Joe Biden's polls

The latest Gallup Poll shows that just 42 percent of Americans hold a favorable opinion of Vice President Joe Biden, with 40 percent viewing him unfavorably. That's the VP's worst showing since he was nominated at the Democratic National Convention, according to Gallup.

The CNN/Opinion Research poll has him at 45 favorable and 40 percent unfavorable.

The Rasmussen Reports poll, which surveys likely voters instead of all adults, says the vice president's favorability rating is 46 percent, with 47 percent holding an unfavorable view of him.

All the polls agree that he has dropped about 20 points from his post-election high.

"His predicament is stumping pollsters and has experts wondering what, if anything, the erosion in his numbers reveals about the public’s feelings," The Politico reported.

"I don't think Biden has burst into the news with some highly negative coverage since he was sworn in, and I don’t think we’ve seen a highly visible scandal," said Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport, "It’s an interesting puzzle.”

It's no puzzle at all. Right on the White House website you can see the reason for the VP's unpopularity. He's the face of the stimulus bill, or as the administration calls it, the "Recovery Act."

"Vice President Biden Hosts Conference Calls with Governors, Mayors, and County Officials to Discuss Recovery Act Implementation" reads the headline for one recent White House press release.

"Vice President Biden Updates President Obama on Recovery Act Year-End Progress," reads another.

"Vice President Biden Announces End of Year Targets for Recovery Act Progress," reads a third.

The Recovery Act, if you remember, was the $787 billion emergency spending bill that was sold to the public as absolutely necessary to prevent unemployment from going above 8 percent. It was rammed through Congress in February as the phone lines on Capitol Hill burned up with calls from angry voters.

The unemployment rate currently stands at nearly ten percent.

Only someone who thinks it's a great idea for the government to borrow $787 billion and spend it on politically favored projects could find it puzzling that Vice President Biden is unpopular.

One person who doesn't seem to be puzzled is Vice President Biden himself. On September 24 he held a conference call with governors and mayors to urge them to meet the October 15 deadline to report the number of jobs saved or created by the stimulus package.

"If it fails, I'm dead," he told them.

Today the vice president was in Boca Raton, Florida, to raise money for the Democratic National Committee. He told the crowd of about sixty Democratic donors that some of the administration's decisions -- bank bailouts, for instance -- were unpopular.

"Our constituents would rather have us go out and save rattlesnakes in Arizona," he said.

But the vice president insisted that the Recovery Act is working. "We're getting to the end of this toboggan run," he told the donors.

It's not clear if he was referring to the economy or the polls.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous posts, "The Explanation," "Making Us All Sick" and "Catastrophe Fatigue."

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Tabloid update: "Hillary's shocking secret illness"

America Wants To Know happened to stop by the supermarket tonight and was nearly killed at the checkstand when the Globe tabloid virtually jumped right out of its metal rack, practically hit us in the head and almost knocked us unconscious.

Actually, we just took a copy out of the rack and tossed it onto the conveyer belt.

But that's the general spirit of the cover story, frighteningly headlined "Hillary's Shocking Secret Illness -- Blackouts, blinding headaches & shortness of breath."

Inside, there's no evidence whatsoever of any of this, a minor factual detail that we are very happy to report.

"Everyone is scared something is terribly wrong with Hillary," says the Globe's "insider," who goes on to reveal, "The headaches, the shortness of breath, the chest pains are real. She's concerned that she's ruining her health while working long hours and enduring grueling travel as Secretary of State."

The Globe's sources say Secretary Clinton "is planning to leave her cabinet post by next summer and quit politics for good!"

But in the very same paragraph, and again in the one after that, the Globe emphatically notes that recent polls show Mrs. Clinton to be "MORE popular than her boss President Barack Obama."

So what's the shocking secret illness?

"Already the 62-year-old former U.S. Senator from New York, ex-First Lady and defeated presidential contender has suffered two frightening falling incidents," the Globe says.

Then they list them.

The first one was in 2005, when Senator Clinton "suddenly collapsed" while giving a speech in Buffalo, New York. Her staff said she fainted due to a stomach virus, and she canceled a speech scheduled for the next day.

The second incident was earlier this year, when Secretary Clinton broke her elbow in a fall. "Hillary insists she slipped and fell," the Globe reports, "but others question whether she could have collapsed."

There's no evidence given, not so much as an "insiders say," to support the theory that she may have collapsed, but these two incidents, four years apart, are apparently the "terrifying blackouts" the Globe mentions in its colorful headlines.

Then there are a few more complaints about grueling job-related travel to "far-flung" places. "She doesn't want to have a heart attack in some place like Zimbabwe or Moscow," the Globe's source said, "She's afraid if she keeps pushing herself, eventually that's what will happen to her."

The Globe backs up its reporting that Hillary Clinton is in the midst of a "secret health crisis" with quotes from "friends" who believe she showed "typical symptoms of thyroid trouble" including weight gain, headaches, and fatigue, in 2001.

In 2001?

She certainly seemed fine in 2008.

In fact, she seems absolutely fine right now. She's giving interviews, she's wearing bright colors, she's polling better than the president, and she has an active and well staffed presidential campaign office that took in $9,300 in campaign contributions and $172,000 in income from mailing-list rental during the third quarter of this year.

Seriously. That's not from the Globe, that's from the Federal Election Commission.

According to Secretary Clinton's filings with the FEC, as of September 30 she had $2 million in her campaign bank account to cover less than a million dollars in unpaid bills. As of June 30 she still had eight salaried employees working in her campaign office, although one of them told the New York Daily News that the staff would soon be cut to five.

