Michael Steele certainly hasn’t done anything to help the situation. With at least one Republican chair calling for him to step down, it seems that his days could be limited. Perhaps it will help Republicans if Steele is gone, but is the rest of their house in order? Perhaps not. The health care debate might have confused some who thought the GOP had returned to traditional conservatism. While the GOP did manage to stay completely on message for about a year in regard to the toxic health care bill, after it passed they seem to be falling apart again with a mixed message of “repeal”, and “replace”. Why would you bother to say you’re going to replace a bill which is universally hated in your base? A more logical approach would be to maintain the hard line “repeal” message. Conservatives are looking for signs of weakness, and this “replace” funny business fits the bill.

The Tea Party is seen as something of a force to contend with in the May primaries, and in November. While championing conservative causes and candidates they have rightfully been brutal on liberal Democrats. What the GOP needs to remember is that the Tea Party is independent. They have a self-assigned primary obligation to serve conservative, traditional values. That means on occasion they have come out swinging against various “moderate” Republicans. Many conservatives see that as a good thing, since they feel they are weeding out the “weak” Republicans in favor of “true” conservative candidates. It could cut into Republicans votes in November.

This is a bitter sweet movement for conservatives. For years they’ve simply been taught that Republicans are the slight lesser of two evils. For the most part the GOP has been reliably against personal entitlement programs, and it’s worth repeating that they were solidly against health care reform (at least until it passed). To their credit, they have, at times tried very hard to stay true to conservatives. On the other hand, they have a legacy of Medicare Part D, endless war funding, Wall Street bailouts (which amount to a Washington takeover of finance), and near complicity on auto bailouts.

Conservatives have been awakenedand have realized that while Bush was hands down better than the current administration, he did spend, as one conservative put it “like Paris Hilton on a binder”. That seems like a fitting assessment. He blew through the savings the previous Republican Congress had managed to accumulate, almost instantly. There is a lot of apprehension about simply putting in another John McCain, Lindsey Graham, or even George Bush. These are all like-able people in the GOP camp, but most conservatives know they are not conservative and represent the same Washington mentality that landed us where we are.

November will indeed be a great month for the GOP no matter what. Conservatives, however, know that one election will solve very little. That’s especially true if attempts to install more conservative candidates wind up putting Democrats in for another term this country simply cannot afford.

In recent days Max Baucus and Howard Dean have both come out and admitted what we already knew. That the health bill is about redistribution. Dean was at least kind enough to suggest that you can’t push redistribution too far, because you risk removing the incentive for work.

Republican Operative – Dean And Redistribution

That was sweet of him. Baucus wasn’t quite as kind. He indicated that some people simply make too much money.

“Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind”

It’s helpful to know that while we’re all out here working for higher and higher taxes, that Mr. Baucus is working behind the scenes to figure out just how much money we should be allowed to make. I wonder where that line is exactly. Sure, it’s been painted at $250k for now, but how long can we expect it to be there. We already know that every socialist program goes over budget. We already know that no matter how many votes you purchase today with spending, you always seem to need more tomorrow. How can we be assured that the socialists won’t need to lower that threshold tomorrow?

Once the signing ceremony ended for the unconstitutional health care takeover, we were then treated to baseless (and videoless) accusations of violence, name-calling and spitting. Now we’ve finally moved on to the truth. It was all a giant ruse from day one. This was never about helping anyone. In typical Democrat fashion, the bill was only about shifting power and jobs to the Federal government while fleecing the American public for more money to find Democrat games.

Readers might also remember that shortly after that legislation passed, the credit card companies abruptly raised interest rates on consumers of all stripes. While this was much less reported in the media, it affected far more people than the legislation was designed to help. People who don’t pay their bills are a minority. People that do pay are, of course, the overwhelming majority. Yet, Congress’ law said that credit card companies have to offer someone the same interest rate for the life of the purchase. That meant that even consumers who do not pay their bills are insulated from the consequences of their actions. So where did those costs get shifted to? The responsible payers, of course.

