Two Reporters Injured Trying To Kiss President Obama’s Behind

Seen on the wire:

August 17, 2009 (United Press Affiliates)

(Washington D.C) -- A spokesperson for the Obama Administration is downplaying the significance of an incident at the White House yesterday which resulted in injuries to two reporters, calling it “an unfortunate misunderstanding.” The reporters sustained serious injuries as they and others suddenly rushed to kiss President Obama’s “behind” after mistakenly thinking he was speaking to them when he loudly exclaimed “Well you can just kiss my ass.” The reporters did not realize he was speaking into a cell phone via a small ear-piece microphone which was hidden from their view and they thought he was addressing them.

In the melee, New York Times reporter Susan Jones tripped on the leg of NBC reporter Sam Emery and sustained a compound fracture of her left femur, with a piece of bone protruding through her skin. Upon coming to after a five-hour surgery, she downplayed the seriousness of her injury saying “These things happen, and it’s no big deal. It was just a misunderstanding on the part of us reporters, and this does not reflect at all on President Obama. I’m just so thankful that he was completely uninjured and can continue his historic and consequential presidency.” Mr Emery, who has been on the White House beat only six months since graduating from journalism school, suffered multiple ligament tears in his right knee when he hit the ground but shrugged it off saying “At my age these injuries were bound to happen sooner or later, and I’m just so happy that President Obama is fine and continues to bring all residents of North America and the world together through his visionary leadership.” NBC's veteran broadcaster Brian Williams, who has said that more should follow his example of bowing before President Obama and keeping a respectful distance, nevertheless stated "With all the excitement in appearing before President Obama, it's easy to see how things like this happen."

Newsweek Magazine’s editor Evan Thomas, who has characterized President Obama as a “sort of God” and who has decided to feature President Obama permanently on the magazine's cover, expressed relief that both the President and the Newsweek reporter at the scene were not hurt and voiced pride that his reporter was the only one to actually reach President Obama to plant a kiss on his behind before the misunderstanding was recognized. He said the incident illustrates the “dedication, passion, and journalistic professionalism” his staff bring to reporting the news.


John M Greco

Obama Divides Opposition To Conquer Drug Makers Who Seek To Appease

Obama has divided what should be the united opposition to his underhanded and deceptive scheme to put in place the foundation for nationalized health care. The free-enterprise-based pharmaceutical industry (PhRMA) foolishly thinks it has cut a deal with Obama on his health care reform plans (link), apparently thinking that this supposed deal is less bad than what would happen to them if they opposed Obama. Aside from the fact that Congress actually writes the laws, as least as of this moment six months into the Age of Obama, and prominent Congressional Dems have made it clear there are no deals that will bind them, and aside from the fact that whatever isn’t in a bill this year can be easily added to a new one next year once the ultraliberal Dems vanquish the opposition to nationalized health care, what in the world makes anyone, including the pharmaceutical industry, think they can trust Obama on anything, in light of everything they now know of him and have now seen of him?

Rich Lowry writes in the above-linked post at National Review Online that “[e]ven if the deal holds, PhRMA will be at the mercy of a government system that will tend to squeeze out even those private players who have obligingly assisted in creating the predicate for their own destruction.”

Winston Churchill insightfully described an appeaser as “one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.” Indeed.

John M Greco

Post Office Eliminates Mail Delivery To Balance Budget and Save Jobs

July 25, 2009: The Washington Post reported (link) that “the Postal Service, which is projecting a $6 billion shortfall by the end of September despite a recent postage rate increase, will go to Congress this month to seek emergency relief, looking to cut home mail delivery from six days a week to five. Already, the Postal Service has cut hours at hundreds of post offices across the country …. It has consolidated routes …. Still, said Postmaster General John E. Potter, the service is in "acute financial crisis."

July 26, 2011 -- The Obama administration’s head of the Postal Service announced today the elimination of delivery service.

The Postmaster General stated that she regretted having to take this drastic action, but said that the Postal Service had no other alternative in light of continued decline in mail volume and escalating budget deficits. This fiscal year, the Post Office is slated to lose upwards of $20 billion, despite reducing mail delivery to once a week 7 months ago and a budget infusion of $15 billion from President Obama’s discretionary TARP Fund.

In a press conference yesterday, the Postmaster General said “I hope that once mail delivery is eliminated entirely that the Postal Service will be able to balance its budget within 3 years, given the 25% budget increase Democrats passed this year for the Department.” She went on to say “I am proud of the efforts of the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress to preserve the thousands of Post Office jobs, since the loss of even some of them would hurt the economy, and although I regret having to permanently discontinue mail delivery service, the Post Office is working hard to identify additional efficiencies to finally balance our budget.”

President Obama issued a statement today, saying “I do not stand with those who would do nothing to finally stop the Post Office budget deficits and those who are indifferent to saving the thousands of jobs there. As I have said before, I am committed to balancing budgets and saving jobs. As for the loss of delivery service, this is a time for shared sacrifice and we must all do our part in these difficult times.”


John M Greco

The American Medical Association Endorses the Ultra-Liberal House Democratic Health Care Reform Proposal – Is This a Surprise?

The American Medical Association has just endorsed (link) the House Democrats’ health care reform proposal, unveiled last week, and regarded by everyone I have read as the most ultra-liberal of all proposals announced thus far. So ultra-liberal, in fact, that no one I have heard or read gives it much chance of becoming law, let alone even passing the Democrat-controlled House.

