Category Archives: Socialism

Our Torqued-Up Turkey

Barack Obama, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Pseudoscience, Socialism

“I can think of only two occasions on which I agreed with George Bush. Both involved the upholding of the people’s negative, or leave-me-alone, rights. The first was his refusal to capitulate to the Kyoto-protocol crazies.” (From “Conservatives For Killing Terri”) BO has more than made up for that temporary reprieve. Why rush over to Copenhagen to give away the store amidst a depression—to say nothing of a controversy that has even some greens wondering about the veracity of the voodoo science of global warming.

Over to Christopher Monckton, whom I introduced a couple of posts ago.

THE CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY OF GLOBAL WARMING
Written by Christopher Monckton
Tuesday, 24 November 2009

This is what they did – these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen.

An unelected global government with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the “global warming” fraud – for fraud is what we now know it to be – tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures.

One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world’s four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact, there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 years – and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years.

Worse, these arrogant fraudsters – for fraudsters are what we now know them to be – have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings.

Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up.

Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset – the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.

Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers – for that is what they are – have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled.

And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists – they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be.

What have the mainstream news media said about the Climategate affair? Remarkably little . The few who have brought themselves to comment, through gritted teeth, have said that all of this is a storm in a teacup, and that their friends in the University of East Anglia and elsewhere in the climatological community are good people, really.

No, they’re not. They’re criminals. With Professor Fred Singer, who founded the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, I have reported them to the UK’s Information Commissioner, with a request that he investigate their offenses and, if thought fit, prosecute.

But I won’t be holding my breath: In the police state that Britain has now sadly become, with supine news media largely owned and controlled by the government, the establishment tends to look after its own.

At our expense, and at the expense of the truth.

Christopher Monckton is a British Lord (3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley), the former policy advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the inventor of The Eternity Puzzle.

Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Economy, Government, Healthcare, libertarianism, Media, Republicans, Socialism

The excerpt is from my new WND.Com column, “Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy”:

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is advancing on the country with an $848 billion health-care bill in hand, which he hopes to bring to the Senate floor before he and cohorts go on holiday.

Yet the swiftest arrow in the Republican punditocracy’s Obamacare quiver remains this:

If the government can’t pull off the ‘Cash For Clunkers’ scam, how will it handle health care?

Or this:

If government can’t manage the gallery of the grotesque – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – how will it run a sixth of the economy?

When all else fails to persuade, they galvanize the argument from Hitler. Taking their cues from Rush Limbaugh, it is not uncommon for Republican commentators to pair B. Hussein’s health care with Hitler’s hobby horses: smoking bans, abortions, euthanasia and eugenics.

Hitler and the mismanagement by government of Medicare and Medicaid (but not of the military) – this is the Republican commentariat’s repertoire of riffs.

Anything but First Principles, with which the GOP has an oil-and-water relationship.” …

The complete column is “Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy.”

**
THE SECOND EDITION of my first book, Broad Sides, One Woman’s Clash with a Corrupt Culture, is now back in print with bonus material and reviews.

Pre-order your copy, or copies, HERE in time for Christmas and Hanuka.

Broad Sides will be available shortly from Amazon.

What ObamaCare Will Mean for You— and What You Can Do About It Today

BAB's A List, Barack Obama, Communism, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Propaganda, Regulation, Socialism, Taxation, The State

By Robert James Bidinotto

Now that the House and Senate finally have completed work on their enormous health-care bills, we can see what the final provisions will be. Their differences are far less important than their similarities. Either bill will be a disaster for our economy—for our personal well-being, both financial and medical—for our precious rights and freedoms—and for the futures of our children and grandchildren.

Both bills are now coming up for crucial floor votes. Many in Congress are very nervous about what their votes will mean for their political careers.

This coming week is critical in the process of passing or defeating this legislation, once and for all. Now is the time that you can weigh in and make a real difference with your congressman and senators.

Here is what you need to know. Rather than overwhelm you with arcane details of each bill, it is more important that you understand in principle what ObamaCare will mean for you and your family.

