The Ryan healthcare cost solution

The Cato Institute has produced a video here that explains the healthcare voucher reform proposed by Paul Ryan.  The essences of this proposal is to get away from the third party payer system we now have and introduce market forces into the system.  The video speaks to this subject in a clear and convincing manner.  The debate over this issue represents the clearest and biggest differences between the Republican and Democrat,  conservative and liberal positions on the organization of our affairs going forward.  Should the dems and libs prevail in this case, we will be taking a major step toward true socialized medicine for our country, i.e., the Canadian single payer, government monopsony model.  That model does control costs by government fiat but it also introduces delays and questionable quality of provider care.  Many "experts" seem to be in favor of this model.  We're about t0o see how many consumers of healthcare services are in favor.

O'Reilly and Stewart

Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart represent two large markets for infotainment or, put another way, "news" with an entertainment component.  O'Reilly caters to the center-right of the political infotainment market and Stewart to the center-left.  A recent segment on the O'Reilly program in which he interviews and spars with Stewart puts on full display the weakness in this TV programming format and why it's hard to get any really useful educational information from this medium.  Mostly the interview is about showing the audience how clever and quick these two TV personalities are.  It does nothing to shed light on the current problems and issues of consequence we now face in the country.  This is what could be described as a "gotcha" TV interview with quick witted individuals trying to outscore each other for audience approval.  Want to be entertained?  Watch this programming.  Want real information of substance on a subject?  There's still no substitute for finding credible sources, comparing viewpoints and reaching conclusions on ones own.  Fortunately the emergence of the internet makes this job much easier.

Acorn and Obama -- one more time

Stanley Kurtz, a careful and thorough reporter/writer, has tracked Acorn back to its sources and through all its machinations during the Clinton Administration and written numerous articles on what he has discovered in the past.  What occurred over the years is shocking, alarming and discouraging.  Most of what Acorn does and has been doing tracks back to the community organizer of all community organizers, Saul Alinsky.  Alinsky was the senior thesis subject of none other than Hillary Clinton, who greatly admired his work and thoughts.  Another disciple of Alinsky's is Barack Obama, whose close ties to Acorn date to the days before he attended Harvard Law school.  Kurtz has written two books on this subject and along with a few others like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, really understands what happened to cause the financial meltdown that cost millions of people billions of dollars in home, 401k, IRA, and stock values.  This mother of all bubbles and devastating aftermath needs to be understood by all who are interested in righting the ship and putting it back on a safe course.  To date, the word is hardly out at all.  This is largely because the liberals in Congress and in the media were complicit in causing the collapse and are simply not interested in getting at the bottom of what actually happened.  The whole thing is a national disgrace and unless the corruption that caused it is exposed, it will happen again and it's hard to imagine how this country could survive two such catastrophes back to back.  Kurtz's articlein the NYPost (naturally no liberal publications would give this coverage the light of day) is a reasonably good summary of events.

Yale does the right thing

Today is a good day for Yale and for the country.  The school has reversed its policy and is now actively recruiting Naval and Airforce ROTC programs for undergraduates.  For some years I have withheld contributions to Yale for its lack of support for our Armed Forces.  While I was not a participant in the NROTC program at Yale as an undergraduate, several of my friends were.  Like many others, I believe that a strong defense is essential to protecting and preserving our Republic and participation by leading schools in developing this capability is needed and important.  For far too long many schools have turned away from supporting ROTC programs on the grounds of the government policy of DADT.  But their brief is with the Congress which passed the DADT law and not the military which has simply been abiding by the law.  I suppose the schools will claim that now that DADT is being overturned they are justified in returning these programs to the curriculum.  I personally believe the real reason schools rejected the programs was an anti military bias extant since the Vietnam War.  Whatever the case I have renewed my pledge and sent in my contribution in today's mail.

Newt Gingrich is toast

Gingrich's faux pas of dismissing Paul Ryan's healthcare reform plan has backfired and will cost him the opportunity of pursuing his presidential aspirations.  In some ways this is too bad because Gingrich does have many ideas, some good, some not so good, that deserve a hearing in the campaign, and he is a very good presenter and debater.  However here's another case of a career politician who has become enamored with the stage itself. In the end it appears Gingrich really wants to exercise power more than anything else and his attempt to undermine Ryan growing strength in the Republican Party by characterizing his budget plan as "radical" shows us this this reality.  What follows is a quote from a commenter to Jonah Goldberg's reprise of Gingrich's faux pas that seems to reflect the new reality expressed in the Tea Party movement.  The author of this comment, BTW,  appropriately signs in as Dagny Taggart:

"I used to be a huge Newt fan - years ago. But something has happened that has changed everything.

Two years ago, Americans recoiled in horror as extremely partisan Democrat majorities in the House and Senate rammed through multiple smelly, unwanted and unneeded bills that threw trillions down a rat-hole and imposed incredibly obnoxious laws on citizens and our free markets. And they did it while flipping the figurative bird to any Americans who questioned them. Never in the history of America has one party of Congress treated this country with such utter contempt.

Republicans think differently now. They will no longer tolerate trianguating RINOS "reaching across the aisle" to make bad policy with these people.

I am not sure if Newt understands this."

Thomas Sowell on taxing the rich

Facts and the truth have never deterred politicians, especially democrats (socialists) from wanting to raise taxes on the rich.  Call it envy, call it expediency, call it demagoguery, call it what stupidity, and you'd be right on all fronts.  But never mind the real world where when taxes are raised beyond a certain point the wealthy seek ways to "shelter" income often to the point where they remove assets entirely from taxing authorities who want to confiscate their wealth.  This fact has been in play for decades and generations as Thomas Sowell points out here in his usual very clear and very straightforward manner.  But as long as envy is one of the seven deadly sins we will have Obamas trying their best to take from the rich and give to the voters who support them.  At this point in time there are now about equal numbers of citizens who pay any income taxes and those who pay none.  So right of the bat there's the possibility of 50% of the voting population to demagogue.  No wonder the career politicians like this approach.

California and the recession

Victor Davis Hanson is a practical, intellectual farmer, much like say Thomas Jefferson without the same political office holding aspirations. What's interesting about Hanson is his understanding of the macro economics of the micro economic environment in which he finds himself in Central California.  His comments on the "wealth" of the unemployed, their access to various government social safety net programs and not least their ability to operate in a vast cash economy in which they pay no taxes on part time work (yet remain the beneficiaries of these government programs) and finally their access to credit lines and vouchers for housing and food stamps.  Hanson contrasts the "affluence" of the unemployed poor with the working poor of his grandparents 1930's generation.  He also talks about the reasons why industry is not moving into this area to take advantage of this idle and presumably cheap source of labor singling  out the state taxes and regulatory environment as principal culprits.  All in all it's a dangerous brew of unemployment and government largesse that cannot continue since we now know the socialist politicians have finally run out of other peoples's money and the prospects for jobs remain weak. Hanson thinks we are living in "dangerous times" quite possibly leading to major social upheaval on the order of magnitude that brought on the horror of the Soviet Union.  Let's hope this draconian perspective is overstated and yet until the time when we return to a system that values work over handouts and freebies to big swaths of the population, he just may be right.  After all, if the government no longer has the ability to buy a lot of people's comfy lifestyle, those people are liable to get very angry sooner or later.  Hanson's article is here.