Stealth Reform, by Grace Marie-Turner

Congressional leaders are arguing over whether they’ll get a comprehensive health reform bill passed this year or next. But, in fact, major health reform is speeding through Congress in two bills that are on the fast track to enactment — SCHIP and the economic stimulus bill.

Expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to children in families well into middle-income ranges passed the Senate yesterday and will likely be signed into law by President Obama early next week. In some states, children in families earning $100,000 or more would be eligible for taxpayer-supported insurance, as would adults already receiving it, clearly changing the mission of the program.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked, “Is the real intent of this legislation to replace the private health care system with a government-run health care system?” The response from Senate Democratic whip Richard Durbin (D-IL) was that he didn’t want to “trap people into private health insurance.” Heaven forbid!

Nine Senate Republicans broke ranks and voted with Democrats in favor of the SCHIP expansion; 40 Republicans crossed over and joined nearly all Democrats in passing the nearly-identical House version of the bill last week.

Nonetheless, the partisanship in the debate was evident: Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he was “disgusted” by the way Democratic leaders handled the debate. “It does not bode well for cooperative work in the coming months,” he told The Washington Post.

But the real game-changing health provisions are in the economic stimulus bill, where millions of Americans would be added to Medicaid and other taxpayer-financed health programs — without committee hearings or virtually any debate.

Here are some, but by no means all, of the health reform provisions in this gargantuan economic spending bill: (more…)

Ian Stodghill won 1st in the high school division and Henry Imperial won 1st in the middle school division of the Elbert County Republican Women’s Essay Contest. The winners earned cash prizes and got to read their essays to an assembly of about 100 parents, teachers and community leaders.

(click to enlarge)

Ian Stodghill’s Essay mp3 file
Henry Imperial’s Essay mp3 file

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High School Winners (from right to left)

• 1st, Ian Stodghill - Dear Trail Home School
• 2nd, Michael Weichselberger - Agate
• 3rd, Deanna Acosta - Legacy Academy

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Middle School Winners (from left to right)

• 1st, Henry Imperial - Legacy Academy
• 3rd, Kate Melman - Kiowa
• 2nd, Briana Vullo - Big Sandy

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I’m reading Samuel Huntington’s, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1996. It seemed like an appropriate subject to engage at this time of rapid reorientation of power structures within America.  On the strong possibility that any comment I might have on such a grand subject would involve inserting one or both feet in my mouth, I will take my time with this subject.  Meanwhile, check out Kissinger’s recent essay, The chance for a new world order.

“4- Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack.”

An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America (English translation begins on page 15.)

Barak Obama’s Inaugural Address

I liked the speech.  I liked that he brought in so many fundamental American values and images.  I like that he kept his goals, for the most part, above the level of entrenched partisan solutions.  It was a good start.

The biggest obstacle to Obama’s “post-partisan” vision will be the hard left.  Reaching out to Republicans will be easy because half of them are liberals already, and the other half will respond to reason.  The hard left, however, will be difficult to bring into a bipartisan coalition.  Convincing them of the value of American institutions such as the market, or the value of individual responsibility, entrepreneurship and investment, or the end of victimization and racial thinking, will be sea-change challenges that the hard left will fight tooth and nail.

Presidential elections consistently reveal the near 50/50 split in American political sentiment between the left and the right. In the RMN today, Mike Rosen described the audience split between conservative Fox News and the rest of the liberal networks at 2 million for Fox News and 25 million for the rest.  This split is 7% to 93%.

Let’s assume that politically slanted journalism is persuasive, if only because the thousands of journalists and journalism students desperately need it to be so.  And let’s assume that the average intelligence of people is uniform across the political spectrum.

It is fair to conclude that the 93% of the media that is liberal is as effective as the 7% of the media that is conservative.  In other words, conservative media is approximately 13 times more persuasive than liberal media.

• Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more truthful than liberal media?
• Could it be that conservative media is 13 times better written than liberal media?
• Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more logical than liberal media?
• Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more realistic than liberal media?
• Could it be that conservative media can predict the future 13 times more accurately than liberal media?
• Could it be that conservative media has 13 times less propaganda than liberal media?

Whatever the reason, and it’s probably a combination of things, when measured by effect, conservative media has 13 times more influence.

It would be interesting to look at comparative advertising rates between liberal and conservative media to see if they support this theory.  Since conservative media is, minute for minute, much more influential than liberal media, one would expect its’ advertising rates to be significantly higher.

President Bush’s remarks about American moral authority

Remarks from President Bush’s last press conference, 1/12/09, responding to a question from a Washington Post reporter.

This excerpt hardly sounds like the apologia that the press characterized this press conference. The press, apparently still suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome will simply not permit positive views of Bush to go unchallenged. At some point in the next 4 years, people are going to start expecting the left to do something other than elevate themselves on the perceptions of others failures that they like to talk about. I’m sure everyone hopes they get it right, but their stampede toward socialism on the brink of a hyperinflation is a poor start.

West Elbert County Sun, 1/8/09

• “Extensive sampling at the ranges and elsewhere on the property have shown a level of contamination that is much less than we anticipated, and except for the bullet impact backstops, much less than we have ever seen at shooting ranges.”
• “None of the lab-confirmed samples have triggered the level of concern we established with the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment, 1100 ppm lead in soil, nor even the department’s default level of 400 ppm. Therefore 40+ years of shooting by the Boy Scouts has not generated a significant hazardous condition, as one might otherwise expect.”
• “Jeffrie Hermann, executive director of the BSA Denver Area council, noted that the BSA has incurred more than $600,000 in expenses to date on this special use permit application[.] ” Note: This does not include costs for shooting range relocations and the indefinite future costs of regulatory compliance.

Case SU-08-0032, Special Use Review Permit, Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch Shooting Facility

Complainants have succeeded in diverting hundreds of thousands of present and future charitable dollars that could have benefited the Scouts, into county, state and federal regulatory industries, and accomplished nothing.

If the scouts ever need shooters to come out and fire off a few rounds in the direction of the complainants when the winds are just right for maximum sound effect, I’m available. 

“There cannot be any doubt that this bureaucratic system is essentially antiliberal, undemocratic, and un-American, that it is contrary to the spirit and to the letter of the Constitution, and that it is a replica of the totalitarian methods of Stalin and Hitler. It is imbued with a fanatical hostility to free enterprise and private property. It paralyzes the conduct of business and lowers the productivity of labor. By heedless spending it squanders the nation’s wealth. It is inefficient and wasteful. Although it styles what it does as planning, it has no definite plans and aims. It lacks unity and uniformity; the various bureaus and agencies work at cross-purposes. The outcome is a disintegration of the whole social apparatus of production and distribution. Poverty and distress are bound to follow.”

“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau, what an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for!

Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords.”

Bureaucracy, Von Mises.