ObamaCare will mean:

Outrageous Costs. At a time of exploding federal spending and budget deficits, both the House and Senate bills would add far more than a trillion dollars to the mind-boggling financial liabilities we taxpayers already face. Even the stated price tags of these bills are fraudulent products of statistical manipulations. One way they pretend to reduce costs is to remove a quarter-trillion dollars in doctor Medicare reimbursements from the bills, but instead add that gargantuan spending into separate legislation. Another way they pretend to balance the books (“deficit neutrality”) is to impose years of tax increases to fund these bills, before the outrageous spending actually kicks in. When it does, the “cost curve” in later decades will soar upward, and deficits will pile up by the billions. In addition, the bills would vastly expand the already-bankrupt Medicaid program; this would impose on state governments, which already face crushing budget crises, tens of billions of dollars in new taxing and spending commitments. You will ultimately pick up that tab, too.

Soaring Taxes. ObamaCare is not “insurance,” but a gigantic new entitlement scheme meant to “spread the wealth around.” To pay for this spending spree, both bills will drain our ailing private economy of hundreds of billions of dollars in higher taxes. These taxes will fall disproportionately upon the young and healthy: They will be forced to buy costly policies, thus expanding the “pool” of payers who will subsidize those older and sicker. Higher taxes also will fall heavily upon “the rich.” But these include the same entrepreneurs and employers whom we expect to create businesses and jobs to lift us out of the recession—and also the very doctors whom we expect to provide the medical services to the millions of new patients. The legislation also proposes hefty taxes on better private-insurance plans, which would penalize and undermine existing employer-employee benefits packages. These are just a few of the many new taxes and fees the bills would impose on us.

Perverse Incentives. ObamaCare would subsidize and greatly expand the demand for health care, while discouraging the supply of health care. It would create a gigantic new federal entitlement program that would add millions of new, taxpayer-subsidized claimants for health-insurance coverage. Then it would force insurers to accept all comers—regardless of any actuarial risk factors—and to provide them coverage that is far beyond what many people actually require. On the other side of the equation, ObamaCare will increase taxes on those private insurers (who now average only 2-3% profit margins), while expecting them somehow to pay all the new benefits. It will also increase taxes and fees on hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and the inventors of new medical devices—thus punishing those who create and provide medical treatments. Inevitably, this will deter many of them from developing or offering vital new medical treatments for patients, and it will even force some of them out of business.

Government rationing. When soaring demand for medical care overwhelms shrinking supply of providers, the only outcome would be government rationing of medical care—which has occurred in all socialized-medicine regimes.

Lost Individual Choice. All talk of adding “choice and competition” to the health-insurance market is a complete fraud. The bills do not free individuals to buy insurance across state lines—“choice and competition” that would actually reduce the cost of insurance. Instead, the bills propose a host of new mandates on private individuals, employers, and private insurers. Under penalty of fines or jail, individuals will be forced to buy costly coverage; employers will be forced to provide it and to comply with countless petty regulations; and doctors, hospitals, and private insurers will be forced to comply with a mountain of new government orders, requirements, restrictions, demands, and regulations. Compliance with all these ever-expanding governmental edicts will drive up the costs for physicians, hospitals, medicines, treatments, and private insurance premiums. Skyrocketing costs will force more and more people into the “public option.” Meanwhile, the bills would slash reimbursements to Medicare Advantage plans, killing a private-insurance option now exercised and enjoyed by one-fourth of all seniors.

Broken promises. In sum, the pending legislation will not cover all the uninsured; it will not add to freedom of choice for consumers; it will not be “deficit-neutral”; it will not “bend the cost curve downward”; it will not prevent illegal aliens from receiving taxpayer-subsidized medical care; it will not prevent government payments from funding controversial procedures such as abortions; and it will not allow people to “keep their current coverage.” All of these are the loud promises of ObamaCare’s advocates; all are demonstrable falsehoods.

Instead, ObamaCare will do only one thing, which was the overt objective of its proponents from the outset: put the federal government in charge of the delivery of all health care in America.

A single-payer, government-run program of socialized medicine is the stated objective of those who designed this legislative monstrosity—from President Obama, to the vast coalition of unions and advocacy groups, to the congressional leaders who drafted these bills. They explicitly intend to bankrupt the private-insurance marketplace, so that only the government option remains. Far from adding “choice and competition,” then, ObamaCare aims at imposing on us a government health-care monopoly.

But only if we allow it to happen. Because this power-grab still can be stopped.

Congress remains deeply divided over many provisions of this legislation. If it passes, it only will be by a handful of votes. That means we can defeat this monstrosity by changing just a few minds. Now—this week—is the time for you to raise your voice and put on the pressure.

