Libertarian Leanings

The Health Care Free Lunch

Gene Lyons insists that Democrats should pass comprehensive health care reform with or without Republican input.  Says he:

'In a column for Politico.com, our bipartisan friend Sen. Grassley recently wrote that, should it be enacted, "As many as 119 million Americans would shift from private coverage to the government plan." That, in turn, would "put America on the path toward a completely government-run healthcare system ... Eventually, the government plan would overtake the entire market."

Translation: The public plan must be stopped because it'd be too good.'

Too good?  There's a pipe dream for you.  Be that as it may, Mr. Lyons clearly favors the single payer model. 

'Meanwhile, never mind that the White House has completely ruled out a British- or Canadian-style "single payer" plan, recognizing that many Americans are more comfortable with the private coverage they already have. Atlantic Monthly blogger Matt Yglesias wondered what British conservatives say about that country's National Health Service.

So here's the Tory position: "The NHS embodies something which is truly great about Britain. That something is equity: the spirit of fairness for all and the equal right of everyone regardless of age, background or circumstance to get the healthcare they need. It really is one of the most precious gifts we enjoy as British citizens ... That is why the Conservative Party has made [improving] the NHS its number one priority."'

So I thought it very timely when an email update from Canon Andrew White arrived in my inbox.  Canon Andrew White is President of The Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East and Rector of St George's Churchin Baghdad.  I get these updates from him from time to time because I once made a contribution to FRRME which was involved in efforts aimed at reconciliation among Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.  Those efforts were going on at a time when sectarian violence in Iraq was at its height.

Back then updates he sent out described the progress toward reconciliation.  Now they have a different message.  Canon White suffers from Multiple Sclerosis.  He has been receiving stem cell treatments to mitigate the effects of his disease, and he gives periodic updates as to how they are going.  Here is what he said in his last one.

'Well, greetings from Baghdad! I am pleased to say that yesterday I had my 4th Stem Cell Treatment for MS, as usual with my own stem cells. This time I had the injection in my neck, this was to try and deal with my balance problems. The fact is, since I started this treatment in Iraq I have improved by about 70%.

Every time I drive through the squalor here and then arrive in the modern, yet basic hospital, I am amazed that I can have this treatment here in Baghdad. The doctors are outstanding and perform this treatment to a very high standard. Yesterday, the injection was in the cervical vertebrae. I will have a further treatment on Sunday with the cultivated stem cells. I was the first person to have this stem cell treatment here. Since then, another 21 MS patients have had the treatment; all have radically improved. They have also treated a person with Motor Neurone Disease and several people with spinal cord injuries. Once again, these people have also improved. I cannot deny that the more I have this treatment and the more I make improvement, I become increasingly frustrated by the lack of treatment in the UK.'

On a side note, I think it's worth emphasizing that Canon White's stem cell treatment did not involve use of embryonic stem cells.  They were his own. 

But to the topic at hand, as a priest and a Brit, Canon White would be an unlikely proponent of free market health care systems.  In fact he takes a swipe at capitalism and the profit motive, implying that they are to blame for the treatment shortcomings in the UK. 

'All that is on offer are expensive drugs that make me feel very, very ill. The fact is, this [stem cell] treatment is cheap and makes nothing for the drug companies.'

So there he is in Baghdad getting his stem cell treatments in a modern but basic hospital.  I think it's safe to say it was a private, for-profit hospital.  I sent a response to Canon White's update, asking him to confirm my suspicion.  At this point he has not had time to reply. 

In the meantime I looked for confirmation in an article written this past March by Dahr Jamail which describes the rise of a privately run health care system running side be side with the government system in Iraq.

'Government hospitals are short of doctors. A small increase in pay over the last three years has lured some doctors back, but what they pay cannot match income in the private sector.

On average, a general practitioner in a government hospital earns about 300 dollars a month; a private hospital pays twice or three times that much. More and more doctors are shifting away from government hospitals.

“I and my family were unable to live on the pay I earned at a government hospital,” says Dr. Kubayir Abbas, 34, an anaesthetist. “So I decided to come over to the private sector instead, and now it is much better.”

