The weak shall perish ~ Obama

I am writing this as a candidate to be abandoned and delivered to death by the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress with their health care bill.  I am 77 years old, nearly 78 – I have diabetes, gout, osteoarthritis, had a heart valve replacement, bypass surgery, congestive heart failure,  and just spent two months in the hospital and rehab from a stroke.  Do you think they want to spend any money on me?  I think not.  There was a time when age was respected and revered, especially by the Asian countries where the elders ruled the roost.  My value now is only to my family.

This small article is only a pin-prick to the Obama administration.  I am sure they won’t miss me, so depriving me of health care will only please them.  I am sure those old Senators and Representatives now in Congress, where 237 of them are millionaires, will not lack for health care to keep them alive.  We need them… or do we?  I think all you sickly people over 50 should start worrying.

Now, for all you women, the first shot has been fired at you by the Obama administration.  Now you are encouraged to wait until 50 for a mammogram, and then only every two years.  That will save you worry, they say.  I say it will save them money.

See attached:

As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren’t receiving the scrutiny they deserve—and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending. Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a “global budget” on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine.Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for. White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission “critical to our fiscal future” and “one of the most potent reforms.”

AP

On that last score, he’s right. Prominent health economist Alain Enthoven has likened a global budget to “bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don’t see the faces of the people you kill.”

As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission—all 15 members appointed by the President—would have to meet certain budget targets each year. Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation. After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.

The theory is to let technocrats set Medicare payments free from political pressure, as with the military base closing commissions. But that process presented recommendations to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Here, the commission’s decisions would go into effect automatically if Congress couldn’t agree within six months on different cuts that met the same target. The board’s decisions would not be subject to ordinary notice-and-comment rule-making, or even judicial review.

Yet if the goal really is political insulation, then the Medicare Commission is off to a bad start. To avoid a senior revolt, Finance Chairman Max Baucus decided to bar his creation from reducing benefits or raising the eligibility age, which meant that it could only cut costs by tightening Medicare price controls on doctors and hospitals. Doctors and hospitals, naturally, were furious.

So the Montana Democrat bowed and carved out exemptions for such providers, along with hospices and suppliers of medical equipment. Until 2019 the commission will thus only be allowed to attack Medicare Advantage, the program that gives 10 million seniors private insurance choices, and to raise premiums for Medicare prescription drug coverage, which is run by private contractors. Notice a political pattern?

But a decade from now, such limits are off—which also happens to be roughly the time when ObamaCare’s spending explodes. The hard budget cap means there is only so much money to be divvied up for care, with no account for demographic changes, such as longer life spans, or for the increasing incidence of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.

Worse, it makes little room for medical innovations. The commission is mandated to go after “sources of excess cost growth,” meaning treatments that are too expensive or whose coverage will boost spending. If researchers find a pricey treatment for Alzheimer’s in 2020, that might be banned because it would add new costs and bust the global budget. Or it might decide that “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller,” as President Obama put it in June.

In other words, the Medicare commission would come to function much like the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which rations care in England. Or a similar Washington state board created in 2003 to control costs. Its handiwork isn’t pretty.

The Washington commission, called the Health Technology Assessment, is manned by 11 bureaucrats, including a chiropractor and a “naturopath” who focuses on alternative, er, remedies like herbs and massage therapy. They consider the clinical effectiveness but above all the cost of medical procedures and technologies. If they decide something isn’t worth the money, then Olympia won’t cover it for some 750,000 Medicaid patients, public employees and prisoners.

So far, the commission has banned knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis, discography for chronic back pain, and implantable infusion pumps for pain not related to cancer. This year, it is targeting such frivolous luxuries as knee replacements, spinal cord stimulation, a specialized autism therapy and MRIs of the abdomen, pelvis or breasts for cancer. It will also rule on routine ultrasounds for pregnancy, which have a “high” efficacy but also a “high” cost.

Currently, the commission is pushing through the most restrictive payment policy in the nation for drug-eluting cardiac stents—simply because bare metal stents are cheaper, even as they result in worse outcomes. If a patient is wheeled into the operating room with chest pains in an emergency, doctors will first have to determine if he’s covered by a state plan, then the diameter of his blood vessels and his diabetic condition to decide on the appropriate stent. If they don’t, Washington will not reimburse them for “inappropriate care.”