To contact your congressman, by phone, mail, or email, go here:

http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml

and contact your two senators by going here:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Tell them the following, preferably putting the ideas into your own words:

The House and Senate bills will not create “universal, affordable insurance.” They instead would create a gargantuan, unaffordable new federal entitlement program. They would further explode our soaring deficits; hugely increase tax burdens on our ailing economy; create perverse incentives that would expand the demand for medical services, while discouraging and punishing the suppliers of medical care; and deprive Americans of true choice and competition, by imposing an endless stream of new “mandates” on individuals and employers. This legislation would destroy existing private health-insurance plans, and ultimately destroy the quality and affordability of health care in America.

This legislation is so flawed and destructive in principle that it cannot be “fixed” or amended; it must be scrapped in its entirety. True health-care reform is necessary, but it must be based on our free-market system—such as:

• allowing individuals to purchase insurance from companies across state lines, and letting them take that coverage with them when they change jobs;
• letting individuals buy high-deductible, low-cost catastrophic coverage, by freeing insurers from laws that force them to offer only costly, state-mandated provisions in their policies;
• enacting tort reform, to eliminate the costly practice of “defensive medicine.”

Such reforms would expand coverage to millions of the uninsured, while actually reducing costs to employers, policy-holders, and individual taxpayers.

I feel so strongly about this, that I cannot consider you for re-election unless you vote against this legislation, in any shape or form.

* * *

Whether or not you have ever contacted a congressman or senator, now is the time to do it. This week may be the last time we can influence the outcome on this issue.

Your health, your financial well-being, and your nation’s future hang in the balance.

Please act today—then forward this message to your family, friends, and associates. If you are on Facebook, an annotated version of this can be found and linked out:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&suggest&note_id=211096360608

Updated: 'Fannie Med' On The March

Democrats, Fascism, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, Uncategorized

Cato’s Michael F. Cannon on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s latest bright idea: “President Obama and his congressional allies want to create yet another government-run health insurance program (call it Fannie Med) to cover yet another segment of the American public (the non-elderly non-poor).

The whole idea that Fannie Med would be an ‘option’ is a ruse.

Like the three ‘public options’ we’ve already got – Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program – Fannie Med would drag down the quality of care for publicly and privately insured patients alike. Yet despite offering an inferior product, Fannie Med would still drive private insurers out of business because it would exploit implicit and explicit government subsidies. Pretty soon, Fannie Med will be the only game in town – just ask its architect, Jacob Hacker.

Now the question before us is, ‘Should we allow states to opt out of Fannie Med?’ It seems a good idea: if Fannie Med turns out to be a nightmare, states could avoid it.

But the state opt-out proposal is a ruse within a ruse.

Taxpayers in every state will have to subsidize Fannie Med, either implicitly or explicitly. What state official will say, ‘I don’t care if my constituents are subsidizing Fannie Med, I’m not going to let my constituents get their money back’? State officials are obsessed with maximizing their share of federal dollars. Voters will crucify officials who opt out. Fannie Med supporters know that. They’re counting on it.

A state opt-out provision does not make Fannie Med any more moderate. It is not a concession. It is merely the latest entreaty from the Spider to the Fly.” [End excerpt]

And this from Tom DiLorenzo:

“The only sensible approach to healthcare ‘reform’ would be massive privatization of America’s socialized hospitals, combined with deregulation of the medical professions to introduce more competition, and deregulation of the health-insurance industry. Free-market competition would produce medical ‘miracles’ the likes of which have never been seen, while dramatically lowering the cost of healthcare, just as it has done in every other industry where it is allowed to exist to any large degree.

This is not likely to happen in the United States, which at the moment seems hell-bent on descending into the abyss of socialism. Once some states begin seceding from the new American fascialistic state, however, there will be opportunities to restore healthcare freedom within them.”

Update (Oct. 28): To the erroneous comment below from “Moonbat”: The market NOW in its knee-capped state still delivering abundance and plenty. The consumer/citizen is obvious to what comes as a seemingly effortless result of the Invisible Hand. So good ideas do not win out; ditto liberty.

Milton Friedman spoke about mankind’s oblivion to the abundance of the market with great clarity.

“The aggregated wisdom of men acting freely in the market place accounts for the cornucopia Americans take for granted. This abundance does not preclude affordable health insurance. For six dollars a day, the baying Boobus can purchase pretty comprehensive coverage, no deductibles or screening for pre-existing conditions. The average immoral dolt, however, prefers to spend the meager sum on a six-pack and hope that others will be coerced into covering his care.”