Who is John Galt?

congress vs. the founders

Last week, Senator Sherrod Brown (Democrat, Ohio) put Harry Reid's version of healthcare reform in a historic context:

“I don’t think in the end, anybody here in our caucus wants to be on the wrong side of history, wants to kill on a procedural motion, something as important as this."

In Congress, egos are not just personality traits -- they're entire personalities.  Every President is concerned with his "legacy."  Obama wants to be the next FDR.

Similarly, the Constitution provides for two methods of proposing amendments -- through a convention called by two-thirds of the states, or directly by two-thirds of both houses of Congress.  To date, all successfully ratified amendments have originated in Congress.

I honestly believe that each Congress likens itself to the original founders.  Where the founders were able to forge a remarkable Constitution, at least some in every subsequent session believe they are in a position to rethink it; to correct it.  Obviously, those who describe our Constitution as "a living, breathing" document feel qualified to rethink the whole document wherever it proves convenient.

But the founders of the Constitution had a very different perspective.  They were not looking out, from a central government, seeking the best model to wield power over states.  Even those who advocated the strongest central government were doing so as representatives of specific states -- states where their respective appointers had a vested interest in their own, state-level authority. 

Writing the Constitution was like the states dipping their toes into cold water.  Every participant was there to protect something warm and dry back home.  None -- none -- had been sent to Philadelphia to surrender their state's autonomy.

Somewhere between the 16th and 17th Amendments, those toes in the pool started telling everyone else what to do.  During that time, the federal government acquired the ability to give the product of any man's labor to any other man -- or even to entire states if necessary to purchase power.

Fast-forward to the new "Louisiana Purchase."  A tiny number of leading Senators, with no particular regard for those who actually pay taxes, seizes hundreds of millions of dollars from 49 states and funnels it to the 50th.  Not for "the general welfare."  Not because of "the commerce clause."  Because they need one more vote to reach the critical mass to pass some other redistribution scheme.  And you thought Wall Street's derivatives were confusing!

The fable about democracy being two wolves and a sheep is playing out before our eyes.  The Louisiana Purchase is a promise, regarding first pick of the loin chops, given to Mary Landrieu in order to secure her agreement to begin the slaughter.  How do you defend against this, when they're using our money to buy each other's approval to take our money???

I know these people think they're reshaping the Constitution.  But couldn't they at least try the one we've already got?

the chill on global warming

Via Drudge: UK blogger on British climate change scandal.

...Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia’s CRU, just how royally he has been screwed.

...The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.”

...Further down the line there may be, in many countries, a question of criminal prosecution of anybody who has falsified data to secure funds and impose potentially disastrous fiscal restraints on the world in deference to a massive hoax. It’s a new world out there, Al [Gore], and, as you may have noticed, the climate is very cold indeed.

You've gotta love that last part.  Maybe it's time to start shaking down everyone who concealed the data or methods behind their "peer reviewed" work.  It's starting to look like "peer" is a synonym for "partner in crime."

white house party-crashing

Ample news coverage today about Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who crashed Obama's first state dinner.  Pictured above are the party-crashers, in a picture from the Salahis' Facebook page.

As you've probably heard, the Secret Service and White House staff are leaving no stone unturned in the search to answer one burning question: How the hell did Joe Biden get in?

time flies

Mrs. Galt's hand-held mixer gives up the ghost.  For the past year, she's been jiggling the switch in order to get it to start.  Today it won't start at all.

After fussing with it for a minute or two, she pitches it in the trash, complaining, "They just don't make things like they used to."

I laugh.  At twenty-five years old, this is the mixer they used to make.

what's really important about that 47 million

One of the most intellectually dishonest claims about healthcare reform is the premise that we're trying to "help" 47 million people who can't afford insurance.  These people are all somehow "shut out," and the goal is to get them covered.

In fact, many young healthy people are simply opting not to purchase insurance.  This is not surprising, when you consider their options.  Purchasing healthcare through an employer requires them to assume the cost of less-healthy co-workers.  Purchasing outside of work requires them to pay income taxes on their premiums. 

And an array of state and federal laws regulating health insurance make it impossible to purchase the one thing young people really need -- actual insurance for catastrophic illness.  Instead, available insurance plans are all required to cover office visits, pregnancy and other expenses that not every young person might need. 

In fact, most of the regulatory burden in health insurance appears to center around forcing insureds to share parts of other people's expenses.  So, in a sense, people who decide not to purchase insurance because the cost seems disproportionate to their personal risk are, well, correct.  What they're rejecting is not health insurance at all; they're rejecting socialized medicine.

Jim Angle, from Fox News:

That means older people will pay less but young people will pay more.

"If you limit the amount premiums can vary based on a person's age, that can result in premiums increasing by 50 or 60 percent for workers under the age of 30," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans.