Just for comparison, New York's senior senator, Chuck Schumer, reported a staff of three for the same period, and he's planning to run again.

Is Hillary?

Her old Senate seat is now held by Kirsten Gillibrand, but because Sen. Gillibrand was appointed to the seat to fill a vacancy, she has to run for re-election in 2010 and again in 2012 when the six-year election cycle for the seat is up.

Her old Senate campaign committee has $2.1 million in its bank account. That's in addition to the $2 million in the presidential campaign committee account, which is still accepting donations at www.HillaryClinton.com.

But never mind, the Globe says Hillary Clinton is quitting politics. "Sources believe a mysterious health problem is behind her decision to abandon public service," the tabloid reports.

A mysterious health problem. Maybe she's sick of President Obama.

It's going around.

The Globe says Secretary Clinton will quit the administration in mid-2010. "'She will explain it as a desire to spend quality private time with her husband, Bill,' a pal says. 'But don't believe it.'"

Don't worry!


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier tabloid updates, "Clinton! Parkinson's! Michelle! Baby Tragedy!" and "Obama's Secret Enemies List"

The endangered American job

The latest evidence that health care reform will never pass comes from David Espo of the Associated Press, who reports today that Senate Democrats working on the bill have removed the requirement for employers to provide health insurance to their workers.

Instead, "Democratic officials familiar with talks on the bill" say companies with more than 50 employees "would owe significant penalties if any worker needed government subsidies to buy coverage on their own."

In other words, if the company is paying a salary that's insufficient to afford health insurance, the company would be fined.

David Espo reports that the fine "could be as high as $750 multiplied by the total size of the work force."

Why don't the Democrats just make it a federal crime to hire people, and get it over with.

Let's say you run a company with 51 employees. You pay salaries that are sufficient to get qualified people to take the jobs. You also pay Social Security tax and Medicare tax and worker's comp and unemployment insurance and anything else the state and federal governments require employers to pay for the increasingly stupid decision to create jobs in this country.

If the Senate Democrats' plan becomes law, the salaries you pay your employees could be deemed insufficient by a government panel, based on factors completely out of your control.

For instance, you could hire an unmarried woman with no children, and a year later she could have an unemployed husband and twins. The salary that once was adequate to afford health insurance is now inadequate because she has to buy insurance for four people. (Imagine the discrimination lawsuits you could face if you don't raise everyone's salary equally.)

Or health insurance premiums could rise, causing the salary that was adequate last year to be inadequate this year.

Or the government could change its guidelines on who qualifies for subsidies, moving some of your employees into the category of "needing government subsidies" when they weren't there before.

According to the Senate Democrats' plan, you would be fined as much as $750 for each employee on the payroll.

This appears to be an attempt to force employers to raise salaries if they don't offer health insurance. One problem with the "public option" is that there is no way to prevent employers from dropping their employee benefits package and sending their workforce over to the lower-priced health insurance "option" offered by the taxpayers.

But imagine you're running a company. The government is attempting to set up a time bomb that could raise your labor costs suddenly and repeatedly. The government is planning to let the Bush tax cuts expire, raising your annual tax bill. The government is trying to enact climate legislation that will raise your energy costs.

If you plan on staying in business, the prudent thing to do is lay off as many employees as possible, stop hiring, stop taking risks on growth, conserve capital, and just try to keep the doors open.

This is the path to 25 percent unemployment.

If we're there by next November, John Boehner will be the next Speaker of the House. That should improve the economy all by itself, because the imminent threat of punitive, job-killing, profit-demonizing Democratic legislation will instantly vanish when Republicans get their gavels back.

In the meantime, we should all be grateful to James Madison for making it so hard to get anything accomplished in Washington.


Copyright 2009

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The dog eats veal

First lady Michelle Obama told Jay Leno on Friday that the family had a little birthday party for their Portuguese water dog, Bo, who recently turned one year old.



"We had a really sweet celebration," Mrs. Obama said, "We had party hats."

As the Associated Press reported it, the dog "feasted on a cake shaped like a dog house that was made out of veal."

Nothing says "Happy Birthday" like a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Is it possible that no one in the White House knows about the animal-rights campaign to stop the consumption of veal?

America Wants To Know is not an advocate for animal rights and doesn't lie awake wondering if the meat under the Marsala had a happy life. But there are people, lots of them, who object to the way calves are raised for veal production and who have advocated a boycott of veal for many years.



They're probably all Democrats, too.

Then there's the cost factor. Veal is one of the pricier items in the supermarket meat case, and the nation has an unemployment rate of nearly ten percent. Is it good politics to feed the White House dog so extravagantly?

In a 1991 unauthorized biography of Nancy Reagan, author Kitty Kelley relates this story:

The First Lady did nothing to mitigate the damage to her image. When she received a letter from a Chicago woman criticizing the President's budget cut of aid to handicapped children, Nancy responded like a movie queen patronizing one of her fans. She sent a photograph of herself plus a copy of the Reagans' "favorite" recipe for artichoke and crabmeat casserole.

When another media barrage was aimed at the free-spending First Lady, her staff responded by directing that no more photographs be sent out without approval. Then they issued a new "favorite recipe": macaroni and cheese.

Maybe the people who usually object to this kind of thing won't object to it this time. Still, it seems like an awfully foolish and completely avoidable political mistake.

There must be a number of people on the White House staff who saw this feeding-the-dog-veal story between the time Bo's party was planned and the time Mrs. Obama told Jay Leno about it. Apparently it didn't occur to any of them that it might present an appearances problem.

And maybe it doesn't.