Legislators are free to try and impose their personal wills on companies, but they can’t really control the revenues companies need to survive. Laws can say who a company can and cannot raise rates on, but the effect is always like the chest of drawers in a Three Stooges Episode; as soon as you push one drawer in another one pops out.

Utility companies are more or less government controlled organizations, yet we’ve seen energy costs go up tremendously over the past 15 years. Weren’t oversight and price controls designed to make price hikes a thing of the past? While it’s true that utilities need to go to various regional advisory boards to seek permission to raise rates, but they always get that permission. At the end of the day, these regional board succumb to the pressure to keep utilities from having to ration service, and they opt to let the companies raise rates. Yet, because utilities aren’t free to work in the open market we’ve seen breathtaking lack of innovation. Ten years after everyone on the planet accepted credit cards, many utilities still don’t. As every bank worth doing business at offers online banking, many utilities don’t have online facilities for managing and paying your account. With all that oversight, there simply isn’t enough money to innovate.

March 21st marked a solemn occasion in America. With sweeping health insurance regulation, we have again expanded our reach into the inner workings of private industry. When government pretends it knows business better than businesses do, we can expect the stories above to play out again and again. Some liberal voters might get a warm and fuzzy feeling when companies are “cut down to size”, but inevitably those same voters complain again later when rates continue to climb. It’s easy to wonder how high prices need to go before consumers realize government is the problem, not the answer.

Mounting pressure from protesters, other politicians, and Constitutional lawyers were bound to create some apprehension about the controversial legislative approach. However, it wasn’t this pressure that led Congress to drop the “deem and pass” technique in favor a straight vote on the two separate pieces of legislation. No, the real reason this Constitutional “slaughtering” never saw the light of day was that Democrats simply didn’t need it.

Concerned Americans learned the truth on Sunday as their stomachs tied into knots and their hearts hung low when they heard Bart Stupack (D-MI) announce he had made an unholy alliance to sell his vote. The 30 pieces of silver? Handouts to airports in Stupak’s home district and an ineffective Executive Order banning public funds for abortion. As has been widely publicized, the order isn’t worth much more than the ink used to sign it. Since courts have repeatedly ruled that abortion will be legal and eligible for funding by the Federal government, the only legal way to prevent the funding is with real, old fashioned laws. The Hyde Amendment language, in place since the 70′s, provided that. At least until yesterday it did.

Beyond the typical horse-trading and vote purchases we’ve come to expect to secure passage of unpopular legislation, the bill is flatly dangerous on its face. To make this argument acceptable to people of all political persuasions, the remainder of this article will assume the left is correct and that insurance companies are evil villians who need to be eliminated. With that assumption in mind, we’d have to examine what makes health costs so darn high. For example, let’s say you have a “bad” insurance policy so you end up paying many costs out of pocket. Would it enrage you to learn that a doctor’s office visit has a real cost of $300 or more? Or that a simple preventative blood test could cost more than $200? Putting aside the issue of whether or not insurance companies are to be trusted (as this article has promised to do), we could all agree that these prices are insane.

Obama has repeatedly submitted the idea that the current health care legislation will reduce these costs, but there is no evidence of it. In the bill we find laws requiring more people to purchase insurance. We find punishments for business with employees that don’t provide insurance, and we find laws that target insurance companies themselves. The bill is 50% insurance company give away (which is ironiuc on its face), and 25% new taxes and laws on you the taxpayer, and 25% retribution on insurance companies. Which component of the multi-thousand page bill asks hospitals to charge less than $2000 for the privledge of sleeping in their bed one night? Which part causes drug makers to make their products available in generic form or at reduced rates?

No conservative could support those measures either, but at least one could truthfully say that they would actually lower health care costs. At least they would in the short term. Instead, the bill focuses only on these evil, hateful insurance companies. Remembering that for the remainder of this article we all agree that insurance companies are dubious at best, how much of the increased premiums and higher co-pays are simply insurance companies passing along the real cost of health care? Based on the prices above, it’s starting to look like we’ll have to get angry at some new industries.

