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Barack Obama

Kansas schools fail to make cut for grants

by Bob Weeks on March 5, 2010

Last year Secretary of Education Arne Duncan created a program named “Race to the Top” which would make grants to states that are willing to make certain reforms. Two such reforms prominently mentioned by Duncan and President Barack Obama are charter schools and merit pay for teachers.

We now know that Kansas was not selected to receive a grant, at least not in the first round. Kansas had applied for $166 million.

Kansas is falling behind the rest of the states in the types of innovation that Race to the Top was designed to promote. Specifically, the Kansas charter school law is weak. Anyone wishing to start a charter school must seek approval of the local school district. Most school districts in Kansas, especially the Wichita district, are hostile towards any lessening of the government school monopoly. As a result, there are very few charter schools in Kansas. It is likely that this played a role in the decision not to award a grant to Kansas.

Kansas is also unlikely to implement any sort of merit pay for teachers. As I reported last year in Kansas school establishment rejects reform: “In particular, the document Teaching in Kansas Commission: Final report, makes it clear that teacher merit pay in Kansas is not desired unless it is so watered-down as to be meaningless.”

Besides resisting merit pay, the Kansas National Education Association (or KNEA, the teachers union) is also opposed to charter schools. The national teachers union is too, as the Wall Street Journal reported last year: “NEA President Dennis Van Roekel told the Washington Post last week that charter schools and merit pay raise difficult issues for his members, yet Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said states that block these reforms could jeopardize their grant eligibility.”

It turns out that the prediction of Secretary Duncan was fulfilled. Kansas, with a teachers union that blocks reform at every step, is failing to keep up with innovations in education. Kansas should implement these reforms for their own good.

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The stimulus evidence one year on

by Bob Weeks on March 2, 2010

in Economics

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported a piece that analyzes whether the Obama stimulus plan, after one year’s time, can be judged a success. (See The Stimulus Evidence One Year On)

Robert J. Barro, who is professor of economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, writes that the stimulus may be a good deal in the short run — if the government spends on things that are truly worthwhile. As we’ve seen, that is not always the case.

But Barro says, correctly, that this spending, paid for with borrowed money as it is, generates debt that must be repaid at some time. This is something that government spending advocates seem to conveniently forget.

Barro comes to this conclusion:

We can now put the elements together to form a “five-year plan” from 2009 to 2013. The path of incremental government outlays over the five years in billions of dollars is +300, +300, 0, 0, 0, which adds up to +600. The path for GDP is +120, +180, +60, minus 330, minus 330, adding up to minus 300. GDP falls overall because the famous “balanced-budget multiplier” — the response of GDP when government spending and taxes rise together — is negative. This result accords with the familiar pattern whereby countries with larger public sectors tend to grow slower over the long term.

The projected effect on other parts of GDP (consumer expenditure, private investment, net exports) is minus 180, minus 120, +60, minus 330, minus 330, which adds up to minus 900. Thus, viewed over five years, the fiscal stimulus package is a way to get an extra $600 billion of public spending at the cost of $900 billion in private expenditure. This is a bad deal.

The fiscal stimulus package of 2009 was a mistake. It follows that an additional stimulus package in 2010 would be another mistake.

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Why Obama is wrong about net neutrality

by Bob Weeks on February 13, 2010

in Regulation

“Net neutrality” sounds like a noble concept, doesn’t it? But it’s another example of one political position co-opting language in a way that mislabels the underlying agenda.

In this case, net neutrality is a struggle over who should control the Internet. Some describe the contest as between government and free markets, while some think it’s between two competing set of corporate interests.

It shouldn’t be a surprise as to who President Obama believes should control the Internet.

Hayek vs. Keynes: the video

by Bob Weeks on February 11, 2010

in Economics

There’s a video concerning some obscure but vitally important ideas in economics that’s getting a lot of play on YouTube. Titled “Fear the Boom and Bust” a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem, the video tells the story about two competing theories of how the world works — the theories of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich A. Hayek. The ideas of Keynes have been vastly more popular in mainstream economics and politics and are embraced by President Obama and his advisors. This, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean that Keynes and his followers are correct.