But if Nancy Reagan had thrown a birthday party for a dog and fed it veal, we'd still be hearing about it.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: Eat like a Reagan! Here are Nancy's recipes for Ronnie's "favorites":

Nancy Reagan's Crabmeat and Artichoke Casserole

1 14-ounce can artichoke hearts, drained and rinsed
1 lb best quality crabmeat
1/2 lb small button mushrooms, sauteed in butter
2 T butter
2 T flour
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup dry sherry
Parmesan cheese, grated

Place artichokes in a buttered baking dish. Arrange crabmeat over the artichokes, then add sauteed mushrooms. Melt butter in a saucepan and add flour, cook briefly, then add cream and sherry and stir until bubbly and thickened. Pour cream sauce over crab mixture, stir to mix, and top with Parmesan cheese. Bake for 15 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Serve hot.

President Reagan's Favorite Macaroni and Cheese

1/2 lb macaroni
1 teaspoon butter
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
3 cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 cup milk

Boil macaroni in water until tender and drain thoroughly. Stir in butter and egg. Mix mustard and salt with 1 tablespoon of hot water, and add to milk. Add cheese to macaroni, reserving enough to sprinkle on top. Pour into buttered casserole; add milk, sprinkle with reserved cheese. Bake at 350°F for about 45 minutes or until custard is set and top is crusty.

The impulse to censor

All totalitarians censor.

There aren't enough guns or enough gunmen to force each and every person in a country to do what they're told to do, so in order to control a population and keep them subjugated, totalitarians instill fear and resignation.

Fear and resignation will keep people in line very effectively, with the added bonus that they can't be seen with a camera. A population that's held down through fear and resignation looks quiet and peaceful in a news photograph.

Still, you can see the weapons at work, if you look.

You can observe fear in the silence that fills the gaping space that would otherwise be filled by someone standing up and saying, in any language, "Hey, this ain't right."

You can observe resignation in the proliferation of comments like, "Who am I to know? This is what everyone says, so it must be true."

It's easier to instill fear than resignation. Cut off a few heads, and you're there.

To induce a widespread feeling of resignation, it's essential that the population doesn't ever hear, read, or see credible evidence that what the totalitarian asserts is untrue.

That's why they censor. That's why they close down television stations, control newspapers, arrest intellectuals, burn books, restrict the Internet, and prohibit free speech.

If you study history, or live through it, the startling thing about totalitarianism is that a society can arrive at it by traveling a road that is paved with good intentions.

Totalitarianism is the logical result of collectivism, the belief that the welfare of the group is more important than the rights of the individual.

Freedom is the logical result of individualism, the belief that the rights of the individual are more important than the welfare of the group.

A totalitarian society tells the individual, "Sorry, you must sacrifice (or be sacrificed) for the sake of a group of people."

A free society tells the group of people, "Sorry, that individual has the right to his own life, liberty and property, and you can't take those things away from him just because you need his help."

The United States is a free country with a Constitution that protects an individual's right to life, liberty and property, but over the course of the 20th century the nation pushed further and further down the road of good intentions toward collectivism, stretching the Constitution through interpretation to accommodate policies widely believed to be good for society.

The crown jewel of collectivism, a health care system that would provide free care for all by taxing some and restricting payments to others, eluded the well-intentioned grasp of the collectivists time and again.

President Barack Obama is not succeeding either.

But as if to demonstrate the unavoidable connection between collectivism and totalitarianism, he is showing the totalitarian's impulse to censor.

On Friday the Obama administration, under pressure, lifted a gag order issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The CMS had ordered health insurers not to send mailings to their customers telling them how the proposed health care reform bill would affect their benefits.

On Saturday, a "senior White House official" denounced as "outrageous and unacceptable" a public complaint about new taxes in the health care reform bill from Gerry McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the nation's largest labor unions:

"He’s doing his members a real disservice," said the official, who said that while all other labor leaders had been careful to keep their opposition to elements of health care proposals modulated and largely inside the tent, McEntee was "beyond the pale."

On Sunday, the White House escalated its effort to discredit Fox News, with White House senior adviser David Axelrod telling ABC's "This Week" that Fox News is "pushing a point of view" and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel telling CNN, "The way we -- the president looks at it and we look at it, is, it is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."

Last week, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn derisively described Fox News as "a wing of the Republican Party." Mr. Emanuel's comments make clear it is the president personally who is driving the administration's war on an American news organization. The administration is trying to damage Fox News by publicly impugning its reputation and limiting its access to government officials.

"Despite calls to the White House this week," Fox News reported on its website, "the administration did not offer a guest for this weekend's 'Fox News Sunday' to talk about Dunn's comments, although administration officials appeared on all four Sunday morning shows to speak on various issues."

While the justification for any one of these strong-arm tactics might be open to debate, the pattern tells the unmistakable story. The Obama administration is trying to prevent the American people from hearing dissident views from credible voices.

When the health insurance industry released a study last week by PriceWaterhouseCoopers saying the proposed health care reform bill would result in higher insurance premiums, the president used his weekly radio address to denounce and threaten the industry. "Our health care dollars continue to be poured into their profits, bonuses, and administrative costs that do nothing to make us healthy," the president said. He accused the industry of "smoke and mirrors." He called the study "bogus" and "phony" and said Congress is "rightfully reviewing" the health insurance industry's "privileged exemption from our anti-trust laws."

See the earlier post, "The hit on Rush Limbaugh," for more about that.

It's clear that the Obama administration is trying to convince the American people that every well-informed, well-intentioned person supports the president's plan for health care reform. They would like the American people to believe that something must be done and that experts have determined that the president's plan, whatever it turns out to be, is the one-and-only thing that should be done.