Dr. Shakir Mahmood Al-Robaei, another anaesthetist, said “it’s better for us to work here than in the public sector. We earn more money, it is safer, and we don’t have to worry about having the right equipment and supplies. When I worked in the public sector, we were short of everything most of the time.”

And so government hospitals continue to run short of doctors, while some private hospitals have a surplus. What has improved since 2007 is that violence against doctors, and even against patients who attend certain hospitals, has dropped notably.

Government hospitals also lack basic supplies such as gauze, rubber gloves, clean needles, surgical instruments and drugs for anaesthesia. Non-medical basics such as clean bedding, disinfectants and air-conditioning are often lacking, even in the largest medical complex in the country, the Baghdad Medical City. Iraqis have for years had to buy their own medicines and even oxygen supplies on the expensive black market.

Corruption within the Ministry of Health, and the near total lack of reconstruction that was promised by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in the first year of the occupation have left Iraq’s healthcare system depleted of resources.

A report ‘Rehabilitation Under Fire’ released last year by the health organisation Medcat said Iraq has only around 9,000 doctors, after most fled the country. That gives a ratio of six doctors for every 10,000 people. The ratio in Britain is 23 to 10,000.

Given the crisis in government medical care, the business of private hospitals is booming. Raphael hospital, which currently has 35 beds and sees on average over 1,000 patients a day, will soon expand to 90 beds and increase its staff.

Dr. Rhamis Mukhtar, the only surgeon for morbid obesity in Iraq, has been working at this private hospital since 2000, while also working at a state hospital. “I’m thinking of moving here full time,” he said. “There are much better supplies, services, and overall care for the patient. This centre is the best for laproscopic surgery in the country.”

For complicated emergency cases, government hospitals are still the best, Dr. Mukhtar said. They have special equipment most smaller private hospitals lack. It has to get very bad for someone before they can hope to get the best out of a government hospital.'

It is typical that government run health care systems ration care because it is the only way they can contain costs.  We see it time and again, where visitors come to the U.S. to get the care they can't get in their own countries' single payer systems.  Either they can't get treatment at all, or they can't get it in time, waiting lists being so long.

Mr. Lyons, Mr. Yglesias, and others on the left deny that rationing even happens, but at the same time they seem to believe rationing is really a good thing.  It's a fairness thing.  If everybody can't get the kind of treatment Canon White can get in Baghdad, then nobody should get it.  And when nobody gets treatment, it'll be the drug companies who get the blame.  It's the fairest thing. 

Updated 6/24/09.  Canon White's reply:

Dear Tom, 
 
Thank you for the email. My treatment is in the Government Hospital. I only pay for my Drugs the MRI is in a private clinic. I pay for my drugs as I'm not Iraqi. 
 
AW

Machiavellian

A liberal relative of mine recently told me I ought to read Machiavelli's The Prince, explaining that the parallels to today are scary.  I asked him if it would be describing Obama.  His face registered an expression of shock, shock that I could suggest such a thing.  But he quickly recovered and said no, no of course not, The Prince is really cut throat.  As if to say, that Obama is not.

So this morning in a very roundabout way, I found my way to this essay by Jim Geraghty that raised a very similar parallel.  Mr. Geraghty wrote his essay about a month ago, and the parallel was not between Obama and The Prince, but Obama to Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals.

'After Obama took office, the pundit class found itself debating the ideology and sensibility of the new president — an indication of how scarcely the media had bothered to examine him beforehand. But after 100 days, few observers can say that Obama hasn’t surprised them with at least one call. Gays wonder why Obama won’t take a stand on gay marriage when state legislatures will. Union bosses wonder what happened to the man who sounded more protectionist than Hillary Clinton in the primary. Some liberals have been stunned by the serial about-faces on extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention without trial, military-tribunal trials, the state-secrets doctrine, and other policies they associate with the Bush administration. Former supporters of Obama, including David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Jim Cramer, and Warren Buffett, have expressed varying degrees of criticism of his early moves, surprised that he is more hostile to the free market than they had thought.