The video has been viewed nearly 700,000 times. Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute has dissected the video and concludes that it’s great:

A hearty word of congratulations to Russ Roberts and John Papola for putting all this together and providing a fantastic example of how economics can be communicated to every person. It was Mises’s own view that economics should not be relegated to the classrooms but should be part of the study of every citizen. Roberts and Papola have taken his injunction very seriously and done something wonderful for Hayek, for Austrian ideas, for economics in general, and for the intellectual progress of the world.

The presentation manages to squeeze in one of my favorite quotes of Hayek: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

The theories of Austrian economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Hayek, and Murray N. Rothbard are becoming more popular as their theories offer explanatory power that Keynesian theories can’t match. Here in Wichita, Austrian ideas were recently advanced to explain the nature of the unemployment in Wichita and what might lie ahead. Malcolm Harris, Professor of Finance at Friends University in Wichita, who blogs at Mammon Among Friends, appeared last Friday on the KPTS television public affairs program Kansas Week and presented an explanation of our current woes based on Austrian principles.

Harris said that today we have a “different kind of unemployment.” He explained that credit plays a crucial role in the business cycle, something that he said we don’t hear much about today: “An overexpansion of credit causes an overexpansion of activities that cause real trouble.” Cessna, he said built many airplanes in 2007 and 2008 because there was such a credit bubble, and Cessna produced planes to meet the demand the bubble generated.

But now the bubble is over and demand has fallen. This type of unemployment, Harris said, doesn’t get solved by a stimulus package. He said this is “Austrian” unemployment, because it was the Austrian economist Hayek who explained the importance of credit in the business cycle.

Roger Garrison of Auburn University has a Powerpoint presentation that explains the difference between Keynesian and Hayekian view of economics. You may need to download a Powerpoint viewer in order to use this presentation.

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Scott Brown, Republican, wins in Massachusetts

by Bob Weeks on January 19, 2010

in United States government

At any moment Martha Coakley will concede that she has been defeated in her effort for the Democrats to hold on to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat in the United States Senate, dealing a blow to President Obama’s prestige and the future of Democratic Party efforts to control increasing sectors of the American economy.

Today the Wall Street Journal released poll results indicating that Americans are already weary of the big-government policies of Obama and his administration:

For the first time, a majority of Americans — 53% — disapprove of the government’s increased role in the economy since the financial crisis, up from 44% in March. And 48% said Washington was doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals, a plurality seen in polling since September.

The government’s takeover of General Motors, the biggest economic intervention that happened solely on Mr. Obama’s watch, drew the strongest negative reaction. Nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed, 65%, disapproved of the government’s taking a majority stake in the troubled auto maker. Independents were highly critical of the move, as were Republicans.

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Obama faces earmark test

by Bob Weeks on December 17, 2009

in United States government

A test for President Barack Obama is coming up soon.

When campaigning for the presidency, Obama pledged to end earmark spending. As reported earlier this year in Time Magazine: “… both Obama and Republican nominee John McCain tried to outdo each other with their pledges to rid Washington of the notorious pet projects that legislators slip into spending bills. Obama, who authored 2007 legislation to overhaul congressional ethics rules governing lobbying and earmarks, runs a real credibility risk when he makes exceptions to his own rules.”

But did he make a pledge to end earmarks? MediaMatters says he didn’t make a specific pledge. But he certainly criticized the earmark process.

At any rate, a bill loaded with earmarks is heading to the president for his signature. As reported in the New York Times: “The bill includes 1,720 earmarks costing $4.2 billion for lawmakers’ pet projects, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.”

Earlier this year, Obama signed a spending bill that contained earmarks. His defenders said that it was “last year’s business.”

Fair enough. Obama inherited certain conditions upon assuming office. But now — at least as far as this spending bill is concerned — it’s all his own doing.

We’ll know soon how Obama really feels about earmark spending.