They would like to induce a general sense of resignation.

That's why people who stand up and say, "Hey, that ain't right," -- whether at tea parties or on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or on the Glenn Beck show or at a town hall meeting or in a letter from your insurance company or in a union newsletter or in a 'fishy' e-mail or in a Chamber of Commerce TV ad or on the Rush Limbaugh show -- are ignored, ridiculed, denounced, demonized or, if possible, ruined.

Every effort by the government to censor or silence critics is a step in the direction of totalitarianism. Every effort to use the power of government to intimidate American businesses into silent acquiescence is a step in the direction of totalitarianism.

The length of the road is uncertain but the destination is not.

Totalitarianism is the logical consequence of a bad idea, the idea that the welfare of a group can be improved by limiting the rights of the individual. It is not unique to nations with evil leaders. It is not unique to any one culture or geographic region.

It is not going to happen in the United States of America.

Our troops overseas are not the only Americans fighting for freedom.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested to read "Defending Capitalism" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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Tabloid update: "David Letterman's Lover's Story"

At first blush it appeared that the David Letterman womanizing story would be a motherlode of jokes to rival the Clinton administration, but it turns out the story is more poignant than funny.

The National Enquirer paid everybody and found out that Stephanie Birkitt was David Letterman's longtime girlfriend at the same time Regina Lasko was his longtime girlfriend. Regina was in Westchester and Stephanie was in Manhattan. Stephanie knew about Regina but Regina didn't know about Stephanie. Stephanie wanted to get pregnant but Regina got pregnant first.

Letterman only married Regina after a "bitter ultimatum" and Stephanie took pleasure in the fact that the wedding was a low-key affair at a Montana courthouse.

The wedding to Regina didn't end the affair with Stephanie. Letterman paid Stephanie a salary of $200,000 a year, and he paid for her law school tuition, and he bought her a house, and he offered to hire her as his "personal" attorney. He put her in charge of his Indy racing team so they'd have an excuse to be there together. He invited her on family vacations and fooled around with her when his wife was elsewhere.

The most cringe-inducing detail in the tabloids this week is the report that Letterman couldn't bring himself to tell his mother about the breaking scandal, so she heard about it in a phone call from his wife.

Second place goes to this: "Letterman liked Stephanie to play 'dress up,'" the National Enquirer's sources said. "He had Stephanie re-enact some of his favorite 'Stupid Pet Tricks' -- with Stephanie as the pet!"

What a betrayal.

Merrill Markoe wrote that bit.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "David Letterman's stimulus package."

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The hit on Rush Limbaugh

The vicious libel of Rush Limbaugh that took place this week was made possible by an abuse of government power known as antitrust law.

On July 14, 2009, roughly six weeks after David Checketts approached Rush Limbaugh about investing in the St. Louis Rams, the Associated Press reported this:

As NFL owners and players resume talks on a new collective bargaining agreement, the new union chief and 20 current and retired players plan to meet with members of Congress Wednesday in hopes of building political support to head off a lockout.

In an interview with The Associated Press Tuesday, the union head, DeMaurice Smith, said the group will remind lawmakers about the "gifts" Congress bestows on the league, such as an antitrust exemption for broadcasting contracts.

The players' union was asking Congress to use the threat of removing the NFL's antitrust exemption as a way of pressuring the league to reach a new deal with the players.

"Congress has jurisdiction over the NFL in several areas, including a 1961 law granting leagues antitrust exemption for broadcasting. That allowed the NFL to sign TV contracts on behalf of all its teams, helping to transform the league into the economic powerhouse it is today," the AP reported.

Without the antitrust exemption, the NFL would be committing a crime by signing TV contracts on behalf of its teams. Perhaps. It's difficult to know what's legal and what's not legal under the antitrust laws. Microsoft was prosecuted for giving away a free Internet browser.

"The antitrust laws give the government the power to prosecute and convict any business concern in the country any time it chooses," Ayn Rand wrote in 1962. Antitrust, she wrote, is "a haphazard accumulation of non-objective laws so vague, complex, contradictory and inconsistent that any business practice can now be construed as illegal, and by complying with one law a businessman opens himself to prosecution under several others."

Ayn Rand saw the antitrust laws as a means for the "random little powerlusters of the moment" to seize and hold control over somebody else's productive enterprises. "The threat of sudden destruction, of unpredictable retaliation for unnamed offenses, is a much more potent means of enslavement than explicit dictatorial laws," she wrote. "It demands more than mere obedience; it leaves men no policy save one: to please the authorities; to please--in any issue, matter, or circumstance, for fear of an unknowable, unprovable vengeance."

In November of 2007, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell received a letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter threatening to introduce legislation withdrawing the NFL's antitrust exemption if he did not allow a free broadcast of a game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. The league intended to telecast the game exclusively on the NFL Network.

"After weeks of insisting they wouldn't cave in," AP sports writer Rachel Cohen reported, "NFL officials did just that." The game was simulcast on CBS and NBC.

So it should be no surprise that when the NFL Players Association needed a new executive director this year, they thought it might be useful to have someone with Washington experience. DeMaurice Smith, a well-connected Washington lawyer who served on the Obama transition team, got the nod.

"Just like every business in America, a good presence on the Hill is good business," free-agent tight end Mark Bruener told the Associated Press.

The players weren't alone in that assessment. "The NFL has also ramped up its Washington presence," the AP reported, "hiring a full-time lobbyist and creating a political action committee to make federal campaign donations last year."

Stalemate.

But not for long.