If Democrats impose such a commission nationwide, it would constitute a radical change in U.S. health care. The reason that physician discretion—not Washington’s cost-minded judgments—is at the core of medicine is that usually there are no “right” answers. The data from large clinical trials produce generic conclusions that rarely apply to individual patients, who have vastly different biologies, response rates to treatments, and often multiple conditions. A breakthrough drug like Herceptin, which is designed for a certain genetic subset of breast-cancer patients, might well be ruled out under such a standardized approach.

It’s possible this global budget could become an accounting fiction, like the automatic Medicare cuts Congress currently pretends it will impose on doctors. But health care’s fiscal pressures will be even stronger than they are today if ObamaCare passes in anything like its current form. And that is when politicians will want this remote, impersonal and unaccountable central committee to do the inevitable dirty work of denying care.

The only way to take the politics out of health care is to give individuals more power to control medical dollars. And the first step should be not to create even more government spending commitments. The core problem with government-run health care is that it doesn’t make decisions in the best interests of patients, but in the best interests of government.

Governor Sarah Palin has started her book tour allowing her entrance into the political arena.  This has given purpose to the mainstream media.  They didn’t hate Bush until he was elected.  However, Sarah has generated hate from them because of the possibility she may run for President and they want to get started destroying her as soon as they can.  I can imagine that would make Chris Matthews lose control of his kidneys.  He has such trouble with his body!

E.J. Dionne Jr, of the Washington Post and Evan Thomas, of Newsweek, probably have been meeting regularly to perfect their plan to terminate the possibility of Sarah running for President.  I wonder if their wives are real people with opinions of their own.

Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, has a vast influence with Obama because of him having his TV arms politicking for Obama – I mean NBC and MSNBC.  What will happen to him when Sarah defeats Obama?  I know if she was elected with a Republican majority, we would have an energy program where natural gas would be available for all our country’s needs and available even for exporting to South America.  Also, there would be oil from our country available for export to other countries.  Can you imagine how this would affect our balance of payments?  It would also help the normal, average American citizen to have cheap energy for their auto use, electricity, and manufacturing.

We know most of the elitists live in cities and have use of private planes and airlines for their travel.  They don’t have any need for commuting to work, shopping, doctors visits, children school affairs, etc..  Elitists don’t worry about these things.  As you know, Obama and Al Gore want fuel for cars to be expensive to help with “global warming”, which in and of itself is a SCAM!

A few remarks I wish to make:

• At one time the magazines TIME, Newsweek, and US News and World Report were read by more people than any other news journal.  But this is no more.  They are just failing liberal rags that hardly anyone reads and are, fortunately, on their way out.
• I used to watch all three of the Law & Order programs, but a short time ago, about three or four months, they went political and lost entertainment value and I haven’t watched any of them since and never will.  Anyone else for a boycott?
• Just want Fox to know we don’t have to see the Fort Hood terrorist’s picture on TV over and over.  He is NOT THAT PRETTY TO ME!  Also have been wondering how come Obama is seen hundreds of times daily on cable news programs?  Also, how come they called President Bush Mr. Bush and said “the President” when referring to him but not “President Bush”?
• Have heard no one say how they are going to protect the jurors in this decision made by the Obama administration to move the terrorists trials to New York City, as in the case of the SEIU goons who told people “We know where you live!”  Besides this, what person is going to want to be a juror for two to ten years?  Also, who wants to be considered a peer of terrorists?  The only terrorist that might reasonably have been tried here would have been the Fort Hood terrorist, Nidal Malik Hasan.  The first Muslim terrorist to kill their own military companions was in Iraq, when he rolled a grenade into a shared tent.  What ever happened to him?
• When will the Black Panther Muslims who refused to let people vote be tried?  I don’t trust this Obama Justice Department and their Muslim friends.
• Eric Holder says he thought very carefully before bringing the terrorists to New York – I suppose the same way he let off the 16 FALN terrorists and Marc Rich, a well known international commodities thief.  Frankly, I don’t believe a word Eric Holder says.  He has been a Democratic hatchet man for years.  How he was ever given the position of Attorney General is beyond me.