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Don’t forfeit Kansas’ economic future to the United Nations

by Bob Weeks on December 7, 2009

in Environment

By Phil Kerpen and Derrick Sontag

The global warming debate is at a crossroads. With a skeptical American public already rising up against a cap-and-trade scheme that would send energy prices through the roof, a whistleblower at the influential Climate Research Unit revealing that the temperature data used to make the case for global warming was badly manipulated, predictions of yet another cold winter, and the fact it has been nearly a decade since global temperatures stopped rising.

India and China have suggested they might agree to increase their emissions at a slightly slower rate, but that’s it, and would still put the U.S. at a huge competitive disadvantage. Developing countries in the Third World are willing to get on board, but only if they get staggering wealth transfers from U.S. taxpayers.

In the face of all this, President Obama is expected to stop by the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen — on the way home from picking up his Noble Peace Prize in Norway — to commit the United States to a path of emissions reductions that will, in his own words, cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket,” as if nothing had changed at all and global warming remained the world’s most pressing problem.

The world is starting to come to grips with the limits of the American president’s rhetoric, but Obama has yet to face this reality. During his goodwill tour of Asia last month, Obama stood with Chinese President Hu Jintao and promised to “rally the world” toward a binding global agreement on global warming — a Kyoto II — in Copenhagen.

Obama followed up his Chinese appearance by announcing he would attend the conference in person. He plans to tell the world America is “politically committed” to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Those happen to be the reduction levels in the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House, but surely the president knows from his brief stint in Congress that he can’t commit the country to doing such a thing without a vote in the Senate.

The more the American people learn about cap-and-trade — and what it will mean for their jobs, communities and family budgets — the less they like it. Here in Kansas, according to a study by the National Association of Manufacturers, it would mean the price of gasoline would increase 24 percent, electricity by 64 percent, and natural gas by 77 percent. We would stand to lose twenty-nine thousand Kansas jobs by 2030.

Obama, it seems, is more interested in pleasing adoring crowds in Europe than blocking a policy that would slam Kansans with huge costs. But these huge price impacts create problems abroad, too. Australia’s Senate rejected cap-and-trade last week. China and India can accept some efficiency measures, but certainly cannot risk disrupting economic growth. It looks increasingly clear that the most likely result from Copenhagen will be a lot of sweeping rhetoric about progress, a commitment to meet again next year in Mexico City, and no agreement of any substance.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t lessen the anger for the American people because the Obama administration is doing more than making promises abroad. They are actually taking active steps to circumvent the Senate and implement policies that outsource our economic future the United Nations. Under the direction of White House Climate Czar Carol Browner, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to unleash on onslaught of greenhouse gas regulations through a twisted interpretation of the 1970 Clean Air Act, leaning on the United Nations climate reports that depend, in turn, on the now-discredited temperature data from the Climate Research Unit.

Americans for Prosperity will be there in Copenhagen to tell the real story of what is at stake: our country’s economic future, and whether this administration will get away with outsourcing it to bureaucrats at the United Nations and so-called scientists who are willing to obfuscate and manipulate. We can’t afford to lose this fight.

Phil Kerpen is director of policy and Derrick Sontag is Kansas state director for Americans for Prosperity, a national grassroots organization dedicated to fiscal responsibility and accountability. On the web at www.AmericansforProsperity.org.

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Wall Street Journal on government health care

by Bob Weeks on November 12, 2009

in Health care

The Wall Street Journal has compiled its editorials and op-eds into a collection titled The WSJ Guide to ObamaCare. It’s an invaluable collection of reporting and analysis.

For example: The German model, promoted by American liberals as a model to follow? “Alas, the German system is starting to come apart at the financial seams.” (The Stressed German Model: It took the Germans 125 years to figure out that their health-care system doesn’t work)

On learning from the states: “Like participants in a national science fair, state governments have tested variants on most of the major components of the health-care reform plans currently being considered in Congress. The results have been dramatically increased premiums in the individual market, spiraling public health-care costs, and reduced access to care. In other words: The reforms have failed.” (The Lesson of State Health-Care Reforms)

On the purported right to health care: “The question of health care is not one of rights but of how best in practice to organize it. America is certainly not a perfect model in this regard. But neither is Britain, where a universal right to health care has been recognized longest in the Western world. Not coincidentally, the U.K. is by far the most unpleasant country in which to be ill in the Western world. Even Greeks living in Britain return home for medical treatment if they are physically able to do so.” (Is There a ‘Right’ to Health Care? In Britain, its recognition has led to substandard care.)

