Monday Linkorama

  • The stimulus package is starting to look worse and worse. This big story of the second half of this year will be the media slowly awakening to how big a cesspool of corruption it was. If only we had a party to take advantage of that that wasn’t filled with religious pinheads.
  • At the risk of being labelled a pinko communist liberal, I have to agree that Juvenile Life Without Parole should only be reserved for the most heinous of crimes. A rape at age 13 crosses me as a good reason to lock someone up for a long time — but for the rest of their life?
  • If find this post from Ezra Klein (and the comments) to be hilarious. Our system of government is designed to slow change, to avoid radical action. Apparently, that’s a good thing when conservatives are in charge, bad when liberals are in charge. And it’s especially bad if the slowness of the system allows legitimate criticism and public concern to derail bad legislation.
  • Prediction: in the end, the Iranian regime will turn Neda into a martyr … for their side. The similarities between the old Communists and the Islamists continue to grow.
  • Public Plans: Pro and Con

    I’ve just about beaten this subject to death, but it’s worth responding to the tissue of lies being thrown up in defense of a public plan. The WSJ had editorials today — con by John Calfree and pro by the Smuggest Little Marxist in Washington, Robert Reich. Just to tackle a few of Reich’s deceptions (most are addressed in Calfree’s piece).

    No other issue in the current health-care debate is as fiercely opposed by the medical establishment and their lobbies now swarming over Capitol Hill. Of course, they don’t want it. A public option would squeeze their profits and force them to undertake major reforms. That’s the whole point.

    Yes, just as public universities have made higher education so efficient and cheap. Just as the public option for seniors made their insurance so efficient and cheap — oh wait, there isn’t any private insurance for seniors anymore — except that created for government employees. Carry on.

    Can anyone name for me an industry that has benefited from having a “public option”? I’m genuinely curious about this.

    Critics say the public option is really a Trojan horse for a government takeover of all of health insurance. But nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an option. No one has to choose it. Individuals and families will merely be invited to compare costs and outcomes. Presumably they will choose the public plan only if it offers them and their families the best deal — more and better health care for less.

    As I noted yesterday, this is the Big Lie. People don’t choose their insurance — their employer does, thanks to a nonsensical tax code that makes employer-provided insurance tax deductible, but not self-insurance.

    But, say the critics, the public plan starts off with an unfair advantage because it’s likely to have lower administrative costs. That may be true — Medicare’s administrative costs per enrollee are a small fraction of typical private insurance costs — but here again, why exactly is this unfair?

    Because Medicare doesn’t administer Medicare. It farms out that job to the eeevil insurance companies. Because, as we’ve seen with the Post Office and Amtrak and Fannie Mae, government-created corporations are often exempted from the regulations and taxes that private corporations are saddled with.

    Critics charge that the public plan will be subsidized by the government. Here they have their facts wrong. Under every plan that’s being discussed on Capitol Hill, subsidies go to individuals and families who need them in order to afford health care, not to a public plan. Individuals and families use the subsidies to shop for the best care they can find. They’re free to choose the public plan, but that’s only one option. They could take their subsidy and buy a private plan just as easily. Legislation should also make crystal clear that the public plan, for its part, may not dip into general revenues to cover its costs. It must pay for itself. And any government entity that oversees the health-insurance pool or acts as referee in setting ground rules for all plans must not favor the public plan.

    There’s more than one way to subsidize a trojan horse. Will these public plans be subject to the exact same rules and regulations and taxes that private plans are? Will they have to create their own infrastructure or be able, like Medicare, to borrow someone else’s? And perhaps the greatest subsidy of all would be Ted Kennedy’s plan to make participation mandatory. There is no greater subsidy than forcing doctors to participate in the plan.

    Finally, critics say that because of its breadth and national reach, the public plan will be able to collect and analyze patient information on a large scale to discover the best ways to improve care. The public plan might even allow clinicians who form accountable-care organizations to keep a portion of the savings they generate. Those opposed to a public option ask how private plans can ever compete with all this. The answer is they can and should. It’s the only way we have a prayer of taming health-care costs. But here’s some good news for the private plans. The information gleaned by the public plan about best practices will be made available to the private plans as they try to achieve the same or better outputs.

    We’re not even finished with the article and we already have the first subsidy of the public plan. Ever heard of HIPAA?

    Robert Reich is not in favor of healthcare competition. He doesn’t really believe most of the shit he’s peddling in this article. As I pointed out at the other site, many on the Left are openly acknowledging the slow poison that is the public plan. This is nothing but window dressing to lull us into thinking everything’s going to be OK.

    But pay no attention to that. Look at the shiny watch. You are growing sleepy. Very sleepy. Did you hear Michael Jackson died? Don’t pay attention to the Marxist behind the curtain.

    Wednesday Linkorama

    So much going on the internets, so little time.

