What's That Price Tag Again?

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

A couple of weeks ago, a fellow named Douglas Holtz-Eakin wrote a very interesting column in the Wall Street Journal. His column is about the true cost of the bill that’s been put forward by the Senate Finance Committee, and the tax burden that’s about to land on the middle class if it passes. Now Douglas is a pretty smart guy. He’s a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, and a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. And that’s just for starters – here’s a link to his full bio. So we should probably pay attention to what he has to say.

To begin with, he points to the myth that Congress is actually going to cut Medicare reimbursements. According to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, they should already have been cut – but year after year, Congress has voted to reinstate the money. In his words, “It is beyond fantastic to promise that future Congresses, for 10 straight years, will allow planned cuts in reimbursements to hospitals, other providers, and Medicare Advantage (thereby reducing the benefits of 25% of seniors in Medicare)…The very fact that this Congress is pursuing an expensive new entitlement belies the notion that members would be willing to cut existing ones.” (Or, as Nanny Ogg, one of my favorite characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels would say, “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”)

The problem is, if Congress admits to that rather obvious truth, it pushes the total cost of the legislation to well over $1 trillion.

Then there’s the $400 billion in new taxes and fees that the bill plans to raise by imposing a 40% tax on “Cadillac” policies (which several Democrats are already scrambling to insure that the union members in their districts won’t have to pay), and a variety of fees on health insurers, drug companies, and device manufacturers. Excuse me, but where do you think the insurers, drug companies, and device manufacturers are going to get the money? There’s only one way – by passing their increased costs along to consumers. Holtz-Eakin points to the Senate-House Joint Committee on Taxation, which indicated that “87% of the burden would fall on Americans making less than $200,000, and more than half on those earning under $100,000.”

Complicating matters even further, he points out that Democrats chose to make many of the industry fees nondeductible. Typically, a business would be able to count these kinds of fees as a business expense, which is subtracted from the revenue of the business before the tax obligation is calculated, just as the business would subtract rent on their facilities, their monthly power bill, etc. But every dollar that is taken from a business the way the Democrats are proposing to do it is a dollar that comes directly off the bottom line, and the business must increase revenue by more than a dollar to get it back. Holtz-Eakin estimates that this will result in an increase of as much as $200 billion in insurance premiums over the next 10 years, with 90% of that increase being borne by the middle class.

Why would Congress do such a thing? I can answer that one: Because it will then give Congress an excuse to even further demonize the health insurance industry for making such awful, terrible, greedy, unconscionable increases in premiums, and use the situation they created to further justify a government-run health care system. Cynical? Yep, but do you doubt it for a minute? I’ve still got that beach property for sale…

Thanks for listening.

I'm A Little Concerned About Calvin Woodward

Greetings from the Left Coast! Where we here at Left Coast Blues are a little concerned about the well-being and future career prospects of Calvin Woodward. Calvin’s byline appeared yesterday on an Associated Press story that revealed that, hard as it may seem for you to believe, you have once again been lied to by the Democrats. Here, in part, is what he had to say:

“In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making ‘immoral’ and ‘obscene’ returns while ‘the bodies pile up.’

“Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That’s anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries.

“Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure…”

Now, the “Democrats and their allies” know darned well what the truth is. But they have some legislation they want passed, and they’ll do whatever they have to do to get it done. Let me remind you again of some of the Rules for Radicals I shared in my last post:

“An organizer…does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.”

“The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms…He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.”

“Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 per cent on the side of the angels and that the opposition is 100 per cent on the side of the devil. [The organizer] knows that there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree.”

So, in this case, the issue at hand is that Democrats want to ultimately replace private health insurance with a government-run system. And that is the ultimate aim, no matter what they may say. Many leading Democrats are on record as favoring a “single-payer” (i.e., the government) system. Obama is on record as favoring a single-payer system. But the American people don’t want a single-payer system, because we’ve seen the dark side of such systems in other countries such as Canada and the U.K., and we’ve seen what a fiscal nightmare Medicare and Medicaid have become. So, in order to turn public opinion around, they are trying to "polarize" the issue by demonizing the health insurance industry. It doesn’t matter if they have to lie to make that happen, because truth is “relative and changing,” and all that matters is whether the effort will work.

