Rabid Liberal Rants

Just read an article in The Week which describes the universal healthcare program in Massachusetts which sounds strongly similar to the program the Feds want to pass now. One of the main points of the article is that Massachusetts, when originally drafting and passing the plan, never took into account the rising costs of healthcare. Thus, when the recession hit, more people were out of work, more people applied for the state subsidies for insurance, and tapped out the insurance fund. The rising healthcare costs fueled a $9 Billion gap, which took away money from education, public safety, and other services.

Similarly, the government plan fails to address the rising costs of healthcare. No way are they going to discuss putting caps or limits on payouts if they want the healthcare industry on board with the plan.

Under Sen. Ron Wyden’s the proposed Senate Bill, people who refuse to buy health insurance will be fined over $1000/year.

Called “shared responsibility payments,” the fines would be set at least half the cost of basic medical coverage, according to the legislation.

I’m sorry, I didn’t vote Democratic so they can fine me for not choosing health insurance. As I have said before, I shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for folks who choose to eat fast food three times a day. The cost for these programs will only go up. And they continue to take more money out of my paycheck to pay for these programs. Yet my pay isn’t going up that fast, which means I’m making less.

According to research done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, National Public Radio, and the Harvard School of Health, health insurance costs individuals an average of $4,800 annually. The cost for families to get insurance is even higher, at around $12,000 annually. These kinds of costs would push many people over the edge financially. How does Sen. Wyden propose that we pay for more people who will be unable to afford food, housing and education if they have to pay for health insurance? Effective health-care reform would be better accomplished by other means. Sen. Wyden’s own proposals to switch America from employer-based to individual health-insurance markets, for example, would do a great amount of good by encouraging competition and innovation without making life harder for the people having the most difficult time getting insurance.

Why not have individual health insurance markets? I can choose my car insurance, life insurance, cell phone provider, internet provider, cable tv provider, etc? Competition would create lower prices.

In Europe, where health care is free and state run, many experts say we may be going down a slippery slope.

Europeans have some of the world’s best hospitals and have made great strides in fighting problems like obesity and heart disease. But the system is far from perfect.

“What we can be proud of in Europe is the ground rules, that everyone has the right to health care,” said Jose Martin-Moreno, a health expert at the University of Valencia in Spain. “But the implementation has been difficult and one size does not fit all.”

Critics say the policies are often driven more by politics than science. Last week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised that patients unable to see cancer experts within two weeks would get cash to pay for private care. Brown had previously argued against paying for private providers and some say the reversal may be a gimmick to boost his sagging popularity.

A World Health Organization survey in 2000 found that France had the world’s best health system. But that has come at a high price; health budgets have been in the red since 1988.

“I would warn Americans that once the government gets its nose into health care, it’s hard to stop the dangerous effects later,” said Valentin Petkantchin, of the Institut Economique Molinari in France. He said many private providers have been pushed out, forcing a dependence on an overstretched public system.

“The minute you make health insurance mandatory, people start overusing it,” said Dr. Alphonse Crespo, an orthopedic surgeon and research director at Switzerland’s Institut Constant de Rebecque. “If I have a cold, I might go see a doctor because I am already paying a health insurance premium.”

And I thought “Change” was coming. Sounds like it’s the same ‘ol situation. Obama and pals are “outraged” at the bonuses AIG execs received while at the same time they’ve taken the company to the crapper. However, Senator Dodd, as well as Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner knew about the bonus payouts, new they were going out, and even approved of it.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, who originally proposed the executive compensation provision, said he did not include the exemption clause, which said new rules “shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009.” In an interview with CNN, Dodd denied inserting that exemption at the 11th hour, and insisted he doesn’t know how it got there. “When I wrote the language there was no such language like that,” Dodd told CNN Tuesday. Multiple Senate Democratic leadership sources also deny knowing how the exemption got into the bill. The mystery isn’t just how what was effectively a protection for AIG was put into the stimulus bill — it’s also how a provision intended to prevent AIG from giving executive bonuses, was taken out. The Senate passed a bipartisan amendment proposed by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R- Maine, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, that would have taxed bonuses on any company getting federal bailout dollars, if the company didn’t pay back the bonus money to the government. But the idea was stripped from the stimulus bill during hurried, closed-door negotiations with the White House and House of Representatives.

And yet now they’re “Outraged”. Senator Grassley even suggested that the AIG execs to commit suicide.

Look, AIG shouldn’t have given out bonuses after claiming that they needed a bailout. But at the same time, we have a bunch of charlatans in Washington who are feigning outrage just because the American people who elected these jokers are outraged. They are reactive instead of being proactive.

A nice article in OregonLive.com, which echoes the sentiment of many, regarding the Mortgage Bailout. Basically asking the simple question “what about all the people who bought houses, have been budgeting, cutting their expenses, and paying their mortgage ON TIME??? What about the people who know how to live within their means?