See attached:

How Eric Holder fixed the FALN pardons

By Michelle Malkin  •  January 9, 2009 10:18 AM

The Los Angeles Times, mirabile dictu, breaks from the Obamedia pack and does some digging into Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s past history as a political fixer for the Puerto Rican FALN terrorists (hat tip – Debra).

Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents…

…President Clinton’s decision to commute prison terms caused an uproar at the time. Holder was called before Congress to explain his role but declined to answer numerous questions from angry lawmakers demanding to know why the Justice Department had not sided with the FBI, federal prosecutors and other law enforcement officials, who were vehemently opposed to the grants.

Some religious groups and influential individuals, including President Carter, had endorsed the commutations. But Clinton’s decision outraged law enforcement officials, who had tried to contain a bombing campaign in New York, Chicago and elsewhere in the 1970s and 1980s by groups seeking independence for Puerto Rico from the United States.

New interviews and an examination of previously undisclosed documents indicate that Holder played an active role in changing the position of the Justice Department on the commutations.

Holder instructed his staff at Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney to effectively replace the department’s original report recommending against any commutations, which had been sent to the White House in 1996, with one that favored clemency for at least half the prisoners, according to these interviews and documents.

And after Pardon Attorney Roger Adams resisted, Holder’s chief of staff instructed him to draft a neutral “options memo” instead, Adams said.

The options memo allowed Clinton to grant the commutations without appearing to go against the Justice Department’s wishes, Adams and his predecessor, Margaret Colgate Love, said in their first public comments on the case.

“I remember this well, because it was such a big deal to consider clemency for a group of people convicted of such heinous crimes,” said Adams, the agency’s top pardon lawyer from 1997 until 2008. He said he told Holder of his “strong opposition to any clemency in several internal memos and a draft report recommending denial” and in at least one face-to-face meeting. But each time Holder wasn’t satisfied, Adams said.

The 16 members of the FALN (the Spanish acronym for Armed Forces of National Liberation) and Los Macheteros had been convicted in Chicago and Hartford variously of bank robbery, possession of explosives and participating in a seditious conspiracy. Overall, the two groups had been linked by the FBI to more than 130 bombings, several armed robberies, six slayings and hundreds of injuries.

What can I do?  What can YOU do?

Hand arthritis has stopped me in many ways, but will try to at least list some of the things that scare the hell out of me.  The children can’t worship God in schools, but the teachers with a political axe to grind can train and indoctrinate the kids to worship Obama.  No prayers to God in school; No saying the Pledge of Allegiance in schools – what gives?

Chairman Mao Zedong had children sing of him… now it’s Obama doing the same thing.  Chairman Mao then put out a little red book that told people what they could and couldn’t do.  When is Obama coming out with his?  Will Obama’s little “blue book” be written by his czars of low repute?  His Czars leave a lot to be desired in the areas of morality, honesty, character, and integrity.  They were appointed with no Senate approval or background checks.  Is it only me that is depressed and scared at what is happening in our country?  Will everyone else wake up or will I die having our country destroyed in four years?

What my generation fought for and previous generations fought for is of such little consequence that this generation in the majority will give it away so easily.

Have to make this short, but want to bring to your attention the fact that this government forced someone to shut up and not bring the fruit of the healthcare bill to everyone’s attention.  Max Baucus is one really anti-American member of Congress, and of course there are many of these, but THAT is REALLY un-American.  What’s happened to the First Amendment?

Also, I would like to mention how disgusted I am that the greatest elitist of ALL time, Al Gore, was able to borrow a half-billion dollars from the American taxpayer to put people in other countries to work, making products that only the elitists, like Gore, can afford to buy.

Please God, protect my country from these horrible individuals!

Shall we go back to previous administration and prosecute people who did things the left loons consider wrong … Lincoln doing away with Habeas Corpus and using the Army against Americans from different parts of the country, killing and imprisoning them; Jackson taking property of the Cherokee nations, having the Army relocate them and consequently killing two-thirds of them including old people, women, and children; Government experimenting on black men with Syphilis disease via several administrations for forty years, from 1932 until 1972; Roosevelt taking away the right of Habeas Corpus from Japanese Americans and placing them in concentration camps during World War II; Truman dropping two atomic bombs, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese elders, women, and children thereby saving at least a half million young American service men and a couple million young Japanese service men.