Tevi Troy writes (link) at The Corner blog at National Review Online that this proposal “raises taxes, imposes both individual and employer mandates, and creates a government-run health-care plan. This is not surprising, as the House [Democrats’] Leadership’s strategy appears to be to pass a bill that is as far to the left as possible in order to have maximum leverage when negotiating with whatever compromise comes out of the Senate.”

It is hard to believe that a majority of the AMA membership would support this House Democrat proposal, once given a chance to read it. So it is somewhat surprising to have the AMA leadership release this quick endorsement, supporting a plan hatched by the radically-liberal Pelosi and containing the Trojan Horse government run “public option” plan that will surely and shortly eradicate private insurers, leaving all healthcare in the hands of liberal federal government bureaucrats and all doctors as de facto federal employees. And what sentient doctor thinks there's a snowball's chance in hell that Democrats would move one inch toward much-needed reform of malpractice liability law, a very high priority for most doctors?

One factor that must be huge here – the tendency of all large, ostensibly non-political organizations, from philanthropic foundations to professional societies like the American Bar Association, to become progressively more liberal over time, as liberals, executing one of the key directives from their playbook, slowly take over internal staff bureaucracies and elected leadership positions, and then isolate and suppress less-organized and less politically-astute internal opponents.

John M Greco

More Obama “Stimulus” Spending?! Because the First $789 Billion Didn’t Work

Last Friday, July 9, in a discussion on the Obama Administration's just-floated idea to use TARP money for Small Business Administration loans, Larry Kudlow said on his CNBC show: “This [TARP money] is one of the greatest slush fund operations of all time. This TARP money was never intended for this purpose.” Kudlow then stated he believed such a move was another indication that Obama and his people are “panicking” over the continuing economic struggles and the rising unemployment rate, which the Obama team said would never get anywhere near as high as it now is if their massive “stimulus” spending plan was enacted. Well, their plan was enacted, and now things are much worse. And now some Obama people are talking about a second “stimulus” spending plan, because the first didn’t work.

Guest Joe Lavorgna, chief US economist for Deutsche Bank, had the guts to admit he was wrong in succumbing to the big-government-spending-is-the-solution fallacy and hysteria, saying: “The stimulus package, which I initially was all for, has not played out the way I thought. I think a second stimulus package would be really terrible... The first one wasn’t very effective – it’s vulgar Keynesianism as you [Larry] said before.” Even now, though, he says “not very effective.” How about “not effective at all”? From common sense and the opinions of realists, the economy in general and the banking system in particular have stabilized because of the massive Milton Friedman monetary stimulus and the long-called-for significant softening of the “mark-to-market” accounting rule that was destroying banks’ technical solvency.

The hubris and vanity of the liberal elites leads to their fatal attraction to command and control. They believe they know better than the masses who didn’t attend their Ivy League schools. For them, the ‘stimulus” was never about the economy, it was about ever-bigger government pursuing the liberal agenda. But for the saps who were snookered into believing massive government spending and further government control would help the economy, it was a triumph of hope over common sense, of quasi-religious faith in central planning over all human experience, of Obamamania over rational thought.

JM Greco

Previous related posts:

The So-Called “Stimulus” Is “About Politics and Power, Not Sound Economics”

Re: The "Stimulus": Economics As the Dismal Science -- Keynesians Say 1+1=3, Milton Friedman & Common Sense Say No Way

"Great Powers" Historian Paul Kennedy Warns Against the Planned Economic “Stimulus” Package That We’ll Need Foreigners To Pay For

Coleman Brought a Squirt Gun to a Knife Fight In the Minnesota Senate Recount Battle

Well, the Minnesota senate race recount is finally over, and what most people, including me, thought would happen happened. Vicious, no-holds-barred ultra-liberal Democrat Franken out-recounted incumbent Republican gentleman-Norm Coleman. It’s hard to understand even now Coleman’s puzzlingly restrained behavior while the Franken Democrats were stealing the election via a selective recount in Democratic strongholds. Coleman may have thought Minnesota Democrats were above bad behavior, but the joke’s on him, and unfortunately also on us.

This Democratic tactic has been tried twice in the recent past in high profile races – in the 2000 Presidential election, of course, and in the 2004 Washington state governor race. Bush fought hard and finally prevailed, but in Washington state the Republican caved. Coleman seems to have taken an above-it-all approach, counting on the courts to invalidate Franken’s shenanigans, even though such an approach in the Washington governor’s race didn’t work and even though a leading Democratic strategist from that contest was called in early as a Franken advisor.

Coleman won the initial count by over 700 votes, and then also won the first recount by over 200. But as in the Washington governor’s race, that did not deter the Democrats. Votes were selectively “found” in majority Democratic precincts. Democrat Franken’s team seemed to have out-hustled, out-maneuvered, and out-smarted Coleman’s. Franken was recently declared the winner by 312 votes.

Among the many disturbing reports, one from the Wall Street Journal (link) particularly astounded me for the brazenness of the state’s Canvassing Board, led by the ultra-liberal Democrat Secretary of State, who was elected with significant help from the ethically bankrupt left-wing ACORN organization. In one heavily Democratic precinct the hand recount showed fewer votes than had been recorded by the machine on election night, so the Board went with the higher election night count, netting Franken 46 votes. But in another heavily Democratic precinct, the opposite occurred, so the partisan Democrat Board went with the recount, there netting Franken 37 votes. As the WSJ noted, Franken “benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.”