On October 12, Chris Mortensen of ESPN reported:

NFL Players executive director DeMaurice Smith on Saturday made a move to solidify the union against a bid by conservative talk show radio host Rush Limbaugh as part of a group that aims to purchase the St. Louis Rams.

In an e-mail to the union's executive committee on Saturday specifically addressing Limbaugh's bid, Smith said, "I've spoken to the Commissioner [Roger Goodell] and I understand that this ownership consideration is in the early stages. But sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred."

DeMaurice Smith told ESPN, "I encourage our players to express their views." At least seven NFL players came out publicly against Rush Limbaugh.

Somebody apparently told them that Rush Limbaugh endorsed slavery and assassination. Friday on MSNBC, David Shuster issued a non-apology for reporting that Limbaugh held those views, explaining that MSNBC had gotten this information from an NFL player, but they could not independently verify it.

Did the players get that 'information' from DeMaurice Smith?

ESPN's Chris Mortensen reported on October 12:

In Smith's communication Saturday with his executive committee, the union leader encouraged players to speak their mind on all matters, including Limbaugh's bid.

"I have asked our players to embrace their roles not only in the game of football but also as players and partners in the business of the NFL," said Smith in the e-mail. "They risk everything to play this game, they understand that risk and they live with that risk and its consequences for the rest of their life. We also know that there is an ugly part of history and we will not risk going backwards, giving up, giving in or lying down to it."

"Our men are strong and proud sons, fathers, spouses and I am proud when they stand up, understand this is their profession and speak with candor and blunt honesty about how they feel."

They spoke with "blunt honesty" about a preposterous lie. Rush Limbaugh does not support slavery and assassination. He supports tax cuts and free enterprise.

Rush Limbaugh, with his tens of millions of listeners and his sharply articulated conservative views, is a threat to the re-election of the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

DeMaurice Smith obviously knows all of this.

Maybe it was his idea, or maybe the Democrats in the House and Senate reached out to him and let it be known that they'd appreciate a favor, but DeMaurice Smith executed a vicious and totally unwarranted attack on Rush Limbaugh that would have ended the career of a less independent broadcaster.

In return, the Democrats on Capitol Hill will threaten to withdraw the NFL's antitrust exemption if the league locks out the players when the collective bargaining agreement expires.

Watch for it.

You don't have to know anything about antitrust law to see the potential it holds for abuse of power. This week the health insurance industry released a report stating that the proposed health care reform bill would result in higher premiums for consumers and businesses, and instead of checking their math the Senate Democrats threatened to revoke their antitrust exemption. President Obama joined their call in his weekly radio address, attacking the insurance industry for "earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our anti-trust laws."

A couple of years ago, Major League Baseball was threatened with the loss of its antitrust exemption if it didn't institute a 'voluntary' drug-testing program with tough penalties for steroid use.

A "privileged exemption" from laws "so vague, complex, contradictory and inconsistent that any business practice can now be construed as illegal" is a very valuable thing.

It can be offered in exchange for campaign contributions. It can be revoked in retaliation for opposition.

It can be a blunt instrument in a collective bargaining negotiation that should not involve the government in any way.

If the NFL didn't have an antitrust exemption, the NFL Players Association would have no reason to curry favor with Democrats on Capitol Hill. Congress would have no leverage, and no role, in negotiations between the league and the union.

But why should there even be a law that prohibits the NFL from negotiating TV contracts for its teams? If it's okay with the team owners, why is it anybody else's problem? What is the threat to the American people that justifies a law allowing politicians to selectively interfere with business negotiations between private parties? And even if there was a reason for such a law, why should politicians be able to offer exemptions from it to certain favored businesses?

It's time to repeal the antitrust statutes. Arbitrary laws are an irresistible invitation to abuse of power. They are dangerous to freedom.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous posts, "Tackling the NFL" and "Barry Bonds' big asterisk."

Source note: Ayn Rand, "Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason"; The Objectivist Newsletter; February, 1962. Reprinted in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought by Ayn Rand, available from Amazon.com, the Ayn Rand Institute's bookstore, and many other booksellers.

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Breaking the spell

Magic is a very old art, and one of the oldest rules in it is: Never repeat a trick.

Because when you repeat a trick, the little incidental words and movements that carried no significance for the audience suddenly become glaringly obvious as important clues to the mystery.

Curtain up.

Ladies and gentlemen! Live from New Orleans, Louisiana, we proudly present the astounding, the mystifying, the amazing President Barack Obama!

We take you now to the University of New Orleans, where a town hall meeting is just about to wrap up. The final question for the president comes from a little boy who is in the fourth grade.

"Why do people hate you?" 9-year-old Tyren Scott asked. "They're supposed to love you. And God is love."



"That's what I'm talking about," the president answered. His answer runs four paragraphs and includes his observation that people are "worried" and "feeling frustrated."

We take you now to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's August 11th and President Obama is holding a town hall meeting, where he is about to call on an 11-year-old girl.

"All right, this young lady right here. She's still enjoying her summer. When do you go back to school?"

"I go back to school September 3rd."

"September 3rd, okay. What's your name?"

"Julia Hall from Malden, Massachusetts."

"Nice to meet you, Julia." (Applause.)

"I saw -- as I was walking in, I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming health care. How do kids know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can -- that help more of us?"



President Obama's answer is eight paragraphs long in the White House's transcript and includes the sentence, "I recognize there is an underlying fear here."

Julia Hall turned out to be the daughter of a coordinator of Massachusetts Women for Obama, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted to reporters that the president chose questions at random.

If Tyren Scott has a connection to the Obama team, it hasn't yet become public.

But it certainly is strange that two children at two separate town hall meetings would ask a version of the same question, the question our famously thin-skinned president apparently asks himself every day: Why doesn't everyone love me?