Eric Holder's Injustice Department

Then there was Dresden, Germany – bombing took thousands of lives and burned the city.  Is Eric Holder going to unleash a pack of investigators to go after those administrations who were trying to protect the American people?  Is he going to investigate Obama bringing in communists to undermine our government and take steps to destroy the American economy?  Does he consider the Bush administration so much worse than all those other administrations including Obama’s?  As far as I am concerned, the Obama administration are the only ones who are trying to destroy the country and give aid and comfort to the terrorists.  The Obama administration is using the health reform package as another scare tactic to destroy our country from within.

If Obama is able to get his health reforms through, there will be fewer and fewer old people and this country doesn’t have a lot of young people with the mental capacity to run this country.  An example of this are the youthful and unproductive people in the Obama administration.

Mr. Green Jeans (Al Gore) is now involved with pushing this health program through and is also using it as a tool to push his faux global warming warnings (which he has been able to use false information and convince the American public that it exists against all scientific, factual information).  He is the master of all snow job artists and now he is ready to aid in selling the health care reform, using his role and Liar in Chief.

Just heard on tv that some heavy hitting Republicans are contemplating coming in and cooperating with the Democrats on health care reform – people such as Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch, and John McCain.  We have to vote all members of the Senate and House out, regardless of party… as QUICKLY as possible.  Reminds me how the left expects Israel to sacrifice peace and safety for their citizens to satisfy the Palestinians.

Out with the old and in with the new, huh Obama?

Isn’t it nice that the Boston Tea Party people were not afraid to act against the British forces that wished to deny us freedom?  We cannot allow Obama’s union goons and ACORN from depriving us also.  I had three brothers and many nephews, cousins, and uncles who fought for our country during World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf Wars.  These were all foreign wars.  I am 77 years young and will gladly go into service to fight the union goons, ACORN, and people Obama has assigned to take our freedoms away in our country.  This cannot be allowed, even if THEY wished.

This is all about the “gimme generation”.

As a Christian, I believe that it is every Christian’s duty to live complete lives as given to them by God.  They have no right to end it for economics.  Our country has only ONE chance – a new two party system calling for term limits.

Remember the Soviet Union insisting that its citizens rat out their relatives and friends?  Where is the Soviet Union today?  Cuba forced citizens to rat on parents, friends, and relatives… where is their economy now?  Is Obama’s rant against rumor and false information a similar program, set up to destroy dissent and crush our our rights to privacy and freedom of speech?

I sure hope the DNC comes out with more of their great commercials to divide the American people.  It shows their true character, absence of principal, lack of integrity, and their hate for the First Amendment and their fellow countrymen.  They call their fellow Americans Nazis for using their free speech rights.  This is the best hope for the Republican party to regain the majority in Congress.  KEEP ON TALKING!

Hitler also decided who lived and who died.  The Jews went first, then the mentally ill, criminals, people who espoused free speech and any enemy of the state.  Obama’s health plan decides who lives and who dies – the Obama five year program.

Monday, August 10, 2009

EDITORIAL: Look for the union label

Politics is getting increasingly violent as Democrats desperately try to salvage their health care bill.  Rep. Brian Baird, Washington Democrat, said last week that public protest against the government health care plan “is close to Brown Shirt tactics.” For Mr. Baird to characterize his constituents as Nazi storm troops is distasteful, to say the least. Yet it is fully in line with the tone set by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who misleadingly decried protesters “carrying swastikas.” Closer examination revealed that in every case, the symbol was being used as a warning against the arrogance of power of which Mrs. Pelosi has become emblematic.

Democratic talking points characterize the spontaneous grass-roots opposition to the planned government takeover of the health care system as being organized by a shadowy cabal of lobbyists and insurance companies. However, the real storm troops are being deployed openly by organized labor in an attempt to squelch dissent.  On Aug. 6, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney sent marching orders to his members to confront concerned citizens at town-hall forums. In St. Louis, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) reportedly attacked and beat Kenneth Gladney, who was passing out yellow flags outside a forum held by Rep. Russ Carnahan, Missouri Democrat. SEIU President Andy Stern has summed up his philosophy as, “We prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work, we use the persuasion of power.”

