CBS News Online Poll Results

A CBS News online poll currently shows 68% give Obama an F on the economy, 60% on foreign policy, 79% on health care, 32% on Afghanistan (not a majority but a plurality), 36% on Iraq (again a plurality), 58% on terrorism, 55% on energy and the environment, 59% on social issues, 78% on bipartisanship, and 64% on his overall job. These are staggeringly bad numbers, and the funny thing is that he gets his least-bad results for the one area on which liberals most oppose him--Afghanistan! Although I gave Obama an F in most areas, I did give him a D on Afghanistan because while he's been losing the war there (much as Bush spent years losing the war in Iraq before he agreed to McCain's surge) he hasn't cut and run like the John Edwards leftists want him to (when they're not too busy cheating on their spouses to care about foreign policy).

Given Obama’s imposition of fascist health care on us, it's no surprise that Obama scores worst on health care, where 79% give him an F, but note that an almost identical share (78%) gives him an F on bipartisanship. Obama made a big deal during the 2008 presidential campaign claiming he would govern with bipartisan support. The liberal media spread Obama's claim far and wide, even though Obama, according to the National Taxpayers Union ratings, has the most liberal voting record on spending, taxes and regulation of any member of the Senate. Mushy moderates tend to fall for such liberal media claims, but the viciously partisan imposition of fascist health care by Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress has, for the moment, revealed to mushy moderates (and even some mushy liberals who are wishing they'd supported Hillary in the Democrat primaries) the preposterous fraud behind Obama's claims to bipartisanship. Obama's fraudulent bipartisan claims should serve as a salient lesson to mushy moderates and mushy liberals not to believe liberal media propaganda about Democrats. People have short political memories, however, so I wouldn't count on mushies learning any long-term political lessons, although I'd be happy to have them prove me wrong.

To vote in the poll and see the results, you can go to http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-6116297-503544.html?tag= and then scroll down.

Democrats Could Lose Even Old Safe Seats

As the New York Times story at the link below demonstrates, even the liberal media have to admit that the Democrats' creation of massive new Big Business subsidies and shoving of fascist health care down our throats have created such a backlash against the Democrats that they might lose even some of their traditionally safe seats in Congress. It's the very likelihood that Democrats will suffer major losses in November that leads them to their current scorched earth policy, trying to impose as much fascist control as possible over our lives now, knowing that when they're back in the minority they can use the filibuster to stop Americans from repealing the fascism that Democrats are imposing on us now. I don’t expect Democrats to lose the 40 House seats required to lose their majority entirely this November alone, nor to lose the Senate (which would require Democrats to lose every competitive contest). I do expect, however, that they will suffer substantially more than the traditional midterm congressional losses, losing their ability to overcoming virtually any filibuster in the Senate while losing a practical, working House majority in support of most of their fascist policies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/politics/25campaign.html?th&emc=th

GM Used TARP to "Repay" Loan

You might recall that on October 3, 2008, Democrats in Congress passed a massive bailout of Wall Street investment firms called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) optimistically (or disingenuously) estimated would cost "only" $700 billion of your tax dollars. Although President Bush supported the massive TARP bailout of Big Business, not a single Republican in the House or Senate supported it.

Seeing big financial institutions get a government bailout, the Big Three American auto companies, GM, Ford and Chrysler, went begging to the federal government on November 19, 2008 to get their own multi-billion-dollar bailout. Congressional Democrats and President Bush agreed to an auto bailout bill that the CBO again optimistically estimated would cost "only" $15 billion. Conservative Republicans in the Senate, however, filibustered the auto bailout. Of 41 Republicans in the Senate, only 10 liberal or mushy moderates ones voted to kill the filibuster, along with 40 Democrats and the Senate's two liberal "independents" (who caucus with the Democrats). A supermajority of 31 Republicans (just more than three-fourths) joined 4 Democrats in supporting the filibuster. Without 60 votes to kill the filibuster, the Democrats failed to bring this second Big Business bailout to a vote, and it died.