On Obama’s tall tales: “To highlight abusive practices, Mr. Obama referred to an Illinois man who ‘lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about.’ The president continued: ‘They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.’ Although the president has used this example previously, his conclusion is contradicted by the transcript of a June 16 hearing on industry practices before the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigation of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.” (Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance: His tales of abuse don’t stand scrutiny.)

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Young Americans for Liberty: Are we rebuilding the wall?

by Bob Weeks on November 9, 2009

in Politics

Young Americans for Liberty protest sign

Today Wichita Young Americans for Liberty held an event at Wichita State University to “protest our country’s communist tendencies and our government’s attempt to metaphorically rebuild the Berlin Wall…on our own soil.” I stopped by and took photos and video.

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Michelle Malkin delivers conservative message in Wichita

by Bob Weeks on November 6, 2009

in Politics

Michelle Malkin in Wichita

At a fundraising event for Kansas Secretary of State candidate Kris Kobach, conservative author, journalist, and columnist Michelle Malkin delivered a message that appealed to conservatives, although not necessarily the Republican establishment. Her most recent book is Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies.

In endorsing his candidacy, Malkin praised Kobach as a conservative intellectual and a conservative activist.

On the national level, Malkin said that there’s a constant theme from the left: Don’t tell the truth about Obama, you’re a hater, you’re a racist, you’re divisive, you’re an extremist. This narrative is designed to keep conservatives quiet. But ordinary American people are pushing back, she said, without the sponsorship of national Republicans in Washington or any top-down group.

This has the Obama administration and the “top-down Astroturfers on the left” in a tizzy. It’s not the way that ACORN and SEIU (Service Employees International Union) have organized its foot soldiers, she said. It’s why there’s been such a vicious and violent reaction from people like Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod and ACORN chief Bertha Lewis.

She said she embraces the epithets the left throws at her: “I am the angry mob,” she said to applause from the audience.

Malkin said that within the first month of the Obama administration, important campaign pledges of transparency, openness, ethics, and lobbyist bans were broken. Now there is widespread buyer’s remorse.

Malkin quoted Bess Myerson: “The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.” The mainstream media is not only indifferent to the corruption of the Obama campaign, but “an active participant in whitewashing that culture of corruption out of all coverage of this man … not just of Barack Obama, but Michelle Obama as well.”

Michelle Malkin and Kris Kobach

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” she said, naming her book, Fox News, conservative talk radio, and alternative media on the Internet as examples of media that are getting out the message.

Holding up a copy of the Constitution, she said “by the way, this is my teleprompter.”

She said the partisan goal of ACORN and its satellite organizations is to elect a Democratic majority and keep it there. Referring to internal scandals in ACORN, the New York Times kept the news quiet in the weeks before the 2008 election because it was a “game-changer.” “They weren’t going to rig the game against Barack Obama.”

Besides an idealogical investment in Obama, there is a financial investment too, as the Times admitted that it sold over a million dollars of “Obama swag” on its website — a conflict of interest, Malkin said.

These organizations have tried to stifle the political expression of conservatives. SEIU president Andy Stern said “We will use the power of persuasion, but when that doesn’t work, we will use the persuasion of power.” When the leftist status quo is faced with change, they respond with violence, as exemplified by the SEIU.

Malkin said that while the Obama administration is trying to control mainstream news media through a czar and a revival of the fairness doctrine, she worries more about what they’re trying to do to ordinary citizens.

“We need to educate, agitate, and organize,” she said. Those in the Republican establishment who advocate toning down the message are unwise. She said we need to fight the capitulationist forces in Washington, as not only are there “Republicans in name only,” there are “conservatives in name only.”

Malkin said that the best place for activists to start is right in their own back yards.