His answer, it seems, is that the American people are a quivering mass of anxiety.

This would explain why he's on television so often. He thinks he's reassuring the nation. He thinks his policy goals are being blocked by irrational anxiety, stoked by unhelpful voices in the media.

So his goal is to silence or discredit the unhelpful voices, while staging little theatrical productions aimed at sending out the message that no serious, honest, well-informed person questions the wisdom of the president's policies.

Like any good magic show, it just makes your skin crawl.


Copyright 2009

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Why health care reform will fail

Today on Capitol Hill, the Senate Finance Committee voted to pass a health care reform bill that doesn't include a government-run insurance plan of any kind. After the committee adjourned, five Republican senators spoke to reporters in a hallway of the Hart Senate Office Building.

"During a pause," The Hill newspaper reported, "a group of protesters spoke up who had sat silently in the committee room, holding signs that advocated for healthcare reform. The protesters numbered about a dozen and wore hospital patient gowns over street clothes."

The Hill reports that the protesters demanded to know why the senators had blocked the discussion of "single-payer," the Canadian-style health care system in which everyone receives free health care services paid for by the government.

Reporter J. Taylor Rushing writes that four of the GOP senators "left the scene," but Senator John Cornyn of Texas stayed to talk to an older couple who had driven all the way from California to witness the vote.

Senator Cornyn stayed for "several minutes" and "calmly" stated his reasons for opposing a single-payer health care system.

Now, get this:

"The couple, Bob and Bonnie Wolfe of Santa Cruz, Calif., said they appreciated Cornyn's gesture but still did not feel listened to.

"'The situation is, I have never been able to get a clear answer from any politician as to why Medicare covers 80 percent of my costs, but the insurance companies were able to come in and get their foothold in for that 20 percent,' Bob Wolfe said.

"'From our point of view, they shuffle papers,' said Bonnie Wolfe. 'They have nothing to do with our health care. They don’t take care of us.'"

This is why health care reform will fail. Here you have two people who are upset that Medicare only pays for 80 percent of their medical costs.

They were upset enough to drive from California to Washington D.C. to complain about it.

If Bob Wolfe wants a clear answer as to why Medicare covers only 80 percent of his costs, he shouldn't be asking a politician.

He should be asking a math teacher.

Or maybe he should ask Raul Castro.

"Nobody, no individual nor country, can indefinitely spend more than she or he earns," the Cuban leader said in a speech last August. "Two plus two always adds up to four, never five. Within the conditions of our imperfect socialism, due to our own shortcomings, two plus two often adds up to three."

Cuba has had fifty years to figure out that socialism doesn't work, but here in America, where we've only been going at it in earnest since last fall, a lot of Americans still don't believe there are any limits on what the government can buy for them.

They want housing subsidies and auto subsidies and child-care subsidies and free health care and a free college education, and most of all they want the self-esteem that comes with believing they earned all of this, or they're entitled to it because they were somehow cheated out of it by evil corporate titans and Republican politicians.

And they want it all. Eighty percent just annoys them.

So if you're out there in the workforce breaking your back to pay your own bills with after-tax earnings, Bob and Bonnie Wolfe have a message for you.

"Is that the best you can do?"


Copyright 2009

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Close the schools

Last week, the Christina School District in Newark, Delaware, suspended student Zachary Christie and ordered him to attend reform school for 45 days. Mr. Christie's offense was bringing a knife to school.

The district has a zero-tolerance policy for weapons, and certainly nobody wants their kids to go to school in a revival of "West Side Story."

And Zachary Christie didn't just pull a knife. He pulled a fork and a spoon, too. They were all attached, it was a Boy Scout camping utensil.

But Zachary Christie is no Boy Scout.

He's a Cub Scout.

He's six years old.

This is Zachary:



That's his mother on the left and his father on the right. You can see they're giving him some space, seeing how he's armed with that folding fork.

He's probably on the no-fly list already.

Zachary Christie must be very confused right now, because he was just trying to eat lunch with his cool new Cub Scout camping utensil, and the next thing he knows, adults are arguing over his head and he's suspended from school.

Helpfully for Zachary, and for anyone else who's confused, the New York Times dug up a law professor to explain why the Christina School District is right and Zachary's furious parents are wrong.

"There are still serious threats every day in schools," said Dr. Charles P. Ewing, professor of law and psychology at the University at Buffalo Law School. The Times said Professor Ewing explained that "giving school officials discretion holds the potential for discrimination and requires the kind of threat assessments that only law enforcement is equipped to make."

Fair enough.

If school officials are so incompetent or bigoted or stupid that they can't be trusted to judge the difference between a cheerful six-year-old with a camping utensil and a brooding psychopath with a hatchet, there's only one thing to do.

Close the schools.

These people should not be teaching anybody's children. They shouldn't be trusted with a sharpened pencil.

After all, a sharpened pencil could be used to hijack an airplane. That's why the TSA banned crossword puzzle books from airplanes and only allows the much safer tidbits® puzzle books, which can be done with a ballpoint pen.

They also make good vocabulary exercises for home-schooled weapons violators.

The most troubling part of this story is the no-warning, no-mercy, no-counseling policy that sends a perfectly innocent child out of the classroom and off to reform school for making a perfectly innocent mistake. In a sensible world, one in which school officials weren't terrified of being hauled into federal court and sued for discrimination, a sensible school official would sensibly confiscate the dangerous item from the six-year-old and then send a sensible note home to tell the parents that Cub Scout knives aren't allowed in school.

But we don't live in a sensible world.