For these reasons, and for the simple incremental loss of freedom Americans suffered yesterday; Congress’ new way of passing bills is still just a little better than the old way. It certainly didn’t make the bill a good one, and it doesn’t make it any more likely to survive more than a couple years before its repeal.

Everyone from the House Speaker to lower ranking members of the House to our President have directly or indirectly likened the bill to more defensible legislation protecting the rights of black Americans. It’s a stretch to say this bill will even benefit anyone directly, except government. To compare it favorably to civil rights legislation is an outright abomination. Black Americans, and indeed, all Americans have certain human rights no one can deny them. Not included in that list is free health care. While the nation was moving in the right direction on the civil rights bill, we are most certainly moving away from freedom with this bill. It’s ironic to hear proponents of freedom restricting laws praise a bill that promised more freedoms to minorities decades ago.

So what is the bill? While no one can look you in the eye and tell you everything that 2,000 pages of legislation will do, here’s what we do know will happen between now and 2014:

• Taxes go up. Cadillac health plans pay higher taxes (if you aren’t a member of a union). You’ll also pay Medicare taxes on investment income, for the first time in our history.
• Kids will have to be accepted into insurance plans, no matter what conditions they have. That will jack premiums for children up (assuming somewhere in the thousands of pages we don’t have price controls).
• Uninsured Americans will be forced to purchase insurance or face a 2% (of salary) fine.
• Employers who don’t buy their employees insurance will pay fines. That means employers will slow down hiring or halt entirely.

In summary, we have a job killing, insurance destroying, premium hiking bill. If you support that, that’s fine. Most conservatives would think you’re wrong, but you’re entitled to your opinion. Just don’t call it civil rights, and don’t regurgitate Democrat party talking points about cost savings that no one can prove.

It’s basic stuff we’ve been taught since grade school. We know that you need 50% majority in the House to win and 60% to win the Seante. Evidently, statist corrupt politicans don’t have access to this most basic level of education. If you want the bill badly enough, apparently, you just “deem” bills into law. What is most sickening about this process isn’t even the Constitutionality of the process, it’s the intention behind it.

The intentions are something like this: Democrats have an unpopular government intervention into the private sector (not the first such intervention, but definitely the biggest), they can’t use normal means to pass the bill. Instead of reforming their bill to be able to catch votes, they simply invent new rules. It has gone beyond arm twisting, beyond cutting backroom deals, beyond a majority punishing citizens who votes for the opposition party. It’s entered an era of simply rewriting the fundamental laws governing how new bills are created.

It’s extremely difficult to stomach this. The Democrats have come up with a bill so radical and so left wing that they have essentially created two parties within the Democrat party. The left wing, and the ultra left wing. In the final hours before “deemage” of the bill, we watch the Ultra Left Party twist the arms of the Left Party. Faced with loosing their own jobs, they stand defiant. They aren’t defiant because they know it’s right for the country, they are defiant because they know they will get Americans hooked on the crack rock of socialism. Once you start to depend on the government you cannot get off the sauce. It is simply impossible.

Look at Greece. Workers on the government dole cannot tolerate any cuts in government spending. Willing to bring Greece to a halt public officials leave their posts to participate in riotous protests against the government. Even as they know the government has no choice but to cut spending because it’s own creditors are cutting it off, protesters are unsatisfied. America will become Greece. We’re already as bad as most of Europe. In some cases European leaders have even chided us for being too quick to spend on unnecessary programs. That’s a really bad sign.

We know Meidcare is a broken entitlement doomed to run up deficits and the national debt into perpetuity. We know the social security program is no different. No one can do anything about it, though, because we’re all hopelessly addicted to the drug. We can’t get off it, and no one even wants to bother to try. If they do try, they are accused of trying to take away your entitlements and demonized by the establishment.

If this bill passes it will be impossible to repeal it practically speaking until Obama’s gone in 2012. Democrats bet that by then public pressure will be to keep the program since two years of taxes will already be paid into it. We can’t take that chance. It really is time to get every boot on the ground making noise to oppose this horrible abuse of power.