But back to Mr. Obama and his plan to bail people out of mortgages that many had no business taking on in the first place: He’s making a lot of us who bought homes we could afford — rather than homes that put us on the financial edge — look like complete chumps, has-beens and idiots.

His plan would take billions of taxpayer dollars and give them to banks and investors so they could lower borrowers’ interest rates and make other changes to the terms of their home loans. This is exactly the sort of thing that I worried about when Obama talked to us about being our “brother’s keeper” in his convention acceptance speech. His plan will teach people to be even more irresponsible with money; to acquire more and more and more because the threat of failure is getting lower and lower.

Complete CHUMPS!

An 2004 article by Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard, after the Republican victories in the House, Senate, and with Bush being reelected, exclaiming how the Republican majority was “expected to last for years, maybe decades”.

Listen to Walter Dean Burnham, professor emeritus at University of Texas at Austin, who is the nation’s leading theorist of realignment, the shift of political power from one party to another. The 2004 election, he says, “consolidates it all”–that is, it solidifies the trend that has favored Republicans over the past decade. To Burnham, it means there’s “a stable pattern” of Republican rule. “If Republicans keep playing the religious card along with the terrorism card, this could last a long time,” he says.

Democrats will have enormous difficulty overcoming “the huge weight of Republican strength,” he says.

Rove, leery of claiming too much for Republicans, said on Meet the Press on November 7 that “there are no permanent majorities in American politics.”

For Republicans to slip into minority status again, [Burnham] says, it would take a monumental party split like that in 1912 or “a colossal increase in the pain level” of Americans as happened with the Great Depression. Neither is likely.

The point of the article, IMHO, is that nothing is permanent and anything can change in an instant. Even for Democrats. So unless Obama can truely usher in an era of bipartisanship, we’re doomed to repeat history.

Paul Krugman opines on the ugly turn occurring in the McCain/Palin rallies:

The crisis isn’t the only scary thing going on. Something very ugly is taking shape on the political scene: as McCain’s chances fade, the crowds at his rallies are, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage. It’s not just a mob phenomenon — it’s visible in the right-wing media, and to some extent in the speeches of McCain and Palin.

And from HuffPost:

McCain is appealing to the worst of people’s fears and prejudices in order to advance himself electorally.

And rightly so. From ABC News:

Some Chicago economists are leading an opposition movement to get lawmakers to consider other options.

Two economists lead the opposition movement, one from the University of Chicago, the other from Northwestern University. And Thursday their concerns were brought into the White House meeting.

Senator Richard Shelby went to the White House armed with a letter. The letter is signed by 200 economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, and warns Congress not to back the bailout.

Why:

Its ambiguity: Very short on specifics and oversight, they say.

Its fairness: Because taxpayer’s will be subsidizing the risk investors “chose” to take.

And it’s long-term effects: The economists say paying for it will take a generation

“Ben Bernanke likes to say there are no atheists in fox holes, well General Bernanke just called in from the fox hole and said we want a nuclear strike. It’s that radical and we’re going ‘is it really that bad?’” said John Cochrane, finance professor, University of Chicago

The Democrats should be right along with this as well. I understand something must be done to keep credit flowing within the banking system. But people should also be held accountable for their mistakes. Why should we as taxpayers, who pay their mortgages, bills, and taxes on time be forced to bail out folks who gambled?

It’s a known fact: As mayor of Wasilla, an Alaskan town, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin thought it was prudent to have rape victims pay for their own rape kits and exams. From the NYTimes OpEd Page:

When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the small town began billing sexual-assault victims for the cost of rape kits and forensic exams.

The insult to rape victims is obvious. So is the sexism inherent in singling them out to foot the bill for investigating their own case. And the main result of billing rape victims is to protect their attackers by discouraging women from reporting sexual assaults.

This on top of some startling stats from staralaska.org:

• Alaska is the # 1 state in the country for Rape and has been for 23 out of the last 30 years (FBI’s Uniform Crime Report)
• Alaska’s reported rate of rape per capita is 2.6 times the national average (FBI’s Uniform Crime Report)
• Anchorage has the ninth highest sexual assault rate of any city in the United States, and Fairbanks is ranked first (FBI’s Uniform Crime Report)
• Fairbanks’ rape rate is 4.7 times the national average (FBI’s Uniform Crime Report)

We really need to understand her reasoning behind this and call her on it. She’s kept quiet about it far too long.

From the DailyKos, regarding Palin’s interview with Katie Couric:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? … Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions.

As Kos points out, Palin says that “Reducing taxes has to be accompanied by tax reductions.”

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Oh boy, let the mudracking begin. From the National Enquirer [hey, they were on the money with the John Edwards affair], reports that Sarah Palin had an affair with Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s business partner and former city council member from nearby town.

No less than three members of the man’s family including one by sworn affidavit have claimed that Sarah Palin engaged in an extramarital affair with hus­band Todd’s former business partner, Brad Hanson.

And the breakdown from Gawker.