Another aspect was how local precinct officials decided which “votes” were valid under the law. John Hinderaker at Power Line blog (link) notes:

It turns out, not surprisingly, that the counties that are careful about applying election laws are Republican-leading counties, while the lax ones … are heavily Democratic. What this means, in practice, is that thousands of votes are counted in Democratic counties that would not be counted if the same voter lived in a Republican county…. Thus a deep irony arises: if a uniform standard of strict compliance with the absentee ballot statute is applied, Coleman wins. If a looser standard of substantial compliance with the statute is uniformly applied, Coleman also wins. The only way Coleman loses is if a strict standard is applied in Republican counties and a lax standard is applied in Democratic counties. Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened so far.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board (link) supplies the coda:

Mr. Coleman didn't lose the election. He lost the fight to stop the state canvassing board from changing the vote-counting rules after the fact. This is now the second time [citing the 2004 Washington state governor race] Republicans have been beaten in this kind of legal street fight. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.

John M Greco

Previous posts on this subject:

In Minnesota, If It’s Close, They Will Try to Steal It

Democrats Gaining in Their Attempt To Steal Minnesota Senate Election Via Rigged Recount

Minnesota Canvassing Judge Slams Criticisms of Bias, But Does Not Rebut a Single Allegation of Serious Mischief in the Coleman-Franken Recount

Will Unemployment Rate & Socialized Medicine Stall Obama’s Radical Liberalism? – “It’ll Be Close”

The unemployment rate has soared past what Obama and his new brain trust said it would be without their massive and budget-busting “stimulus” spending, which is essentially pork for ultra-liberal interest groups (like unionized state government workers and Medicaid recipients). Prominent Dem pol Ed Rendell, currently governor of Pennsylvania, says on national TV we need much more stimulus spending, but this time aimed at “shovel-ready infrastructure projects” that will translate into jobs. My God, this was exactly how the first stimulus spending plan was sold to the public, and now Dems are saying that’s not how the money is being spent, that we didn’t do what we said we would do, but if we do it again, we Democrats will get it right the second time around.

On health care reform, the noble struggle continues to convince the large swath of politically inattentive Americans that Obama’s ultimate goal is nationalized government-run health care operated by liberal federal bureaucrats. The Trojan Horse ploy is to introduce a government-run health plan that would “keep private insurers honest,” but would surely and shortly put all private plans out of business. A Wall Street Journal editorial today (link) again hits this theme hard. We surely need responsible health care reforms, but socialized government-run health care isn’t one of them. In Canada or in Britain, if you’re old or really sick, medical care is often if not always low speed, low tech, and low quality, but if you’re among the 80% or so who’re basically pretty healthy and only go in on occasion for minor and preventive care, the system is great because it’s real cheap.

As Mark Steyn said today on the radio, hearing from a remorseful Obama voter, lots of his supporters thought they could "get the cool without the consequence," but now know better. And in response to a report that independent voters are beginning to “edge away” from Obama, Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds today writes: “He ran as a different kind of politician than he’s governing as. He hopes to ram through stuff that will cement his position before the rubes catch on. It’ll be close.”


John M Greco

Eight Republicans Vote For Democrats’ “Insane” Massive Energy Tax Bill; Illinois Republican Mark Kirk Takes Heat

Last Friday, June 26, the US House passed the Democrat Waxman-Markey energy tax bill, often referred to as “cap and trade.” The way Democrats rammed the bill through, with massive changes made at the last minute just as the voting began, is almost as outrageous as the substance of it, although, since no one read the bill before it was passed, no one can be quite sure exactly what’s in it (link, link).

But this is just a bill, not a law, as the Senate has not voted yet, and many commentators think passage of this bill in anything like its House version is unlikely. Nevertheless, the substance of the bill and the way it was passed stinks all the same. Iain Murray wrote (link) at The Corner blog at National Review Online that “this is a gross abuse of the Parliamentary process and represents nothing less than contempt for the people of the United States of America.”

As for the substance, it’s a massive new tax on energy in the middle of a recession. Charles Krauthammer’s take (link):

This bill is so bad it's almost indescribable…. In principle, it's a carbon tax. And to do it — which is probably the largest tax in American history — in the middle of a recession is quite insane.

But secondly, even if you accept that we have to do a carbon tax because there is an emergency in the climate …. [the bill] involves so many concessions to constituencies, to coal companies in states, to all kinds of favorite constituencies, that it's a mess, and it undermines the idea of a cap and trade, a system in which the market will regulate carbon emissions. As a result, in the final analysis, it gives money and carbon credits to utility companies on the condition that [they do] not raise rates on people's electricity. But if that is the case, then it undermines the entire argument in favor of this, which is to induce the reduction in the use of energy. If there are no rises in rates, there's no incentive to reduce emissions, and the whole purpose of the bill is undermined.

The bill passed by a margin of 7 votes, with 44 Democrats voting against it and 8 Republicans voting for it. Congressman Mark Kirk, from Illinois’ liberal North Shore, which extends from Chicago’s northern suburbs to the Wisconsin border, was one of the eight Republicans (link), and, according to one commentator, was the only one of the eight not from either the east or west coast.