They apparently believe that we’re too stupid to understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. In fact, Nancy Pelosi has such contempt for our intellect that she said yesterday that a government-sponsored “public option” may be more attractive if they just call it something else. So you’re starting to hear it called “the consumer option,” and the “competitive option.” Harry Reid thinks that it will fly as long as the states have the ability to “opt out” of the public plan. Mind you, that doesn’t mean that the people in those states could also “opt out” of paying for the plan – just that they wouldn’t receive any of the stuff they were paying for. Knowing what we know about politicians, does anybody out there seriously believe that any state would go down that road? Anybody? You there in the back? No? Too bad, because if you're buying that, I've got some beachfront property in West Texas I'd like to sell you. (It's great beach - a long ways to the water, but great beach.)

I believe that the American people are not that stupid, and that a day of electoral reckoning is coming. There’s a reason why the Congressional approval rating is lower than whale feces, and this kind of stuff is part of it.

In closing, I’d just like to thank Mr. Woodward for being intellectually honest enough to report the truth. That doesn’t happen nearly often enough these days, which is one of the reasons why people’s trust in traditional media is also lower than whale feces. Unfortunately, reporting the truth about something like this can’t be good for Mr. Woodward’s career. We just hope things work out OK for him. If worst comes to worst, maybe he can find a gig on Fox News.

Thanks for listening.

Maybe This Will Help

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

Seems like a lot of ordinary folks in the middle of the political spectrum are scratching their heads over President Obama’s actions, and wondering what the heck is going on. Buyer’s remorse appears to be setting in as a lot of people are realizing that this was not what they thought they were voting for – nor what Obama claimed during the campaign that he stood for. Perhaps the following quotes will help. They’re all taken directly from the pages of Rules for Radicals – the community organizer’s Bible – and they should help you understand why the Organizer in Chief does many of the things he does.

“An organizer…is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.”

“All of life is partisan. There is no dispassionate objectivity.”

“In this world…’reconciliation’ means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation.”

“The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms…He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.”

“…goals must be phrased in general terms like ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ ‘Of the Common Welfare,’ ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’ or ‘Bread and Peace.’” (Hope and Change, anybody?)

“Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego.”

“Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 per cent on the side of the angels and that the opposition is 100 per cent on the side of the devil. [The organizer] knows that there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree.” (Consider for a moment the current effort to demonize health insurance executives, and recall that they're only the latest victims of this strategy.)

“The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization…All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.”

“There is a way to keep the action going and to prevent it from being a drag, but this means constantly cutting new issues as the action continues, so that by the time the enthusiasm and the emotions for one issue have started to de-escalate, a new issue has come into the scene with a consequent revival. With a constant introduction of new issues, it will go on and on.”

Explains a lot, doesn’t it? But there’s one lesson that Obama has not sufficiently learned, and that is that “people react strictly on the basis of their own experience,” and that “when you go outside anyone’s experience not only do you not communicate, you cause confusion.” You have to understand where the other person is coming from, and Obama doesn’t have the breadth of experience to really understand the majority of middle America.

He doesn’t understand what it’s like to run a small business and have to decide whether you’re going to make payroll or make your mortgage payment this month. He doesn’t understand those people who are bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. He doesn’t understand those people who want the government to defend the country, control the borders, help those who truly need a safety net, and otherwise get the hell out of the way so we can get on with taking care of ourselves and our families. He doesn’t understand why we should be so twisted up about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or Bill Ayres, or ACORN, or a Treasury Secretary who didn’t pay all of his own taxes, or a "czar" who casually calls the opposing party a**holes, or a "safe school czar" who admitted that, as a teacher, he had violated a state law by not reporting the sexual abuse when a 15-year-old told him he had had homosexual relations with an adult, etc., etc., etc. And that will ultimately be his undoing.

Thanks for listening.

The Van Has Left the Building

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

So Van Jones resigns, blaming a “vicious smear campaign” for his troubles. I find that choice of words interesting. Since it was his own statements that ultimately were his undoing, does that mean he’s guilty of a vicious smear campaign against himself?

One of the more incredible statements I’ve heard from the left was that Jones wasn’t a “czar,” he was simply an adviser on “Green Jobs.” Oh, puh-lease. Even the New York Times has referred to him as Obama’s “environmental jobs czar.”