We live under the Incorporation Doctrine, the Supreme Court's fairly recent interpretation of the Constitution that makes most of the Bill of Rights apply to state and local governments. In practice, this means the justices decide whether school officials have shown a good enough reason for anything they do that might violate a student's rights, like place limits on political demonstrations in class or strip-search students for drugs.

Before the Incorporation Doctrine, state and local officials had the final word. But over the last eighty years and especially in the last fifty, the Supreme Court usurped the powers that the Constitution reserved to the states. Now anyone who feels aggrieved by a school policy can file a federal lawsuit against the school district, and if the case makes it to the Supreme Court, the justices will evaluate the school's reasoning and then effectively substitute their own judgment for the judgment of locally elected school boards.

It's not a career-ender to be sued, unless you're sued for discrimination.

So the zero-tolerance policy permits no discretion, no judgment and no differentiation between Cub Scout utensils and guillotine blades.

The policy works perfectly, exactly as designed.

It's not designed to protect the students from weapons. It's designed to protect the district from lawsuits.

It's not really stupid at all.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: For more information about the Incorporation Doctrine and how it has affected the schools, read the appendix to The 37th Amendment at this link: http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm

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Decoding Don Draper

The website AskMen.com just announced that the winner of its online poll to find the Most Influential Man of 2009 is Don Draper.

Don't know him?

Don Draper is the fictional advertising executive on AMC's 1960s-era series, "Mad Men." Actor Jon Hamm plays the ad exec, a seductive, secretive, brooding, chiseled masterpiece of a character.

"It's interesting how drinking, smoking and carousing wins the race today," series creator Matthew Weiner said.

Mr. Weiner, who once put an Ayn Rand novel in the hands of one of the show's characters, probably knows better. The appeal of Don Draper is deeper than that.

Don Draper refuses to be a sacrificial animal. He didn't want to sacrifice himself in the army. He didn't want to sacrifice himself to his needy brother. He doesn't want to sacrifice himself to the suburban norms of early-1960s family life.

He values his own life, and when push comes to shove, he doesn't recognize society's claims on it.

That's the character that won the poll of over 500,000 online voters. Usain Bolt, the world's fastest man, finished second, and President Barack Obama came in third.

Interesting, isn't it?

"Art," Ayn Rand wrote, "is the barometer of a culture. It reflects the sum of a society's deepest philosophical values: not its professed notions and slogans, but its actual view of man and of existence. The image of an entire society stretched out on a psychologist's couch, revealing its naked subconscious, is an impossible concept; yet that is what art accomplishes: it presents the equivalent of such a session, a transcript which is more eloquent and easier to diagnose than any other set of symptoms."

Every day, it seems, another government official is telling the American people to sacrifice a little more of their own well-being and comfort for somebody else's -- for somebody else's health care, for somebody else's country, for somebody else's freedom. For the planet. For the children. For the "stability" of the nation's financial system. For homeowners in trouble. For auto workers in Detroit.

Sacrifice is always described as a virtue.

Yet Don Draper, a character who rejects the idea of sacrifice and consistently acts to preserve his own life and happiness, is the Most Influential Man of 2009.

The U.S. Constitution, which was largely written by James Madison, could have been written by Don Draper. It doesn't say anything about sacrifice. It says you have the right to your life, your liberty, and your property.

And it's not even fictional.

Maybe Don Draper's appeal belongs in the same category with Tea Party protests and Ron Paul rallies, signs that many, many people are tired of being treated like sacrificial animals, and most especially tired of pretending to approve of it.


Copyright 2009

Source note: The Ayn Rand quotation is from her 1965 essay, "Bootleg Romanticism," which is included in "The Romantic Manifesto."

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The rise in suicides

"Of the demonstrably wise, there are but two," Mark Twain wrote, "those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied by drink."

Life is harder than it looks.

Recently there has been a surge in the number of people who have tragically met Mark Twain's first standard of wisdom.

Today, the deputy CEO of France Telecom SA resigned following 24 suicides by company employees in the last 18 months.

In 2007, the U.S. Army reported 115 confirmed suicides, the highest level since the Pentagon began keeping records in 1980. The Army reported 110 active duty Army suicides from January 2009 through August 2009, of which 71 have been confirmed, and 39 are still under investigation. For the same period in 2008, there were 89 suicides among active duty soldiers.

In August, the U.S. Department of Labor reported a 28 percent increase in workplace suicides over the prior year.

There's no shortage of reasons for despondency. France Telecom SA laid off 22,000 people between 2006 and 2008. The stresses of military life are well documented. The pressure of the economic crisis and the rising unemployment rate need no explanation.

And yet, there may be another factor at work in this horrible story.

If you watch a lot of news on television, you can't help but see a lot of commercials for prescription drugs, each one featuring a calm and reassuring voice reading a list of terrifying risks and side effects. Stroke. Heart attack. Bleeding. Suicide.

Suicide?!!

"Some people have had changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions while using CHANTIX to help them quit smoking," one cheerful voice-over announces.

"You may have thoughts about suicide when you first start taking an antidepressant such as Paxil, especially if you are younger than 24 years old," another voice chirps.

"In patients with depression, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide may occur," the Ambien CR announcer says soothingly.

If you found this post because you are in the grip of depression, and you're taking any prescription drugs, call a 24-hour pharmacy right now and tell the pharmacist what you're taking and what you're feeling. You may be experiencing a known side effect of a prescription drug.

There may be a solution that's a lot easier than ending a war or fixing the economy.