Why did Kirk vote for this bill, which, along with every other Congressman, he didn’t even read? Greg Hinz at Crain’s Chicago Business writes (link):

Congressman Mark Kirk is strongly defending his vote …. [He] said he tied his vote to national security, … that raising the price of energy somewhat will reduce American reliance on "Middle Eastern dictatorships." "I would have preferred a bill that focused more on energy independence," the Highland Park Republican said, … [but said that] the version put to a vote by Democratic leaders will force the United States to diversify American energy production.

Well, yes, achieving energy independence is an urgent national matter, but if utility energy prices are prevented from rising and we don’t reverse the Democratic freeze on developing new supplies of oil, gas, and nuclear power and using more coal, won’t we still use about as much foreign oil?

This bill amounts to a massive new tax by Democrats underneath the ruse of environmental protection and energy independence, the additional revenues from which would only help fuel their destructive spending orgy.

There was a rally at Kirk’s office today to protest his vote. Illinois bloggers John Ruberry of Marathon Pundit (link) and Anne Leary of Backyard Conservative (link) were there and cover it at their blogs.

Sensible big-tent Republicans understand that Republican legislators will not always vote in lock-step on every issue, especially if they represent liberal-leaning districts. But sometimes Republicans in such districts feel intimidated, lose nerve, and vote with Democrats rather than educate voters on the merits of their position. But when even 44 Democrats couldn’t vote for this bill, Kirk’s vote is hard to understand, and very disappointing.

John M Greco

Remembering Errol Flynn, at 100

Errol Flynn, one of the great movie stars of all time, was born 100 years ago today. He defined the classic movie action hero -- daring and dashing, a leader of men; honorable and purposeful, but devil-may-care and quick to laugh. His roles may not have been unduly complex, but they were bold and heroic. His pictures were often run and much watched, years ago, before movie heroes changed forever.

His signature “swashbucklers” defined the genre and are, at least to this fan, his greatest roles: Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk. All were directed by Michael Curtiz and featured rousing theme music by Erich Korngold. Flynn’s co-star in the first two, and in six other of his movies, was the great Oliva de Havilland, and character actor pal Alan Hale had roles in 11 of Flynn’s movies by my count. Captain Blood, as good as any he made, was his first lead and his break out film.

Another favorite of mine, and of one of my sons, is the WWII action picture Objective Burma. Same character type – a bold, determined leader with an important mission. He made many other films, of course, including many Westerns, most notably They Died with Their Boots On and Virginia City. He was a great actor, but remarkably, though perhaps not inexplicably for Hollywood given its pseudo-sophistication borne of a collective intellectual inferiority complex and its love of self-absorbed drama, he was never nominated for an Academy Award. Flynn would be much more appreciated today by the Hollywood intelligentsia if he had played notably unheroic self-destructive substance abusers on the screen instead of just becoming one in later life.

Flynn was born of Irish and British descent in Tasmania, of all places, where his father was a professor of biology. Expelled from a number of schools for rowdy behavior and perhaps also for inappropriate romantic adventures, after some failed ventures he eventually turned to acting, where his natural charm, good looks, and athleticism led to quick success. He was quite the womanizer, apparently, whose exploits led to the quip “In Like Flynn.” The fast living and drinking prematurely aged him, and his career slowed down. In his later years he lived in Jamaica, and died at age 50 in Vancouver while traveling on personal business. His autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, was published shortly after his death.

The lasting image – Flynn standing on his ship’s gunwale amidst the clamor and confusion of a great sea battle, one hand on the rigging and one brandishing a sword, shouting “Over the side men, follow me.”


His daughter Rory Flynn maintains an interesting website dedicated to memories of his career (link).

Richard Balsamo

Chance for Sensible Health Care Reform Improves as Ultra-Liberal Proposals Start to Implode

Americans need health care reform, but what we do not need is a monolithic health care system owned and operated by the federal government and its ant hill of bureaucrats. Our medical advances and treatments lead the world. We need reforms to our current system that preserve the strengths but address problems with medical costs, affordability of insurance, portability of insurance to eliminate “job lock,” and inconsistent quality of care. We need a reform plan that keeps control in the hands of individuals and their doctors, not give it to bureaucrats in the federal government. One such plan is already on the table -- the Patients’ Choice Act (link; link; link; link).

As for the uninsured – take out those that already qualify for federal programs but haven’t signed up, non-citizens, and those who can afford medical insurance but feel healthy so risk going without it, and what’s left is only a fraction of the 46 million count that gets bandied about. I've seen estimates of 10-15 million (here's a well-documented analysis concluding the number is about 11 million). Tweaks to existing federal programs can address those truly in need, who, incidentally, usually can obtain care when they want it at emergency rooms, free clinics, and some doctors’ offices. Not ideal, not optimal, and in need of reform, but medical care is currently available, subsidized by hospitals and doctors from the income they receive from private insurers. No need to rush the overhaul of our entire system to deal with the uninsured problem. Why not take a few months rather than a few weeks?

So why the bum’s rush by Democrats? Why, of course, because the more time people have to examine and think about their proposals the less likely they will be to support them.

The good news – the first wave of cost estimates of some of the Democrat-proposed reform plans have been astronomical, and growing public and stakeholder concern over Obama bailouts, massive spending, unimaginable debt, and political rush jobs has the linchpin of schemes for a nationalized system – the government-run so-called “public plan” option (link)– in serious doubt (link). Even health-care-guy former Senator Tom Daschle, one of many Democrats disgraced recently by admissions of major tax evasion, dropped the public plan from his own health care reform proposal released this past week (link).