Not to be deterred by Congress, President Bush unconstitutionally used an "executive order" to amend the first massive bailout law, TARP, to allow himself to give to the auto companies some of the money intended to bail out financial firms. GM and Chrysler eagerly took the TARP money, but Ford executives, wanting to keep their jobs, changed their minds. (Once Obama became president, he used the Bush-Democrat bailout of GM to force the old GM CEO to resign.)

On February 18, 2009, GM and Chrysler again approached the federal government, hats in hand, begging for another bailout. On February 24, Obama announced in an address before the joint session of Congress that he would give GM and Chrysler another $15 billion of your tax money. (It amazes me that liberal Democrats still run around claiming that it's Republicans and not liberal Democrats who support Big Business.)

You might have noticed recently that the new CEO of GM has been running TV ads where he crows about how GM has paid back the billions of dollars of your tax money that the federal government gave GM so that the United Auto Workers could continue to be the most overpaid union workers in the world. As Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reports in the two stories below, however, Obama's GM CEO should be eating crow instead: TARP's own inspector general, Neil Barofsky, reports that GM merely used more TARP money to "pay back" the subsidies, which came largely from TARP money in the first place! So GM's much-vaunted repayment is half like using your VISA card to pay off your MasterCard--and half like using your VISA card to repay your VISA card! I must say that the Democrats' capacity for blatant deception never ceases to amaze me.

http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/charles-grassley-gm-bailout/2010/04/23/id/356756?s=al&promo_code=9CE6-1

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/22/grassley-slams-gm-administration-loans-repaid-bailout-money/

Socialist Porn?

The historically savvy among you might think I'm referring to the infamous pornography produced under the rule of the German National Socialist chancellor, Adolf Hitler, but as the following story shows, I'm actually referring to the use of taxpayer-purchased computers at the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal agency dedicated to socializing as much of American capital markets as possible. While the SEC bureaucrats pretend to regulate capital markets to protect investors, they actually spend your tax dollars surfing the web for Internet porn! With thriving free markets in porn, we hardly need socialist porn, but the following story sure gives me a great laugh. I say let's fire the whole lot of them, close down the SEC, and let them go home to surf for Internet porn on their own computers! :-D

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/23/republicans-slam-sec-porn-surfing-report/

US Navy Denied Access to FoxNews.com

I've just learned that the government has denied the US Navy access to FoxNews.com. You can read about it at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/16/navy-access-fox-news-web-site-blocked/. Do we really believe the blockage is just an "error?"

The Story On Medical Insurance

The story on medical insurance starts with how WW II wage and price controls led defense contractors to offer health insurance as additional, unregulated income to attract workers from other industries since the wage and price controls prohibited paying higher wages. Congress exempted health insurance from taxation too, making it all the more attractive. Once labor unions—which the New Deal turned into government-enforced labor cartels—got a taste of tax-free health insurance they began to demand not just more of it, but an ever-increasing share of their income in it. The pro-union government policies of the 1950s and especially 1960s, and reduced competition from the European companies laid low by the war, meant that large American corporations gave in to these demands.

By the late 1960s, when government started inflating the money supply to pay for the Great Society social programs and the Vietnam War without overtly raising taxes (inflation is a covert tax on your money), large, tax-free health insurance polices had become the norm for Big Labor. All that money being diverted into health care had the predictable effect of raising health care prices relative to the prices of other goods and service. When the stagflation of the 1970s pushed millions of Americans into higher tax brackets while lowering their real (inflation-adjusted) pre-tax earnings, they looked at Big Labor and started demanding the same sorts of benefits. When these other Americans got a taste of tax-free medical insurance, they wanted more too. It took a while, but where once very few people had health insurance and nobody needed it for a simple annual physical, decades later almost every takes it for granted and believes they need it. (I have actually survived without it, but that’s another story.) All that additional spending on health care naturally raised health care prices relative to other goods and services even more than Big Labor’s health benefits did.

