Our #1 story is about who are the adults in government these days. It’s not Obama and the Senate but rather the Republican House which is actually tackling tough issues. Article number 2 relates how on Friday, the Obama Administration let it be known that they were killing CLASS. This was the provision in Obamacare which set up a insurance for long term care. It seems that numbers wouldn’t work out. Story #3 relates a growing problem Obama has in Pennsylvania explicitly and one that is actually much broader across the country. Our fourth article comes from Britain where the National Health Service is seeing patients being put on the DNR (do not resuscitate list without personal or family agreement). I guess death panels aren’t impossible in a democracy. Our final posting is about Occupy Detroit which seems foolish since the Occupy movement is asking for more Detroits.
1. Who are the Adults?
Let's take our eyes off the Republican presidential race for a minute and ask the question, where if anywhere are we getting adult leadership on major public policy issues this year?
The answer, I think, is WHERE THE FOUNDING FATHERS SEEM TO HAVE LEAST EXPECTED IT, FROM THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND SPECIFICALLY FROM ITS REPUBLICAN LEADERS.
The Founders expected the House, with all its members elected directly by the people every two years, to be the flightiest branch of government, most susceptible to momentary enthusiasms and nostrums, in need of restraint from a Senate full of old-timers and a president gifted, they hoped, with the gravity of a George Washington.
But that's not exactly what we see in Washington today. IN CALENDAR YEAR 2011 WE HAVE SEEN SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER AND HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN PAUL RYAN TAKING ON TOUGH ISSUES AND PROVIDING ADULT GUIDANCE WHEN OTHERS SEEM TO BE DOING THE OPPOSITE.
Certainly Barack Obama, touted as an instinctive bipartisan compromiser, has proven to be something like the opposite. True, on occasion he caves in to the opposition -- on extending the 2001-03 tax cuts last December, on rescinding an Environmental Protection Agency air quality regulation recently. But he does so grudgingly and with an eye obviously on election politics rather than on public policy….
Unfortunately this is not only true, it’s not even in doubt. The Democrats enter in a fiscal crisis and their answer to it was two-fold. Spend and “don’t let a crisis go to waste.
2. CLASS Fails: The First Admitted Failure Of Obamacare
Now that one of ObamaCare's major new benefit programs has been scrapped, LIBERALS ARE TRYING TO MAKE STONE SOUP BY CLAIMING THAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MERELY COMMITTED AN ACT OF "GOOD GOVERNMENT." They claim that when this long-term care insurance program proved to be unworkable, the Administration conceded as much, and now it's gone. So let's review the evidence, not least because it so perfectly illustrates the recklessness that produced the Affordable Care Act.
When Democrats were pasting it together in 2009 and 2010, the immediate attraction of the program known by the acronym Class was that its finances could be gamed to create the illusion that a new entitlement would reduce the deficit. ENDING THE COMPLICATED CLASS BUDGET GIMMICK ERASES THE BETTER PART OF OBAMACARE'S PURPORTED "SAVINGS," but it's also worth focusing on the program's long-run political goals…
…The only reason the Health and Human Services Department pre-emptively called off this scheme is that former NEW HAMPSHIRE SENATOR JUDD GREGG SUCCEEDED IN INSERTING A PROVISO THAT REQUIRED THE CLASS PROGRAM'S REALITY TO MATCH DEMOCRATIC PROMISES AS A MATTER OF LAW. If HHS couldn't provide "an actuarial analysis of the 75-year costs of the program that ensures solvency throughout such 75-year period," it couldn't be legally implemented.
In other words, HHS HAD TO PROVE THAT THE CLASS PROGRAM WOULDN'T GO BROKE THE WAY IT WAS DESIGNED TO—AND ACTUARIAL ANALYSIS IS A MATTER OF MATH, NOT POLITICS. In a 48-page report that HHS submitted to Congress Friday, the department concedes that it is literally impossible to create any kind of long-term care program under the law's statutory text in which revenues match expenditures. SUCH A PLAN WOULD COST AS MUCH AS $3,000 PER MONTH, WHICH NO ONE WOULD EVER BUY….
Well at least in this case the Obama Administration actually followed the law.
3. Obama’s Pennsylvania Problem and Soon To Be National Problem
Minutes stretched on awkwardly after U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis spoke to local Democrats. Yet that was less uncomfortable than one man's attempt to break the silence.
