The Tragedy of ObamaCare

Forget the politics. What matters to me, and should matter to everyone, is that ObamaCare has always been a shit-sandwich and it remains so today.  The only two things we learned from today's Supreme Court ruling, we already knew: ObamaCare was deceptively sold, and anyone looking for salvation from the Supreme Court is looking in the wrong place.

The debate all along on healthcare was flawed. The debate focused on the visible: your costs, your choices, your doctor, your insurance, and the constitutionality of the mandate. That’s understandable. Voters relate to what they can see. But what makes modern healthcare so dynamic is not the visible, and that is what will atrophy under a federal top-down system.

Virtually all the advances in healthcare we have come to take for granted: X-Rays, MRIs, arthroscopic surgery, pharmaceuticals, surgical devices, implanted defibrillators, and all the high-tech gadgets and substances one sees in a hospital, are produced by private industry. The more involved the federal government gets, the harder it becomes to make and improve these things. We won’t notice the slowing pace of advances right away. It will happen slowly and inexorably. Years from now, we won’t even realize we are dying from routine diseases which a private health system could have cured.

None of this was necessary. Every problem we have with health insurance today is already caused by government: It comes through your employer because of tax laws that allow deductibility only for employers. You can’t buy insurance across state lines due to a law called McCarran Ferguson. Medicare rate controls guarantee high inflation for non-Medicare patients. There are no limits on malpractice awards. State monopolies force residents into high-cost plans. You can’t even be charged with theft if you drive up to a hospital in a Ferrari, demand to be treated, and then refuse to pay!

ObamaCare was never about fixing those problems. ObamaCare has always been about control and power for the Democrat Party. Democrats know that once the government controls your healthcare, they control you.

This has been and still is the tragedy of ObamaCare.

Why Exercise?

We keep hearing about the shrinking workforce, or what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls, “The Labor Force Participation Rate”.  Since Barack Obama was elected, the size of the workforce, that is the number of Americans working or seeking work, has dropped precipitously from 66% to 63.6% (source: BLS*).  This is the first time since such measurements were made (1948) that the rate has gone down like that.  Why?

Here’s a thought experiment:  Suppose a law was passed that guaranteed everyone an average lifespan, but no more.  Medical professionals would annually predict the overall average life expectancy, and that would be it.  The sick would have their lives extended up to that average age by every means available.  Everyone, sick or healthy, would be terminated when they hit the average life expectancy age.   In other words, you would would be guaranteed the exact same lifespan as your drug addicted, cigarette smoking neighbor, regardless of your health condition. 

What do you suppose would happen to the fitness craze?  Would Americans spend hours running, weight lifting, cycling, and eating healthy foods knowing the longest they could possibly live would be…average?  What would be the marginal advantage of staying healthy?  What would happen to cheesecake consumption rates for those over, say, 60?  In other words, what would happen to the “Fitness Force Participation Rate”? 

  

Also, what would happen to the average lifespan over time, would it go up or down?

* Bureau of Labor Statistics - Labor Force Participation

Brett Kimberlin - A Limerick Poem

In honor of "Blog about Brett Kimberlin Day"

Here's a brief summary:  Brett Kimberlin is a convicted violent criminal, most likely a murderer, and now a free man who has become a violent and dangerous leftist activist who gets funding from leftist sugar-daddies like George Soros and Barbara Streisand.  His latest terrorism is focused on bloggers bent on exposing his past, his current activities,  and his leftist ties.  He is a menace to society, a menace to the 1st amendment, and must be stopped.

Some links:
The original expose' by LC (important)
Who is Brett Kimberlin? (a short video)
More Here... (good)
What is Brett Kimberlin up to now? (scary)

The First Composite President

Whatever You Want Him To Be...
Wanna close Guantanamo?  He does too.
Wanna keep Guantanamo open?  Yup, him too.
Wanna kill terrorists?  He does too.
Wanna try terrorists like citizens? Yup, him too.
Do you hate rich people?  He does too.
Are you rich? Yup, him too.
Are you black?  He is too.
Are you white? Yup, him too.
Do you love your country?  He does too.
Do you want to fundamentally transform your country?  Yup, him too.
Etc. etc. etc.