In fact, a study by the Urban Institute found that going to a 2-1 age rating would push up premium costs for the youngest adults by almost $1,100 to just under $3,000 dollars a year.

Many young people won't buy insurance at current rates, much less higher ones.

The article observes that in some states young people pay one sixth or one seventh of the premium that older people pay.  If you take a group of healthy young people and follow them over time, it's not unreasonable to believe that, even after allowing for the few who go on to become very sick, they're only going to consume a fraction of the total care that a similar-sized group of seniors will consume.

So why, then, is Congress looking to stick this group with fully 1/2 to 1/3 of the premiums paid by older people?  Because this demographic is so incredibly healthy that nearly all of that money can be used to cover sicker people.

We've talked about how there are two kinds of liberals -- the "useful idiots" who generally mean well but who don't understand the true costs of the policies they support, and the elites whose agenda is really served by those policies.  The elites are the ones who know that Obamacare is designed around rationing.

Similarly, there are two ways liberals can look at the 47 million "uninsured."  Your basic, garden variety, well-meaning bleeding-heart liberal idiot feels sorry for 47 million hapless souls who are all one broken bone away from homelessness.

But the elites -- when they look at that 47 million they look past the temporarily unemployed/uninsured, past the pre-existing conditions, past the seniors caught in the Medicare donut-hole and the rescissions.  What they see, in that 47 million, is the 15 million or so who have escaped all the hidden socialism.  Where the useful idiots see that not everyone has insurance, the elites see that not everyone is paying.

john stossel: we pay them to lie to us

John Stossel, writing at townhall.com:

From the start, Obama has promised to pay for half the "reform" cost by cutting Medicare by half a trillion over 10 years. But, [Cato's Michael] Tanner asks, "how likely is it that those cuts will take place? After all, this is an administration that will pay seniors $250 to make up for the fact that they didn't get a Social Security cost-of-living increase this year (because the cost of living didn't increase). And Congress is in the process of repealing a scheduled increase in Medicare premiums."

obama milestones

Yesterday, Obama set a personal best for the most consecutive days in negative double digits on Rasmussen's Daily Presidential Tracking Poll (page changes daily at 9:30AM Eastern).

Obama extended that record today, his tenth in a row at or below -10%, and as a bonus he has accomplished this with a new personal low of -15%.

Out of respect for good taste I don't waste a lot of time talking about Obama's polling, but I've been watching this particular index for some time, and it's definitely been trending down.  Breaking these two records at the same time, particularly as other more-favorable-to-Obama polls are consistently beginning to break negative, is probably newsworthy.

"will you kiss me?"

is it time to vote "present"?

As I understand it, the ideological problem with the healthcare bill currently before the Senate is that it's "too liberal" for about five Democrats, including Olympia Snowe.  It's costly, it subsidizes abortions, and it includes a public option.

Now, the liberals' goal is to sweeten the overall bill, by amending it, just enough to get those Dems onboard.  That's not many votes to add to the bill, but it will take 51 votes to pass each amendment.  So the question is where those votes are going to come from. 

Who will provide the 51 votes necessary to satisfy Joe Lieberman, who says he will not vote for a public option in any form?  Who will provide the 51 votes to limit abortion funding to the satisfaction of Ben Nelson?  I don't think the Republicans should be helping the Dems get this bill over those hurdles.

It can be argued that, in the House, principled conservative votes in favor of the Stupak Amendment resulted in a bill that satisfied enough Democrats to pass a bill Republicans overwhelmingly opposed.  And that's debatable, since at least one Dem -- Stupak -- reportedly would have voted for the bill in exchange for just getting the amendment to the floor.  And, had House Republicans voted "present" on Stupak, it's possible that Nancy Pelosi could have rallied enough Dems willing to pass Stupak as simply part of the price of passing the entire bill.

Let's see how this could work in the Senate.  There are 100 Senators, ranging from liberal to conservative.  Obviously the most conservative are Republicans, while the most liberal are Democrats.

Suppose Ben Nelson introduces an amendment to limit abortion funding.  If, say, 36 of the 40 Republicans supported it on principle, plus the 5 Democrat holdouts, then of the 55 remaining Democrats only 10 would have to sign on for the amendment to pass. 45 liberals get to protect their "pro-choice" visages, while principled Republicans move the bill one Democrat closer to getting passed.  Sound familiar?

referrals (sticky post)

The blog is now receiving thousands of hits per week from StumbleUpon referrals.  Unfortunately, these referrals are directed at only five or six specific posts.  I think there is much more content here that's a good fit for political stumblers in particular, and I've put links to what I think are some of my better posts on the left sidebar.

If you like anything you find here, I appreciate your referral to StumbleUpon using either your own toolbar or the toolbar widget I've put in the right sidebar under "Share It!"  Not just to toot my own horn, but even if you'd simply like to spread the word.  I believe we're acquiring regular readers from these referrals.

Thanks for your support!

--JG