Answering a question about Newt Gingrich and his endorsement of a liberal Republican congressional candidate, Malkin said that Gingrich made an obviously bad decision. He’s made other bad decisions lately too, she said, appearing with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in an ad sponsored by Al Gore that argues for global warming hysteria, and also campaigning with Al Sharpton on education issues.

Another question asked about the viability of a third party in America. Malkin revealed that she voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne in 1996. Kobach added that given the way our electoral system is structured, it is very difficult to displace a party. The Republicans replacing the Whigs is the last such example.

Speaking about the tea party protests, Malkin said that from the start it was never only an anti-Obama phenomenon, despite all the mainstream media spin.

Asked what George Soros is really after, Malkin answered “The destruction of our pillars of capitalism and individual liberty and truly deliberative democracy.”

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Star Parker delivers message in Wichita

by Bob Weeks on October 8, 2009

in Politics

In an energetic message delivered to an audience at Wichita State University this Monday, author and columnist Star Parker spoke about breaking the cycle of poverty and other issues facing our country.

Early in her talk, Parker noted the irony of the welfare office in Washington (the Department of Health and Human Services) being located on Independence Avenue. The approaches that have been tried over the last 45 years to conquer poverty haven’t worked and have led to two generations of government dependence with disastrous consequences, she said.

Speaking of her own experience being on welfare, the rules of welfare are “don’t work, don’t save, don’t get married.” These rules are designed to keep poor people on welfare, not allow them to break out of poverty. There’s something wrong with our society, she said, if we allow this to continue.

She believed the lie that “I was poor because rich people are rich.”

There used to be a healthy black community, but the war on poverty has been very harmful to family life. Fathers used to be in the black home. But the government moved in and began to bankrupt family life.

At the time, Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan looked at the plans for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and recognized that it will hurt black families more than help them, Parker said. Then, black out-of-wedlock births was one in four; today it is three in four. Even though there was poverty and racism, black family life was largely intact.

The ideas of the conservative right work for all Americans, including poor people, she said. Traditional values, including the duty to be self-sufficient and responsible in the choice they make, are an important factor in getting out of poverty.

Who is in poverty, Parker asked? 53% of the poor live in families with only one parent. We need to “mention marriage every now and then,” she said.

Developing a work ethic is also important, she said. “Work is how you get out of poverty.” But there is a hostile environment in Washington and elsewhere that says the wealthy need to be penalized. That means they can’t produce as many jobs as they could.

The welfare state and moral relativism has caused harm to all of America, she said. The black family was most vulnerable, so it was hurt first. Now the rate of births out marriage for Hispanics and whites is higher than it was for blacks was when the war on poverty started.

Regarding education and school choice, Parker made the point that the rich — even the middle class — already have school choice. It’s poor people that benefit most from school choice programs across the country. She told of the Washington, DC scholarship voucher program, where 1,700 poor children each year were able to attend better schools. Parents desperate to get their children out of DC schools applied, 40,000 of them, so there had to be a lottery to decide who would get the scholarship.

But President Barack Obama canceled this program.

Social security is another government program that is harmful to the poor, Parker said. The little that they might be able to save gets sent to Washington for something they don’t own, they can’t transfer, and on which they get a horrible rate of return.

In response to a question about the redistribution of wealth through the tax system to provide basic needs such as food and shelter, Parker said that the best approach is to create an environment where people can provide these things for themselves.

Answering another question, Parker said it’s important for youth to hear all sides. Most curriculum, she said, is slanted towards the left.

A question about race and racism brought out Parker’s observation that whenever the left is losing on an issue, such as health care, they bring up the issue of race. This is the case even when the people on both sides are black. There’s an industry that benefits from racism, but “most of the barriers of segregation have been removed,” she said. The number one crisis facing African-Americans today is not racism, but sexual immorality, she said.

Regarding the murder of Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, she said that people should not take justice into their own hands. The debate is intense, and we need to “take it down a notch.” The death of Tiller was a horrible thing, and it is also horrible to glorify the man and the things he did, she said.