Obama’s defenders would no doubt insist this is a reflection of his pragmatism, his willingness to eschew ideology to focus on what solutions work best. This view assumes that nominating Bill Richardson as commerce secretary, running up a $1.8 trillion deficit, approving the AIG bonuses, signing 9,000 earmarks into law, adopting Senator McCain’s idea of taxing health benefits, and giving U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown 25 DVDs that don’t work in Britain constitute “what works best.” Obama is a pragmatist, but a pragmatist as understood by Alinsky: One who applies pragmatism to achieving and keeping power.'

That last sentence pretty well captures Obama.  He is pragmatic about getting and keeping power.  It is the common thread to all of his policy pronouncements, and it explains the ease with which he glides from one "deeply held" position right over to the opposite side of it.

'During the campaign, Obama’s critics laughed and marveled at how quickly the candidate threw inconvenient friends, allies, and supporters under the bus once they became political liabilities. Over on the Campaign Spot, it’s been easy to compile a list of quickly forgotten promises. But it is unlikely that Obama would consider any of this a character flaw; instead, it is evidence of his adaptability and gift for seeing the big picture.

Alinsky sneered at those who would accept defeat rather than break their principles: “It’s true I might have trouble getting to sleep because it takes time to tuck those big, angelic, moral wings under the covers.” He assured his students that no one would remember their flip-flops, scoffing, “The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.” If you win, no one really cares how you did it.'

In Obama the true face of liberalism begins to stand out, and it just may be that some Democrats who recognize what they see in it, will become disenchanted, put off, although I expect my liberal relative will not be among them. 

Proceed leftward along the political spectrum and the further you go the more you find acceptance, and even approval, that liberalism is a con job.  Those in the know, those in the in crowd, accept that the rubes have to be fooled into what's good for them.  Liberal "truths" are just so much pap for the rubes.

'It’s not about liberalism. It’s about power. Obama will jettison anything that costs him power, and do anything that enhances it — including invite Rick Warren to give the benediction at his inauguration, dine with conservative columnists, and dismiss an appointee at the White House Military Office to ensure the perception of accountability.

Alinsky’s influence goes well beyond Obama, obviously. There are many wonderful Democrats in this world, but evidence suggests that rising in that party’s political hierarchy requires some adoption of a variation of the Alinsky philosophy: Power comes first. Few Democrats are expressing outrage over Nancy Pelosi’s ever-shifting explanation of what she knew about waterboarding. Those who screamed bloody murder about Jack Abramoff’s crimes avert their eyes from John Murtha. The anti-war movement that opposed the surge in Iraq remains silent about sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Obama will never get as much grief for his gay-marriage views as Miss California.'

It's all about the power.  No doubt there are lefties galore who believe fervently in Obama's power to do good, and their own as well.  But what happens when Obama uses his power for something that is clearly not good. 

The video below describes the kind of power we can expect President Obama to exercise.  Gerald Walpin is the AmeriCorps Inspector General who was fired for investigating Kevin Johnson, a friend and supporter of Obama.  Watch the whole thing.

So how long will the moderate Democrats make allowances for this kind of abuse of power?  It's corruption pure and simple.  Can they believe there is some greater good to be achieved by it?  The liberal true believers can, and they can also be reliably blind to to the abuse, believing it unimaginable that they would ever be in disagreement with the One.  But what about the moderates?  How many are willing to jettison principles in order to avoid being the next Gerald Walpin?  And when our Democratic congress has acquiesced, ceded power to this Democratic White House precedent will have been set, putting even the true believers at risk.  It means they must never relinquish power. 

Another Expiration Date

Barack Obama now admits that unemployment will hit 10% before the end of the year.

'June 16 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said the U.S. unemployment rate will reach 10 percent this year, even as the economy begins to emerge from the recession.

“You’re starting to see the engines of the economy turn,” Obama said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the White House. “It’s going to take a long time -- we had a huge de-leveraging that took place.”

