Voice For Liberty

Tag: Barack Obama

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

    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.

  • Wall Street Journal on government 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.)

  • Young Americans for Liberty: Are we rebuilding the wall?

    Young Americans for Liberty 2009-11-17Young 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.

  • Michelle Malkin delivers conservative message in Wichita

    Michelle Malkin in WichitaMichelle 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 in WichitaMichelle 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.”

  • Star Parker delivers message in Wichita

    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.

  • In health care debate, can we trust the president?

    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).

  • Fact-checking the president on health insurance

    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.

  • Obama’s tax increase on tires

    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.

  • Articles of Interest

    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.