Additional coverage of Parker’s visit is at Kansas Watchdog.

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In health care debate, can we trust the president?

by Bob Weeks on September 22, 2009

in Health care

In the health care debate, President Obama pleads with Americans to get the facts straight before making up their minds. But that’s easier said than done, and by his actions, I wonder if the president really believes this.

Here’s an example: A page at mybarackobama.com under the title “Setting the Record Straight” holds this prominent statement: “It seems like a new lie about health insurance reform crops up each day. These lies create fear and anger — and we’re seeing the results around the country. It’s time to work together to set the record straight and expose the special interests and partisan attack groups who deliberately spread these rumors and lies in a desperate attempt to preserve the status quo.”

A direct quote from the president shown on this page is “Where we do disagree, let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that’s actually been proposed.”

So what are “things that are real,” Mr. President? Here’s some Wall Street Journal reporting (Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance: His tales of abuse don’t stand scrutiny, September 14, 2009) that casts doubt on the president’s truthfulness. Referring to the president’s address to Congress earlier this month:

Later in his speech, the president used Alabama to buttress his call for a government insurer to enhance competition in health insurance. He asserted that 90% of the Alabama health-insurance market is controlled by one insurer, and that high market concentration “makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly — by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates.”

In fact, the Birmingham News reported immediately following the speech that the state’s largest health insurer, the nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, has about a 75% market share. A representative of the company indicated that its “profit” averaged only 0.6% of premiums the past decade, and that its administrative expense ratio is 7% of premiums, the fourth lowest among 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans nationwide.

Similarly, a Dec. 31, 2007, report by the Alabama Department of Insurance indicates that the insurer’s ratio of medical-claim costs to premiums for the year was 92%, with an administrative expense ratio (including claims settlement expenses) of 7.5%. Its net income, including investment income, was equivalent to 2% of premiums in that year.

In addition to these consumer friendly numbers, a survey in Consumer Reports this month reported that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama ranked second nationally in customer satisfaction among 41 preferred provider organization health plans. The insurer’s apparent efficiency may explain its dominance, as opposed to a lack of competition — especially since there are no obvious barriers to entry or expansion in Alabama faced by large national health insurers such as United Healthcare and Aetna.

The president and the Birmingham News certainly have different views of the facts.

That speech also told two tales of patients allegedly abused by their private insurance companies. Congressional testimony, however, provided a different set of facts than what the president presented in his speech (Fact-checking the president on health insurance).

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Fact-checking the president on health insurance

by Bob Weeks on September 18, 2009

in Health care

Advocates for more government control over health care, including President Obama, cite cases where people have been abused by private health insurance companies. We ought to be sure that these cases are real, and we need to be aware of the scope of the problem, before we assign weight to these arguments.

Wall Street Journal reporting (Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance: His tales of abuse don’t stand scrutiny, September 14, 2009) provides some vitally important information in the health care debate.

As it turns out, the facts underlying two cases that President Obama cited in his address to Congress last week are quite different from what the president wants us to believe.

In one case, the president said this in his speech: “One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.”

Here’s the Wall Street Journal reporting on this same case: “Although the president has used this example previously, his conclusion is contradicted by the transcript of a June 16 hearing on industry practices before the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigation of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The deceased’s sister testified that the insurer reinstated her brother’s coverage following intervention by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. She testified that her brother received a prescribed stem-cell transplant within the desired three- to four-week ‘window of opportunity’ from ‘one of the most renowned doctors in the whole world on the specific routine,’ that the procedure ‘was extremely successful,’ and that ‘it extended his life nearly three and a half years.’”

In the second case, the president said this: “Another woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne.”

The Journal reporting: “The woman’s testimony at the June 16 hearing confirms that her surgery was delayed several months. It also suggests that the dermatologist’s chart may have described her skin condition as precancerous, that the insurer also took issue with an apparent failure to disclose an earlier problem with an irregular heartbeat, and that she knowingly underreported her weight on the application.”

Did President Obama lie about these cases? Or is he simply misinformed, and if so, who is feeding him misinformation?