Obama acknowledged that unemployment lines may keep growing despite government efforts to boost economic growth, saying he’s confident an expansion will begin “shortly.” His outlook mirrors the forecasts of private economists who predict a jobless rate of 10 percent -- a level unseen since 1983 -- by the final three months of the year.'

I guess that means earlier projections as illustrated in this graph, where unemployment never gets above 8%, have expired.

"Certainly the worst I've ever seen..."

Canola farmers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba are seeing the worst June frosts in recent memory.

In Manitoba, the frost is the worst in memory for its frequency and area covered, said Derwyn Hammond, the province's senior agronomy specialist for the Canola Council.

"Certainly (it's) the worst year I've seen," said Hammond, who has worked for the Canola Council for 15 years.

With deadlines for full canola crop insurance ranging between June 10 and 20 in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Hammond said he expects most farmers will choose not to reseed.

Cool weather may have actually saved some of the new crop that was at such an early growing stage that it wasn't yet vulnerable to frost, said Doon Pauly, crop specialist for the government of the western province of Alberta.

"It's the equivalent to a frost in the second or third week of May," Pauly said. "That's the bright side."

Whether or not actual weather conditions will rescue us from the global warming police remains to be seen.  They continue gearing up to save the earth from the non-existent threat from carbon dioxide which global warmists say is the cause of a "greenhouse effect" and is responsible for rising worldwide temperatures.   

'In fact, a pair of German math and physics professors claim the proof is on the other side of the argument.  Professor Gerhard Gerlich, who teaches Mathematical and Physics at the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Germany, and his colleague, ProfessorRalf D. Tscheuschner published a paper that thoroughly discredits the theory.  Their paper is entitled, Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics.  

'The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarifed. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet...'

For those of us who are not physicists, the professors offer common sense explanations along with their mathematical arguments. 

'However, as this heat transmission is less important compared to the convection, nothing remains of the absorption and reflection properties of glass for infrared radiation to explain the physical greenhouse effect. Neither the absorption nor the reflection coefficient of glass for the infrared light is relevant for this explanation of the physical greenhouse effect, but only the movement of air, hindered by the panes of glass.'

In other words, a glass greenhouse traps heat by preventing the air inside from circulating higher into the atmosphere where it cools down.  "Greenhouse gases" do nothing to inhibit the circulation of air, nothing to prevent cooling by convection.  For the sake of convenience to their argument, the global warmists ignore the effect of convection altogether.  What choice do they have, really?  It makes their settled science look pretty unsettled.'

For my money I'd say sunspot activity will turn out to be the better predicter of rising or falling global temperatures.

INFLATION

Arthur Laffer predicts inflation.  It's all about the money supply.

'About eight months ago, starting in early September 2008, the Bernanke Fed did an abrupt about-face and radically increased the monetary base -- which is comprised of currency in circulation, member bank reserves held at the Fed, and vault cash -- by a little less than $1 trillion. The Fed controls the monetary base 100% and does so by purchasing and selling assets in the open market. By such a radical move, the Fed signaled a 180-degree shift in its focus from an anti-inflation position to an anti-deflation position. The percentage increase in the monetary base is the largest increase in the past 50 years by a factor of 10 (see chart nearby). It is so far outside the realm of our prior experiential base that historical comparisons are rendered difficult if not meaningless. The currency-in-circulation component of the monetary base -- which prior to the expansion had comprised 95% of the monetary base -- has risen by a little less than 10%, while bank reserves have increased almost 20-fold. Now the currency-in-circulation component of the monetary base is a smidgen less than 50% of the monetary base. Yikes! [...] It's difficult to estimate the magnitude of the inflationary and interest-rate consequences of the Fed's actions because, frankly, we haven't ever seen anything like this in the U.S. To date what's happened is potentially far more inflationary than were the monetary policies of the 1970s, when the prime interest rate peaked at 21.5% and inflation peaked in the low double digits.'