  • Ah, the irony. Pat Buchanan never fails to embarrass. This was the conference where he said that Sonia Sotomayor was obviously an affirmative action baby because her English was less than stellar as a law student.
  • And speaking of racist fucktard “conservatives”, here’s Nixon, saying abortion should be reserved for rape and mixed-race babies.
  • If you want to know why I’m so hostile to unions — or more precisely, their cozy relationship with politicians — here’s another reason. 700 NYC teachers are paid to … not teach.
  • Kick. Ass.
  • I’m been blogging enough on Iran at the other site, so I’ll post some updates here. The Iranian government is charging $3,000 bullet fees to the families of people they’ve murdered. Obama is slowly toughening his language, to depressing and predictable “there you go” condescension from “conservatives”. The reformist candidate may have been involved in the Beirut bombing, although that hasn’t stopped us from working with Khadaffi. And finally, a portrait of the woman murdered by the Basij. Oh, and the Iranian government is banning the soccer players who wore green armbands.
  • Only in America. Birds hit plane. Pilot saves all passengers aboard by landing in Hudson. Passengers sue airline. Media backs passengers.
  • This has to be deliberate.
  • McCarthy Goes Non-Linear

    If you want to know why conservatism has collapsed, look no further than Andy McCarthy’s repugnant post at NRO. Sample quotes:

    The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society.

    Because of obvious divergences (inequality for women and non-Muslims, hatred of homosexuals) radical Islam and radical Leftism are commonly mistaken to be incompatible. In fact, they have much more in common than not, especially when it comes to suppression of freedom, intrusiveness in all aspects of life, notions of “social justice,” and their economic programs.

    The key to understanding Obama, on Iran as on other matters, is that he is a power-politician of the hard Left : He is steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment over what he chooses to see in America’s history…

    Later, he defends these remarks.

    Look, I disagree with Obama on a lot. And there are parts of the left that not overly fond of freedom — the real freedom to live your life, not the phoney-baloney freedom of cradle-to-grave government subsidies.

    But to equate that with the murderous evil regime in Iran that literally proclaims to rule by divine right? Where’s Godwin’s Law when you need it?

    This is not limited to McCarthy. I’ve heard Limbaugh, Hannity and others say the same thing. Obama is an angry black man. Obama hates America. Obama gave me back acne.

    It’s the tired exhausted rhetoric of those who are bereft of ideas. They know how to solve the problems of the 1980’s but have no idea what to do about the problems of the 2000’s. It’s the kind of shit we used to hear from the Left when they were bereft of ideas (“Republicans hate black people. Republicans want poor people to starve. Republicans want rivers to be polluted.”)

    It rallies the base. But it turns off that middle third of the electorate that is actually paying attention and actually has an open mind. Anyone with half a brain can see that Obama does not hate America and is not an angry person. But, apparently, half-brains are in short supply at NRO.

    Monday Linkorama

  • The CBO — a relentlessly non-partisan group — estimates Obamacare will cost $1 trillion. The solution? Silence the CBO. But remember, it’s only conservative who ignore hard facts and data.
  • Here’s the way you know who to favor in the Cheerios debate. CSPI is in favor of the government; therefore that position is the wrong one.
  • Watchdogs are off again on a condom study costing 400 grand. And suppose this study leads to some change that results in preventing a handful of AIDS cases? My read is that this study was peer-reviewed. We need lawyers to stop grand-standing about it.
  • Mexico is liberalizing their drug laws. A blood all-out war will do that.
  • Time Magazine continues to prove what a worthless rag it is — running a story about bullet trains that parrots the party line completely.
  • Radley Balko points out that the only promises Obama is breaking are those that would limit his own power. He has yet to break a campaign promise that would expand it. And so it goes.
  • Fat people live longer. Now I get to bash the CSPI twice in one linkorama.
  • Midweek Linkorama

  • A chilling recollection of the Khmer Rouge. I recently watched a documentary on S-21 that was horrifying.
  • How “empathic” is Sonia Sotomayor? Not empathic enough. She let a innocent man rot in prison because of a procedural error. Biden was right — she’s definitely got the cops back.
  • Something to remember. That claim that 100,000 people a year die of medical errors? Garbage.
  • San Francisco is forcing its residents to compost.You just know this is something — like food miles — that’s going to turn out be a net negative for the environement.
  • Let’s promote US tourism by charging every immigrant $10. Do our politicians ever think about the laws they pass? Like … ever?!.
  • Problems at the UN

    I really don’t understand the affection so many people have for the United Nations. It has its uses — mainly in giving a floor for countries to spew words, as opposed to bullets, at each other.

    But the UN human rights record is atrocious, with a bunch of gangsters using the floor to throw praise at Cuba. And their peace-keepers are notoriously ill-behaved, allowing violence to go on, raping women and, recently, taking food from starving kids.

    We need to see the UN for what they are not what we wish they were.