There are currently many proposals in various degrees of detail:

• From Senate Democrats on the Finance Committee (Baucus)
• From Senate Democrats on the Health Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (Kennedy/Dodd)
• From an independent group of Senate and House Republicans (the Patients’ Choice Act)
• From House Democrats, release pending
• From former Democrat Senator Daschle (with Republican props Dole and Baker)

A half-way decent overview of developments with most of these proposals is here from the Associated Press, which, however, true to its ultra-liberal bias, omits to mention at all the most advanced and, to the liberals, threatening Republican reform proposal – the Patients’ Choice Act.

And, as shocking as the Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimates have been, an editorial (link) in today’s Wall Street Journal warns that in the past such cost estimates usually have turned out to have been too low:

Useful to emphasize … is that CBO's number-crunching is almost always off --
predicting too much spending for market-based policies and far too little for
new public programs, especially on health care. The CBO score [read “cost
estimate”] for a new entitlement is only the teaser rate, given that the costs
will inevitably balloon as the years pass and more people mob "free" or
subsidized insurance.

John M Greco

Obama Dissembles On His Plans For Health Care

A friend says to me -- Unlike our current president, for all his shortcomings, former President G.W. Bush at least was not a narcissistic liar. That about sums it up. It is clear to all with open eyes that President Obama is a man of the left, if one pays any attention to his actions and associations, past and present, rather than to his words. But he fools the foolable with his verbal misdirections and falsehoods. He soothingly and earnestly assures us that he is not leading America to the left as he carefully and methodically does just that. For the left, the end has always justified the means.

Obama, strongly pitching his “public option” government-run health plan that he knows is nothing more than a Trojan Horse for nationalized, government-run health care, said this (link) today to a gathering of leaders of the American Medical Association:

"What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system," he said. "I'll be honest. There are countries where a single-payer system may be working. But I believe — and I've even taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief — that it is important for us to build on our traditions here in the United States. So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this — they are not telling the truth."

Small lies might not convince, but the big ones ….


JM Greco

The Key Fight in Health Care Reform Is On a “Public Plan" Option, & Prospects Still Uncertain. Will Republicans Hold?

Some observers, including me, believe that many leading Democrats would ultimately prefer to have a straight up national health insurance plan in the US, akin to that of Britain or even Canada, but realize that political support for such a radical switch is insufficient. So their tactic at the moment is to introduce the seed for national health insurance, thinking that once in place the move to truly national health insurance would be inexorable. The plan is to introduce in health care “reform” what will ultimately become national health insurance through the Trojan Horse of a “public plan” option that the federal government would run in competition with private health care plans.

The theory behind a public plan option is good. As President Obama recently wrote, it could give Americans “a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep the insurance companies honest.” But reality is different. The problem is that private insurers, which must navigate through and comply with 50 sets of state insurance regulations and must negotiate reimbursement rates with providers, could never compete with a government run plan that did not have to operate at a profit and that could dictate reimbursement to providers. Democrats would make sure that premiums for a government run plan would be far cheaper than those of private plans, and so private plans would soon be extinct. Private plans are far from perfect, and many reform proposals can improve things, but government run national health insurance, like that of Britain or Canada, would undoubtedly mean rationing of care through government-imposed cost-driven medical protocols, poorer service, and stifling of medical innovation.

The public plan option is where the important fight is. Can Republicans hold firm as a group to refuse support for any reform plan that includes it? And if so, will Democrats want to pass on a party line vote, which they could do, a reform plan that would be one of the most sweeping and consequential laws in American history, and be wholly responsible when things go sour with the scheme, as would happen eventually? Or if Republicans hold firm, will Democrats blink and drop the public plan option? We’ll all see.

The latest update I’ve seen is an Associated Press report from two days ago titled “GOP Senators Say Bipartisan Health Deal in Jeopardy -- President Obama's declared support for a public insurance plan, which would compete with private insurers, is opposed by nearly all Republicans” (link):

President Obama's hopes for a bipartisan health deal seemed in jeopardy Thursday [June 4] as GOP senators protested his renewed support for a new public health insurance plan, and a key Democratic chairman declared that such a plan would likely be in the Senate's bill…. A public plan that would compete with private insurers is opposed by nearly all Republicans.
Congress might be able to pass a health overhaul bill with little, if any, GOP support. But Obama and Democrats including Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus have said repeatedly they want to avoid that outcome because such a measure would be less widely supported and less sustainable over time…. There appears to be little room for compromise, with Republicans contending that no matter how a public plan is designed, it would inevitably balloon and crush the private market…. Many Democrats, meanwhile, insist that a final bill must contain a public plan.

John M Greco

The Sad and Tragic End of General Motors

Tomorrow, June 1, it is expected that we will witness the tragic end to a remarkable story – the 100+ year run of iconic General Motors as a private company. The story of storied entrepreneurs William C. Durant, Pierre S. du Pont, Walter P. Chrysler, Louis Chevrolet, among others, and, most notably, Alfred P. Sloan, who, along with legendary engineer Charles F. Kettering, made GM what it once was -- the leading industrial company in the world.

Years of incompetent management and many more years of destructive union hegemony spelled the end. General Motors has long needed a restructuring bankruptcy, but one conducted under the rule of law that would have shrunk, streamlined, and legally rejuvenated the company to allow it to survive and prosper. But we’re not going to get that. A powerful Obama who, using the pretense of a national financial crisis to bend people to his will and disdainful of the legal rights of holders of capital, has something different in store.