If the chart above is a true indication I don't see how we're going to avoid inflation.  According to Mr. Laffer the big jump in the money supply is from a huge increase in bank reserves which he says are "excess reserves."   That means those reserves won't languish in bank vaults but will hit the street as loans, increasing the currency-in-circulation.  The impact is likely to be huge. Update: Russia may unload some U.S. Treasuries from its reserves and replace them with International Monetary Fund bonds. Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, said some reserves may be moved from Treasuries into IMF debt, reiterating comments made last month by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Ulyukayev’s remarks were confirmed by a Bank Rossii official who declined to be named, citing bank policy. Treasuries fell, pushing 10-year yields toward the highest level in seven months, in response to Ulyukayev’s statement. The dollar fell against the euro on speculation that Russia will reduce its holdings of U.S. debt. The government is going to pay higher interest rates in order to finance Obama's unprecedented yet planned massive deficit spending.

Updated Unemployment Graph

Via Hot Air, Here's another flavor of the unemployment graph accompanied by a video presentation showing Obama's stimulus has done more harm than good.  I don't know how much more "rescue" we can stand from this guy.

What The Tea Parties Are All About

According to Charles R. Kesler Obama's prime goal is to build an enduring Democratic majority that will impose a more socialized democracy upon America.  In the course of achieving it, Obama has made unprecedented intrusions into the free market.  Coupled with his wild "stimulus" spending, this will very likely hamstring the American economy for years to come.  A struggling economy, however, is the least of our worries.

'What Obama hopes for is a similar breakthrough for the forces of liberalism in this generation.

An enduring Democratic majority is not out of the question. The wild scramble to stop the economic and financial downturn may well leave America with a politically controlled economy that would corrupt the relationship between citizens and the federal government – sapping entrepreneurship and encouraging new forms of dependence on the state, as in much of Europe. That would be consistent with the more socialized democracy that liberalism has been striving for ever since the Progressive Era.

Obama likes to emphasize that America is more like the world than we realize, and must become still more like it if the US is to remain the world's leader. Despite his summoning oratory, his sense of American exceptionalism thus is far less lofty, far more constrained, than Reagan's or FDR's. The greatest stumbling block to Obama's ambition is likely to be the inability of this exceptional president to persuade Americans to follow him into so unexceptional a future.'

I would take issue with Mr. Kesler's characterization of our crisis as a "wild scramble to stop the economic and financial downturn."   There is certainly a wild scramble but the objective is not to stop the downturn.  The downturn itself serves Obama's purpose.  It provides cover for much more government intrusion for the ostensible purpose of creating social justice.  The real danger we face will come if he continues to be successful legitimizing the destruction of personal and economic freedoms which are the source of American power.

As with the GM bailout, which is less a bailout of GM than of the United Auto Workers, the Obama administration will continue to make the best of this crisis.  A continuing downturn provides opportunity to spend massively on the Democrats' favored constituencies.  According to Kevin Hassett, it's not just failing firms like GM and Chrysler that Obama plans to rescue.  He plans to rescue the successful ones as well.

'I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.'

Economics 101 students already understand that the policies Obama advocates won't revive the economy.  Why would he do that?  What will assuredly be a bust for the economy will be a boon for the Democrats who yearn for more complete control.  The tea parties are grass roots protests that hope to prevent that from happening, hope to preserve our liberty.

Charles R. Kesler is a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

Kevin Hassett is director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Bloomberg News columnist, and an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election.

The Unemployment Graph

I don't think I should pass up the opportunity to put up this graph that's been making the rounds.  It originated with the Obama administration who published it to argue that unemployment, as illustrated by the pale blue line, would be much worse without the administration recovery plan than it would be with the plan.  The "with" line is in dark blue. 

The actual unemployment numbers are plotted in red.  Hell of a job, Barry.

Via Innocent Bystanders.

Open Letter to the President

Lou Pritchett, a former corporate vice president who spent 36 years at Proctor and Gamble before retiring in 1989, recently wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama.  He sent it to the New York Times which neither published nor even acknowledged the letter.  The letter has since made it to the internet where it has gotten a half a million hits.  Go read.  It's good.

Media: Desperately In The Tank