"LET'S GO OBAMA!" HE SHOUTED, CLAPPING LOUDLY.
NO RESPONSE.
It was a reaction you'd expect at a Republican rally — not from Pittsburgh unionists, elected Democrats and other party faithful gathered to support Barack Obama's jobs bill.
While the event's lackluster attendance might be attributed to poor planning (cardinal rule in politics: never book a room you can't fill), there is no excuse for Democrats' lack of applause for a Democrat president.
OBAMA HAS A PENNSYLVANIA PROBLEM, PARTICULARLY WITH WORKING-CLASS DEMOCRATS AND WOMEN WHO SUPPORTED HILLARY CLINTON IN 2008.
He eventually won them over (along with young people and blacks), beating Republican John McCain by nearly 10 points.
Today, not so much — largely based on LOSS OF TRUST.
Candidates know they can evoke strong negative feelings and still win back voters. BUT VOTERS' TRUST IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO RECOVER….
Obama's Pennsylvania problem - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/zito/s_761965.html#ixzz1b2ufRGzX
It’s a loss of confidence along with a loss of trust. It would take a miracle for Obama to win reelection.
4. Elderly patients condemned to early death by secret use of do not resuscitate orders
Elderly patients are being condemned to an early death by hospitals making secret use of "do not resuscitate" orders, an investigation has found.
The orders – which record an advance decision that a patient's life should not be saved if their heart stops – are routinely being applied without the knowledge of the patient or their relatives.
On one ward, one-third of DNR orders were issued without consultation with the patient or their family, according to the NHS's own records. At another hospital, junior doctors freely admitted that the forms were filled out by medical teams without the involvement of patients or relatives….
Death Panels anyone? I guess we know how the Europeans Health Care system is cheaper than ours.
5. Occupy Detroit? Why?
Detroit would seem an odd place for the Occupy movement. After, all, IT HAS ALREADY RECEIVED EVERYTHING THE 99 PERCENTERS ARE DEMANDING.
Want redistribution of wealth? For 40-odd years, Detroit has gotten tens of billions of dollars in welfare assistance, from the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson’s administration to Barack Obama’s Strong Cities Initiative.
Want good-paying jobs? Michigan is the notorious home of the Big Three automakers, who paid their workers a best-in-the-U.S. wage of $40 an hour — far above the average U.S. manufacturing wage of $15 an hour, resulting in blue-collar workers who often earned six-figure incomes….
….And yet on Friday, some 500 demonstrators from across Michigan descended on downtown Detroit to protest conditions here. They gathered at the Spirit of Detroit statue at the base of Woodward Avenue. They marched up Detroit’s main street past the gleaming new corporate headquarters of Quicken Loans and Compuware, past a sea of empty storefronts, past the corporate-sponsored sports complexes, to their destination: Grand Circus Park. They held signs reading “MAKE CAPITALISM EXTINCT” AND “THE PEOPLE ARE TOO BIG TO FAIL” AND “EAT THE RICH” WHILE CHANTING “GOOD JOBS NOW!” AND “TAX THE RICH!” AND “F— THE GOP!”
Unwittingly, however, they were protesting a Democratic-run city that represents the failure of their agenda.
The distribution of wealth? In addition to massive federal welfare payments, Detroit also levies the state’s highest property tax as well as its own income tax. Yet that hasn’t helped the poor. In fact, it has done the opposite — creating a fatherless city that leads the nation in crime, sports a NEARLY 50 PERCENT ADULT ILLITERACY RATE, AND GRADUATES JUST 24 PERCENT OF ITS STUDENTS FROM HIGH SCHOOL.
The good-paying jobs? THE GRAVITY-DEFYING WAGES OF THE UAW CRIPPLED GM AND CHRYSLER, FORCING THEM INTO THE VERY FEDERAL BAILOUTS THAT THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT DECRIES — $60 billion in federal loans that they, unlike Wall Street banks, have yet to fully pay back….
OWS protesters are like the two guys who decided to open a business. They went into the countryside and bought strawberries for $1.00 per pound and then sold them in the city for $1.00 per pound. After doing this for several weeks, the one man said to the other, “You know, we’ve been doing this for a while and haven’t made much money. Do you have any ideas?” The other man said, “I think we need a bigger truck.”
OWS protesters are against the bailouts by government yet they are promoting the same government that bailed out Wall Street. It appears they think the problem is they need a bigger truck (government).
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