Tomorrow General Motors is expected to file for restructuring bankruptcy. In the “pre-packaged” restructuring plan, Democrat Obama is laundering even more taxpayer money to unions, and has extorted from bondholders (e.g., retirees’ pension plans, mutual fund investors) and from emasculated TARP-ensnared creditor banks a much larger piece of what’s left of the company for the automakers’ union than the Democrat union would otherwise get in a bankruptcy proceeding that followed the rule of law and far, far more than it deserves. Democrat union members up, while taxpayers and creditor banks and pension plans down.

Of course, the taxpayer is the biggest loser, other than the rule of law, which seemingly now is of concern only to some behind-the-times Republicans. The federal government (that is to say, Democrat politicians) will own over 70% of the rump GM, and the Democrat union a big chunk of what’s left after that. Larry Kudlow, on his CNBC show Friday May 29, said that the “taxpayers are by far the biggest losers in this deal,” which he said is “an assault on free market capitalism.” Obama has now parlayed the financial crisis and the public panic into taking control over our largest insurer, some of our largest banks, and now our largest automaker, all the while saying, to fool the foolable, that he has no interest in doing any of this.

When I first began working for a big company years ago, I endeavored to read some books about business. I was not interested in books on the latest fads in management theory but rather books that told the stories of successful companies. And one the very first that I read, and the best I ever did read, was “My Years With General Motors” by its legendary long-time head Alfred P. Sloan, a staunch believer in free markets for free men. The dust jacket blurb of my Doubleday paperback edition exclaims “Even today, Bill Gates praises ‘My Years With General Motors’ as the best book to read on business, and Business Week has named it the number one choice for its ‘bookshelf of indispensable reading.' Draft your own blueprint for organizational success by using the tools found in this book. Learn the valuable lessons only Sloan could teach.” Lessons never learned or even appreciated by later management feckless and irresponsible, a union solipsistic and corrosive, and Obama Democrats dissembling and lawless.

JM Greco

"Spirit Of American Youth"

"Spirit Of American Youth"

By Donald De Lue

At the First Infantry Division Museum at Cantigny Park
Wheaton, Illinois, Outside Chicago

Replica of the Original That Stands In the Normandy Beachhead in France,
Honoring Young Americans Who Gave Their Lives For Their Country

Bonnie & Clyde -- Killed 75 Years Ago Today and Reborn as Movie Anti-Heroes

Depression-era bank robbers and killers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were themselves killed 75 years ago today in a controversial police shoot out in rural Louisiana. The couple were romanticized at the time by some in a seemingly ambivalent public, perhaps reflecting widespread anger with the perceived failures of the banking system in particular and the capitalist system in general. This theme was picked up by Arthur Penn when he made the very successful 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde (link), which made stars of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

Reflecting on all this for a few moments today, to my memory it seems that this movie was one of the first somewhat revisionist American movies to celebrate the homicidal criminal as a somewhat sympathetic figure. To be sure, there were previous films about Depression-era gangsters (Public Enemy; Little Caesar), but none that seem to humanize and soften, in part with comedy, criminals that murdered policemen and civilians. Other such movies followed, most notably the Godfather trilogy.

It seems at least one Hollywood producer thinks the American gangster as romantic anti-hero theme still has legs -- to wit, the soon-to-be-released movie about John Dillinger, who eventually met his own demise, two months after that of Bonnie and Clyde, outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater at the hands of lawmen tipped off by the Lady in Red.

R. Balsamo

Remembering Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle

Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series of detective stories. Conan Doyle was born in Scotland to parents of Irish descent and became a physician as well as an accomplished athlete and author. He eventually set up medical practice in southern England but work was slow, and so, with time on his hands, as the story famously goes, he turned to his writing avocation. Eventually writing became his sole focus, and although he was a prolific author particularly proud of his historical novels, his most endearing and lasting works have been the 60 short stories and novellas, the canon, featuring private consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his particular friend and colleague Dr John Watson. After many rejections from publishers, the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, made it to print in 1887.

Holmes is a solitary, brusque, eccentric, and enigmatic figure of eclectic intellectual interests who uses his tremendous skills of observation and deduction to solve mysteries. He lives with his physician friend Watson in London, famously at No. 221B Baker Street. Through the great descriptive powers of Conan Doyle, the stories evoke both the genteel civility and the sinister edges of a bustling, fog-bound, cacophonous late Victorian London at the height of Empire. And who can forget the Persian slipper, jack-knifed correspondence, Watson’s wound from a jezail bullet, the useful coal scuttle, the fitful violin playing, and the 7% solution.

Particular favorite stories of mine include Silver Blaze, with the curious incident of the dog in the night-time; A Study in Scarlet, wherein Holmes first meets Watson and remarks “You have been to Afghanistan, I perceive”; The Blue Carbuncle, featuring Holmes’s deductive discourse on a lost hat; and The Abbey Grange, wherein Holmes impanels Watson as a one-man English jury and exclaims “Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”

Holmes and Watson have been brought countless times to radio, movies, television, and even theater. Until recently, the Basil Rathbone / Nigel Bruce series of radio and film adaptations have been the best known, although grating to any lovers of the original stories. For some reason, adaptations commonly but inaccurately portray Watson as a bumbling fool, presumably to better showcase Holmes’s logical mind, but this device does disservice to the original stories and makes both characters almost comic-book like.