We expect to see his grim-faced “purple shirts” using intimidation at other events during the congressional recess.  This effort is fully consistent with the general contempt that the Democratic majority has shown for those who oppose its radical agenda. The promised era of bipartisanship is long gone. The government’s new slogan is “sit down and shut up.” In an appearance in McLean last week, President Obama advised opponents of his plan to “get out of the way” and said he didn’t want them “to do a lot of talking.” The Obama White House made history when it set up an e-mail snitch line for people to report on the “fishy” ideas of their fellow citizens.  The Democrats would do better to try to understand the root causes of this unprecedented spontaneous outpouring of public concern and frustration than to resort to intimidation tactics.

There are many serious questions about the growth of government and the planned takeover of health care that need to be answered, not beaten down. Deploying thugs will only lead to violence, which serves no one’s interest. If the people are shouting, it is because the politicians have stopped listening.

Another article:

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Angry rich liberals

Victor Davis Hanson

Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists.  Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet. To listen to former Vice President Al Gore or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, we must immediately curtail our carbon emissions — or face planetary destruction.  Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture. From time to time, Mr. Gore hops on a private jet – and purchases “carbon offsets” penances for the privilege. His mansion not long ago consumed more energy in a month than the average American home does in a year. Mr. Friedman lives on a sprawling estate reminiscent of those of the grandees of the 18th-century English countryside.

The rest of us would find these environmental scolds more convincing if they chose to live modestly in average tract homes. That way, they could limit their energy consumption and provide living proof to us of how smaller is better for an endangered planet Earth.  Critics in the business of racial grievance offer the same contradictions.  Recently, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. got into a spat with a white policeman who arrested him in his own home for disorderly conduct. Mr. Gates immediately cried racism. He argued that his plight was emblematic of the burdens the black underclass endures daily from a racist white America.  However, Mr. Gates is one of the highest-paid humanities professors in the United States. And Mr. Gates – not the middle-class Cambridge, Mass., white cop — engaged in shouting and brought up race.

Within hours, the black mayor of Cambridge, the black governor of Massachusetts and the black president of the United States all rallied to their chum’s side.  Yet this well-connected, well-paid man apparently wants us to believe in melodramatic fashion that he is living in something like the United States of decades ago.  Indeed, citing racial grievance at times proves a valuable asset for wealthy celebrities. Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson posed as victims of various racial oppressions when they found themselves in their own self-created legal problems. Race-baiter the Rev. Jeremiah Wright simply retreats to his three-story mansion on a golf course after his day job of denouncing whites as exploiters.

We have more of the rich on the barricades railing about the economic inequality of America. Former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina preached about “two Americas,” one poor and abandoned, one wealthy and connected. Mr. Edwards should know because he built himself a gargantuan multimillion-dollar mansion in which he might better contemplate the underprivileged outside his compound.  Sen. Christopher Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, sermonizes about corporate greed and credit card companies’ near-extortion. Nonetheless, Mr. Dodd managed to squeeze out of the corporate world a low-interest loan, a sweetheart deal for a vacation home in Ireland, and thousands in campaign donations.

Former senator and Cabinet nominee Tom Daschle of South Dakota was a big proponent of raising taxes to nationalize our health care system. The problem was that the populist Mr. Daschle both hated paying taxes and loved limousines — and so avoided the former but welcomed the latter.  In the old days, critics of what we called the “system” were at least for the most part blue-collar workers, underpaid teachers or grass-roots politicians whose rather modest lives matched their angry populist rhetoric. Now the most vehement critics of America’s purported sins are among the upper classes. These critics’ parlor game has confused Americans about why they are being called polluters, racists and exploiters by those who have fared best in America.

Do the wealthy and the powerful lecture us about our wrongs because they know their own insider status ensures that they are exempt from the harsh medicine they advocate for others? Mr. Gore, a millionaire, is not much affected by higher taxes for his cap-and-trade crusade.  Or does the hypocrisy grow out of a sort of class snobbery? Do elites hector the crass middle class because its members lack their own taste, rare insight and privileged style? Judging from the police report, Mr. Gates seemed flabbergasted that the white Cambridge cop did not know who he was “messing” with.  Or is the new hypocrisy an eerie sort of psychological compensation at work?