If you have a friend that doesn’t watch the news or doesn’t know what is going on…educate them. If you know someone who opposes this bill but isn’t the type to speak up, now is the time for them to do it. Our final hours will mark what we were willing to do to stop this. If we fail to bring hell on our opponents in Washington, they will certainly bring hell on us.

Obama is aware of the political reality that not much will pass Congress after the April recess. It’s a sad commentary that Congress doesn’t pass big bills close to elections. It’s almost an admission that they know people don’t really approve of their job performance. Surely, many of these Democrats are well aware that they don’t have to forfeit their jobs. Indeed they are aware, but the Democrat leadership has hoodwinked many of them into believing voters would be angry with them for not enacting Obamacare.

Of course, the Dems would like Representatives not to think about whether voters are angry with or without this particular bill. This is about saving face. It’s about proving that Democrats are not total failures (just partial ones). It’s also about extending the lie of Obamacare for 6 more years until it kicks in, all the while letting Uncle Sam collect those extra taxes. The bad news is that while the “benefits” of the bill won’t kick in until several years from now, the business killing taxes and rules kick in right away.

That means conservatives have one last hope: The House might not pass the Senate bill. Why would they? It’s fundamentally different from the Senate bill, anyway (from a Democrats perspective). Plus, there are really no guarantees the Senate will want to (or be able to) pass aspects of the House bill via reconciliation.

So it comes down to this: Are Congressional Democrats principled on the bill they actually want to pass or are they partisan shills? The cynics (like myself) believe the latter but only time will tell. Something about the House just passing the Senate bill just feels wrong, though. It’s clearly against the House’s wishes. They have their own bill, but due to Scott Brown they are now going to buckle under party pressure.

The President knows this is likely to costs the Dems many seats in November, but he doesn’t care. Obamacare is about Obama. He needs his monument and he wants it by Easter, no matter the cost.

The main problem with every bill proposed so far is that they focus on the insurance carrier. While insurance company executives are definitely the “bad guys” because you always get the rate hike and coverage limitations from them, they aren’t the root problem. This new version of the bill will provide a couple things that do address the root cost problem, however. Melody Barnes, a White House domestic policy advisor to Obama said:

“They (the summit participants) talked about medical malpractice reform and found possible areas of common ground there and so that’s something they (White House staff) will be looking at…They (summit participants) talked about purchasing insurance across state lines doing that, though, in a way to make sure people are treated fairly.”

It’s a good start to address issues like frivolous lawsuits, and to try to increase competition, but not nearly enough. See, allowing insurance companies to sell across State lines will indeed provide some premium reductions, but there’s only so much blood to squeeze out of a turnip. We could gain at most 2-3% even if all insurance company profits were eliminated. So where are we going to cut from next? Well, tort reform helps a little too, but again, it’s a few percent.

Unfortuanately, Ms. Barnes comments still indicate that the tired, baseless corporate hatred.

“doing that, though, in a way to make sure people are treated fairly”

These kinds of statements further the notion that Obama’s administration doesn’t really have a grasp on the problem, and that their solutions can’t possibly address them.

Worse, the bill will most likely still have Obama’s signature price controls on premiums. Again, this is suicide for private insurance. If we allow the government to tell insurers what to charge, but the market dictates higher medical costs to insurers, how will any stay in business?

To get the kind of aggressive savings Dems want, the root costs will have to be addressed. Until it is, we’re just draining out the ocean one spoonful at a time.

It’s hard not to admire that tenacity. If that sort of aggressiveness were applied to lowering taxes and cutting social spending programs, I’d be in love with Congress. Too bad it isn’t. Instead, we have someone in a safe district urging her Congress to vote for her plan (to help her) no matter what the cost. Will that vote actually cost anyone their job? If polls are an indicator, yes. In particular, the conservative leaning districts which have Democrats in office now, will certainly get slaughtered (no pun intended). In a representative republic, part of me has to admire the system working as it should. Politicians get elected to make decisions, and that’s what Pelosi is urging them to do. Of course, America’s outright hatred of the decision in question muddies that admiration a little bit.