Shit Romney Won’t Say – Part I

Politicians rarely speak their mind, or at least their whole mind.  Their job, which is to be liked by as many people as possible, is antithetical to speaking in absolutes.  Here is a quote from the man many regard as our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln:

 

"I think slavery is wrong, morally, and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio" (September 17, 1859), p. 440.

“I should not object if it should gradually terminate…”  Huh?  Why not: “If elected, I will emancipate all slaves.”?  Note that the above quote was about a year before the election of 1860.  If you compare Lincoln’s rhetoric on either side of the campaign with his statements right before the election, there is a marked difference in tone.  Abe Lincoln, our greatest President, adopted a more moderate tone during his campaign.   Apparently, Lincoln had an Etch-A-Sketch.

With that in mind, here are some things Mitt Romney won’t say during this campaign.  All I know is, I find these things to be axiomatic, and I can say them even if Mitt won’t:    

·   Barack Obama did not inherit this mess.  In fact, he is largely responsible for the Financial Crisis of 2008!  No, he didn’t do it singlehandedly;  he had lots of help.  But, I defy you to find a single human being who was present at more stages of this economic cluster-fuck than Barack Obama.  From his college days, to his Community Organizer days, to his ACORN days, to his Non-Profit days, to his State Senate days, to his U.S. Senate days, all the way to his Presidency, he has been an effective proponent of the very policies and philosophies which crashed the financial system in 2008 and have kept us from escaping the malaise.  To wit:  Marxist student?  Check.  ACORN activist against bank lending standards?  Check.  Community Reinvestment Act?  Check.  Supported Subprime Mortgages for anyone?  Check.  Fannie and Freddie’s biggest money recipient by rate?  Check.  TARP?  Check.  Continued support for the re-distribution of credit?  Check.  Continued war on bank lending standards?  Check.  Continued support for Fannie and Freddie? Check.  Supported Fed Chairman Bernanke all along?  Check.  I could go on for pages.      

·   Barack Obama had nothing to do with getting Osama bin Laden.  In fact, the bin Laden raid happened IN SPITE OF Barack Obama!   As a candidate for Senate, a U.S. Senator, and then President,  Barack Obama opposed every single policy which led to the eventual location and termination of Osama bin Laden.  To wit:  Opposed interrogating terrorists?  Check.  Opposed imprisoning terrorists?  Check.  Opposed treating terrorists as military combatants?  Check.  Opposed wiretapping terrorists?  Check.  Opposed Guantanamo?  Check.  Opposed gathering any intelligence from terrorists?  Check.  Opposed waterboarding KSM?  Check.  My Labradoodle, who opposed none of those policies, did more to get Osama bin Laden than Barack Obama.   

·   Barack Obama is not a “nice guy”.  In fact, Barack Obama is an amoral person!  Morality is the difference between Economic Liberals and Economic Conservatives.   To wit:  Marx = Redistribution of Wealth is good for The Lower Classes.  Keynes = Redistribution of Wealth is good for Stimulating the Economy.  Progressives of both Parties = Redistribution of Wealth is good Politics.   All the above definitions focus on the benefit to the receiving class and none address the moral implications.  Redistribution of Wealth is immoral by definition because it amounts to THEFT.   Barack Obama, who may embody one or all the above ideologies, is an exemplary example of this amorality.   He cannot impose an immoral economic system and be “nice” at the same time. 

My real complaint is, not only will Mitt Romney not say this shit, he says the exact opposite.  In all three cases, Mitt Romney could avoid these topics, but instead he is on record saying:  “Obama did not cause the financial mess.”, “Obama deserves praise for getting bin Laden.”, and “Obama is a nice guy.”  It would be like Linclon saying: “Personally, I think slave owners are nice people.  Really, they inherited a bad system, and they deserve praise for failing to completely stop the abolitionist movement.”

Preposterous.   Still to come - Part II.       

Do High Taxes Slow Growth?

(This is my response to a piece which appeared in the Wall Street Journal April, 24th on the Opinion page.  The original can be found here.)       

Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez make a weak case in “High Tax Rates Won’t Slow Growth” (April 24).  Unfortunately, economic statistics are not like baseball statistics; they cannot be compared over long periods of time without significant adjustment.  In baseball, statistics are easily compared going back decades since the variables have mostly remained constant.  Not so with pre-tax income, overall growth rates, or any other economic statistics which have undergone infinite variable changes and need to be put in the proper historical context.  