But Holmes aficionados have been rescued forever from such debased adaptations. Twenty five years ago almost to this very day, the definitive treatment of Holmes and Watson and the Conan Doyle stories appeared on the scene from Britain’s Granada TV (link), with Jeremy Brett as Holmes and David Burke and later Edward Hardwicke as Dr Watson. Burke described the films as “faithful to the original in spirit and in detail,” and one reviewer wrote that Brett’s performance “has wiped the memory clean of all previous portrayals.” Granada filmed 41 painstakingly detailed Holmes stories until Brett's untimely death in 1995. This series is a triumph.

I think for those who come back to these stories time and again the lure is the portrayal of two devoted and loyal friends, different yet complementary, and their lives, adventures, and travels in a well-drawn atmosphere of late Victorian Imperial Britain. I was captured by these stories as a boy and remain hooked, and I can still remember reading them years ago late into Chicago summer evenings with my imagination off in some fog-shrouded London street.

Richard Balsamo

New Republican-Proposed Patients’ Choice Act Offers Smart Alternative To Obamacare

Some Congressional Republicans proposed today a new health care reform plan that promises substantial improvement over what we have but, by placing control in the hands of consumers, avoids the federal government-centric features favored by most Democrats that many fear are surreptitiously designed to eventually usher in universal single-payer health care, premised as it is elsewhere on significant rationing of care, limited adoption of new technologies, and substantial wage and price controls for providers.

Called the Patients’ Choice Act, the heart of the plan seems to be reform of the tax code and using that money to give everyone an amount of money with which to purchase a health care policy, either as a refundable tax credit for tax payers or as a direct subsidy for the poor. Consumers with employer-based policies can keep them if they desire or shop for a different policy along with everyone else in the open market or on a state-government-sponsored exchange with competing policies that all meet some minimum standard.

What’s in this plan:
· Portability – workers can take their employer-sponsored policy with them if they want when they change jobs
· Health Savings Account option with its incentives for cost-conscious consumption of services
· No exclusions for pre-existing conditions when consumers sign up for new policies, accomplished through a state-controlled risk-adjustment process across insurers
· State subsidized coverage for the uninsurable through a state risk-pool
· Creation of a bonus incentive for providers to form “Accountable Health Organizations” that deliver higher quality care at less cost
· Creation of an online personal preventive care plan designer
· Lawsuit reform at the state level through creation of expert review panels and specialized health courts
· A Health Services Commission to report on price and quality data and trends
· Strengthening the Medicare Advantage program

What’s not in:
· Individual or employer mandates to have/offer health insurance
· Federal comparative effectiveness board to make and mandate coverage determinations – who can get what care when.
· Federal Medicare-type plan as an option for everyone (the “public plan” option)

The best and most detailed overview I’ve seen so far is by Peter Ferrara at The American Spectator online (link). Ferrara concludes:

The bill would assure essential health coverage and health care to every U.S. citizen, without increased federal spending and taxes, and without the federal government taking over your health care. For precisely those reasons, today's left wing Democrats will not support it…. This bill demonstrates that there is no reason for a government takeover of health care other than the lust for political power that drives the liberal/left political machine.

Philip Klein, also at The American Spectator, has some well-reasoned areas of concern, but is overall very positive (link):

Politically, I think this was a masterful move by this group of Republicans. Keep in mind that [this] alternative never has any chance of being passed [by Democrat-controlled Congress], but it's a statement by the minority party about their approach to an issue. Agree or disagree with the components of the plan, these Republicans have released an undeniably serious health care proposal, and they have done so months before the Democrats have come up with theirs…. This offers a way to oppose the Democratic approach to health care while pushing back against charges that the GOP is "the party of no."

Grace-Marie Turner and Joseph R. Antos have a briefer treatment (link) of this new proposal in the Wall Street Journal. They write:

Republican congressional leaders are finally offering a clear alternative to the health-reform plans being developed by the White House and Democrats in Congress. The goals and the rhetoric of both sides are remarkably similar: cover the uninsured, allow people to keep the coverage they have, provide more choices of affordable health insurance, and rein in health costs. But their policy prescriptions are remarkably different…. Who will control the system? Doctors and patients, or politicians and regulators? That's the crux of this year's health-care debate. The Republican proposal makes the choice clear.

Related posts:
Prospects Uncertain for “Public Plan” Option in Health Care Reform
Health Care Reform – Major Players Pledge to Reduce Costs, While the “Game Changing” Public Option Lurks

John M Greco

Prospects Uncertain for “Public Plan” Option in Health Care Reform

The so-called “public plan" option proposal remains the most contentious of all on the table in the health care reform debate. The idea is that the federal government would offer a government subsidized benefit plan, akin to Medicare, for not only all of the current uninsured but also for anyone who wanted it. As such, it would compete with private insurance plans whereby it might, as feared by many, through its pricing power eventually wipe out private plans and be the only plan left standing, thus successfully effecting a Trojan horse tactic to establish single-payer government run health care.

Two related issues are thorny as well. First -- how to pay for it if enacted. Not much alternative but higher taxes. Second -- how can continually rising medical care spending be better restrained to make all health care more affordable? Here, some endorse free market solutions such as cost sharing to make patients behave more like discerning consumers, while some endorse a federal health care board that would mandate cost-effectiveness-driven coverage decisions as to who gets what care and when (Obama’s new Institute of Comparative Effectiveness, authorized in the stimulus bill).