Perhaps the more Mr. Gore rails about carbon emissions, the more he can without guilt enjoy what emits them. The more Mr. Gates can cite racism, the more he himself is paid to spot it. And the more Tom Daschle wants to tax and spend for health care, the less bad he feels about his own chauffeur and tax avoidance.  Here’s a little advice for all of America’s wealthy critics: a little less hypocrisy, a little more appreciation of your good lives — and then maybe the rest of us will listen to you a little more.

And another…

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

PRUDEN: Recycling the contempt

OPINION/ANALYSIS: Recycling is so popular that even our congressmen, unaccustomed as they are to practicing what they preach, do it. They’re reaching back into the dark past to recycle contempt. Never waste a crisis, even if you have to manufacture the crisis.  Democrats from the cosseted life in the House and Senate, accustomed to getting the deference at home so often denied in Washington, are suddenly having to deal with inconvenient old folks at home. President Obama insists that the War on Terror is over, ended by his ultimate weapon, the Apology Bomb. But to listen to delicate congressmen whose feelings are hurt, al Qaeda has merely moved terror operations to their congressional districts.

Angry lynch mobs (to hear House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her sidekick Steny Hoyer tell it) of elderly gents on walking sticks and little blue-haired ladies in their 80s have descended on congressmen at town meetings across the country – in California, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Ohio, Georgia and other places. They’re taking out their anger and frustration at the Obama health care “reform” in the robust American way, but Mrs. Pelosi professes to see “reform” adrift on a turbulent sea of Nazi swastikas. Rep. Brian Baird of Washington sees a blur of Brown Shirts. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas calls the dissenters “un-American.” She later remembered where she was and said she didn’t mean to call them that. Her contempt for Arkansas folks just popped out. In Georgia, Rep. David Scott tried to calm a town meeting with a plea to “calm down and take a deep breath,” then took a deep breath and scolded everyone with a hysterical screed about the “hijacking” of his meeting.

Rep. Steve Cohen treated his Memphis constituents with similar contempt: “Take two aspirin and come back in the morning.” Rep. Russ Carnahan told livid St. Louis constituents, naive yokels in his view, that they had been “mobilized [by] special interests in Washington.”  The frightened Democratic reaction to robust debate – “the conversation” that “progressives” are so eager to have with those who disagree with them – recycles the insults and epithets last heard in confrontations over civil rights and the war in Vietnam. The protests are “organized,” the work of “outside agitators.” Martin Luther King, by Democratic reckoning, was an outside agitator. The marches against the Vietnam war were marvels of organization, true, but … umm, well … that was different. Mr. Obama should recognize outside agitation when he sees it, given his career in outside agitation in Chicago. He was taught by Saul Alinsky, “the father of American radicalism,” that the left-wing strategy for achieving an unpopular goal is to “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”  We’re almost there.

The Democrats are trying to impose rationed government health care (the target) quickly, before the public wakes up from entertaining distractions (the freeze), making villains of all who oppose (personalizing it) and creating a chaotic controversy (polarizing it) that can be effectively exploited. Mr. Obama once taught Saul Alinsky workshops in Chicago, so he was ready when he thought he heard opportunity knocking.  But the president and his congressional accomplices forgot that timing is everything. The public-opinion polls show that bare majorities think there’s a health care crisis, but bigger majorities are satisfied with their own coverage.

The majority can smell government medicine and the confiscatory taxes on the way. The president further miscalculated when he agreed to the insertion of a scheme, hidden in the thousand pages of the House legislation, to “offer” counseling to the aged about how they want to die. Nothing there about the “how” and “when.” That comes later.  When he confronts mortality, a man is suspicious of boodlers with smooth tongues. Roger Fakes, 70, a retired businessman, showed up at the Memphis “town hall” in neither Brown Shirt nor swastika (he’s actually a Presbyterian elder). His congressman’s insistence that Obamacare would not disturb his private insurance moved him to his feet with polite but pointed questions and observations: “There are some of us old gray-haired folks who don’t want the government involved in any of our business.” And not just the gray-haired folks. Congressmen are learning the hard way they sometimes have to listen, like it or not.