For example, the authors begin by saying; “The share of pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% of earners in the U.S. has more than doubled to about 20% in 2010 from less than 10% in the 1970s.”  What the authors omit is that back in 1970 there were very few S Corporations and today there are about 5 million.  S Corp. income is reported on individual tax returns thus inflating the reported incomes of S Corp. shareholders.  Diamond and Saez do not indicate that they have corrected for this, and if not, their opening premise is flawed.

   

A similar flaw taints their main point, which is that; “…growth…averaged 1.68% between 1980 and 2010 when top tax rates were relatively low, while growth averaged 2.23% between 1950 and 1980 when top tax rates were at or above 70%.”  As I recently heard Charles Krauthammer point out, Europe and Japan were still smoldering ruins in 1950!  Also, India and China were not playing on the world stage, the U.S. had modest regulations, and Americans were known for their work ethic.   

I would prefer economists find a more unified measurement which would encompass all taxes, regulations, laws, and trade issues affecting economic activity.  Hard as that might be to do, we could then compare 1950 with 2012 just as we do in baseball.

The G.E. Rule is still Right

 I've written before about how G.E. is Right in not paying taxes:

You may have seen that GE, despite having a massively profitable year, will pay zero federal income taxes for 2010.  That’s right, less than you!  And this is the second year in a row.  I have no love for GE and its hearty embrace of crony capitalism, but they are doing the right thing by not paying any taxes. How can I say this? Because I believe no business entity should pay taxes, and that includes behemoth GE.

Let me ask you a question: How many people do you think would die of cancer each year if all cancer cells could be somehow trained to start growing on the tip of your nose? Every morning the first thing you would do is look in the mirror and see if you had any cancer. If you saw something, you would immediately have it removed. That would be the end of cancer, right? 

The price of runaway government today is like cancer in that it hides undetected until the symptoms begin. By then, it’s often too late. If every citizen woke up every morning and could see the true cost of runaway government on the tips of their noses, they would never allow it to metastasize, and that would be its ultimate demise.

Business taxes are a good example of this disease. The fact is, businesses don’t actually pay taxes. Citizens do. Businesses merely collect taxes and pass the cost along to the next entity in the supply chain until an ultimate “end-user” buys the product and pays the cumulative tax. Economically literate politicians, (an oxymoron) know this full well, but will never end stealth taxes unless forced to because they are a perfect way to ensure that the cancer they caused stays undetected. 

Today, Jeff Immelt addressed this issue, but claimed the reports were wrong, and asserted G.E. did pay taxes.  That's a shame.  Regardless of the facts, I'd have preferred he embrace my G.E. Rule, which states that no business should pay more taxes than G.E., which allegedly pays zero.  "The G.E. Rule" would solve "The Buffett Rule" along with a plethora of other economic issues:

• Unemployment would plummet

• Growth would flourish

• Capital would flood into the US

• Your pay would go up

• Your company would be able to compete with the Big Boys who currently get special treatment

• It would end the deduction for employer health insurance freeing you to make your own health choices  

• You could leave your job and your health insurance would go with you 

• Obama’s  Buffett Rule could be satisfied as it would end double taxation on dividends and  capital gains which could then be taxed at the same rates as income 

• Overseas profits could be repatriated instantly

• It would end taxation without representation for businesses 

• It would deal a serious blow to Stealth Taxes (more taxes would be transparent to voters once and for all)

• Most corporate lobbyists would be out of a job

• Crony capitalism would be seriously curtailed

• Prices on all goods and services would plummet 

• Stock bubbles, like the Tech Bubble of the 90s, would not happen as stocks would be rationally valued and taxed once at the individual level.   

• Companies, even Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, would pay dividends!

Of course your taxes would go up, but that would alert you to the TRUE size of government and how long would it be before you did something about that?

Jeff Immelt should be defending G.E.'s tax avoidance instead of denying it.  

Oil Speculation Explained

Oil Speculation Explained via Colombian Hookers

This Piece is not about Race or Racism

I thought about writing a piece about race and racism, but decided against it.  It’s just too hot.

If I had, I’d have written about the race prism through which Blacks and Whites can see the same event, like OJ Simpson and the Trayvon Martin shooting, in such different ways.