As of today, the prospects for such a public plan option are unclear. A few days ago Matthew Murray reported (link) in Roll Call that “[t]he fiscally conservative [Democrat] House Blue Dog Coalition … announced its health care blueprint, a plan that likely will have fellow Democrats grousing for its lack of a government-run component.” Also last week, Philip Klein wrote (link) at The American Spectator that “Republican Sen. Mike Enzi (the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (which is chaired by Ted Kennedy), and also a member of the Finance and Budget Committees) … insisted that regardless of their public statements in support of such an approach [for a public plan option], privately, Democrats are ‘backing away’ from the idea, ‘or holding it out there as something to trade in the future.’ ”

Finally, in response to my post last week (link) on the public plan option, a physician friend with a wealth of experience in clinical practice and managed care/health insurance comments:

The public option plan is so vague at this point, it seems hard to say what the implications will be. Clearly if you extrapolate it out, it could be the end of direct insurance role for the privates. But they would still run the back office---so less profitable, but still a going concern.

Nevertheless, I think your depiction of it as a "trojan horse" is apt. But, if it were available only to individuals, self-employed, and maybe small business, it could make a real difference without being so dominant. Maybe.

The amounts of money being currently charged for self-employed, small business or the individually insured are hurting business widely. (And remember that in aggregate this is a huge group--- with the self-employed and small business making up possibly the largest group of working people in the country) This is often the rag-tag group which brings new ideas --- really where "innovation" comes from. And the non-innovative private sector insurers are stifling their ability to have reasonable margins in their work with policies which often seem to have little to do with fair underwriting, but mostly to do with income optimization for themselves. If they, the private insurers, could provide more reasonable, less costly alternatives to these groups (which I think means lower profit margin and more accurate underwriting principles) then I would say go for it. I do know how tantalizing it is, though, to have large profit business go along undisturbed, especially in times when other LOBs are declining in margin. They have not budged on this for 20+ years. Maybe the scare of a possible "public option" is just what they need to start them thinking about their business model anew.

The economics are a bit murky. AHIP says it can accept no pre-existing conditions if there is an insurance mandate. But the public option people have been more or less silent on that, since it is politically dangerous. Assuming that did get in place, then AHIP is saying they couldn't compete with the public option due to pricing power imbalances. As far as I can recall, pricing has been shadowing Medicare for years in the private sector (at least payment for hospital days, various appliances, etc.). So have programs and policies, etc. So, while it seems logical that a public option would put competitive pressure in place, I don't understand why it would be a situation where the privates could not compete at all. I do hear that said, though.

John M Greco

Health Care Reform – Major Players Pledge to Reduce Costs, While the “Game Changing” Public Option Lurks

Today the Wall Street Journal reported (link) that “groups representing hospitals, health-insurance companies, doctors, drug makers, medical-device makers and labor” planned to pledge today in a letter to President Obama “that they will work to reduce cost increases in the nation's health-care system by $2 trillion over the next decade,” or, in other words, “to help reduce the growth of national health-care spending by 1.5 percentage points in each of the next 10 years.” The methods employed to achieve this result would include “simplifying administrative costs, making hospitals more efficient, reducing hospitalizations, managing chronic illnesses more effectively and improving health-care information technology.”

I think this is a fine attempt on the part of these stakeholders to demonstrate commitment to be part of the solution. However, insurers and providers have been trying all these approaches for years to control medical costs, with some success. This announcement seems to amount to a pledge to try harder. After all, there is no magic that will stop the steady increase in medical care spending. The main drivers are an aging population and continual, costly dramatic improvements in valuable medical diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, with a modicum of fraud, waste, the liability-driven excessive testing that is “defensive” medicine, and high malpractice premiums thrown in. The "solution" is multi-focal and incremental.

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the health policy-focused Galen Institute (link), wrote today (link) at National Review Online’s The Corner in a post titled Where’s the Beef?:

[T]he tools they said they would be using aren’t new, and the Congressional Budget Office has said they will save little if any money: administrative simplification, coordinated care, evidence-based medicine, and use of health-information technology, etc. So, where’s the beef? No one at the White House event or in a subsequent briefing with reporters by [HHS] Sec. Kathleen Sebelius was able to offer details.

Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal editorial today (link) addressed the “public plan” option, which would be the real “game changer” in any reform of our health care system.

This new [proposed] entitlement -- like Medicare but open to all ages and all incomes -- would quickly crowd out private insurance as people gravitated to heavily subsidized policies, eventually leading to a single-payer system…. The truth is Democrats know that any policy guardrails built this year can be dismantled once the basic public option architecture is in place. The White House strategy is to dilute it just enough to win over credulous Republicans. That is what has always happened with government health programs….

I can’t think of a better example of a political “Trojan Horse” tactic than this Democrat effort to create a so-called “public option” health care benefit plan that would compete with private carriers. Democrats know that effecting full national health care is a bridge too far right now, so their tactic is to introduce now a seemingly salutary plan that in time will accomplish the same thing.

This Democrat plan illustrates their attraction toward achieving the shared miseries of socialism rather than improving upon the somewhat unequal sharing of health care prosperity that we now have with smart and well-designed reforms.


John M Greco

Illinois Blogger Conference -- May 8

This Friday, May 8th in Downers Grove (west suburban Chicago), Illinois.

Register here.