As tax-free health insurance became more widespread, it also mutated from health insurance into prepaid medical care. Unlike real insurance, where if you use it you end up paying higher rates, with much so-called health insurance, if you don’t use it, you lose it, and within certain parameters you do not pay more. I, for instance, have exhausted both the office visit benefit and the diagnostic benefit of the half-hearted health insurance that I buy through my private university as a part-timer there. My rates will not rise as a result of my using my benefits. If I were, on the other hand, to smash up my 12-year-old car, I would get almost no money from the insurance company (because of the age of the car and because the policy, as real insurance, has a large deductible) and they would almost certainly raise my rates (assuming I’m at fault). (In Denver I had a minor accident where I caught the side-stripping of my car on the wall of a parking garage. Repairing it cost just under that the amount for which Colorado law would allow them to raise my premiums, so they cancelled my policy instead! Thank you state of Colorado for pricing me out of the market! The state of VA did the same thing for private health insurance for me which is part of why I went without insurance entirely for a while—actually a couple of whiles.)

The widespread development of prepaid heath care has predictably driven up prices of medical care relative to prices of other goods and services. It’s very much like the impact of student loans: a cat chasing its tail; the faster it runs, the faster the tail runs away from it.

Health insurance also suffers from state as well as federal regulation. If you have several preexisting conditions, for instance, the natural response of an insurance company would be to 1. Exclude the preexisting conditions or 2. Charge more for preexisting conditions. When I first went to apply for an individual health insurance plan, I had three pre-existing conditions. Aetna, which so far as I can tell seems to be the best of the over-regulated lot of big health insurance (pre-paid health) companies, increases the base premium by 25% for each preexisting condition. So for my three conditions they would have been willing to write me a policy with a premium 75% higher than the base. I would have paid it too, as my family was willing to help out (I couldn’t have afforded even the base at that time). My family was willing to cough up the $450 per month to have me insured. The state of Virginia, however, in its infinite liberal compassion, “protected” me from “price gouging” by limiting insurance companies to a 50% increase in the premium over the base. Aetna couldn’t legally charge me for all three preexisting conditions, so the VA price control, rather than protecting me, simply priced me out of the market. Instead of having a policy at 175% of base, I had no policy at 150% of base. Neat, huh?

And at the federal level during the Clinton years liberals came up with a “solution” for my lack of heath care: they passed a law (called HIPPA) allowing states to create state monopolies for “high-risk” patients. The law allows either a fascist monopoly, wherein the state government grants the monopoly to a state-regulated private company, or a communist monopoly, wherein the state offers the insurance itself. In VA we have the fascist version, and VA happened to have granted the monopoly to Aetna. So VA wouldn’t let Aetna offer me a normal policy for $450/month, but it would let Aetna offer me a high-risk policy for $4500/month. I kid you not.

There is another aspect to the rise of medical prices relative to other goods and services. As real incomes per person rise, as they have done in every year in the industrialized countries since the Industrial Revolution except during recessions and depressions (so that the average real income has risen about 25 times, or 2400%, in the US since 1700), people can afford not just to buy more and better food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health care and entertainment, but shift more of their income from food, clothing and shelter to transportation, health care and entertainment. Even for a compulsive overeater in the grips of the disease there’s some sort of point of satiation (called a bliss point in economics), where more food or better quality food doesn’t appeal to the person. While the bliss points for clothing and shelter might range much higher, it’s still true that as income levels have skyrocketed over the past 200+ years, people have shifted proportionately from good, clothing and shelter to transportation, entertainment and medical care. The improvements in medical care have been profound. At the turn of the 19th century, average life expectancy in America was about 55 years. Most likely you and I, had we survived to age 49, wouldn’t plan on lasting much longer. My 81-year-old mother most likely would have been long in her grave. My dad probably would have died 30 years ago rather than 3 years ago. The leading cause of death among woman was childbirth. People would have regarded the tragic death of my high school friend Margie from pregnancy complications as commonplace, not the rare tragedy that it was thanks to our not having socialism destroy medical innovation in America. Men on average lived longer than women, even though women rarely smoked. (Indeed one of the perverse effects of 1960s/1970s feminism, which took smoking as a symbol of liberation, was to reduce the average number of years by which women had come to outlive men, although the gap remained around 7 years or so last I checked.) We pay more for medical care in part because we get far more than we used to, just as we pay more for entertainment because we get far more than we used to.