More great reading:

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Palin got it right

Rep. Don Young

On July 24, Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts took to The Washington Post to attack former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s opposition to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax legislation and her overall energy philosophy.

Mrs. Palin correctly criticized the scheme presented in the legislation sponsored by Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts. By only citing a report from the left-of-liberal Center for American Progress, Mr. Kerry and Mrs. Boxer naively underestimate the effects the legislation will have on the American economy. Other, more mainstream organizations, such as the Brookings Institution and the Black Chamber of Commerce, disagree.

Waxman-Markey artificially creates competition between cheap, abundant energy and unreliable, expensive renewable forms, compelling utilities to use heavily subsidized, politically correct “renewable energy” while thousands who work producing traditional energy lose their jobs.

All the while, American industry will flee to other countries where they can power their assembly lines with cheaper energy. Because nearly four decades of obscene subsidies for wind and solar power haven’t worked, Waxman-Markey ups the ante and engages in societal re-engineering and fundamental restructuring of America’s energy supply.

According to the Energy Information Administration, wind and solar receive 55 times more in subsidies than coal and 100 times more than oil and natural gas. Yet today, wind and solar barely make up 1.5 percent of America’s electricity supply and 0.5 percent of the total U.S. energy supply, while 85 percent of the U.S. energy supply originates from fossil fuels. These figures make clear to what extent the Waxman-Markey bill must give a leg up to wind and solar to force their success. The simple fact is that these so-called industries would not survive without mandates and subsidies.

Mrs. Boxer and Mr. Kerry seem ignorant of the fact that wind and solar fail to power America’s trucks, planes, trains and ships. In reality, wind and solar will not displace the energy necessary for moving people and products around the country.

Nevertheless, while mocking Mrs. Palin’s good sense, they choose to advocate legislation and policies that will drive U.S. dependence on foreign oil through the roof. The senators seem oblivious to the fact that nearly one-fourth of every barrel of oil goes to producing the asphalt on which their electric cars drive, the lubricants that enable the blades on their windmills to spin and the plastics that are used in the medical supplies, fabrics and raw materials Americans cannot live without.

In 1995, Congress passed legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas development. In fact, legislation to open ANWR has passed the House 10 times and the Senate once. Unfortunately, President Clinton vetoed that attempt, and today, Americans fail to enjoy the hundreds of millions of barrels a year that would be flowing had the bill become law.

Now, for the first time since 1982, we have the ability to develop our offshore resources. In 2008, President George W. Bush let the Executive Moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf Development expire, and Congress did not renew the legislative moratorium. However, the Obama administration and the radical environmentalists have other plans, and a de facto moratorium remains.

American energy marvels such as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) are the real drivers of the American economy. TAPS didn’t require a government mandate; it required the federal government to get out of the way. This pipeline would never be built today. TAPS was successful only because of the oil embargo and, more significantly, because the legislation curtailed the ability of environmentalists to file lawsuits to block the project — an effort in which, unfortunately, they have become well versed. This summer, as TAPS prepares to send its 16 billionth barrel to the consumer, I am reminded that Sarah Palin is correct and Mr. Kerry and Mrs. Boxer are again on the wrong side of energy issues.

Healthy markets succeed when the federal government steps back, not when it picks winners and losers. If history has demonstrated anything, it’s that economies cannot be centrally planned by legislative bodies or bureaucrats — even though some in the majority party seemingly disagree. The market, coupled with the ingenuity and enduring spirit of hardworking Americans, always wins.

Cheap energy means a strong economy. This is something we’ve learned firsthand in Alaska. In our villages, where gasoline or heating oil can top $7 a gallon, jobs are hard to come by.

The senators write that climate legislation will “ensure that the United States — not China or India — will be the leading economic power in this century.” But the truth is, they already are.

The United States was the dynamic economic power in the 20th century without cap-and-trade. I know Mrs. Palin and I are both committed to ensuring that America’s economic dominance continues into the 21st century rather than embarking blindly down the road to serfdom offered in Waxman-Markey and by the aforementioned senators from Massachusetts and California.

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