Find a 24-hour Walgreens at this link:
http://www.walgreens.com/marketing/storelocator/find.jsp?foot=store_locator

Find a 24-hour CVS Pharmacy at this link:
http://www.cvs.com/CVSApp/store/storefinder.jsp

Find a Walmart with a 24-hour pharmacy at this link:
http://www.walmart.com/cservice/ca_storefinder.gsp

David Letterman's stimulus package

A lot of money is going to change hands over Joe Halderman's foiled plot to extort $2 million from David Letterman.

The late night comic probably will be paying lawyers and damage-control publicists more than $2 million, if he hasn't already.

The tabloids will be paying everyone. Yesterday a former assistant named Holly Hester identified herself as one of the women who will talk. "Get the f--- out of here," a man outside her California home told a New York Daily News reporter, "We're being offered a lot of money for this s---."

CBS and Letterman's production company will be paying settlements to people who were denied raises or promotions -- or continued employment -- while women who slept with the boss received favorable treatment.

Other networks will be paying former assistants Stephanie Birkitt and Laurie Diamond for the brilliant sitcom treatments they threw together so Barbara Walters can continue to say she doesn't pay for interviews.

And that's nothing compared to the money that's going to change hands if the pre-nup agreement doesn't survive the revelation that David Letterman had a secret bedroom above the Ed Sullivan Theater, which no one was allowed to enter except the female employees who were privately invited.

Yeesh.

Two things jump out at us about this story. One is that sofa bed manufacturers will have to find a new market, because they're not going to be selling any office furniture for a while.

And the second is that John Cleese is about to lose the title of Grand Master of Alimony Jokes. It was a short run.


Copyright 2009

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The midnight sausage factory

Senate Finance Committee member Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware, told CNSNews.com that he doesn't expect to read the legislative language of the health care reform bill that the committee just completed.

"Carper described the type of language the actual text of the bill would finally be drafted in as 'arcane,' 'confusing,' 'hard stuff to understand,' and 'incomprehensible,'" CNSNews reported.

It's tempting to say that if they don't know what they're doing they shouldn't be doing it, but that might be construed as the type of uncivil discourse which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tearfully warned might lead to violence.

We wouldn't want anybody to get hurt.

So we'll just point out that the "actual text of the bill" is what becomes law, and that's what people will have to obey or face law enforcement action. Maybe Senator Carper can't understand it, but there are plenty of lawyers hired by everyone affected by this law who will understand it and will be happy to explain it to him.

That's why the public should have a reasonable amount of time to read the critical passages of the bill before the Senate votes on it.

The Senate Finance Committee customarily works with what they call "conceptual language," which is something like a plain-language description of what the legislative language will say.

They like to make sure everybody understands what they're doing.

You should see what they're doing.

America Wants To Know caught the last couple of hours of the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill mark-up on C-SPAN late Thursday night. The committee finished work on the bill at 2:15 a.m. on Friday. Exhausted and bleary-eyed, Chairman Max Baucus congratulated the senators and the committee staff on accomplishing what he said was real progress toward "delivery system reform."

Senator Baucus said the results wouldn't be seen for four or five or six years, but the health care bill would begin the process of moving the health care system away from "fee for service," which he said was very wasteful, and toward a more efficient "delivery system."

Right there, you can see the core of the problem with health care reform.

For all that the Democrats have assured the public that "if you like what you have, you can keep it," they are trying to set in motion a process that will cause "what you have" to go away.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year. But soon.

The proposed health care reform bill would require every American to buy health insurance. It would restrict health insurance companies to offering only policies that meet with the federal government's approval. It would tax insurance companies that currently offer expensive policies with good coverage. It would levy fees on medical device manufacturers and drug companies and other businesses in the health care sector.

All these things would have serious consequences and create new problems.

The individual mandate to buy insurance would require a massive enforcement bureaucracy operated by the Internal Revenue Service. Some people would get subsidies. Some people would pay fines. Some people would invent fictional children to qualify for "refundable tax credit" checks and then report on their tax returns that they bought a health insurance policy with the money. What level of government intrusiveness will be necessary to police this monstrosity?

How will the government decide what standards new health insurance policies must meet in order to be legally sold in the U.S.? By interest group lobbying and political contributions? How long will it take the bureaucracy to catch up with advances in medical technology? Will important and valuable innovations be lost because getting them approved for coverage is like trying to sell a new weapons system to the Pentagon?

How long will insurance companies continue to offer high-quality policies if there's a 35 percent tax on the companies for selling those products? How is the government going to replace that revenue after there are no "Cadillac" policies to tax?

How does it reduce health care costs to hit medical device makers and drug companies with $90 billion in fees that they necessarily will pass on to consumers in the form of higher prices?

Will Congress rage against profits made by companies in the health care sector and try to restrict salaries, price increases, company spending and shareholder dividends? Will this cause a long, slow deterioration of quality, availability and innovation?

Where will Congress get the money to pay for Medicaid expansion and insurance subsidies when the projections of what they will cost turn out to be wildly wrong? (Cash-for-Clunkers was funded with a billion dollars that was supposed to last for three months. The money was gone in three days.)

Health care reform is a disaster chased by a catastrophe.

If you light candles throughout your home and then go out, forgetting you lit them and forgetting you have a cat, when the house burns to the ground you can use your superior intelligence and excellent verbal skills to explain that the candles were needed to promote a feeling of serenity, and you had to leave because it was the Columbus Day recess, and it's not your fault because the cat is under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Agriculture, but the house is still burned down and any idiot could have told you this would happen.

"If we were starting a system from scratch," President Obama said recently, "then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense."

Good God. It's arson.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "The secret health plan," "Bad at math," "Just kill it," "Yes we can and no we won't," and "Gazing into the future."

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