I don’t hear too many complaints about entertainers making too much money or about the un-affordability of sporting events—and certainly not to the degree where most liberals want the government to seize control of such things. Americans voluntarily choose to spend billions of dollars annually on entertainment instead of health care. At the same time it’s natural that as we get higher incomes we spend an increasing share of treatments that extend our lives and improve its quality. People now routinely spend millions on relief from ailments like allergies and arthritis with which people once just suffered. Cancer used to be an automatic death sentence when I was a kid, so much so that I can recall the days when people were actually afraid to say the word lest just saying it might invoke the disease. Now millions routinely live for years with various types of cancer. Probably some day the treatments that now sometimes cure and often at least slow the cancer will seem crude and barbaric, and we will have much better treatments. The more people spend on these things—whether treatments to remove allergies or treatments to cure cancer—the better they’ll get if scientists and companies are left to do research and respond to patient demands rather than political demands.

The British National Health Service provides a good, brief example of what happens when government seizes control of health care: Britain actually has fewer hospital beds now than it did before government seized control of health care, and for years after we had dialysis routinely in America, British doctors lied to patients with kidney failure, telling the patients that there was nothing medical science could do for them. That’s what socialist medical care—whether fascist or communist—does to doctors: it turns them into liars for the state and stifles medical innovation. The irony under socialist health care is that it forces nearly everyone to have the same lousy care—everyone except the politicians who give themselves better health care, and the very rich who can afford to spent the money to travel to a more market-oriented health care system, like ours (or like ours was before ObamaCare) and pay for good health care.

It’s a perverse trait of humans that if someone invents something that we really, really love we often resent them for it and demand that government seize control of it and give it to use for free. Public transportation in the big cities, for instance, started out entirely private. People found it so useful that they soon clamored to have government first regulate its prices, and then seize control of it entirely. We see the same sort of thing happening now with health care. Sure, government’s labor, taxation and monetary policies have artificially inflated the price of medical care relative to all other goods, but ultimately it’s the wondrous and constantly-improving state of medical care that sets our bliss point for medical care astronomically high, so that as our incomes rise it will continue to be natural for us to spend an increasing share of our income on health care just as we do on entertainment. Setting aside the inflation of medical prices from bad government policy, it’s actually a good thing that we can afford to pay spend increasingly-larger shares of our income on increasingly-better health care.

Obama and the Working Poor

Thanks to the passage of Obama's fascist health care plan, my insurance company raised the premium on my half-hearted basic health insurance.  Since the fascist health care plan imposes so many new regulations and taxes, however, my insurance company dropped the best of the three optional supplementary insurance plans, which I elected when I first started teaching at my online university, so with lower coverage my overall premium actually went down.  So my paycheck actually contained an extra $12 today!  So I'm paying a tiny bit less to get only one-third the health care benefits.  And people say that Obama isn't helping the working poor!

Gallup: Obama & Democrats at All-Time Lows

With the majority of Americans opposed to Obama's imposition of fascist health care on us, it's not surprise that passage of ObamaCare hasn't stopped his downward slide in the polls:

Gallup: Obama Numbers at All-Time Low
http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/obama-gallup-poll-numbers/2010/04/12/id/355405?s=al&promo_code=9BC3-1

nor that Democrats have also reached their all-time low in the polls:
Gallup: Democrats' Approval at Historic Low
http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/gallup-democrats-approval-healthcare/2010/04/12/id/355438

and are trailing in reelection races for November--where they haven't already announced that (because they're trailing) that they're retiring. In the wake of Scott Brown's upset in the great state of Taxachusetts--arguably the most liberal state in the union--probably no seat is safe for Democrats in the wake of their imposition of fascist health care, with its taxes, cuts in medical care, regulations, and prison sentences. As the second story above indicates, Democrats on spring recess are scattering like cockroaches exposed to the light, largely refusing to meet with (angry) constituents who opposed ObamaCare. The real question right now is: how much more damage to American can the liberal Democrats do before those (angry) constituents throw the bums out in November? I think we can expect the Democrats to continue their slash-and-burn tactics to impose as much government control as possible between now and then, lying, cheating and stealing as they did when the House pretended to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare and Obama pretended he could amend legislation by executive order in promising to pro-life Democrats that despite the Senate version's funding of abortions, Obama wouldn't fund any abortions. But hey, welcome to the Democrats, the party of compassion!