But whether or not you call him a “czar” is beside the point. The point is that Obama has brought over 30 people into his administration, at the very top of the Civil Service pay scale, for positions that unquestionably are intended to help shape policy, but which are not subject to the advice and consent of the Senate as Cabinet positions are. Many of them, like Jones, wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in Hades of actually surviving a Senate confirmation hearing. In fact, if the mainstream media was doing its job as an impartial watchdog of democracy instead of acting like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat party, Jones – as well as some of the other “czars” – wouldn’t have lasted this long.

But the thing that makes me walk away shaking my head is the naiveté of those who say, “Gee, how did this slip past the Administration? Is this another failure of their vetting process?” How many examples do you need before you get it? This wasn’t a surprise to the Administration. They knew full well who Van Jones was, what he believed, and what political positions he had taken in the past. They simply didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. When you are a far-left ultra-liberal, you don’t object to other far-left ultra-liberals – you actively recruit them.

One of the other things my mother used to tell me is that I would be judged by the company I kept. Americans are finally figuring out that the company Obama has kept over the years, and that he continues to keep – as reflected by the people he surrounds himself with in his administration – really do speak volumes about who he is.

Thanks for listening.

Listen With Your Eyes

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

When I was growing up, one of my mother’s favorite sayings was, “What you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say.”

We currently have a President who is a consummate public speaker (at least, as long as the teleprompter is working). His powers of vocal persuasion were honed through his years as a community organizer, where sometimes words are the only tools available to accomplish your goal. Unfortunately, we now see that there is a huge gulf between what he says and what he actually does.

He ran as a post-partisan candidate. He was going to bring us together again. The political climate had become too bitter and divisive, and he embodied the winds of change that would reach across the aisle, mend the partisan divide, and restore unity of purpose to the government. Nothing could be farther from the reality of the “my way or the highway” governing style he has adopted since he took office.

He ran as a moderate. It was just plain silly to call him a socialist. Why, pretty soon his opponents will “be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.” (Note: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” - Rule #5 from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.) We now see that he is, indeed, what his record as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate showed him to be – the most far-left President we have had in living memory. Obama and his supporters may object to the “socialist” label, but, as poet James Whitcomb Riley so aptly put it, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

He ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility. He has now presided over the largest increase in the federal deficit ever. And he’s not done yet: He claims that we can provide health care coverage to all of the people who don’t currently have it, without raising taxes (other than on the “wealthy”), and without increasing the federal deficit in the process. It’s simply not possible. The math doesn’t work. Even the Congressional Budget Office says it will cost another $1 Trillion over the next ten years. Let’s put that number into perspective: if you could spend $1 every second of every day of every year, it would take you just over 31,709 years to spend $1 Trillion.

He pooh-poohed the stories about his past associations with radicals and, shall we say, less savory characters. Why, he barely knew Bill Ayres, and besides, most of that stuff happened when Obama was just a kid. And he simply doesn’t remember hearing Rev. Wright saying any of that offensive stuff when he was sitting in the pew. Now look at the collection of radicals, tax cheats, and former communists he has appointed to positions within his administration. Look particularly at the “czars,” who drive public policy, but don’t require Congressional confirmation. (That’s why he hired them as “czars” – he knew they would never survive confirmation hearings.)

I could go on, but you get the idea. If my mother was alive today, I know what she’d say. It’s time to start listening with our eyes instead of our ears.

Ted Kennedy

The news today is full of stories about the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy. We will no doubt hear at great length about all of the wonderful things he has done for the American people, and I fully expect an impassioned plea from the Democrats to get the health care reform bill passed as a tribute to the late, great Senator. Unfortunately, Mary Jo Kopechne is still unavailable for comment. 'Nuff said.

The "Science Czar"

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

You may not have heard of John Holdren, Obama's pick for the head of his Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology...a.k.a. the "Science Czar." But you should have.

Like all of Obama's "Czars," he didn't have to go through any Senate confirmation hearings like Cabinet members do. That's one reason why Obama has so many of them. You don't have to deal with those pesky Republican Senators asking inconvenient questions about the person's background. And Holdren's background is particularly disturbing.

But rather than duplicate the information here, I'd like to direct your attention to this blog entry on the GOPUSA Web site. Please read it. You need to know the kind of people your tax dollars are paying for.

Thanks for listening.