was also involved in setting up the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles after the war, organizations that were destined to fail and eventually lead to the resurgence of Germany as a military power. Glenn showed several clips of Obama and Hillary Clinton using the word "Progressive" to describe themselves, and I guess that we, the people, should think such a reference would make them a danger to society. I like Glenn a lot, and I think his off-beat, sometimes humorous approach to the news makes it fun to watch. But once in a while he hits on a subject that makes me wonder if he is just trying to scare us. Is being "Progressive" really that sinister? I know that he does a lot of research and reads all these books on ideology and history that would bore me to death, so maybe we need to be paying a bit of attention to him. Whether he is right or wrong, he makes me want to get more information on my own. If there really is danger lurking in the shadows, I want to know about it. Maybe this was Glenn's plan all along.
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