A second issue is the number of cases of rescission. That’s where an insurer cancels a policy, leading to stories like the two above. The number of cases identified by Congressional staff analysis is 20,000 over a five-year period. This may be evidence of a small problem that needs some gentle reform. A wholesale government intervention is not justified by these cases.

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Obama’s tax increase on tires

by Bob Weeks on September 14, 2009

in Taxation

There’s a reason why some news is released on Friday night. Those making the news hope it won’t be noticed.

That’s probably why the Obama Administration waited until then to inform the country that it was imposing a tariff on tires imported from China. This tariff will probably protect some American jobs, but it will increase the cost of tires.

Lew Rockwell, in a post on his blog on the Obama tire tariff, is as plain as can be:

“To stem the alarming availability of inexpensive tires to American consumers in a depression, and to reward overpaid, underworked unions and inefficient US producers, Obama has imposed — unilaterally, as a dictator — a 35% tariff tax on Chinese tires. The Chinese correctly point out that this is an act of the rankest protectionism, and harmful to the cause of world trade.”

President Bush did things like this too: President Bush’s tax hike.

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Articles of Interest

by Bob Weeks on September 14, 2009

in Politics

Van Jones, Jay Leno, smoking in Kansas, Obama’s health care speech.

Obama and the Left: The lesson of the rise and fall of Van Jones

This Wall Street Journal commentary analyzes the resignation of “green jobs czar” Van Jones. “Our guess is that Mr. Jones landed in the White House precisely because his job didn’t require Senate confirmation, which would have subjected him to more scrutiny. This is also no doubt a reason that Mr. Obama has consolidated so much of his Administration’s governing authority inside the White House under various ‘czars.’ Mr. Jones was poised to play a prominent role in disbursing tens of billions of dollars of stimulus money. It was the ideal perch from which he could keep funding the left-wing networks from which he sprang, this time with taxpayer money. … [leftists who helped elect Barack Obama] are increasingly frustrated because they are discovering that Mr. Obama will happily employ ‘movement progressives,’ but only so long as their real views and motivations aren’t widely known or understood. How bitter it must be to discover that the Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck, who drove the debate about Mr. Jones, counts for more at this White House than Mr. Sirota.” Ouch.

Rooting against Jay Leno

Tonight, Jay Leno’s new television show makes its debut. Not all are happy. As reported in the Los Angeles Times story Jay Leno’s new show is surrounded by drama: TV insiders hope NBC’s cut-rate alternative to scripted content fails: “… a fair number of industry insiders — and not just rival executives — will be rooting for it to flop. That’s mostly because, as part of NBC’s controversial experiment to overturn 60 years of prime-time TV traditions with relatively cheap programming, Leno’s new show is perceived as a potential job-wrecker.”

Evidently the Leno show will cost only one-third of the cost of the scripted dramas that usually appear at the 9:00 pm (Central time) slot, and that means fewer jobs. But because of the show’s low production costs, it can be a business success even with low ratings compared to its competition.

Kansas casino smoking ban

The Wichita Eagle story Group claims smoking in Kansas casinos an ADA problem tells of an effort to force the state of Kansas to prohibit smoking in casinos.

It should be noted that in Kansas, the casinos are owned by the state itself, and the state hopes to collect a lot of tax revenue from these operations. That may be why earlier this year when the Kansas senate passed a sweeping state-wide smoking ban, it proposed to allow smoking in state-owned casinos.

Whether or not you believe in the merits of the smoking ban, the attitude of the state is clear: regulate everyone else, but not my myself.

A Bipartisan Plan to Wreck the System

In a funny — well, it would be funnier if it weren’t so sad because it’s so true — the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins writes the speech that President Obama should have given last Wednesday. Here’s an excerpt:

Now, much has been said about our “public option” that’s been confusing and misinformed. It’s in that spirit that I speak to you tonight.

Critics wonder: How can a new “public option” bring meaningful competition to the health-insurance marketplace and drive down costs?