This would ordinarily be a cut and dry case of Democrat voters get what they asked for, a socialist government. I just wish it wasn’t so darn hard to remove entitlements once they’re enacted.

Of course, that’s part of the plan. FDR’s ponzi schemes were brilliantly devised. I admire them in the same way I admire the diabolical plans of villains in the movies. The genius of the plan is this, the entire you time you work, your taxes are going to pay for someone else. But you don’t see it that way, you think you’re putting away for your retirement. But you aren’t! The joke’s on you!

When the jig is up and someone tries to end the ponzi scheme, you get furious because you think you’ve been paying into it the whole time. Democrats laugh all the way to the bank, at your expense. Ponzi schemes are so clever because there is no clean way to end one. When Madoff got busted look at all the lawsuits that happened. The lawsuits weren’t directed at him, but from various people trying to claw-back their alleged “winnings” from other ripped off investors and the IRS. It’s brilliant! And that was only $65 billion in assets. Imagine the civil war that would break out if you tried to end the $32 trillion deficit spending Medicare program!

Of course, Democrats don’t need a socialist history lesson from me, they know the deal. This is all intentional. You pass the bill on a party line vote with the other party vowing to repeal it at some point. But by the time the GOP controls the White House in 2012, it’s too late! You can’t repeal it because the citizens think they are paying into it and they want their money, dammit!

Nice work Democrats.

Yesterday’s summit did clarify one thing that sometimes gets forgotten. At the heart of this discussion is fundamental belief by the majority party that a bigger government is always a better government. If you delete all the controversial statements made yesterday, the silly sob stories that prove nothing, and the President’s ego (whose size is surpassed only by our national debt), you see that Democrats don’t see anything wrong with giant government.

To defend the big government platform, Obama simply points to statism that already exists in the country. That shouldn’t sit well with conservatives who want to see the country head toward smaller government and a healthy respect for the 10th amendment. For anyone who thought that Democrats are idiots, or these are simply goof balls who have no clue what they are trying to implement, yesterday proved those people wrong. These liberals know exactly what they are trying to do, and they make no apologies for doing it.

When Eric Cantor (R-Rep) started talking, he had the massive Senate bill in front of him. Obama displayed his arrogance at full blast by ripping Cantor for bringing “props” to the meeting. For conservatives, showing the public the massive size of a government bill is not a prop. You can’t possibly digest what’s in a 2,200 page bill. The liberals know it and that’s why they like it. There is no end to the increased regulation and silly bureaucracies contained in the bill. Eric wants people to know that. Obama chided:

“…health care is very complicated. And we can try to pretend that it’s not, but it is.”

Mr. Obama forgets he isn’t writing medical literature. Yes, health care is amazingly complicated, but a bill whose stated goal is to expand coverage doesn’t need to be.

Bottom line, we have a diabolical, egotistical man in the White House bent on the Federal government controlling almost anything they can get their hands on. You can’t win when you talk with someone like that. I have liberal friends and they are nice enough people, but they simply cannot comprehend the Constitution, and they don’t want to try.

The good news is that support is beginning to erode (albeit slowly) in the House. As we get closer to November that will likely become even more true. Republicans did the right thing to stand against this bill (one of the few things the GOP has gotten exactly right this entire time), and yesterday they did conservatives proud, I think. You cannot talk sense into this bunch of liberals though. You have to simply fight them. It sounds like yesterday’s pompous parade could fire up the GOP to continue to do that. Then in November, we fire the liberals.

Obama’s White House published their first actual health care plan on Monday. It was a ‘greatest hits’ of things wrong with the Senate and House bills. The eerie checking account monitoring business from the House bill made it in, the abortion language from the Senate made it in. It has the goofy health insurance “exchange” (lots of people call such an exchange “google” or a “telephone”). It has Jimmy Carter style wage and price controls. How did that work out in the 70′s exactly? I wasn’t alive for some of it. I hear it wasn’t good.