I thought I’d start by talking about my experience during the OJ Simpson trial:  Back then, I ran a company of about 100 employees split evenly between Blacks and Whites.  On the day of the OJ verdict, we put televisions in the lunchroom so that everyone could watch it live.  When the not-guilty verdict was read, the Blacks unanimously cheered and celebrated, while the Whites were unanimously depressed.  Then we all went back to work as if nothing had happened.  But, it forever changed my perspective on the racial divide. 

 

I thought about writing about that continuing dichotomy and the Trayvon Martin case.  How could the races see the same circumstances and come up with such disparate and unanimous conclusions?  (The Trayvon Martin case is mostly conjecture at this point, but nothing will change once the facts come out.  Trust me.)

If I had written about race, I’d have talked about how “culture” is the sum total of all the experiences of a group going back in time.  For instance, in the case of Blacks and Whites, I would have obviously pointed to slavery as the main cultural  point of departure in America. 

With that in mind, here’re some relevant facts from 1860, just prior to the Civil War:

• Virtually all Blacks in 1860 were either slaves, recently freed, or had slavery in their immediate ancestry.
• According to the US census, only 2% of Whites owned slaves nationwide in 1860.

It’s safe to say 150 years later, after multiple waves of immigration, and the civil rights gains of the 1960s, the cultures have not merged:

• Black culture, attitudes, and world-view in America are still 99% affected by a direct lineage to slavery.
• White culture, attitudes, and world-view in America are 99% detached from any direct lineage to slavery.

In other words, 99% of Blacks in America are the cultural descendents of slaves, and 99% of Whites are the cultural descendents of people who never owned slaves!   That does not put Blacks and Whites at opposite ends.  That puts them 200% apart; they occupy two different planes!

So what about discrimination, something Blacks have always dealt with in America? 

Unfortunately, discrimination is a human constant and not limited to White or Black Americans:

• Within African cultures, where virtually everyone is of shared ancestry, there is widespread discrimination and a caste structure.  
• In China, where virtually everyone is of shared ancestry, there is widespread discrimination and a caste structure.   
• In India, where virtually everyone is of shared ancestry, there is widespread discrimination and a caste structure.  
• I could go on about every single culture throughout history.

In other words, discrimination is a human constant and cannot be explained as racism.  That doesn’t make it any less real, but it does suggest that blaming it on race is intellectually lazy.

  

Why, I would have asked, had I written about this, did Barack Obama get a higher percent of the vote than recent White Democrats Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry?  Perhaps discrimination here is based on something other than race, just as it is around the world?  Perhaps we are similar to other cultures, only exceptional perhaps in that discrimination here can be overcome by ability and achievement?

      

I thought I’d write about all this, but then I decided not to.  This message is probably just too hopeful and too controversial, all at the same time.      

It's Likability Stupid!

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  This nugget of psychology, often attributed to Abraham Maslow, is particularly relevant to today's politics.

Two cases in particular:  

On one side is all the conservative hand-wringing over Mitt Romney's apparent victory in the GOP primary.  Conservative analysts are almost unanimous in their disdain for Mitt Romney claiming he is not a "real conservative" and will certainly lose a general election like other "moderates" John McCain, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. 

In the telling of these analysts, Ronald Reagan's victories were all about ideology and contrast.  According to them, the American people got all analytical, just like them, and carefully weighed the policies of the candidates.  In the end, after all the analysis, they were won over by the sensible, logical conservative policies of Ronald Reagan.  Bunk.  

Reagan got elected because the American people liked him.  If ideology and contrast were the winning formula, Barry Goldwater would have been President too!  

On the other side, Barack Obama is making a similar error.  He got elected in 2008 because the American people liked him, not because they liked divisive rhetoric and class warfare.  Yet, with a dismal record on the economy, a long line of broken promises, low polls on ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, and foreign policy, his campaign is entirely based on three negative emotions: hate, envy and guilt. 

According to Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", which is Obama's tactical bible: 

If the organizer begins with an affirmation of love for people, he promptly turns everyone off. If, on the other hand, he begins with a denunciation of exploiting employers, slum landlords, police shakedowns, gouging merchants, he is inside their experience and they accept him. 

Electoral politics is different from Community Organizing, and Obama may be squandering the one thing he had going for him, likability.  

The 2012 race will ultimately come down to a contest between two men who will fight it out, not on some ideological battlefield contesting the brains of voters, but rather the way it's always been done: over hearts.  

It's likability stupid!