They miss the point. The great work done so far has tended to squash competition, and we would continue this work—by restricting the ability of insurance companies to design and market their policies; by regulating what coverage they can offer; by using tax distortions to keep consumers in the dark about what their health care really costs, so they will continue to treat it as a “free lunch” when it actually gobbles up more and more of their disposable incomes.

People, this is why insurance rates keep going up and up, and why a competitive marketplace, in which consumers reward those who provide high-quality care at low cost, hardly exists. And I say again, with all humility, this is a great bipartisan achievement.

I think he’s right: the present system is a product of both parties.

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Health care reform threatens anesthesiology, patients

September 14, 2009

While doctors aren’t the only source of information we should use when considering health care reform, they are on the front lines of providing care, and so their insights are valuable.

Recently, Ronald Dworkin contributed An Anesthesiologist’s Take on Health-Care Reform to the Wall Street Journal. He makes some good observations on doctors in general, and on the special nature of anesthesiology.

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President Obama’s health care speech

September 9, 2009

Speaking to a joint session of Congress and the American people, President Barack Obama laid out his latest vision for health care reform.

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Articles of Interest

August 31, 2009

Kansas budget, expensive college, Kansas education funding, alternatives to ObamaCare.

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Astroturf, Obama style

August 12, 2009

At the recent New Hampshire town hall meeting, President Obama took a softball question from a young girl. It seemed innocent enough. Almost natural.

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The real right to medical care versus socialized medicine

August 11, 2009

In 1994, George Reisman wrote a pamphlet explaining the problems with America’s health care system. He criticized the Clinton plan for reform, and offered an alternative based on freedom and markets rather than government interventionism. It is a brilliant work, and still relevant today: “I wrote this essay to help defeat the Clinton plan for socialized medicine. In all essentials it’s as valid today as it was then. It’s a demonstration that government intervention inspired by the philosophy of collectivism is the cause of America’s medical crisis and that a free market in medical care is the solution for the crisis. I urge everyone who wants to help defeat the essentially similar Obama scheme to read it.”

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Paygo rule meaningless, harmful

August 6, 2009

In a letter printed in yesterday’s Wichita Eagle, Doug Ittner of Wichita promotes the benefit of a rule known as “paygo.” The purpose of this rule is to force budget discipline on Congress. As the Washington Post’s David Broder wrote in that newspaper in June: “[Paygo's] key provision requires that any new tax cut or entitlement increase be paid for by an offsetting reduction in other programs or a tax increase. If, for example, you want to guarantee child care for every working mother or provide her with a payroll tax cut, you would have to find savings or revenue elsewhere of equal size.”

It sounds like Congress has suddenly been overtaken by reason, doesn’t it?

If only it were so.

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European health care rationing boards: coming to America?

July 14, 2009

Returning to a letter in the Wichita Eagle written by Brad Beachy of Wichita: He’s making the case that nationalized health care of the type found in Europe is both cheaper and better than what we have in America.

Cheaper, yes. Better? Let’s take a look.

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Obama-style health care: the effects in England

July 9, 2009

In the debate of what to do about health care, advocates — such as President Obama — cite countries that spend much less than the United States. An example is the United kingdom.

The president believes that if we can control costs through better medical practice and efficiency gains, we too can have more health card provided at less cost.

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In Obama administration, transparency and science take backseat to politics

July 7, 2009

President Barack Obama has promised to make transparency the standard for his administration. He also pledged to base decisions such as our nation’s energy policy on science.

As reported on this site, the Competitive Enterprise Institute uncovered a series of email messages within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that raise questions as to how seriously these goals are followed.

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Articles of interest

June 22, 2009

Chemical security, national health care, global warming cost, school order.

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In Wichita, protest of ABC’s Obama coverage

June 21, 2009

Here’s a message from a local patriot and activist. She is rightly concerned about ABC News — the national organization, not the local affiliate — and its upcoming coverage of the Obama administration.

Protest in Wichita in front of ABC affiliate KAKE news TV at 1500 N. West St., Wichita this Wednesday, June 24th starting at 4 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. Please join us! We are protesting the fact ABC is propagandizing the American public and deceiving them.

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