There is little in the way of compromise to be reached here. The Democrat plans (all 3 of them now), all focus on these areas:

• More rules for private companies who provide insurance
• Price controls for insurance companies
• Big government structures to monitor health care usage (allegedly for fraud detection)
• Widening the tax gap between rich and poor (ask California how that policy is working out)
• State Medicaid funding changing (mostly increases for the near term)
• Mandatory coverage for individuals
• Bans on catastrophic-only plans

The list goes on. Where can there be room to negotiate with a plan like that? For too long, the GOP has been the party of “yes”. They go along with bad ideas because liberal pundits and liberal pollsters tell them Americans won’t tolerate the GOP not playing ball with Democrats.

It’s complete non-sense. The plan was bad a year ago, it’s a bad plan today, and it’s going to be a bad plan Thursday. But the GOP members will tuck their tails between their legs and meet Obama, on his terms, with his allies, and his plan. They need to get this through their very thick heads: There is no victory with Obama. Republicans cannot possibly win this fight. The only winner in this game is the person who refuses to play. Your winnings come in November when you get to keep your job.

Enough already. Heck, take a page from Nancy Reagan, just say “no”.

“I think it would be incredibly arrogant of everyone to assume that we should do nothing”

(quote courtesy of Politics Daily)

Actually it wouldn’t be so much arrogant, as responsible. It is not the federal government’s job to implement things like price controls (I might argue it’s not the State’s job either). Admittedly, the language of the 10th amendment is broad. However, to not at least give consideration to it’s application on federal legislation (especially of this size), is demonstrating real arrogance.

In fairness to Ms. Granholm, she is at least rooting for the right team at the Olympics. Now if we could just persuade her root for our Constitution, we’d all be happier.

“The proposal would give the federal Health and Human Services Department — in conjunction with state authorities — the power to deny egregious premium increases, roll them back, or demand rebates for consumers, said a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because details have not yet been officially released.”

This again fails to take into account the soaring cost drivers that lead to those premium increases. Since there is total detachment between the consumer of the health care goods (you) and the guy whote write the checks (the insurer) we over-consume health care. U.S. News & World Report even had to confess the truth:

“Overall, the profit margin for health insurance companies was a modest 3.4 percent over the past year, according to data provided by Morningstar. That ranks 87th out of 215 industries and slightly above the median of 2.2 percent.”

If this is truly Obama’s plan for mitigating rising insurance costs, we’re in for very rough times. You cannot simply shoot the cashier when you overeat at the restaurant and the bill’s high. This is more fake outrage from a guy who obviously knows much better. Obama knows as well as you and I, that you can’t lower insurance costs without reducing the costs insurance covers. But telling people to be healthier, stop the reckless lawsuits, and quit taking senseless risks with their lives doesn’t sound nearly as nice as the quick fix of just telling insurers to eat the costs.

Here’s an idea: Let’s use the interstate commerce clause to force states to work together on their insurance regulations so that we have a nice buffet of insurance choices to pick from, including catastrophic-only plans. Instead of fighting the Constitution every time we want to appease the populace, let’s use it instead.

I’m guessing that saying “your rates will slowly decrease over time to their market supported levels” doesn’t sound as cool as “I’m going to beat those insurance companies into submission”. Time to get real Obama, you’re going to run these guys out of business, and strand us with no coverage at all. Oh wait, was that the plan all along?

Even though we were given assurances that Obama is on the jobs trail, he did an about face today, back to that old, beat up health care horse. We sat in agony and watched the expensive buy-offs, and 1+1=4 math from Congress virtually all of last year, and yet Obama’s bringing it back. When does even the most egotistical, arrogant person on earth finally realize no one wants to hear about his bill anymore?

Nothing is more pitiful than a poor loser.  Obama should follow his own marching orders for 2010, and start to get serious about creating jobs for Americans (yes, Government doesn’t make jobs, but it sure can make policies that stunt job growth).  We need them, the Government needs them, and yes, Obama needs them.  That is, unless he has abandoned hope for a re-election bid.